Ah, well.

I see LancoYokel spent his Sunday penning a critique of last week’s print output. Which is fine. Though I’ll stay away from the criticism of the convention center piece because I unfortunately will probably be writing more stories about this issue as we go down the line, and as a general rule I mostly try to avoid commenting on stories that I might be covering.

But I will address two of his “unasked questions”:

1) How do these numbers compare to prior years? Like maybe ten years worth, minimum?

Would have been great to have had this, of course. Though when I asked Randy Patterson for it, his response was “unfortunately we just began analysing the building permit data more intensively beginning in 2007 so we don’t have a great comparative history.” And while he might have come up with some numbers, he said, their accuracy would have been dubious.

But, sure, I could have waited a few more weeks for someone to come up with those dubious numbers, and included them. Which would have then prompted a Yokels bit about what a stooge I was for including dubious numbers.

Ah, the life of a critic. Yokel, if you ever go on vacation I could probably write some of your blog posts for you.

Then this:

What’s going on in the neighborhoods for which Smart doesn’t give us statistics?

I have those figures - but that wasn’t the story. The story was the downtown. Because you get out of the downtown and how are you going to trace any economic development, or lack of it, to the convention center? You could just as easily trace it to the ballpark or the Academy of Music or out in the northwest what F&M is doing or what LGH is doing. The most immediate effect of the convention center is going to be felt within the shadow of the convention center, and from day one the idea of the convention center itself was that it was going to help revitalize the downtown - and that this rising tide would lift all boats.

As to the column - the suggestion that if Lancaster County retains or even increases its draw in the era of higher energy and food prices - the Yokel says this:

Take a look at the recent developments ’round here that incorporate higher density housing in the name of TND or “smart growth” or whatever planning buzzwords were popular at the moment the developer was selling his plan to some Lanco Yokel planners. Do you see farms integrated into residential tracts? No, you see “green space.” Parks, community centers, grass and (maybe) trees. The farms that existed where the housing and green space now reside are gone. And the county has packed in even more people who have to drive to do any actual shopping. Before Gil went off half-cocked over the notion that Lancaster County might be leading a good planning trend, he needed to figure out how much farmland actually is preserved in smart growth communities. Apparently he didn’t think to ask that question.

So, TNDs don’t preserve farmland because they actually pave over farmland, and if they did preserve farmland you’d see someone growing crops between the new row houses.

Um, that’s not how it’s supposed to work.

How it’s supposed to work is that more intensive development on land here is intended to prevent that farm over there from also being developed. And I’ll absolutely agree that the problem with the overall concept here is that there’s no guarantee that the farm over there won’t ultimately be developed; easements can be purchased (via your tax dollars) and farmers can cross their hearts and promise not to sell to the Evil Developers, but at no point does East Hempfield or any other municipality pass an ordinance saying that if TNDs are permitted then no addition rezoning of agricultural land in the agricultural zone will be permitted.

Don’t know if you could even do so, legally. But yes, if TNDs or other high-density development is to fulfill the promise of actually preserving farmland, then there may need to be things in place that actually mandate this. Then individual municipalities have to buy into it; those out in the hinterlands have to agree to forego the revenue that might be generated by additional development; those closer in have to say, OK, we know that our proximity to the urbanized area means we’re going to see more development here than those in Little Britain Township might.

That’s the deal; not that we’re going to preserve farmland along Harrisburg or Fruitville pikes just outside the city, but that the contiguous agricultural communities out beyond the urban fringe remain agricultural. And it’s been the deal; these concepts have been discussed for more than a decade. It’s only once the rubber began hitting the road in East Hempfield and a few other communities that those who used to skip, glassy-eyed, over stories about the “urban growth boundaries” now have decided that it’s all a very terrible thing indeed, being shoved down their throats by the Evil Developers, and the planners - who are either elitist or, as the Yokel implies, stupid.

These idiots would include not just your simple farmer from East Bumble Township who gulps down the Evil Developers’ jargon - but indeed, James Cowhey, head of the county planning commission, who’s fully invested in the idea of higher density in order to save farmland. It would include former head planner Ron Bailey, not head of planning over in Chester County and under whose tenure Lancaster County came up with most of these concepts.

Indeed, the critics’ problem is that they’ve got the sequence exactly wrong. It’s not the Evil Developers driving this bus; it’s the planners themselves who came up with these concepts, and sold it to the developers. The Baileys and the Cowheys and the staff at the county planning commission and yes, even some of your local east Bumble farmers sit down and study these things over the course of years; they look at what’s being done elsewhere; develop some of their own ideas. They try real hard to see the big picture, and implement policies on the basis of that.

And then out of the woodwork pop the Yokels, declaring those conclusions reached over the course of years to be not only misguided - for which there’s a legitimate argument - but stupid. Or elitist.

Sweet. You want seat-of-the-pants planning? That’s how you get it. Or maybe we can just keep on doing what we’ve been doing; remain calm, all is well. But Kunstler writes about this as well; we’re so psychologically invested in the idea of suburbia as we know it that we’ll defend it to the death. That involves calling any attempt to rethink it stupid and lambasting those who disagree - all the while, of course, without offering up anything in the way of a broad alternative that itself would be palatable to all involved.