I live in the suburbs. It isn't beautiful but I don't care much. We have nice parks. If I want more space I have to move further away from my job. I can't afford to live in the city with the amenities I want. A different sort of city might open up new possibilities, but meanwhile people need some place to live.
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]On Behalf Of MICHAEL YATES Sent: Monday, October 02, 2006 7:33 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: [lbo-talk] let's build!
Karen and I have been traveling around the US for five and a half years now.
As the song says, "I've been everywhere man." Ugliness prevails in much of the nation. Towns and cities sprawl out into the countryside wherever you go, destroying natural and human-made beauty without a second thought. Building millions of cheap houses in the countryside will do absolutely nothing to stop this. There are solutions to the lack of adequate housing for so many people, but these involve some pretty radical changes it seems to me. And BTW, while there are beautiful places in Washington state, a lot
of the landscape has been permanently ruined by the timber industry. They just clear cut whole forests there. Like the strip mines in Wyoming and West Virginia.
I have more to say about this and about the US as I have seen it in my forthcoming book, "Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate: an Economist's Travelogue."
From Monthly Review Press.
Michael Yates
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