Everybody's seen them; homes crammed so close together you can't park a car in the driveway, you can't put a trampoline in the backyard, and forget about planting a tree. This is the "smart growth" that Californians are having shoved down their throats, and there's nothing smart about it. By contrast, in the rural communities north of the American river and east of Sacramento, streets without sidewalks wind through rolling hills, and homes on acre and half-acre lots are set well back from the road. Mature trees provide shade, and deer and
wild turkey come up from the river to invade well-tended gardens. Nobody minds.

But because "smart growth" requires leapfrog infill, this rural way of life is being relentlessly and needlessly destroyed. The reason for this is because an "urban service boundary" has been proclaimed, which prohibits any new housing developments on land beyond this boundary.
So as the population of California grows from 36 million to over 50 million in the next twenty years, we are going to squeeze all of these new people into existing "footprints" of cities.

Do you live in a semi-rural neighborhood within an "urban service boundary"? Because if you do, you'd better get ready for ten "detached homes" to get built on that one acre vacant lot across the street from you. These "cluster homes" are disgusting, ugly contrivances that would not make sense by any aesthetic standard - condominiums look better and provide more amenities, but they don't qualify as "residential single family dwellings." The "smart growth"
cabal exploits the technicality that defines these eyesores as "detached" homes, so get used to them - and pity the poor souls who have to live in them. And enjoy trying to share the road with your twenty million new neighbors, since no roads get built under the "smart growth" mantra, either - they intend to force us all into busses and light rail.

Now a company headquartered in Iowa with operations in the Sacramento area has come up with a plan to build 14 detached homes on 3/4 of an acre. An article in the Sacramento Bee entitled "Downsizing Comes Home" has an image of this abominable plan. And all the powers that be, the media, the environmental lobby, and the politicians, enthusiastically support this destruction of our lifestyle - now claiming low density development causes more CO2 emissions (global warming alarm is probably the biggest scam in the history of the world), and in a larger sense, claiming we are committing some crime against the earth if we want a yard. Perhaps the most offensive aspect of the artist's rendering of the 14 homes on 3/4 acre plan is all the open space surrounding the homes. But that makes sense when you understand the real agenda: This open parkland is owned and maintained by the government - while homeowners get nothing. That used to be called communism.

Volumes could be written about how a coalition of public employee unions, environmental lobbyists, trial lawyers, and opportunistic politicians and academics are destroying the ability of ordinary Americans to own homes on decent sized lots, but for now, let's run some numbers. If you cram 14 homes onto 3/4 of an acre, then at 640 acres per square mile, and 3.5 people per household, you get 41,813 people per square mile. Factor in streets, parks and commercial districts, and you are still looking at 20,000 people per square mile.

Basically, if the smart growth people have their way, the twenty million new residents destined to join us here in California over the next twenty years will be crammed into a mere 1,000 square miles - a square 31 miles on a side, divided into a million tiny pieces and stomped onto every former pearl of beauty, the untended vacant lot or doomed old house on a big lot, within existing cities. This is an absolutely horrific future, being foisted upon us by powerful vested interests and out-of-touch elites who couldn't care less about you and me.

To provide comparisons, the Central Valley in California is 40,000 square miles! If the market were allowed to provide housing, instead running everything through government agencies and trial lawyers, there would still be high density housing, because lots of people like that, especially when it's concentrated in the urban core of existing cities. If property rights were respected, and market-driven development were permitted anywhere (instead of a prison wall surrounding every metropolitan area, causing leapfrog infill to destroy every semi-rural suburb), additional semi-rural suburbs would be built, accommodating the dreams of those who want a little piece of this earth. There is plenty of room.

Ed Ring
EcoWorld