Here’s two arguments that you really shouldn’t try and use in the same piece:
Crucial to this process has been the retention of green belt and a
"town centre first" planning policy. The political decision to curtail
the 1980s ring road sprawl means more than half of new shopping
facilities are being directed to city centres. With it has come safer
streets, growing public transport usage and downtown regeneration. This
is precisely the kind of City success Barker and her supermarket
supporters threaten to unpick with plans to give retail parks the whip
hand in any development dispute.
Now whether you agree with this or not is another matter, but this is clearly a function of a specific planning process. The imposition of a design for a city from the centre.
If the late, great urban guru Jane Jacobs taught us one thing, it was
that traditional economics had little useful to say about the organic
art of urban planning.
Well, actually, no, the late great Jane Jacobs argued against the imposition of a design for a city from the centre:
"Jacobs came down firmly on the side of spontaneous inventiveness of
individuals, as against abstract plans imposed by governments and
corporations,"
Not really all that clever to mix the two arguments, is it?
The hegemons of Wal-Mart, Costco, Home Depot and Best Buy are
strangling civic life. With no greenbelt protection, 105 acres an hour
of countryside is being eaten up to feed rampant ex-urbanisation.
105 acres an hour? Really? 2,500 a day or so? 900,000 acres a year? 1,400 square miles?
Out of 3.7 million square miles? 0.03 % per annum? You mean every generation they swallow up another 1% of their land area? My God! the horror! the Tragedy! In only another 5 generations, in the time of the great great grandchildren of one born now there’ll only be 95% of the country that is still country?
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