Asymmetrical Information

You always gotta wonder when a band of treehuggers release a study.

Tree deficit? Even the U.N. reports that forests are expanding. Is it too hard for CNN to do a little fact checking?

http://www.forestinformation.com/beta/Forest_Statistics.asp

From the article:

"Everybody needs to include green information into their decision making," Moll said. "It's simple: don't create areas where trees can't grow."

People! Don't you get it? We need to stop building all these enclosed structures! We ought to grow trees, and then live in them!

Yeesh. These people defy parody.

Whoa, folks, the study referred specifically trees in urban areas. Unless a city has a plan in place, trees which die or are cut down are not replaced by new trees.

There are many strange things about Ithaca, a city of 30,000 people surrounded by reality, but the city has a City Forester and the number of trees within the city limits increases every year. Trees are too important, both for satisfying the soul and for helping with the gigantic bio-feedback cycle that keeps the earth livable (a/k/a Gaia for the true believers), to ignore.

Living in Olathe, KS (motto: No concrete will be left unpoured), I heartily second the call for maintaining green space.

I am not a rabid enviro geek, but even my 8 year old commented on the fact that Olathe cannot stop building.

Trees. Green. Yeah, it does a body good -- and not just in "specially designated" parks.

If you want to address strictly economic fundamentals, I guess we'll have to open the discussion to the "newly designated" flood plains the city has had to buy out due to the over-development. And I say "over development" because existing retail space is quickly going vacant at the same time that new retail space is being built (in what is now "prime" areas).

We moved to Olathe 6 years ago (into an older, 1970's neighborhood), and the unremitting retail/ new housing development has definitely impacted negatively on the quality of life -- abetted by tax subsidies.

It's one thing to espouse market-driven development. It's entirely another to question short-term city policies that are conduits for subsidies (i.e., TIF financing) for major, national retail enterprises. Certainly, some elected city officials think longer term. The local chamber of commerce, I'm sure, is financed through various means to promote "more growth" --- while surveys continue to acknowledge that residents are dissatisfied with the rapid rate of growth. I am a proponent of local accountability: nevertheless, local political/economic systems, too, often operate slowly in the face of popular opinion.

Yes, the city does reap reward from new, higher-dollar development. They also bear the cost of road improvement, additional public enterprises (libraries, schools, etc.), and there seems to be a propensity to neglect older neighborhoods (i.e., street maintenance).

It's complex, but one wonders why a new 100k sq ft. grocery store always gets the go-ahead, despite a proclaimed "master plan" that would seem to oppose it.

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