In today’s Washington Post, Cato Institute darling Melanie Scarborough bravely speaks out in opposition to sustainable development:
Another bridge across the Potomac might help alleviate tie-ups. Trying to outlaw “sprawl” will not. New roads invite development. Development attracts new residents, who create traffic jams. If you build the roads, they will come.
She writes “sprawl” in quotes to indicate both condescension and doubt in the veracity of the term, as if sprawl doesn’t actually exist — it’s an invention of the minds of Democrats and Sen. John Chichester.
Her reference to “trying to outlaw ‘sprawl'” presumably refers to providing localities with the power to require developments to meet zoning standards. These laws do things like require developers to demonstrate that there’s enough water available in the water table to provide for the new residents. Or let cash-strapped localities say ‘no’ to a new development if they don’t have the money to provide adequate public facilities, such as police officers, classroom space, or a rescue squad. This is common sense. The alternative is to install new developments without any regard for whether these new residents can be supported, which leads to spiraling tax rates that require existing residents to fund the cost of these new developments, costs that the private sector should be paying for, not government. How any fiscal conservative can support this sort of cart-before-the-horse government is a mystery to me.
Scarborough makes no effort to describe how she’d solve the sprawl problem. I can only assume that, to her mind, sprawl doesn’t exist. Hers must be a happy world.
“Cart-before-the-horse-government”
Yes, that’s it, exactly. Well said.
Scarborugh lives in DC no doubt where services stink, but there is no sprawl.
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If she doesn’t venture south of the Beltway, that would go a long way towards explaining the remainder of her column.
The Washington Post gave her the time of day? I’m disappointed in them. That’s the sort of thing you expect from the Moonie newspaper, “the Washington Times.” not the Post.