Was either technological redevelopment of the landscape needed? For example, was there a natural catastrophe or biological threat to humanity elsewhere to justify the new settlements of Manhattan Island and Tacoma? Not that’s clear to me.

So, initally the redevelopments were indefensible.

Do suburbanites or anyone else always know what’s best? No. The daily news can confirm that.

The prevailing wisdom is that the point of studying wisdom is to teach.

If you or I have a mind that is capable of understanding the prevailing wisdom, say about the democratic control of political and economic power, then should we inform ignorant suburbanites and others? Yes.

Would such wisdom prevent redevelopments such as Manhattan Island and Tacoma? Or Brown’s Point and Northeast Tacoma? If each case was considered in a functioning democracy, then the each area might look much different today.

Each area might look worse.

Mofo, I do support some regulation of development. For example I dont support unrestricted development in national parks, federal/state forests and parks, wetlands, and any other protected areas.

But the type of restrictions you seem to be advocating, and the developments you label as indefensible, would require coercive actions by the state to a degree which I could not support. That certainly is something wrong, with something.

Mofo, neither you nor I know what is best for suburbanites. They alone know what is best for their families and the style of living they desire. I dont like the prevailing wisdom that somehow urbanites know better, and suburbanites are the only ones damaging the environment.

Is anything wrong with anything?

Just because someone has the ability to devastate a landscape doesn’t mean that they should devastate it, or that that would even want to.

The landscape of Brown’s Point and Northeast Tacoma shows the effect of a conscience informed by capitalism? Maybe, but even though that process of devastation was justified by law, the choice was indefensible.

How does one defend that choice with respect to all the governmental and cultural pressures to live environmentally responsible? To choose to live in the most efficient manner with respect to limited resources?

We still live in a throw-away society. Trash Tacoma or whatever established settlement and move on to some other landscape in the name of capitalism or probably more so in the name of personal autonomy. Independant choices as such happen all the time and within legal systems devised by courts and lawyers.

It was not inevitable that the landscape of Brown’s Point and Northeast Tacoma would be sheared for no apparent reason other than personal aggrandizement. And, by any account, such blatant devastation is indefensible.

It’s called capitalism and free will.

In the past ten years alone the feverish construction of hundreds of homes there have added nothing to the landscape but proof of the crassness and greed of selfish people.

Such blatant landscape devastation, by any account, is indefensible.

It is about time the council starts to practice what they preach!!!

DuPont…I am not trying to knock DuPont with this or people who choose to live there, but…putting some sidewalks and streetlights around strip malls in a place that a few years ago was swampland is not a success.

That’s because they misunderstand what it means to be a walkable community.

Just because there are sidewalks does not mean an area is walkable.

The scale of the area has to be human sized for anyone to walk there. The question comes down to” how many places are within walking 5 minute walking distance?

The problems with the suburbs is that by definition, all of the uses are spread out too far to walk to. That makes car use mandatory for each and every use. If you don’t have a car you are basically stranded.

That is why suburbia is often cited as being polluting and non-sustainable when gas prices continue to increase (there is a finite amount of oil).

Besides the “end of oil” concerns, more people are realizing that if you are forced to drive to nearly every function, community and civic life is very difficult to achieve. Yes, you may run into someone at the mall that you know on a Saturday, but it is statistically unlikely.

My problem with suburbia haters like James Howard Kunstler is their portrayal of suburbanites as the original sinners of America. Kunstler in particular, revels in mocking suburia and suburbanites, and reduces them to individuals of questionable intelligence and character. This is not helpful.

I grew up in Bonney Lake and moved to Tacoma in 2001. I now love the city and wouldnt want to live anywhere but the city. However, people like Kunstler fail to recognize that suburbanites exercise their own free will to live outside our cities, because to them they see a better quality of life in suburbia. You and I would disagree with their conclusion, but who are we to tell them where they should live?

“I do wish that some of Tacoma’s neighbors—Fife, Lakewood, University Place, and Ruston—would someday consider annexation into Tacoma instead of walling themselves off from us,”

I agree with you. However, we’re never going to get suburbia to acquiesce to a plan that benefits both of us, if we(urbanites) continue to belittle them(suburbanites).

This will be solved most efficiently within the market place. Lets create a lively, healthy, affordable, urban environment that people from the suburbs will want to move to. Just like I did.

great article erik.

“With that in mind, it makes me very happy that Washington State adopted the Growth Management Act in 1990.”
Washington’s Growth Management Act is great in concept, but the problem is it has no teeth. It very little success in curbing sprawl. Anyone who takes a drive in the unincorporated areas of East Pierce County outside of Puyallup and Sumner or Spanaway quickly sees proof of this. The weakness of the growth management act has put is in a situation where policy leaders have to use carrots (tax subsidies, market based purchases of land) to preserve our farms and forests. These carrot methods are useful, but the problem is we there is no stick to compliment the carrot, and thus sprawl continues.

DuPont…I am not trying to knock DuPont with this or people who choose to live there, but…putting some sidewalks and streetlights around strip malls in a place that a few years ago was swampland is not a success. People in DuPont have to drive to Lakewood or Olympia to go to the grocery store. It was created as a company town to serve state farm and Intel, but it’s turned into a sprawling car-dependent contrived community driven by cheap housing. It’s not something I would point to as a model suburban community.