SALON

Thursday, Mar 7, 2013 6:19 PM UTC

The federal government isn’t coming for your suburban home

Agenda 21 isn't an insidious plot to move Americans into overcrowded cities, contrary to Glen Beck's ravings

By

Topics: OnEarth.org, Agenda 21, sustainability, URBAN GROWTH BOUNDARIES, Glenn Beck,

The federal government isn't coming for your suburban home (Credit: iStockphoto/Dmitry Galanternik)
This article originally appeared on OnEarth.org.

Pssst! Have you heard about Agenda 21? The secret plot to collectivize private property — hatched by United Nations internationalists and midwifed by operatives ensconced within our own government — all in the name of “ending sprawl” and “encouraging sustainability”? The seizure of suburban homes by jackbooted, gun-toting U.N. thugs? The involuntary relocation of displaced suburbanites to cramped dwellings in densely packed cities?

OnEarth No? Seriously? You haven’t heard about any of this? Don’t blame Glenn Beck.

His magazine, The Blaze, put Agenda 21 on the cover of its January/February 2012 issue; the article contained therein, its editors promised, would expose “the global scheme that has the potential to wipe out freedoms of all U.S. citizens.” Beck then stretched this warning into a dystopian science fiction novel that came out last November titled (what else?) Agenda 21. In it, suburban and rural homeowners are stripped of their property and carted off to overcrowded cities, where they’re forced to live in bunker-like apartments, wear government-issued uniforms, and generate power for the grid by walking on piezoelectric “energy boards.”

In truth, Agenda 21 is the sort of nonbinding, suggestion-filled “action plan” the United Nations generates whenever it holds any kind of major international summit. It emerged from the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and dedicated to addressing the most vexing environmental problems of the time. Beck, who has made a fine living catering to the tinfoil-hat crowd, is trying to pass off U.N. bullet points as a precursor to real bullets. But you don’t have to believe the folks in the black helicopters are eyeing your redwood deck as a future landing pad in order to push the theory that a cabal of environmentalists and elected officials has it in for the ‘burbs, and won’t rest until every last Olive Garden in America is razed and turned into, well, an actualolive garden.

Last August, Stanley Kurtz, who has lectured at Harvard and the University of Chicago, wrote an article for the stalwart conservative journal National Review that appeared under the provocative headline “Burn Down the Suburbs?” It opened with a zinger: “President Obama is not a fan of America’s suburbs. Indeed, he intends to abolish them.” Kurtz’s article was in many ways a rehash of observations made previously by Joel Kotkin, a writer who specializes in analyzing demographic shifts in cities and suburbs. In 2010 Kotkin, a former New York Times columnist, wrote on his blog that “for the first time in memory, the suburbs are under a conscious and sustained attack from Washington.” He later told one interviewer that the Obama administration was “the first anti-suburban administration in American history.”

For Beck, Kurtz, and Kotkin, all the evidence one needs to back up such breathless assertions can be found in the language of sustainability and “smart growth” used by environmentalists and their allies in government. Alas, what’s being heard and what’s actually being said are two different things. The champion of sustainability says: “We need to reduce sprawl by encouraging greater density.” But the anxious suburbanite hears: “We’re tearing down the houses on your cul-de-sac and replacing them with a 20-story Brutalist apartment building, complete with its own wastewater treatment plant.” The champion of sustainability says: “It’s time to shift from last century’s car culture to the new century’s culture of mass transit.” The anxious suburbanite hears: “We’ll be sending someone around for your Escalade shortly. Fortunately for you, the D train will soon be stopping at your new building — right next to your on-site methadone clinic!”

As someone who was raised in the suburbs and still has deep family roots there, I think I know what’s fueling this anxiety. And instead of scoffing at it, I believe the champions of sustainability should be emphasizing how ideas that fall under the rubric of smart growth benefitall of us, wherever we reside. Their new message needs to be: if you really love your suburban quality of life, then know that the greatest threat to it isn’t coming from bureaucrats, environmentalists, or liberal politicians. It’s coming from that brand new, almost-completed housing development going up right next to yours.

Did you move to the outskirts of town to be closer to nature? So did my parents, who relocated from Dallas to a quiet lakeside community in the Texas Hill Country in 1997. Back then, the 15-mile drive to their house from central Austin took 30 minutes and led you through farmland, ranchland, and protected wildlife habitat. A peaceful after-dinner drive to “count the deer” was a favorite pastime. “It wasn’t considered a good night if we didn’t count at least a hundred,” my mother recalls. Now, she says, they’re lucky if they see three or four. Between 1990 and 2010, the human population of their community grew by more than 240 percent — turning it from a quiet refuge to a busy exurb. Once, my parents could look outside their window and see green hillsides; now “it’s just the rooftops” of the more than 2,000 single-family homes permitted for construction since the year they moved in.

Did you escape to the suburbs because you hated big-city traffic? Even if all the deer hadn’t been run out of my parents’ exurb, there’s no such thing as a “peaceful after-dinner drive” near their home anymore. The residents of their community average 2.6 vehicles per household, and those vehicles now jam the single artery leading into and out of town. More than three-quarters of these drivers are solo commuters; fewer than 10 percent carpool. What used to be a half-hour drive to and from central Austin can now take twice as long.

Did you move to the suburbs for safety and stability? Perpetrators of property crimes love sprawl; it’s great for business. The combination of low-density, single-family housing with an absence of pedestrian culture means more back doors for the jimmying and more windows for the breaking, all conveniently hidden from the eyes and ears of potential witnesses. From 2001 to 2011, my parents’ idyllic community saw its own crime index rise substantially.

Sprawl destroys the defining character of suburbs by conferring upon them many problems associated with urban areas: crime, congestion, paved-over wilderness. And yet Stanley Kurtz assails urban growth boundaries — which draw a literal line in the sand, then limit development beyond it — as a liberal scheme “to force suburban residents into densely packed cities.” But if that’s true, why did the citizens of conservative Virginia Beach, Virginia, establish one back in 1979? The answer is that their “green line,” which has restricted sprawl to the city’s northern half, has preserved the unique agricultural character of the southern half; as a result, today there are nearly 170 working farms within the city limits. Similarly, these boundaries didn’t seem so sinister to the Tennessee General Assembly, which passed a law in 1998 requiring every independent county in the state to adopt them, explicitly citing a statewide need to “minimize urban sprawl.”

Mass transit, too, offers far-flung suburbanites relief from sprawl’s ill effects, in this case by reducing their commute times and increasing the amount of time they get to spend at home. So why would Joel Kotkin blithely dismiss it as “offer[ing] little to anyone who lives outside a handful of large metropolitan cores”? Has he ever talked to an exasperated exurban commuter? The first decade of this century saw 60 percent population growth in America’s exurbs. As they added 10 million people to their numbers, the number of road miles driven by Americans increased by nearly 200 billion. Even putting aside the amount of atmospheric CO2 that all those extra miles represent, you’d think Kotkin would see how giving people mass-transit options promises to improve everyone’s commute — drivers included.

In the century since they first appeared on our physical and cultural horizon, the suburbs have earned the right to consider themselves every bit as American as our gleaming cities and rolling farmlands. There’s no stealth plan to “abolish” them. There is, instead, a perfectly transparent plan to include them in the list of communities that must be brought into the sustainability fold if we’re ever to address climate change effectively, protect wildlife habitat, and ensure that we don’t pollute or deplete our resources to the point of no return. Smart growth is great for cities — but it’s great for suburbs too. People who love them should understand that any concerted effort to make them cleaner, prettier, safer, and less congested is a conspiracy worth joining.

Jeff Turrentine

More Jeff Turrentine.

You Might Also Like

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

7 motorist-friendly camping sites

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 9

Sponsored Post

  • White River National Forest via Lower Crystal Lake, Colorado
    For those OK with the mainstream, White River Forest welcomes more than 10 million visitors a year, making it the most-visited recreation forest in the nation. But don’t hate it for being beautiful; it’s got substance, too. The forest boasts 8 wilderness areas, 2,500 miles of trail, 1,900 miles of winding service system roads, and 12 ski resorts (should your snow shredders fit the trunk space). If ice isn’t your thing: take the tire-friendly Flat Tops Trail Scenic Byway — 82 miles connecting the towns of Meeker and Yampa, half of which is unpaved for you road rebels.
    fs.usda.gov/whiteriveryou


    Image credit: Getty

  • Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest via Noontootla Creek, Georgia
    Boasting 10 wildernesses, 430 miles of trail and 1,367 miles of trout-filled stream, this Georgia forest is hailed as a camper’s paradise. Try driving the Ridge and Valley Scenic Byway, which saw Civil War battles fought. If the tall peaks make your engine tremble, opt for the relatively flat Oconee National Forest, which offers smaller hills and an easy trail to the ghost town of Scull Shoals. Scaredy-cats can opt for John’s Mountain Overlook, which leads to twin waterfalls for the sensitive sightseer in you.
    fs.usda.gov/conf


    Image credit: flickr/chattoconeenf

  • Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness Area via Green Road, Michigan
    The only national forest in Lower Michigan, the Huron-Mainstee spans nearly 1 million acres of public land. Outside the requisite lush habitat for fish and wildlife on display, the Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness Area is among the biggest hooks for visitors: offering beach camping with shores pounded by big, cerulean surf. Splash in some rum and you just might think you were in the Caribbean.
    fs.usda.gov/hmnf


    Image credit: umich.edu

  • Canaan Mountain via Backcountry Canaan Loop Road, West Virginia
    A favorite hailed by outdoorsman and author Johnny Molloy as some of the best high-country car camping sites anywhere in the country, you don’t have to go far to get away. Travel 20 miles west of Dolly Sods (among the busiest in the East) to find the Canaan Backcountry (for more quiet and peace). Those willing to leave the car for a bit and foot it would be remiss to neglect day-hiking the White Rim Rocks, Table Rock Overlook, or the rim at Blackwater River Gorge.
    fs.usda.gov/mnf


    Image credit: Getty

  • Mt. Rogers NRA via Hurricane Creek Road, North Carolina
    Most know it as the highest country they’ll see from North Carolina to New Hampshire. What they may not know? Car campers can get the same grand experience for less hassle. Drop the 50-pound backpacks and take the highway to the high country by stopping anywhere on the twisting (hence the name) Hurricane Road for access to a 15-mile loop that boasts the best of the grassy balds. It’s the road less travelled, and the high one, at that.
    fs.usda.gov/gwj


    Image credit: wikipedia.org

  • Long Key State Park via the Overseas Highway, Florida
    Hiking can get old; sometimes you’d rather paddle. For a weekend getaway of the coastal variety and quieter version of the Florida Keys that’s no less luxe, stick your head in the sand (and ocean, if snorkeling’s your thing) at any of Long Key’s 60 sites. Canoes and kayaks are aplenty, as are the hot showers and electric power source amenities. Think of it as the getaway from the typical getaway.
    floridastateparks.org/longkey/default.cfm


    Image credit: floridastateparks.org

  • Grand Canyon National Park via Crazy Jug Point, Arizona
    You didn’t think we’d neglect one of the world’s most famous national parks, did you? Nor would we dare lead you astray with one of the busiest parts of the park. With the Colorado River still within view of this cliff-edge site, Crazy Jug is a carside camper’s refuge from the troops of tourists. Find easy access to the Bill Hall Trail less than a mile from camp, and descend to get a peek at the volcanic Mt. Trumbull. (Fear not: It’s about as active as your typical lazy Sunday in front of the tube, if not more peaceful.)
    fs.usda.gov/kaibab


    Image credit: flickr/Irish Typepad

  • As the go-to (weekend) getaway car for fiscally conscious field trips with friends, the 2013 MINI Convertible is your campground racer of choice, allowing you and up to three of your co-pilots to take in all the beauty of nature high and low. And with a fuel efficiency that won’t leave you in the latter, you won’t have to worry about being left stranded (or awkwardly asking to go halfsies on gas expenses).


    Image credit: miniusa.com

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 9

Related Videos

Comments

 3 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( settings | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Salon is proud to feature content from OnEarth magazine, a survival guide for the planet. Founded in 1979 as The Amicus Journal, the environmental quarterly and its website OnEarth.org are published by the Natural Resources Defense Council. On Twitter: @OnEarthMag

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Let's Stop Screwing Around and Impeach James Clapper: After lying to Congress about all the different ways the NSA's spying on us, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lies about how he lied. Call the White House at 202 456-1111 and Tell Obama to Get Rid of Clapper
293 points294 points | 13 comments
vote
Let's Stop Screwing Around and Impeach James Clapper: After lying to Congress about all the different ways the NSA's spying on us, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lies about how he lied. Call the White House at 202 456-1111 and Tell Obama to Get Rid of Clapper
156 points157 points | 21 comments
vote
Machiavelli doesn’t belong to the 1 percent | "The Prince" is oft-quoted on Wall Street, but its author was a hero of the working class who despised elites
87 points88 points | 33 comments
vote
Let's Stop Screwing Around and Impeach James Clapper: After lying to Congress about all the different ways the NSA's spying on us, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lies about how he lied. Call the White House at 202 456-1111 and Tell Obama to Get Rid of Clapper
38 points39 points | 6 comments
vote
James Clapper is still lying to America: A smoking gun shows Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is a big liar -- and it's not the first time
36 points37 points | comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: "The Joker": Laughing at life's deepest sorrows