Via Atrios, this one from the Allentown Morning Call:
For nearly a decade, tax-weary people from New Jersey and New York poured into the Lehigh Valley in search of a bigger home on a bigger lot, and developers couldn’t build so-called McMansions fast enough to meet demand. But as a credit crisis sweeps the nation, forcing a record number of homeowners into foreclosure, home building — especially construction of large homes — in the Lehigh Valley has slowed to a crawl.
A housing downturn that has made credit more difficult to get, combined with rising energy costs, is pushing the market away from the McMansions built in the Valley the past decade, and toward a more affordable version of the American Dream.
That may give Lehigh Valley Planning Commission members the opening they have been looking for to shift future development toward smaller, more affordable homes that chew up less open space.
The Planning Commission is reviewing more than 100 of the best development concepts used across the nation to build a new neighborhood model members hope they can sell to municipal leaders and developers across the region.
Though it will take at least a year to craft, the model probably will include cottage housing, clustered housing that preserves green space, zoning that encourages businesses and homes to occupy the same neighborhoods and incentives to developers to preserve open space.
Great idea.
But it will never happen.
Prediction: Those living in existing neighborhoods nearby will hate it, will fight it. Will complain that it infringes upon “their way of life,” whatever that means.
Will complain about traffic. Will wail that smaller houses will lower the value of their bigger houses.
Will get people elected who vow to oppose the whole thing.
And will ultimately get the idea tossed onto the trash heap.
”Don’t blame us, we’re just building what the current zoning laws allow,” said Chuck Hamilton, executive officer of the Lehigh Valley Builders Association. ”If a township requires 1-acre lots, no one wants to put a small house on that. If these planners allow smaller lots, we’ll be happy to build smaller homes, if people want them.”
“People,” as in buyers, may indeed be interested. But “people,” as in those who already live nearby, will never accept it, no matter how much sense it might make in the long run.
This is what happens when “smart growth” bumps up against naked self-interest. Self-interest wins - to the detriment of the more rational, sustainable whole.
I'm not green at all, i could care less. Just not my style to complain that i never have money, then mention i have a place at the beach. Then she comes down on people for doing the same thing she does??
looks like a pretty place, how old is it??
