/scratch/scupper: Land Use Archives

January 26, 2006

TOD@Hazel Station: A little historical perspective

UPDATE: I thought I should add a link to this "making up with ECOS" editorial by the Bee.
The current hubub about the so called "crisis" on Folsom Blvd. near the Hazel Ave light rail station is kind of hysterical.

Environmental Council of Sacramento

present a choice between easy money and smart planning

may jeopardize hundreds of millions of dollars in federal transit funds

is opposed by Regional Transit, the Air District, SACOG, and almost everybody other than the applicants

threatens to bring low density sprawl-style buildout to the entire Folsom light rail corridor

exacerbate air quality problems

is the epitome of bad planning

is inconsistent with

the County’s General Plan (Land Use Policy LU-14)
RT’s Master Plan
SACOG Blueprint growth principles
air quality regulations
and surrounding land uses.

costs of the auto mall expansion far outweigh the benefits

upon approval, "does not bode well for future land use planning decisions"

"make it much more difficult to develop the area into a dense mixed-use neighborhood appropriate for the vicinity of a transit station."

I'm on the ECOS mailing list and I culled the list above from their various "Action Alerts".

So with that impending doom, one might think this whole ordeal was some precident setting phenomenon, a first bad step of somekind, a fall from grace on the part of Sacramento County. Far from it. This is pure spin (read:bullshit).

Here's the "Historical Perspective" I offer. :

WRONG DEVELOPMENT MIX DERAILS BID TO BOOST TRANSIT
December 13, 1999
Sacramento Bee | Section: MAIN NEWS Page: A1
By Stuart Leavenworth Bee Staff Writer

In 1992, Sacramento County had a grand plan: It would try to concentrate a mix of development around commuter rail stations, where people could easily walk to offices, homes and stores. Seven years later, county planners acknowledge their blueprint has been a whopping failure. Across the county, de velopers are building big-lot subdivisions, big-box stores and a necklace of parking near existing and proposed rail stations.

As a result, ridership is uneven on transit lines; future rail extensions are uncertain. And hopes for reducing traffic and auto fumes are becoming as hazy as the summer skyline.
"In short, we haven't been very successful in getting that kind of development strategy adopted," said Don Thomas, an assistant planner for the county.

"With every application (from developers), we are getting proposals for the standard subdivision design and big-box developments," said Rob Burness, a senior planner who helped craft the 1992 plan. "They are following the path of least resistance."

As county and city officials note, there are some partial successes. In downtown Sacramento, lofts and mixed-use developments are rising near some stations. In east Elk Grove, the county is working with developers to create village centers that could one day facilitate daily transit users.

Overall, however, "we have missed a lot of opportunities," said county Supervisor Roger Dickinson. "We are approving development that discourages people from walking, discourages people from meeting each other, and encourages more reliance on automobiles."

"There are some real consequences," he adds. Traffic is building, and pressure is mounting to widen highways and build sound walls. "All that costs money, but people don't realize that."

Who's responsible? Fingers point everywhere. Some blame last-minute compromises in the county's 1992 plan. Others blame NIMBYs (individuals who oppose certain developments "in my back yard"), banks and elected leaders, who have repeatedly waived requirements for transit zones at the behest of developers.

Even environmentalists say they have done a poor job of selling the public on rail-friendly development, which involves such plannerish gobbledygook as "high-density, mixed-use transit nodes."

"No one is going out to those communities, either from the government or public-interest groups, and making a case for transit," said Earl Withycombe, who leads the Environmental Council of Sacramento.

A fixture of town planning from Brazil to Canada, "transit oriented development" refers to a compact mix of apartments, shops and offices centered around rail or bus stations. Tourists to Europe often snap pictures of such transit villages without knowing it.

Since 1993, Sacramento has called for half-mile rings of "TODs" around the county, part of a policy to reduce auto emissions at new projects by 15 percent.

But the county plan hasn't been widely embraced.

In south Sacramento, neighborhood activists have helped defeat at least two proposals for TODs. One of these -- at the corner of Elk Grove-Florin and Calvine roads -- would have included a mix of apartments, homes and commercial development, served by buses and, eventually, light rail.

In the same vein, county supervisors this year allowed a Home Depot with 500 parking spaces to be built next to a future rail stop on Antelope Road, despite staff opposition. Other Home Depots have been built near RT stations at Power Inn Road and Sunrise Boulevard.

George Phillips, a Carmichael lawyer who represents Home Depot, said the company worked hard to reach "a darn good compromise" with the county. The Antelope Road store, he said, is designed to accommodate bus pull-ins and a park-and-ride lot. The company has also vowed to subsidize transit passes for its employees, he said.

"I think we ended up with a transit-friendly Home Depot," said Phillips.

Friendly for automobiles, say environmentalists.

In north Natomas, plans for a transit village near Del Paso and Commerce boulevards are also up in the air. The Lewis Operating Corp. is designing a 26-acre mix of shops and offices, and is setting aside land for a future spur of regional rail that could go one day to Arco Arena and the airport, said Greg Thatch, an attorney for the company.

But City Council rezonings have led to what some call "a retail land grab" in the area. Three years ago, the council approved the Natomas Marketplace, a collection of big-box stores near Truxel Road and Interstate 80.

That, in turn, has prompted two other proposals for big-box developments, and could undermine Lewis' transit-planned village.

County officials point to several reasons why their 1992 transit plan -- lauded as "visionary" at the time -- has been ineffective.

One problem is the uncertain extensions planned by Regional Transit. RT plans to extend a line to Meadowview by 2003, and Folsom by 2002. But lines to Elk Grove and Natomas haven't received funding, and RT isn't making promises.

As a result, neighborhood groups are reluctant to support transit-friendly development. In many cases, neighbors fear they will get the traffic of high-density housing without the transit.

"There's a chicken-and-egg question we have to deal with," said Burness. Without higher-density development, he said, Sacramento won't have the ridership for rail. But without assurances rail will be built, denser developments can't be sold, he added.

Another problem: Many rail stations are close to freeways and highways. That makes land adjacent to the stations attractive to big-box stores and other businesses dependent on motorists.

"That is especially true with the Highway 50 corridor," said Burness. "It's an accident of geography that we have to deal with."

Some business leaders say that, in light of this geography, the county should be more realistic. Instead, said Curt Haven, CEO of the Rancho Cordova Chamber of Commerce, the county has rigid rules and little to show for it.

A few years ago, he said, Cordova had retail developers who wanted to redevelop an old Lumberjack store site on Sunrise Boulevard. But since the area was close to the future Sunrise rail station, "All these red flags went up," said Haven. "Regional Transit and the air quality district ganged up on them."

The county approved the project, but Haven said it was a needlessly long ordeal.

RT officials say that, if anything, they have been slow to voice concerns.

In coming years, Sacramento and RT planners hope to take a more proactive approach to developing transit projects.

But what's missing, said Burness, is a broad support for transit. That includes support from business groups, which have a stake in preventing Sacramento from turning into another Los Angeles, he said.

"In Silicon Valley, business groups have taken the lead in advocating transit-oriented development," said Burness. "That hasn't been happening here in Sacramento County."© The Sacramento Bee

Posted by cystdog at 05:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 22, 2005

More manufactured plastic Smart Growth E-Culture

ULI - the Urban Land Institute | Alternative Anchors
by Patricia L. Kirk
With ambience becoming more important than ever, the gathering place is beginning to replace the anchor.

Excerpt:

On any Saturday night, long after stores have closed, the square at Victoria Gardens regional shopping center in Rancho Cucamonga, California, is filled with families watching free outdoor movies, he notes. Planned on a street grid, Victoria Gardens, a 1.3 million-square-foot joint project of Forest City and California-based Lewis Investment Company LLC, serves as a town center for a 247-acre mixed-use project that includes office space and public facilities. The retail/entertainment component is designed around the project’s iconic location along historic Route 66 (now Interstate 15) and at the heart of a winery region in the southern California foothills. The project has three architecturally distinct districts representing Spanish colonial days to the present century, providing visitors a sense of the region’s past.

Posted by cystdog at 12:39 AM

May 25, 2005

Manufacturing a sense of community?

The Manchurian Main Street | Metropolis Magazine

The Manchurian Main Street
Are shopping districts inspired by New Urbanism a form of cultural brainwashing?
By Karrie Jacobs
Posted May 16, 2005
Metropolis Magazine

Victoria Gardens, a new mall in Rancho Cucamonga, California, is laid out like a traditional town, with narrow streets and metered parking. All I knew about Mashpee Commons, a shopping center on the western end of Cape Cod, was that it had a funny name. And one evening last August the only screening of The Manchurian Candidate I could reasonably catch was playing at the multiplex there. I drove as fast as I could, grabbed a parking space, found the theater, and didn't bother to check out my surroundings until after the show.
The movie was Jonathan Demme's 2004 remake of John Frankenheimer's 1962 classic. It involves a rising political star whose wartime heroism turns out to be a fabrication--a carefully crafted faux history implanted in his brain and those of his colleagues by evil conspirators. The film was two hours of sustained paranoia, so as I walked out of the theater I was already feeling uneasy--then I noticed that I was not in a normal mall. Rather I was in a fake downtown, an overtly cheerful place with individual brick and clapboard storefronts lined up along something a lot like actual streets. I was in a fabrication--a carefully crafted faux history implanted in the suburban landscape.

I didn't consciously draw the parallel between the movie and the mall at that moment, but taken together the two things unnerved me. I was hungry but couldn't bring myself to eat at any of Mashpee Commons' friendly sidewalk cafés. Not that there was anything bad about them. There was, rationally speaking, nothing wrong at all. But I felt as if I was still in the grip of the movie's dark conspiracy and had to get out.

This was yet another episode in my ambivalent relationship with New Urbanism. Honestly the New Urbanists--the Duanys, the Plater-Zyberks, the Calthorpes--make good places. I can't fault their planning skills, but there is something about their need to use the past as a sort of architectural tranquilizer that gives me the willies. I see it as a form of cultural brainwashing, a strategy that doesn't solve the problems we've created so much as teaches us to forget them.

read on @ Metropolis Magazine

Posted by cystdog at 07:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 09, 2005

Davis...You are surrounded

County pressured to build
By Elisabeth Sherwin/Enterprise staff writer

WOODLAND -
Developers are proposing housing, commercial development and industrial uses on 4,297 acres of farmland in Yolo County in 13 applications pending before the county Planning Department, the Board of Supervisors learned this week.
Three of the applications are for subdivisions on 1,146 acres to the north, east and south of Davis - the Oeste Ranch subdivision west of Sutter Davis Hospital, the Mace-Covell Gateway Project north and east of the Mace Boulevard curve and El Macero Creek south of El Macero.
A building moratorium placed on Davis by the county will come to an end in June.

I think there will be suicides when they learn that a WallyWorld will go in on County land adjacent to the city. It will be a sight to behold, the council and county supervisor meetings that is. If the city is smart, it will wrestle a revenue sharing agreement out of the County of Yolo. If not, the taxpayers of Davis will end up subsidizing these outlying unincorporated developments. I guess this is one way to grow a city.

read on @ davisenterprise.com.....

Posted by cystdog at 01:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 01, 2005

NYC vs Walmart: Prologue

Wal-Mart's next battle: in the Big Apple | csmonitor.com

Wal-Mart's next battle: in the Big Apple
A proposal for a store in Queens could produce the biggest showdown yet with the megastore's opponents.
By Alexandra Marks | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
[UPDATE: Since this story was written, developers have dropped plans to build a Wal-Mart at the proposed Queens site. But Wal-Mart says it still would like to open a store in New York City and will continue looking for a new site.]

NEW YORK – Wal-Mart, once no more than a rural dime store, is now hoping to cap its global retail empire by taking on the nation's largest untapped metropolis: New York City.

While no formal agreements yet exist, word that the controversial low-cost retailer is eyeing a site in Queens has already generated such a backlash that some analysts say the fight for approval in Rego Park will be the largest and most symbolic showdown yet between the megastore and its union opponents.

"If there ever was a part of the country where people wouldn't tolerate [Wal-Mart,] it would be a city like New York where there's a strong labor movement," says Kate Bronfenbrenner, a labor economist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "People there fight back when they smell a labor rat."
The battle for the Big Apple will also prove to be a test case for one of several new tactics that opponents are employing from here to Montana to hold big-box employers like Wal-Mart accountable to the community. They include requiring companies to provide health insurance, as in a proposal in New York; establishing so-called living wage laws, which is under consideration in Chicago; and limiting the size of such stores, which some communities are attempting to do in Vermont.

"A second-generation response to the big-box sector has emerged over the last year or so," says Paul Sonn, associate counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. "The aim is to level the playing field so that if Wal-Mart does come to New York, it will provide the same benefits that other responsible retail employers like the supermarkets are paying."

Wal-Mart and its supporters say the retailer already offers good benefits, paying almost double the minimum wage and providing some health and dental insurance, as well as a 401(k) retirement plan to eligible employees.

They believe the unions have targeted the company because it is now the country's largest employer with 1.2 million workers. And it's proudly nonunion, which they say allows it to offer bargains, helping families and communities by saving them money - at the same time that the stores increase the tax base.

"What's at issue here is not whether a particular union has been able to organize or collect dues from our workforce," says Daphne Moore, director of community affairs for Wal-Mart in Bentonville, Ark. "It's whether consumers have a choice of where they shop."

But opponents argue that Wal-Mart's wages are lower than those of other retailers such as department stores and supermarkets. And they contend that its controversial labor practices, from alleged violations of child-labor laws to lower wages to minimal health insurance, actually cost communities money.

Studies have shown that Wal-Mart employees are more likely than other retail workers to end up on food stamps and Medicaid and their children in state-sponsored health-insurance programs. Plus, they argue, Wal-Mart drives out other retailers and replaces good jobs with lower-paid ones, undermining the very fabric of the American middle class that the company purports to serve.

"As Wal-Mart goes into larger urban areas, the opposition has been much stronger than in rural areas because they're more directly competing against unionized grocers and larger numbers of successful small businesses," says Ken Jacobs of the University of California at the Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.

In New York, the powerful Central Labor Council, which represents more than 400 unions across the trades, has already made it clear it opposes Wal-Mart's arrival. President Brian McLaughlin says a Wal-Mart in Queens "will prove to be an economic disaster for our entire city."

He has lots of support from the nonunion sector as well. Small retailers in Rego Park like Sayed Afaq, who owns B&R Photo, Electronic and Wireless, are worried that the arrival of the megastore will be the "final nail in the coffin" for his shop. His business was already cut in half by the development of a mall across the street two years ago.

"Everybody knows Wal-Mart is the biggest company in the world, and we obviously can't compete with them in terms of prices," says Mr. Afaq. "We've already reduced our prices, but the rents are going higher. I fairly believe that if Wal-Mart is here, we will definitely be going out of business sooner rather than later because we are just surviving now."

Wal-Mart's city supporters argue that New York doesn't have the same level of retail jobs as its surrounding communities, in part because zoning restrictions make it difficult to develop here. Thus, its retail tax base isn't as hardy as in other places, and Wal-Mart will help expand it. While supporters admit some smaller retailers may go out of business, they don't believe that would be too much of a loss to the city overall.

"In New York City, we're talking about bodegas and greengrocers," says Steven Malanga, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. "Not only do they overcharge consumers, they also don't offer any benefits for the people that work there."

Wal-Mart also contends that it already has plenty of customers in New York. They just travel elsewhere to shop. While the company doesn't have exact numbers, they include people like Queens resident Maria Torres and her family. They drive regularly to a Wal-Mart in New Jersey to take advantage of the savings and would love to be saved the trip.

"We buy there a lot," says Mrs. Torres. "It would be important to have one here."

But other Queens residents are skeptical. Take Maria Garcia, who hasn't yet decided whether she's in favor of the proposed Wal-Mart. "I like it very much because of the low prices," she says. "But I don't like it because [they make] too much overseas. We have lots of people here who need a job who may lose one."

Posted by cystdog at 07:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

NYC vs Walmart: Round 1

The New York Times > Developer Drops Plan for NY City's first Walmart

Developer Drops Plan for City's First Wal-Mart
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
New York Times
Published: February 24, 2005

Facing intense opposition, a large real estate developer has dropped its plans to include a Wal-Mart store in a Queens shopping complex, thwarting Wal-Mart's plan to open its first store in New York City, city officials and real estate executives said yesterday.

The decision by the developer, Vornado Realty Trust, is a blow to Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, and comes after company officials said that New York City was an important new frontier in which Wal-Mart was eager to expand.

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said the company was still exploring other sites in the city, but the possibility that the company would open a 132,000-square-foot store in Queens had immediately stirred a storm of opposition by neighborhood, labor and environmental groups as well as small businesses. Wal-Mart also faced opposition from many City Council members and several members of Congress.

Labor unions fought Wal-Mart with a special intensity because they believe its wage levels and benefits are pulling down standards for workers through the United States.
Melinda Katz, chairwoman of the Council's Land Use Committee, said a Vornado representative informed her yesterday that Vornado was no longer negotiating with Wal-Mart for it to be part of the mall planned for Rego Park, Queens, in 2008.

"I think they just decided it's not worth the complications of having Wal-Mart," Ms. Katz said. "The idea of Wal-Mart was overshadowing what could very well be a good project."

Roanne Kulakoff, a Vornado spokeswoman, declined to comment, except to say there was never a formal deal between Vornado and Wal-Mart. But one executive briefed on the talks between Vornado and Wal-Mart said Vornado had concluded that keeping Wal-Mart would jeopardize the city's approval of a large, ambitious project that included other stores and two 25-story apartment towers.

"There were people who felt it was a major risk for the project," said the executive, who asked not to be identified in order not to anger either side.

The executive said Vornado had originally hoped that city planning officials would approve the Rego Park project before it before it became publicly known that Wal-Mart was involved. But once Wal-Mart's participation became public, the opposition mushroomed, and the fight was shaping up to be the biggest battle against a single store in the city's history.

Small-business advocates declared victory after the decision was made public, but predicted that the battle would resume in other neighborhoods. "Vornado saw the writing on the wall and responded the way a developer needs to when he knows he's holding a losing hand," said Richard Lipsky, a spokesman for the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, an anti-Wal-Mart coalition in New York. "We stopped Wal-Mart this time, but they are going to continue their efforts to open in New York and we will be sure to meet that with significant opposition wherever else they try to locate."

Mia Masten, Wal-Mart's director of corporate affairs for the Eastern region, sought to play down yesterday's developments. She noted that Vornado and Wal-Mart had never signed a formal deal to include Wal-Mart in the complex, planned to be built near the intersection of Queens Boulevard and the Long Island Expressway. Nonetheless, city planning officials and City Council members said Vornado had told them that it wanted to include Wal-Mart.

"We never had a deal," Ms. Masten said, adding that Wal-Mart remains interested in opening stores in New York City. "In fact, we continue to explore a number of possible sites throughout the five boroughs," she said. "Until we have an executed agreement for a specific site, we will not comment on any ongoing negotiations."

Ms. Masten declined to say whether Vornado had dropped Wal-Mart from the project or whether Wal-Mart had pulled out voluntarily. Wal-Mart's opponents said that Vornado might have been swayed in part by a unanimous vote of the City Council's Land Use Committee two weeks ago to block a B.J.'s Wholesale Club in the Bronx. In the face of intense lobbying by environmental, community and labor groups, the committee overruled the local planning board and the borough president.

Several shoppers interviewed yesterday in Rego Park said they were disappointed that a Wal-Mart would not be coming to the neighborhood, noting that many Queens residents now travel to Long Island to take advantage of the store's low prices.

"It would've been good if we had a Wal-Mart nearby because then we wouldn't have to travel outside the area," said Rolando Sands, 21, a soft drink deliverer from Jamaica, Queens. "We'd be able to keep the money in the Queens community instead of Long Island."

Corinth King, 45, a traffic enforcement agent from Rego Park, said she had been looking forward to the store's variety. "They have a lot of good sales," she said. "I like it for things for the bathroom and the kitchen. They have a wide variety. I'm going to miss it."

But shoppers did not form an organized group to support Wal-Mart.

Helen Sears, the City Council member representing Rego Park, had warned Wal-Mart, which has several stores in the suburbs surrounding the city, that to win approval in the city itself, it needed to improve its wages, health benefits and pensions and end its vehement stance against unions.

"I am hopeful that if Wal-Mart attempts to locate another site, whether in Queens or Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan or Staten Island, that its officials work tirelessly to improve workplace benefits and conditions so that New York City will welcome it with open arms," Ms. Sears said. "Until then, we can only offer our backs."

Small-business owners had voiced fears that opening a Wal-Mart in Queens would push hardware stores, shoe stores and many clothing shops out of business, as has been the case in many small towns where Wal-Mart is dominant. Company officials said the store would bring low prices to New Yorkers and would create more than 300 jobs.

City Hall officials declined yesterday to discuss the Wal-Mart matter. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appeared at first to back the project, saying that it was wrong to simply say that warehouse-type stores should not be allowed in the city. But his aides later said that it was not at all clear that he would ultimately support the project.

Charles V. Bagli and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting for this article.

Posted by cystdog at 06:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 17, 2005

Singh speaks for many: A hero in Sutter County

Official says he's sorry, regains Sutter position - The Sacramento Bee

Official says he's sorry, regains Sutter position
Planning panelist is reinstated after ouster for 'Dukes of Hazzard' comments.
By Tom Nadeau -- Bee Correspondent
Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, February 17, 2005

YUBA CITY - Gabrial Singh's on-again, off-again appointment to the Sutter County Planning Commission is on again.
Singh and the four county supervisors who voted him off the planning panel two weeks ago agreed Tuesday to end a six-week flap over his opinions.

If Singh would apologize for remarks he made about the Board of Supervisors and County Administrator Larry Coombs during a heated political campaign last year, the supervisors would not overturn his second appointment to the commission.

So, before a packed audience, Singh said he was sorry for implying the Board of Supervisors, the county administrator and the sheriff were as corrupt and stupid as the characters portrayed on "The Dukes of Hazzard" TV show.

Posted by cystdog at 11:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 27, 2005

Pearls of Wisdom and Air Supply Lines

Folsom - Rancho Cordova - City weighs future of Sunrise - sacbee.com
South part of busy road is a haven for industry.
By Molly Dugan -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, January 20, 2005

(note: It's a "Haven" for industry? "Haven"?)

All you need to read in this article is the excerpt of Pearls of Wisdom from City Council Member Linda Budge:

"For 25 years, we have been aggressively putting industrial (businesses) into that area. ... We can't just tell them they should get up and move," said Councilwoman Linda Budge.

Many cities are not retaining enough of their industrial businesses and, instead, are focusing too much on residential and commercial uses, Budge said.

That approach wouldn't be healthy for Rancho Cordova's economy, Budge said - industrial businesses make up a large chunk of the city's job base.

"We have to have our industrial base. It's an important part of having a well-rounded economy," Budge said. "It's really critical that we continue to emphasize creation of additional jobs for people with manual skills."

And this newsflash that even caught me offguard.....This successful industrial area, part of the backbone of the RC economy that made it fiscally possible to incorporate, ready....has to be "revitalized", according to a city employee quoted on the story.

The last comment worth honorable mention is this quote from Mayor Ken Cooley:

"I don't think we have a clear enough plan at this moment," Cooley said. "It's a front door to the community. We want it to be a welcoming front door. If we're not doing that, we're stepping on the air hose of our future."

January 26, 2005

~grist-mag: Christian-right views are swaying politicians and threatening the environment

Christian-right views are swaying politicians and threatening the environment | By Glenn Scherer | Grist Magazine | Main Dish | 27 Oct 2004

A kind of secular apocalyptic sensibility pervades much contemporary writing about our current world. Many books about environmental dangers, whether it be the ozone layer, or global warming or pollution of the air or water, or population explosion, are cast in an apocalyptic mold.
- Historian Paul Boyer

When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale; the sky vanished like a scroll that is rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place ...
- Revelation 6:12-14

Abortion. Same-sex marriage. Stem-cell research.

U.S. legislators backed by the Christian right vote against these issues with near-perfect consistency. That probably doesn't surprise you, but this might: Those same legislators are equally united and unswerving in their opposition to environmental protection.

Forty-five senators and 186 representatives in 2003 earned 80- to 100-percent approval ratings from the nation's three most influential Christian right advocacy groups -- the Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council. Many of those same lawmakers also got flunking grades -- less than 10 percent, on average -- from the League of Conservation Voters last year.

These statistics are puzzling at first. Opposing abortion and stem-cell research is consistent with the religious right's belief that life begins at the moment of conception. Opposing gay marriage is consistent with its claim that homosexual activity is proscribed by the Bible. Both beliefs are a familiar staple of today's political discourse. But a scripture-based justification for anti-environmentalism -- when was the last time you heard a conservative politician talk about that?

Odds are it was in 1981, when President Reagan's first secretary of the interior, James Watt, told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. "God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back," Watt said in public testimony that helped get him fired.

Today's Christian fundamentalist politicians are more politically savvy than Reagan's interior secretary was; you're unlikely to catch them overtly attributing public-policy decisions to private religious views. But their words and actions suggest that many share Watt's beliefs. Like him, many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the End Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. They may also believe, along with millions of other Christian fundamentalists, that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a sign of the coming Apocalypse.

We are not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. The 231 legislators (all but five of them Republicans) who received an average 80 percent approval rating or higher from the leading religious-right organizations make up more than 40 percent of the U.S. Congress. (The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian Coalition was Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia, who earlier this year quoted from the Book of Amos on the Senate floor: "The days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land. Not a famine of bread or of thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord!") These politicians include some of the most powerful figures in the U.S. government, as well as key environmental decision makers: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Republican Conference Chair Rick Santorum (R-Penn.), Senate Republican Policy Chair Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, and quite possibly President Bush. (Earlier this month, a cover story by Ron Suskind in The New York Times Magazine described how Bush's faith-based governance has led to, among other things, a disastrous "crusade" in the Middle East and has laid the groundwork for "a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.")

And those politicians are just the powerful tip of the iceberg. A 2002 Time/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the Book of Revelation are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks.

Like it or not, faith in the Apocalypse is a powerful driving force in modern American politics. In the 2000 election, the Christian right cast at least 15 million votes, or about 30 percent of those that propelled Bush into the presidency. And there's no doubt that arch-conservative Christians will be just as crucial in the coming election: GOP political strategist Karl Rove hopes to mobilize 20 million fundamentalist voters to help sweep Bush back into office on Nov. 2 and to maintain a Republican majority in Congress, says Joan Bokaer, director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics, and Social Policy at Cornell University.

Because of its power as a voting bloc, the Christian right has the ear, if not the souls, of much of the nation's leadership. Some of those leaders are End-Time believers themselves. Others are not. Either way, their votes are heavily swayed by an electoral base that accepts the Bible as literal truth and eagerly awaits the looming Apocalypse. And that, in turn, is sobering news for those who hope for the protection of the earth, not its destruction.

Once Upon End Time

Ever since the dawn of Christianity, groups of believers have searched the scriptures for signs of the End Time and the Second Coming. Today, most of the roughly 50 million right-wing fundamentalist Christians in the United States believe in some form of End-Time theology.

Those 50 million believers make up only a subset of the estimated 100 million born-again evangelicals in the United States, who are by no means uniformly right-wing anti-environmentalists. In fact, the political stances of evangelicals on the environment and other issues range widely; the Evangelical Environmental Network, for example, has melded its biblical interpretation with good environmental science to justify and promote stewardship of the earth. But the political and cultural impact of the extreme Christian right is difficult to overestimate.

It is also difficult to understand without grasping the complex belief systems underlying and driving it. While there are many divergent End-Time theologies and sects, the most politically influential are the dispensationalists and reconstructionists.

Tune in to any of America's 2,000 Christian radio stations or 250 Christian TV stations and you're likely to get a heady dose of dispensationalism, an End-Time doctrine invented in the 19th century by the Irish-Anglo theologian John Nelson Darby. Dispensationalists espouse a "literal" interpretation of the Bible that offers a detailed chronology of the impending end of the world. (Many mainstream theologians dispute that literality, arguing that Darby misinterprets and distorts biblical passages.) Believers link that chronology to current events -- four hurricanes hitting Florida, gay marriages in San Francisco, the 9/11 attacks -- as proof that the world is spinning out of control and that we are what dispensationalist writer Hal Lindsey calls "the terminal generation." The social and environmental crises of our times, dispensationalists say, are portents of the Rapture, when born-again Christians, living and dead, will be taken up into heaven.

"All over the earth, graves will explode as the occupants soar into the heavens," preaches dispensationalist pastor John Hagee, of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. On the heels of that Rapture, nonbelievers left behind on earth will endure seven years of unspeakable suffering called the Great Tribulation, which will culminate in the rise of the Antichrist and the final battle of Armageddon between God and Satan. Upon winning that battle, Christ will send all unbelievers into the pits of hellfire, re-green the planet, and reign on earth in peace with His followers for a millennium.

Dispensationalists haven't cornered the market on End-Time interpretation. The reconstructionists (also known as dominionists), a smaller but politically influential sect, put the onus for the Lord's return not in the hands of biblical prophesy but in political activism. They believe that Christ will only make his Second Coming when the world has prepared a place for Him, and that the first step in readying His arrival is to Christianize America.

"Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land -- of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ," writes reconstructionist George Grant. Christian dominion will be achieved by ending the separation of church and state, replacing U.S. democracy with a theocracy ruled by Old Testament law, and cutting all government social programs, instead turning that work over to Christian churches. Reconstructionists also would abolish government regulatory agencies, such as the U.S. EPA, because they are a distraction from their goal of Christianizing America, and subsequently, the rest of the world. "World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish," says Grant. "We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less." Only when that conquest is complete can the Lord return.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

People under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the Apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the Rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same God who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a Word?

Many End-Timers believe that until Jesus' return, the Lord will provide. In America's Providential History, a popular reconstructionist high-school history textbook, authors Mark Beliles and Stephen McDowell tell us that: "The secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie ... that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." However, "the Christian knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's Earth. The resources are waiting to be tapped." In another passage, the writers explain: "While many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people."

Natural-resource depletion and overpopulation, then, are not concerns for End-Timers -- and nor are other ecological catastrophes, which are viewed by dispensationalists as presaging the Great Tribulation. Support for this view comes from an 11-word passage in Matthew 24:7: "[T]here shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places." Other End-Timers see suggestions of ecological meltdown in Revelation's four horsemen of the Apocalypse -- War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death -- and they cite a verse mentioning costly wheat, barley, and oil as foretelling food and fossil-fuel shortages. During the End Time, the four horsemen shall be "given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth." Some End-Timers note that Revelation 8:8-11 predicts a fiery mountain falling into the sea and causing great destruction, followed by a blazing star plummeting from the sky. This star is called "Wormwood," which dispensationalists say translates loosely in Ukrainian as "Chernobyl."

A plethora of End-Time preachers, tracts, films, and websites hawk environmental cataclysm as Good News -- a harbinger of the imminent Second Coming. Hal Lindsey's 1970 End-Time "non-fiction" work, The Late Great Planet Earth, is the classic of the genre; the movie version pummels viewers with stock footage of nuclear blasts, polluting smokestacks, raging floods, and killer bees. Likewise, dispensationalist author Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind" novels -- at one point selling 1.5 million copies per month -- weave ecological disaster into an action-adventure account of prophesy.

At RaptureReady.com, the "Rapture Index" tracks all the latest news in relation to biblical prophecy. Among its leading environmental indicators of Apocalypse are oil supply and price, famine, drought, plagues, wild weather, floods, and climate. RaptureReady webmaster Todd Strandberg writes to explain why climate change made the list: "I used to think there was no real need for Christians to monitor the changes related to greenhouse gases. If it was going to take a couple hundred years for things to get serious, I assumed the nearness of the End Times would overshadow this problem. With the speed of climate change now seen as moving much faster, global warming could very well be a major factor in the plagues of the tribulation."

Another prophecy index points to acts of nature (drought in Ethiopia, famine in South Africa, floods in Russia, fires in Arizona, heat waves in India, and the breakup of the Antarctic ice shelf) as proof of the approaching doomsday, noting that "When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh" (Luke 21:28).

According to a chart on the End-Time website ApocalypseSoon.org, we are at "the beginning of sorrows" (Matthew 24:3-8) marking the Great Tribulation. The site links to a BBC News article on infectious diseases and a chronicle of extreme weather events on Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ross Gelbspan's climate-change website as evidence of those unfolding sorrows. However, it adds a stern disclaimer regarding these external links: "We do not, by any means, approve or recommend some of the sites that this page links to. They were chosen simply because they document literally what the Word of God prophesies for the End Days."

If I Had a Hammer

To understand how the Christian right worldview is shaping and even fueling congressional anti-environmentalism, consider two influential born-again lawmakers: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair James Inhofe (R-Okla.).

DeLay, who has considerable control over the agenda in the House, has called for "march[ing] forward with a Biblical worldview" in U.S. politics, reports Peter Perl in The Washington Post Magazine. DeLay wants to convert America into a "God centered" nation whose government promotes prayer, worship, and the teaching of Christian values.

Inhofe, the Senate's most outspoken environmental critic, is also unwavering in his wish to remake America as a Christian state. Speaking at the Christian Coalition's Road to Victory rally just before the GOP sweep of the 2002 midterm elections, he promised the faithful, "When we win this revolution in November, you'll be doing the Lord's work, and He will richly bless you for it!"

Neither DeLay nor Inhofe include environmental protection in "the Lord's work." Both have ranted against the EPA, calling it "the Gestapo." DeLay has fought to gut the Clean Air and Endangered Species acts. Last year, Inhofe invited a stacked-deck of fossil fuel-funded climate-change skeptics to testify at a Senate hearing that climaxed with him calling global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

DeLay has said bluntly that he intends to smite the "socialist" worldview of "secular humanists," whom, he argues, control the U.S. political system, media, public schools, and universities. He called the 2000 presidential election an apocalyptic "battle for souls," a fight to the death against the forces of liberalism, feminism, and environmentalism that are corrupting America. The utopian dreams of such movements are doomed, argues the majority leader, because they do not stem from God.

"DeLay is motivated more than anything by power," says Jan Reid, coauthor with Lou Dubose of The Hammer, a just-published biography of DeLay. "But he also believes in the power of the coming Millennium [of Jesus Christ], and it helps shape his vision on government and the world." This may explain why DeLay's Capitol office furnishings include a marble replica of the Ten Commandments and a wall poster that reads: "This Could Be The Day" -- meaning Judgment Day.

DeLay is also a self-declared member of the Christian Zionists, an End-Time faction numbering 20 million Americans. Christian Zionists believe that the 1948 creation of the state of Israel marked the first event in what author Hal Lindsey calls the "countdown to Armageddon" and they are committed to making that doomsday clock tick faster, speeding Christ's return.

In 2002, DeLay visited pastor John Hagee's Cornerstone Church. Hagee preached a fiery message as simple as it was horrifying: "The war between America and Iraq is the gateway to the Apocalypse!" he said, urging his followers to support the war, perhaps in order to bring about the Second Coming. After Hagee finished, DeLay rose to second the motion. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "what has been spoken here tonight is the truth from God."

With those words -- broadcast to 225 Christian TV and radio stations -- DeLay placed himself squarely inside the End-Time camp, a faction willing to force the Apocalypse upon the rest of the world. In part, DeLay may embrace Hagee and others like him in a calculated attempt to win fundamentalist votes -- but he was also raised a Southern Baptist, steeped in a literal interpretation of the Bible and End-Time dogma. Biographer Dubose says that the majority leader probably doesn't grasp the complexities of dispensationalist and reconstructionist theology, but "I am convinced that he believes [in] it." For DeLay, Dubose told me, "If John Hagee says it, then it is true."

Onward Christian Senators

James Inhofe might be an environmentalist's worst nightmare. The Oklahoma senator makes major policy decisions based on heavy corporate and theological influences, flawed science, and probably an apocalyptic worldview -- and he chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

That committee's links to corporate funders are both easier to trace and more infamous than its ties to religious fundamentalism, and it's true that the influence of money can scarcely be overstated. From 1999 to 2004, Inhofe received more than $588,000 from the fossil-fuel industry, electric utilities, mining, and other natural-resource interests, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Eight of the nine other Republican members of Inhofe's committee received an average of $408,000 per senator from the energy and natural resource sector over the same period. By contrast, the eight committee Democrats and one Independent came away with an average of just $132,000 per senator from that same sector since 1999.

But the influence of theology, although less discussed, is no less significant. Inhofe, like DeLay, is a Christian Zionist. While the senator has not overtly expressed his religious views in his environmental committee, he has when speaking on other issues. In a Senate foreign-policy speech, Inhofe argued that the U.S. should ally itself unconditionally with Israel "because God said so." Quoting the Bible as the divine Word of God, Inhofe cited Genesis 13:14-17 -- "for all the land which you see, to you will I give it, and to your seed forever" -- as justification for permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank and for escalating aggression against the Palestinians.

Inhofe also openly supports dispensationalist Pat Robertson, who touts every tornado, hurricane, plague, and suicide bombing as a sure sign of God's return; who accused both Jimmy Carter and George Bush Sr. of being followers of Lucifer; and who makes no secret of the efforts of his Christian Coalition to control the Republican Party, according to Theocracy Watch.

A good fundamentalist, Inhofe scored a perfect 100 percent rating in 2003 from all three major Christian-right advocacy groups, while earning a 5 percent from the League of Conservation Voters (and a string of zeroes from 1997 to 2002). Likewise, eight of the nine other Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee earned an average 94 percent approval rating in 2003 from the Christian right, while scoring a dismal 4 percent average environmental approval rating. The one exception proves the rule: Moderate Lincoln Chafee (R.-R.I.) last year earned a 79 percent LCV rating and just 41 percent from the religious right.

As committee chair, Inhofe has subtly chosen scripture over science. The origins of his 2003 Senate speech attacking the science behind global climate change, for example, reveal his two masters: the speech is traceable to fossil fuel industry think tanks and petrochemical dollars -- but also to the pseudo-science of Christian right websites. In that two-hour diatribe, Inhofe dismissed global warming by comparing it to a 1970s scientific scare that suggested the planet was cooling -- a hypothesis, he fails to note, held by only a minority of climatologists at the time. Inhofe's apparent source on global cooling was the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, a Christian-right and free-market economics think tank. In an editorial on that site called "Global Warming or Globaloney? The Forgotten Case for Global Cooling," we hear echoes of Inhofe's position. The article calls climate change "a shrewdly planned campaign to inflict a lot of socialistic restriction on our cherished freedoms. Environmentalism, in short, is the last refuge of socialism." Inhofe's views can be heard in the words of dispensationalist Jerry Falwell as well, who said on CNN, "It was global cooling 30 years ago ... and it's global warming now. ... The fact is there is no global warming."

Inhofe's views are also closely tied to the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship, a radical-right Christian organization founded by radio evangelist James Dobson, dispensationalist Rev. D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries, Jerry Falwell, and Robert Sirico, a Catholic priest who has been editing Vatican texts to align the Catholic Church's historical teachings with his free-market philosophy, according to E Magazine.

The ICES environmental view is shaped by the Book of Genesis: "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the seas, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on this earth." The group says this passage proves that "man" is superior to nature and gives the go-ahead to unchecked population growth and unrestrained resource use. Such beliefs fly in the face of ecology, which shows humankind to be an equal and interdependent participant in the natural web.

Inhofe's staff defends his backward scientific positions, no matter how at odds they are with mainstream scientists. "How do you define 'mainstream'?" asked a miffed staffer. "Scientists who accept the so-called consensus about global warming? Galileo was not mainstream." But Inhofe is no Galileo. In fact, his use of lawsuits to try to suppress the peer-reviewed science of the National Assessment on Climate Change -- which predicts major extinctions and threats to coastal regions -- arguably puts him on the side of Galileo's oppressors, the perpetrators of the Christian Inquisition, writes Chris Mooney in The American Prospect.

"I trust God with my legislative goals and the issues that are important to my constituents," Inhofe has told Pentecostal Evangel magazine. "I don't believe there is a single issue we deal with in government that hasn't been dealt with in the Scriptures." But Inhofe stayed silent in that interview as to which passages he applies to the environment, and he remained so when I asked him if End-Time beliefs influence his leadership of the most powerful environmental committee in the country.

And the Cow Jumped Over the Moon

So weird have the attempts to hasten the End Time become that a group of ultra-Christian Texas ranchers recently helped fundamentalist Israeli Jews breed a pure red heifer, a genetically rare beast that must be sacrificed to fulfill an apocalyptic prophecy found in the biblical Book of Numbers. (The beast will be ready for sacrifice by 2005, according to The National Review.)

It can be difficult for environmentalists, many of whom cut their teeth on peer-reviewed science, to fathom how anyone could believe that a rust-colored calf could bring about the end of the world, or how anyone could make a coherent End-Time story (let alone national policy) out of the poetic symbolism of the Book of Revelation. But there are millions of such people in America today -- including 231 U.S. legislators who either believe dispensationalist or reconstructionist doctrine or, for political expediency, are happy to align themselves with those who do.

That's troubling, because the beliefs in question are antithetical to environmentalism. For starters, any environmental science that contradicts the End-Timer's interpretation of Holy Writ is automatically suspect. This explains the disregard for environmental science so prevalent among Christian fundamentalist lawmakers: the denial of global warming, of the damaged ozone layer, and of the poisoning caused by industrial arsenic and mercury.

More important, End-Time beliefs make such problems inconsequential. Faith in Christ's impending return causes End-Timers to be interested only in short-term political-theological outcomes, not long-term solutions. Unfortunately, nearly every environmental issue, from the conservation of endangered species to the curbing of climate change, requires belief in and commitment to an enduring earth. And yet, no amount of scientific evidence will likely shake fundamentalists of their End-Time faith or bring them over to the cause of saving the environment.

"It's like half this country wants to guide our ship of state by compass -- a compass, something that works by science and rationality, and empirical wisdom," quipped comedian Bill Maher on Larry King Live. "And half this country wants to kill a chicken and read the entrails like they used to do in the old Roman Empire."

Those who doubt the dangers of such faith-based guidance need only recall the 9/11 hijackers, who devoutly believed that 72 black-eyed virgins awaited them as their reward in paradise.

In the past, it was not deemed politically correct to ask probing questions about a lawmaker's intimate religious beliefs. But when those beliefs play a crucial role in shaping public policy, it becomes necessary for the people to know and understand them. It sounds startling, but the great unasked questions that need to be posed to the 231 U.S. legislators backed by the Christian right, and to President Bush himself, are not the kind of softballs about faith lobbed at the candidates during the recent presidential debates. They are, instead, tough, specific inquiries about the details of that faith: Do you believe we are in the End Time? Are the governmental policies you support based on your faith in the imminent Second Coming of Christ? It's not an exaggeration to say that the fate of our planet depends on our asking these questions, and on our ability to reshape environmental strategy in light of the answers.

Many years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to his "religious grandparents," who, whenever they were asked about the future, proclaimed, "Armageddon's comin'!" And they believed it. Christ was due back any day, so they never bothered to paint or shingle their house. What was the point? Over the years, I drove by their place and watched the protective layers of paint peel, the bare clapboards weather, the sills and roof rot. Eventually, the house fell into ruin and had to be torn down, leaving my friend's grandparents destitute.

In a way, their prediction had proven right. But this humble apocalypse, a house divided against itself, was no work of God, but of man. This is a parable for the 231 Christian right-backed legislators of the 108th Congress. Their constituency's cherished beliefs may lead to the most dangerous and destructive self-fulfilling prophecy of all time.

- - - - - - - - - -

Glenn Scherer is an author and freelance journalist whose stories have recently appeared in Salon.com, TomPaine.com, and other publications. He is former editor of Blue Ridge Press, a syndicated environmental commentary service in the Southeast.

Posted by cystdog at 05:23 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

~latimes:high school student chronicles the effects of gentrification

Los Angeles Times: Turning a Lens Homeward
A high school student chronicles the effects of gentrification on her neighborhood.
By Daniel Hernandez
Times Staff Writer
January 24, 2005

A year ago, high school junior Stephanie Cisneros had never heard the word "gentrification," but in many ways, she already knew what it meant. She was watching it happen all around her in the Echo Park neighborhood she's called home since she was 5 years old.

Stephanie saw working-class neighbors losing their rental units, only to see the apartments revamped and priced far higher than before.

She saw old storefront businesses close and disappear. Familiar faces, gone.

"I said, 'What's going on here?' " Stephanie recalled.

Curious and troubled, she began carrying a borrowed digital camera around the neighborhood to document the changes.

On Saturday night, Stephanie's 17th birthday, the public got an early peek of her work during a screening of a short cut of the film she's making on the neighborhood's gentrification. It prompted a discussion on recent changes in the neighborhood.

"It reflected the sentiments of the community," said Humberto Flores, 34, a film student who attended the screening at the volunteer-run Echo Park Film Center on Alvarado Street, itself fighting a proposed tripling of its rent. "The neighborhood is coming up … but some are getting pushed out."

Flores added: "If I were to leave my apartment … it would go up $400."

It's a view that many others have been expressing in Echo Park, where the overwhelming forces of Southern California's tight housing market have been causing gradual shifts in the neighborhood's demographics and income levels.

Residential and commercial prices have been rising rapidly, forcing out low-income working families and young bohemians.

Stephanie, who lives with her two younger sisters and parents, immigrants from Mexico City, said a former landlord often reminded the family that their apartment could command two or three times their roughly $500 monthly rent.

That spurred Stephanie, a student at Downtown Magnets High School, to action.

Since June, she has spent hours interviewing business owners and residents on weekends and after school. She has researched the area's history, the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council and housing cooperatives.

With help from multimedia coordinator Jerold Kress at the Bresee Foundation's community center near Koreatown, Stephanie hopes to finish the film by next summer and may enter it in competitions.

"My whole bent is youth should tell their own stories," said Kress, of Echo Park. "It's not CNN coming in and doing a story on Echo Park. She has the experience. It's her family and friends that are affected by what's happening."

"I really didn't think I was going to start this project…. A lot of people my age don't know what gentrification is," said Stephanie, a first-time filmmaker who borrowed digital cameras and editing equipment from the Bresee Foundation, a nonprofit community outreach organization. "But when they finally closed Pioneer Market, I said, 'OK, I am doing this.' "

Stephanie was referring to the decades-old supermarket at Sunset Boulevard and Echo Park Avenue that closed in August. Though workers' compensation costs — not rent prices — forced the owner to close the store, many residents saw its departure as a symbol of the changes in Echo Park.

Several people in Stephanie's film described the loss of Pioneer Market, with its hometown feel and stock of Latino and Asian products, as a blow to Echo Park's character. Stephanie shot footage inside the store in its final days, the sparse shelves providing a striking contrast to earlier images of a bustling business.

A Walgreens drugstore is replacing the market. For weeks, a banner announcing the store's arrival has hung on a fence near the store, a thick black line scratched through the store's name and the word "No" scribbled over it.

In recent months, Echo Park's transformation has drawn protests.

On the morning of the neighborhood council elections in December, protesters marched down Sunset Boulevard, decrying the area's "reurbanization." And the issues have been discussed at length in passionate and often heated exchanges on a popular online message board for Echo Park residents and activists.

Councilman Eric Garcetti, who represents the area, has held forums and tenants' rights seminars, and is pushing for stricter rent stabilization laws and low-cost housing. But changes to the area are hard to resist, said Josh Kamensky, his spokesman.

"There's a sort of unstoppable cycle, of people working hard to make their neighborhood a nice place to live, and that attracts developers," Kamensky said.

Some residents see the changes as significant, but not yet cause for alarm. Andrew Garsten, a longtime Echo Park activist and a member of the neighborhood council, said some "unscrupulous landlords" had taken advantage of non-English-speaking immigrants, pushing them out of their apartments. But for the most part, Echo Park has retained its identity as a welcoming place, he said.

"No matter how high and crazy things have gotten here, it's still affordable compared to other places," Garsten said. "It's just higher than it's ever been before. I don't think the neighborhood has been changing that fast."

Stephanie said she was trying to capture the views of the working-class, mostly immigrant residents of Echo Park, who she said hadn't been given enough information on what the changes mean.

"There's always two sides to a story. I also want to show how [the changes] will improve the area," Stephanie said. "I want to show this to the people on the other side of gentrification and have them pay attention to the tenants, to the residents of Echo Park, and not make them feel unwelcome."

After Saturday's screening, Stephanie stood a little nervously before the audience. She listened to audience members offer their views on gentrification from their experiences in Venice and Santa Monica.

"Hopefully, you'll be able to spread the word," she said. "Learn from this. I want this to be a tool for other people."

Posted by cystdog at 05:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 04, 2005

The Folsom SOI conflagration begins

Folsom Visioning

In Julu 2004, Folsom finally moved forward with pre-annexation planning of the land south of Highway 50 Sacramento County LAFCO voted to added to the City of Folsom's "Sphere of Influence" in 2001.

Public workshops concluded in October and it will be interesting to see which of the competing forces prevails in the adoption of a vision for development south of the freeway.

Read more about it in this July 2004 Bee story:

Folsom citizens take on growth
Residents get to pitch views of the future south of Highway 50 at city workshops.
By Jamie Francisco -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Monday, July 19, 2004

Posted by cystdog at 04:19 AM

/scratch/scupper