rural idiocy

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Fri May 8 07:54:25 PDT 1998


At 02:14 PM 5/6/98 +0000, Patrick Bond wrote:
>In all the chatter about cars, not a word about the capitalist urban
>and suburban planning forms that have reduced them from luxury to
>necessity. What do we do with this landscape after the revolution?
>

I do not think we need to wait that long. Suffice we stop subsidizing the burbs in the name of fiscal austerity, so much champtioned by neo-liberals -- and they will fold like houses of cards before our eyes.

Some of the forms of subsidizing suburban living in Baltimore area include:

- settlement grants for homebuyers (to cover closing costs, 'points,' downpayment, etc.); - lower insurance rates for auto owners (up to 50% comparing to what you pay if you live in the city); - lower real property taxes; - road construction and maintenance; - access to urban services for which suburbanites do not pay; - cheap parking provied by urban employers (eg. JHU asked the city to exempt it from parking tax).

I am ceratin that if those free-riding champions of the free market were required to pay the full cost of they wasteful suburban life style, they would be swarming back to the cities.

However, I would not mind if those scares on our landscape were simply bulldozed -- I would even volunteer for the job.

Regards



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