Progressively paving paradise

According to the city of Asheville’s Building Safety Department, in 2006 our progressive City Council authorized up to 27 percent more development than at anytime in the 10 previous years of nonprogressive Councils.

In dollar terms, there was $279 million worth of new development in 2006, versus [an earlier] 10-year high of $204 million in 2004. Why would an environmentalist City Council willingly accept such ecological devastation? Part of the answer was given by Council member Brownie Newman in his Feb. 28 Xpress commentary, “Development in Asheville: What Are We Going to Do About It?”.

Newman wrote: “Philosophically, I don’t believe that simply adding more people to our population makes our community more healthy, happy or financially prosperous. That said, however, I believe the Asheville area is going to continue to grow in the foreseeable future. If that’s the case, then a lot of that growth should occur in Asheville.”

With those words, Mr. Newman, former head of a Western North Carolina environmental organization [the WNC Alliance], announced his plan—and apparently the majority of Council’s plan—to target Asheville’s environment for degradation.

City Council might claim that they’re simply abiding by the zoning commands of the Uniform Development Ordinance. The UDO, however, was written by a commission dominated by developmental interests. Change it.

Council might also claim that they’re only respecting property rights. No, they’re favoring the money-making property rights of big, often nonlocal developers over the quality-of-life property rights of home-owning local citizens. Stop it.

Council might claim that developmental pressures are so gigantic that there’s nothing they can do about it. Yet nearby Jackson County just declared a moratorium on development. Asheville City Council can, too. Declare it. And while declaring it, use every means at your disposal to declare opposition to that part of America’s and Asheville’s economies that breed the resource war in Iraq. It is a war over the oil needed for continued fast growth.

Finally, Council might contend that it’s politically impossible to oppose rampant growth. But they need only read the eloquently written stories in the Xpress about the hundreds of people who’ve heroically fought growth, and who represent thousands of citizens. The political will is there; Council need only lead it.

After declaring the moratorium, Council should call a referendum on how big we want to grow—if at all—and write a UDO that enforces the results. If we should vote for rampant growth, please ignore the aforementioned everything.

Most of the decisions of America and Asheville are made by a religious belief in the supremacy of profit and growth. This belief continues in spite of its disastrous consequences, which include 300 million Americans, terrible poverty, global warming, vast pollution, resource wars and extreme overdevelopment.

Asheville should lead America away from this disastrous fundamentalism.

The good news is that Mr. Newman and the majority of City Council have impressively shown they will compromise the rule of profit when it comes to poverty issues. Thus, they understand how to control growth—they just need to do it. Until they do, don’t mistake the rhetoric of sustainable development. It’s only a sustainable delusion as Asheville’s gets smart-growthed to death.

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