[Vision2020] subdivisions (Was "Tribune Uncovers")
g. crabtree
jampot at adelphia.net
Fri May 26 05:37:05 PDT 2006
Fair enough, walk on.
gc
----- Original Message -----
From: "keely emerinemix" <kjajmix1 at msn.com>
To: <jampot at adelphia.net>; <london at moscow.com>;
<jeanlivingston at turbonet.com>; <mattd2107 at hotmail.com>;
<vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2006 8:11 PM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] subdivisions (Was "Tribune Uncovers")
> I'm not an urban planner and, worse, I'm a subdivision dweller and
> committed . . . well, "streetwalker" probably isn't the ideal word . . .
> but I'm someone who enjoys a good walk through town. The point, I think,
> is that many subdivisions, my own included, aren't linked well to town.
> Of course, that's probably the reason they're "subdivisions" -- parcels of
> land, formerly open, divided and platted into separate residential
> parcels.
>
> Having now exhausted the limits of my expertise in the field of planning,
> I freely acknowledge that I don't know the answers, Gary. I just want to
> try to get away from the "no-growth" vs. "big growth" polarization that
> tends to define the discussion.
>
> keely
>
>
> From: "g. crabtree" <jampot at adelphia.net>
> To: "keely emerinemix"
> <kjajmix1 at msn.com>,<london at moscow.com>,<jeanlivingston at turbonet.com>,<mattd2107 at hotmail.com>,<vision2020 at moscow.com>
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] subdivisions (Was "Tribune Uncovers")
> Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 18:39:29 -0700
>
> Ms. Mix, I am truly perplexed. At no point in my afternoon travels did I
> leave the city limits of Moscow and yet I drove through the majority of
> Moscow's new development. There are sidewalks next to all the streets that
> I traveled that connected the new to the old. Since the "town proper" is
> already developed where do you suggest we locate new homes that does not
> require a little bit of travel? Particularly since nobody wants any
> commercial development next to their home. If you have a technique by
> which you can float new development over the top of the old and tie it
> together with chute and ladders can you share it with the rest of us?
>
> gc
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "keely emerinemix" <kjajmix1 at msn.com>
> To: <jampot at adelphia.net>; <london at moscow.com>;
> <jeanlivingston at turbonet.com>; <mattd2107 at hotmail.com>;
> <vision2020 at moscow.com>
> Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2006 6:15 PM
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] subdivisions (Was "Tribune Uncovers")
>
>
>>
>>I think Bill was pretty clear that he didn't mean sidewalks meandering
>>through subdivisions -- we can all see that those exist -- but that the
>>sidewalk-laced new subdivisions are not easily connected to other parts of
>>town. The concern is that subdivisions are built with "roads to nowhere,"
>>requiring car travel or the addition of footbridges or paths to link the
>>subdivision to the town proper.
>>
>>Whatever disagreements I might have with some "smart growth" proponents
>>over school facilities, I appreciate the reasonable and coherent arguments
>>that most have advanced, Bill London included. It's easy to lose patience
>>with those who go incendiary with their rhetoric, or whose idea of "smart
>>growth" is really no growth at all, with additional
>>stream-of-consciousness rambling about "our hills" and "our fields" and
>>"tasting of the land to see what it speaks to us." (God knows I've lost
>>patience with it, sometimes publiclly). But Bill London and most of the
>>people I know personally in MCA aren't like that, and while I regret the
>>lack of support for new school buildings, I appreciate the work involved
>>in keeping Moscow from being flooded with big boxes and "cheap crap"
>>merchandisers. Above all, I don't regret at all the opportunity to
>>continue the dialogue.
>>
>>keely
>>
>>keely
>>
>>From: "g. crabtree" <jampot at adelphia.net>
>>To: "Bill London" <london at moscow.com>, "Bruce and Jean Livingston"
>><jeanlivingston at turbonet.com>, "Matt Decker"
>><mattd2107 at hotmail.com>, <vision2020 at moscow.com>
>>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] RE: Tribune uncovers new Moscowpro-growth gro
>>Date: Thu, 25 May 2006 17:07:03 -0700
>>
>>Mr. London, I'm not sure what you're talking about. My afternoons travels
>>took me through several of the "subdivision developments sprawled around
>>town perimeter" as you put it. They all had sidewalks on at least one side
>>of the street. Most on both. I am sure that the developers all paid the
>>city a fee in lieu of land dedication for parks as per requirements. All
>>were "connected to town." I suppose that every time someone wanted to put
>>up some houses we could require them to improve all the infrastructure
>>from the furthest point in the city to their new development but I'm
>>guessing that this would make new homes a tad spendy. The developments, as
>>they are, seem to be meeting the requirements of people quite nicely,
>>judging by the fact that folks are only to willing to live in them. Sounds
>>to me as though your vision of smart growth, affordable housing, and what
>>people actually want doesn't mix very well.
>>
>> If parks and paths and sidewalks are so important to you, why haven't
>> you and your neighbors banded together and done so in your own
>> neighborhood? There is vacant land not too far to the east and west of
>> you to acquire for a park. Each of you could be responsible for your own
>> sidewalk and you could all chip in for a bike path and to connect to the
>> sidewalk that the developer on Hershi Rd. (new development) thoughtfully
>> stubbed out toward your neighborhood to help with being "connected." I
>> think that should you do this you would better appreciate the kind of
>> additional cost you are asking the developer to incur and pass on to the
>> new potential home owners. Why ask others to do what you aren't willing
>> to do yourself?
>>
>> G. Crabtree
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Bill London
>> To: g. crabtree ; Bruce and Jean Livingston ; Matt Decker ;
>> vision2020 at moscow.com
>> Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2006 11:57 AM
>> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] RE: Tribune uncovers new Moscowpro-growth gro
>>
>>
>> G-
>> What you suggest for Moscow's growth ("let the people with a real
>> vested interest in any given project move ahead ") is just what happened
>> under former council and result was series of subdivision developments
>> sprawled around town perimeter. Not one has a park. Not one is
>> connected bysidewalk/trail/path to town. All require rest of us to
>> provide infrastructure for them (think Joseph street bridge). That is
>> Dumb Growth.
>> BL
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: g. crabtree
>> To: Bruce and Jean Livingston ; Matt Decker ; vision2020 at moscow.com
>> Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2006 7:33 AM
>> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] RE: Tribune uncovers new Moscowpro-growth
>> gro
>>
>>
>> Bruce, It's clear from your post that you do not feel that the MCA is
>> a "no growth" organization. But it's equally clear that it's a long way
>> from being pro growth. What it appears to me to be is a growth by
>> strangling committee group. A here is our vision of how property that is
>> not ours should look and be used club. If you stand in the way of the
>> kinds of development that developer's actually are willing to put their
>> money on the line for, can you honestly say you're in favor of growth? To
>> proclaim yourselves as "smart growth" advocates is to say that you're in
>> favor of a set of confused and contradictory goals design to leave
>> everyone dissatisfied. It would seem to me that pro growth is to let the
>> people with a real vested interest in any given project move ahead under
>> a straight forward and not overly restrictive set of guidelines and let
>> the community vote with its patronage. In a society where failure is
>> seldom rewarded, mistakes will likely not be repeated. To try and make
>> everybody happy on the front end of every project is to create needless
>> road blocks and stagnation.
>>
>> Gary Crabtree
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Bruce and Jean Livingston
>> To: Matt Decker ; vision2020 at moscow.com
>> Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 12:45 AM
>> Subject: RE: [Vision2020] RE: Tribune uncovers new Moscowpro-growth
>> gro
>>
>>
>> Whoa Nellie!
>>
>> Matt, I think you need to stop buying what certain "growth at all
>> costs" types are selling in their inaccurate smear of the MCA as an
>> organization favoring no-growth. We are by no means a
>> "no-growth"-seeking organization.
>>
>> We seek to bring open public discussion and planning -- long range
>> planning especially -- back into the process. We seek to incorporate
>> into our City better pedestrian and bicycle corridors, sidewalks, mixed
>> uses and cluster developments that use forward thinking combinations of
>> higher densities, and more shared, open space. We seek sustainable
>> community development, not stagnation. There is a continuum of positions
>> on the growth spectrum, from no growth on the one hand to unregulated,
>> absolute power to develop one's land without regard to the effect on
>> one's neighbors on the other. MCA is not for the former; I would hazard
>> a guess that GMA is not for the latter. Time will tell.
>>
>> Up until recently, this City has operated on a basis that had
>> relegated the zoning code to an advisory document, spot-zoning and
>> re-zoning property willy-nilly at the request of any developer --
>> regardless of the conflict any particular proposal may have had with the
>> Comprehensive Plan. Evidence of that sad pattern can be found with the
>> prior council's frittering away of the West A street commercial property
>> that has been turned into one apartment complex after another. The
>> "pro-growth at all costs" crowd decries the current "lack" of motor
>> business land in the City and uses that alleged "lack" as a basis for
>> asserting the necessity of re-zoning the Thompson property. Those same
>> "pro-growth regardless of the costs" folks include those who spent much
>> of our best motor business land on short term, short-sighted, frenzies of
>> granting every request to turn A Street into apartments -- in an area
>> that has no adequate pedestrian crossing of the largest road in our City
>> for the numerous pedestrian students who were locating in those
>> apartments.
>>
>> Smart Growth we advocate, not "no growth."
>> http://www.idahosmartgrowth.org/
>>
>> The best place for heavy commercial growth was always along the
>> Pullman Highway and behind Third Street on A, as was set forth in the
>> Comprehensive Plan. The recently annexed university-owned land north of
>> the Palouse Mall is an obvious motor business area, and it serves far
>> wiser planning and strategic needs by its location as close to Pullman as
>> we can place it, while retaining a Latah County location. The good
>> folks of Troy will drive through Moscow and past our downtown to get to
>> the Moscow motor business developments near the state line. The
>> Pullmanites and WSU students, particularly those using the bus, seem much
>> less likely to drive or hitch a ride to the far side of eastern Moscow,
>> especially as their choices expand in Whitman County.
>>
>> Being opposed to a misguided and ill-conceived, 77 acre motor
>> business re-zone on the east side of town does not make one anti-growth.
>> It makes one opposed to that particular development.
>>
>> Likewise, as evidenced by prior discussion on this list, expressing
>> concern and seeking solutions about water usage on the Palouse is not
>> anti-growth. In fact, it is pro-growth. The Seattle model, referenced
>> by Nils Peterson and Mark Solomon on V2020 discussions, is worthy of
>> pursuit here. Seattle was able to grow -- substantially -- while
>> actually cutting its water usage through thoughtful, long-term
>> conservation policies. We, too, can do the same. Given our scarce and
>> declining water supply, why not seek to implement water conserving
>> policies that will enable future growth, rather than blindly play a game
>> of chicken with an aquifer of unknown size and dimensions? Preserving
>> our water through thoughtful and proven conservation methods preserves
>> our ability to grow for the long term. Our County Commissioners, two of
>> whom are Republicans, have listened and learned from Diane French, Mark
>> Solomon and others on the water issue, so don't be so quick to dismiss
>> Diane and Mark as having ideas that take root only on the left, when the
>> evidence is to the contrary and their hard work on water management
>> benefits us all.
>>
>> Personally, I also welcome discussion of a reservoir. I oppose
>> injection of the pristine waters of the Grand Ronde aquifer with
>> relatively filthy runoff from muddy fields laden with various herbicides,
>> pesticides, fertilizers, and assorted other pollutants. But opposing
>> injection of the Grand Ronde does not make me anti-growth, Matt, it makes
>> me opposed to that particular water management option among a myriad of
>> choices that enhance the possibility of and favor long-term growth.
>>
>> I am pro-growth. Most in the MCA are as well. Several years ago
>> the MCA Board took a position favoring growth. We accepted the Smart
>> Growth model, and rejected a no growth alternative. That position has
>> not changed.
>>
>> We in the MCA welcome the GMA to the discussion; undoubtedly the
>> community at large does, too. Informed and open discussion is
>> enlightening and useful to all. Overall, my sense is that the Moscow
>> community is glad that the MCA arrived and changed the discussion from
>> private conversations of a few policymakers, movers and shakers to a much
>> larger group of people throughout the community who are all engaged in
>> the discussion. The GMA will undoubtedly add its voice to the
>> discussion, which can only be a good thing. Let the marketplace of ideas
>> percolate and see what happens. But don't mis-apprehend the MCA as being
>> anti-growth, for we are not.
>>
>> Bruce Livingston
>>
>>
>> Matt Decker said:
>> | Remember this(GMA) group was established because of the Mark
>> Solomans, Diane
>> | Frenchs, and the MCA groups that back up their no growth
>> attitudes. Smart
>> | Growth, Please. Disguise it however you like, but it just adds up
>> to little
>> | or nil growth. The attitudes of these people are just to
>> aggressive for
>> | Moscow. Yes some of the people in the group have lives outside of
>> the
>> | computer, that depend on growth, including myself.
>> |
>> | See what we can do first before belittling us to a bunch of money
>> crazed
>> | good ol boy. This group also wants what is best for Moscow.
>> |
>> | MD
>> |
>> | Matt
>>
>>
>>
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