<<  <  >  >>

5. Sierra Club, The Dark Side of the American Dream:

tional right to make their own choices

The Costs and Consequences of Suburban Sprawl

regarding local governance. The EPA anti-

(College Park, Md.: Sierra Club, 1998), http://www

automobile campaign is implicitly founded

.sierra club.org/transportation/sprawl/sprawl_

report/ index.html.

on the idea that "the locals" cannot be trust-

ed to determine their own fate and that the

6. Randall Crane, "Travel by Design," Access 12 (Spring

federal government itself should not only

1998): 2­7.

directly lobby municipal governments but

7. Genevieve Giuliano, "The Weakening Transporta-

should indirectly subvert local decisionmak-

tion-Land Use Connection," Access 6 (Spring 1995): 3­11.

ing. Simply put, EPA's campaign fundamen-

tally  subverts  not  only  the  Tenth

8. Charles Lave, "Cars and Demographics," Access 1

Amendment (in that it interferes with the

(Spring 1994): 4­11.

right of state and local governments to reach

9. Martha Kessler, "EPA to Take On Problem of

their own decisions regarding issues not

Sprawl Using Legal Authority, Regional Chief

within the purview of the federal govern-

Says," Daily Report to Executives (Washington:

ment) but the very concept of democracy

Bureau of National Affairs, February 4, 1999).

itself. EPA appears to see itself not as the peo-

10. http://www.epa.gov/tp.

ple's servant, but the people's master--or at

Simply put, EPA's

least the people's guide. Accordingly, with the

11. Transportation Partners 1997 Annual Report

campaign funda-

support of local branches of those EPA-

(Washington: Environmental Protection Agency,

1998), Executive Summary, p. 1.

backed groups, many American cities are

mentally subverts

adopting policies with little public debate

12. Ibid., p. 1-1.

not only the

that could prove enormously harmful to

Tenth Amend-

those cities and the freedom of their resi-

13. Ibid.

dents.

ment but the very

14. Financial information on these grants comes

American cities do have problems with

from EPA's Grants Information and Control

concept of

congestion, air pollution, housing affordabil-

System database, http://www.epa.gov/envirofw/

ity, and disappearing open space. Most

html/gics/gics_query.html.

democracy itself.

Americans genuinely want to solve those

15. http://tmi.cob.fsu.edu/act/act.html.

problems. To do so, we need an open debate

on policy alternatives, not a bureaucratic

16. http://www.iclei.org.

power grab by a federal agency hiding behind

17. http://www.lgc.org/clc/lgcdesc.html.

federally funded nonprofit organizations.

18. http://www.pti.nw.dc.us.

Notes

19. http://www.bikefed.org.

20. http://solstice.crest.org/sustainable/renew_

1.  Peter Geoffrey Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An

america.

Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in

the  Twentieth  Century  (Cambridge,  Mass.:

21. Michael Shelby, Energy and Transportation

Blackwell, 1996), p. 7.

Sectors Division, "Decision Memorandum--

Supplemental Incremental Funding for the

2. Malvina Reynolds, a Berkeley musician, wrote

Surface Transportation Policy Project under

the song "Little Boxes" (popularized by Pete

Cooperative Agreement CX-825013-01-0," Memo-

Seeger) that coined the term "ticky tacky."

randum to Mildred Lee, Grants Operations Branch,

Environmental Protection Agency, 1997.

3. Jane Holtz Kay, Asphalt Nation: How the Auto-

mobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It

22. http://www.transact.org.

Back (New York: Crown, 1997).

23. http://www.transact.org/trdir/sect4.html.

4. Philip Langdon, A Better Place to Live: Reshaping

the American Suburb  (New York: Harper

24. Transportation Partners 1997 Annual Report,

Perennial, 1994), p. 7.

p. 4-1.

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