🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <37B30D8E.11DC@scvnet.com>,
  Gmlyle@scvnet.com wrote:
>
> The coming of better transportation and communication has markedly
> changed the way we associate with others.  We now associate with
> people who share our interests, not our location.  I doubt that my
> grocer would want to have a lively conversation about the impact of
> on-demand transporation on communities, for example.

Like all technology, transportation is a two-edged sword.  Yes, it
can facilitate more meaningful human relationships.  But it can also
make it too easy to escape one's neighborhood and community at will,
to the extent that one becomes anonymous in one's own neighborhood.
And with anonymity comes loss of accountability: "I've seen him
washing his car -- I didn't really talk to him -- I can't believe he
killed all those people."

We don't need to starve our community relationships to such an extreme
in order to foster the richer relationships that transportation
affords.

Transportation isn't to blame for loss of community.  It's just a
facilitator -- like guns in Littleton.

The blame for loss of community better placed on society -- moral
relativism, longer workweeks, materialism, breakdown of the family,
reduced real wages, ..., and *zoning* :-)  See below.


> Disperse the jobs so that they are within a few miles of the homes,
> and you don't need a mass transit system at all.  Folks won't have
> to commute large distances, so enlargement of freeways becomes
> unneeded.
>
> Better yet, we won't have to live crammed into tiny apartments and we
> won't need to wait for trains to take us to work.

Exactly -- smart growth is not about cars vs. trains.  It's about
cars vs. better zoning.  It's about cars vs. walkable communities.

I recently read about one subdivision that was being built where
there were no front doors -- only garage doors.  While transporation
may be morally neutral, zoning is not.  Zoning is encouraging us to
become sedentary anonymous hermits inside our suburban homes.

--
Michael Malak
malak@claygency.com


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