Comments on: ‘Leapfrog’ Sprawl In West Virginia

By: Rob Goodspeed

Rob Goodspeed — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:04:46 +0000

Mary, thanks for your comment. While I did not include it in the post there actually are groups that work to oppose sprawl and support smart growth across our cities and regions. While I don't know of any groups in West Virginia, the Coalition for Smarter Growth does work in DC and Loudoun County, Virginia. In Maryland, the 1000 Friends of Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation advocate for smart growth. I did find one group that works in the area of farmland protection in West Virginia. Lastly, the Sierra Club nationally has been involved in the issue, and there may be people with the state chapter who are interested.

By: Mary

Mary — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 01:03:33 +0000

Where are the grassroots organizations that are supposedly preventing sprawl? The amount of development going on should be everyone’s topmost concern… Not only are they building cheap, ugly houses, but they are building them near historic parks and on beautiful open spaces. This will make the lifestyle here change for the worse… higher taxes, road taxes, increase use of energy, electric and water shortages. This are should be preserved as an historic district with the added attraction of open spaces and hiking, biking, water sports etc. Soon there will be nothing like that except memories unless people start trying to stop the developers from making money.
Mary

By: Dan Stowell

Dan Stowell — Thu, 31 May 2007 18:51:31 +0000

My weeks-old comment is both cryptic and glib. It makes perfect sense to me that sprawl would flow to areas that do not systematically prevent it, much as its cost-effective to move manufacturing to countries with weak labor laws.

My analogy to biology (referring to sprawl as the hivemind) is tortured at best. I meant to say that sprawl, when viewed as an organism, will adapt to its environment to assure further propagation. In this case, it has found a spot of least (or lesser) resistance. Of course, sprawl is not an organism – it’s really the product of the actions of many different parties. It’s an organism as much an economy is an organism.

I’ll shut up now.

By: David Daddio

David Daddio — Thu, 10 May 2007 00:32:31 +0000

FAA

By: The Bellows » Speaking of Regional Planning

The Bellows » Speaking of Regional Planning — Wed, 09 May 2007 20:02:01 +0000

[...] Rob Goodspeed has a post on how smart growth policies in places like Montgomery County cause new development to leapfrog into more distant locales, including the panhandle of West Virginia. There are actually two centrifugal forces at work here: closer counties stepping on the brakes push growth out, while lax rules in outer counties (designed to attract some of the economic energy of the metropolis) pull growth out. The latter force means that even if you can convince inner areas to get bigger and denser, there will still be other places trying to bring sprawl to them, and once population is in outlying areas, jobs and calls for additional roads will follow. [...]

By: Dan Stowell

Dan Stowell — Wed, 09 May 2007 19:34:21 +0000

The hivemind evolves.1

[1] In the biological sense, evolution implies a population of hiveminds. Proving the existence of multiple mating hiveminds is left as an exercise to the reader.