Growth/Texas Transportation Conference

[Dena Marchant <denam@fsr.com>]

This is from someone in Texas who's involved in 
transportation issues in Houston.  I thought it might be
of interest to this list.

Dena

>It's interesting that at the [Texas] transportation conference, someone
said that
>no one much benefits from a city growing except perhaps the land
>speculators.  The stores do get more patrons, but also they get more
>competition.  The city incurs debt to pay for increased infrastructure.
>The Mayberry hometown coziness is diminished.  Getting from here to there
>gets more difficult as there becomes further away.  Parents are scared to
>let their kids bike to school any more as the traffic gets awful and the
>drivers tired and aggressive.   Mothers get another burden by having to
>cart them around.  
>
>It would be hard to measure the effect on crime, but I suspect losing some
>of the social fabric, the community ties, would cause it to rise.   They
>say stress increases as a function the differences in income of the
>community.  
>
>People came to Houston like mad over the last generation or so to make
>money.  To find someone born here is a rarety.   So they are not very
>community oriented.  I feel we don't know what we are missing. 
>
>My mother has had long bouts with serious old age illness.  In those long
>quiet years I guess she has done much soul searching.  She said she
>wondered if they did the right thing to leave the old home town and go
>chasing back and forth across the country for pay raises.  It was her
choice. 
>
><snip> But it might also deprive us of 
>>the opportunity to learn from and teach others who see life differently
than 
>>we do. And it might be kind of boring.
>
>>From my vantage as an environmentalist among environmentalists, it seems
>the real work is searching our souls about the values of the traditional
>modern worldview of economic progress and growth.  Has it fulfilled its
>promise of a better life?  Or has all that striving and hard work for
>material wealth just led us to take for granted and lose the intangible
>wealth we once had? 
>
>
>
>Nan 
>Houston 
>
>According to Paul Ray's survey, there are three competing worldviews or
>paradigms in America.   Nearly half hold the modernist worldview of the
>last century.  They believe in material progress and assume that the
>current system only needs adjustment.  A fourth, but declining rapidly,
>doggedly hang their hopes on a return to old time religious and moral
values.  
>
>Another fourth, growing fast, are creating a new culture and hope for  a
>transformation of society.  They are the learners, not the knowers.   Their
>core values are "ecological sustainability; civil rights for women and
>communities of color; self-actualization and spirituality; and social
>conscience and optimism."  To show people how society could be transformed,
>they strive to build non-hierarchical, deeply democratic civic and business
>organizations.  They don't realize they are so many nor have a common
>vision or language. 
>
>http://www.coopamerica.org/Business/B44million.htm
>http://www.lightparty.com/Spirituality/Culture.html
>
>
>