Fuck the climate, I wanna drive everywhere!
.......
It's no accident, I think, that James -- the author of Let's Build:
<http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lets-Build-Million-Homes-Years/dp/0955383005>
and a climate change skeptic would be attracted to the New Geography essayist's argument.
While useless as a description of the American scene, the article *does* provide us with yet another example of an interesting trend: criticisms of the Obama administration which are based upon a belief that it's something it's not: i.e. radically different. (See, for example, the tea partiers.)
Mr. Kotkin repeatedly deploys the hyperventilating phrase, "war on suburbia" (coming soon to a tv talking head, shouty blog and radio chat show near you) using as examples of this brutal struggle a few tepid policy and budget mods for rail upgrades and supposedly suburbs shattering 'green' initiatives (nicely dissected by Doug in this thread).
This puts those of us interested in accuracy in an odd position: setting the record straight, not to support Washington but to re-adjust arrows towards actually existing targets.
.d.