To get back to the point, I wouldn’t blame a community that chose — on a local basis — to ignore such regulations. I’m gonna take a wild stab and say that we’re talking about zoning peculiarities, subdivisions with three- or five-acre minimum lot sizes, and the like. I don’t have The Geography of Nowhere, but there’s a library copy of The Long Emergency at home. I’ll see whether Mr. Kunstler addresses the question there. Be a lot easier to work with if he’d provide a reference list, the way Crichton (may he rest in peace) did.

Remember, what they are designing is nothing really new. It’s how human beings learned to design communities before everyone was expected to drive everywhere to everything, everytime.

Mr. Kunstler is also a proponent of nuclear energy…at least last I checked. He has no illusions about the fact that nuclear is the only way to pull our fat out of the fryer.

Eleven million invested to restore a 1920’s warehouse into a minor league stadium (crowds have increased each year); another $10m or so into the old Greystone hotel for the first new hotel in 14 years; another $30m into one across the street that didn’t want to miss out on the party which included doubling the size of the Civic Center, adding a performing arts center which we’d NEVER had previously. (Notice it didn’t migrate to “mall fringe” either.)

Plus, an alleyway was opened – leaving historical buildings intact – to draw tourists through and into formerly-decayed structures, now restored, housing a Learning Center (open date May 09) a restaurant (4,000 square feet of nastiness, now restored under “SmartCode” measures for preservation and utility) and offices. Wonder if you caught a glimpse of the 3 story former Montgomery Fair building, (where Rosa Parks worked), that now holds 19 loft apartments, all filled before restoration was completed just 60 days ago.

Sorry if downtown Montgomery wasn’t impressive enough for you, but to those of us who live, work, and invest here, we’re encouraged.

1. Eisenhower and the Interstate Highway System: Great for trucks. Actually, the system isolated most of the land area of the U.S. . No proximity to Interstate and … remember all those westerns about where the train tracks went? Literally, the same. God, how many towns stole the county records and declared themselves the county seat — even into the 60’s. Result = Cities and Interstate. You want to husband the sod, Suburbs.

2. Reagan announcing thath the U.S. was now a Sevice Economy and going to stay that way. The Ultimate Supply Side — and the overlords pulled it off. At the top you can have anything, but earn a good wage and your overpaid. I’m serious. So what you gonna do? Hang around cause credit was your pay and the top’s tool. Nobody did anything. Military gets a half trillion no matter what, and yet we won’t keep up the school buildings. Actually we don’t even like “public” schools ( Inner City and rural aren’t they ). And the teachers are alright but for their Union which has destroyed the system as the UAW has the auto manufacturers. You know in the 50’s you could send your kids to a state university with a union construction job or a south side steel plan job. Now you both work and it adds up to less.

Now we have President Obama and he has apparently agreed to do things Wall Street’s Way. And so between Walstreet, the Public, the Congress we’ll have a Wall Street short of $ — probably just as well, cause it is possible these Investment “Institutions” are too big to bail. Bleak, interesting, wish so many wouldn’t end up getting hurt.

Oh, I’ll bet they have. Got a solution that doesn’t involve anointed philosopher-kings deciding for the rest of us… “overfed clowns,” I believe was the term Kunstler used?