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The Urban JEANius. This blog will explore many topics in the realm of City and Regional Planning, Urban Design, Architecture, Landscape Architecture and other similar topics and how they relate to urban life, minorities, equality, education, and whatever topics you want to discuss. The goal of this blog is to increase awareness amongst communities who are traditionally underrepresented in this field as well serve as a venue for discussion about current trends in this field...

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Oil Spill... Poor Planning is the blame?

100 days. We are nearing 100 days of this oil-spill crisis. First it was BP's fault, then it was the government's fault, then it was Obama's fault, now its the fault of City Planning. I recently read a post on Planetizen and Vishaan Chakrabarti claims that sprawl has encouraged a reliance on oil, which in turn has created this tragedy. Pause....Rewind....

I agree that sprawl has contributed to negative land-use  and sustainability practices in recent decades but is it a fair assesment to say that this oil spill tragedy and poor planning practices are related?

Vishaan Chakrabarti states: "Do we have the vision to recognize that we have seen the enemy, and it is the suburban house? Do we have the will to embrace high-density living as the only solution, the only land use that limits our energy use, our healthcare costs, our vulnerability to petro-dictators, and our free fall into a sprawling national deficit?"

The enemy according to Chakrabarti is the suburban house... He believes that the suburban house is now the root of all evil and its downfall is of course the only way to fix our national state of affairs.

Is his point valid? or he is extrapolating these issues on planners just to mask the larger issue(s) at hand?

2 comments:

  1. The enemy is Vishaan Chakrabarti. Seriously, throughout NYC, in collaboration with Bloomberg and Amanda Burden, they are created widespread displacement and are killing NYC neighborhoods. And in cahoots with Durst, Related, Vornado and others, how much money has Chakrabarti pocketed for his urbancide?

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  2. Interesting. I'm not familiar with NYC plannign politics but I would love to hear more about the displacement of neighborhoods in NYC. It's a shame that he is the director of Columbia's Plannign Program and makes comment such as those.

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