Until the end, I didn’t consider Perrin de Jong’s elitist, sprawling NIMBY letter [“Open-space Proposal Costs Too Much to Bear,” March 30, Xpress] worth a response, but then I saw his employer, the Center for Biological Diversity. I know that they know better because I went to college with founder Kierán Suckling and helped distribute their iconic Endangered Species condoms.
Kierán certainly knows that slowing metropolitan growth is about contraception and not land use because I discussed it with him in 1984, and he knows that urban unit density helps car mileage, walking, bus usage and above all, affordability to frugal workers with far smaller footprints than lawyers, as do condoms by reducing demand and therefore rent.
As for fifth homes, the rich are highly speculative and will only speculate on limited supply, so without unit density limits, it is the speculators who will go away, and the only remaining buyers will be buying to meet human needs, so it is the fifth homes that depend on unit density limits, not the first ones, and frankly, I think he’s speaking for himself or maybe for lawyers, but not for Kierán or the Center for Biological Diversity.
—Alan Ditmore
Leicester
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