Sprawl

Interesting couple of days at the OC.  First, I had a chat with downtown over the proper name of our center...people writing checks need to have the proper name, as there are now four Ozanam Centers in the Diocese -- each with a separate name -- and HQ does not have ESP and cannot figure out where the money goes.  That was settled (downtown seems to think I am easy to deal with, which I find to be hilarious).  Then yesterday I got a call that we were in line to get a LARGE shipment of bread...did we want it?  Well, yes, but I had to hustle and make calls and get people there to help unload and etc.  So the stuff happened, and there are TWELVE racks of bread and buns; it takes up half of our storage space. This is an issue, as we have a delivery of real food this week.  So I made some calls and some emails to the Hot Meal people, and -- saints be praised -- they will be more than happy to use as much of it as possible tomorrow.  We'll still have a shitload left, but at least we will not have a mold colony by Sunday.  I hope.

http://www.cleveland.com/architecture/index.ssf/2013/07/sustainability_consortium_seek.html#incart_river

I sort of wanted to see one of these things, because -- I am sounding exactly like Ayn Rand here -- these sorts of things smack of one of my favorite topics, that of rewarding failure.  I have always thought that the issue of urban sprawl isn't bad for everyone, only for the central cities who have worked through shitty and idiotic politics to drive away everyone -- especially the most productive of citizens -- to the suburbs, because, let's face it, would YOU want to live next to people like the clients at the OC?  No way in hell.  Yes, it is inefficient for people to move far away and in suburbs and spend all this money on highways and such, but there is also an opportunity cost factor in that you don't have to live among...well, the urban issues.  The point of regionalism, of course, is for the politics who caused sprawl in the first place to come in and reassert their dominance in affairs so they can export the problems they created to the new turf, and fuck that up too.

I of course think it should be the opposite; that if we want regionalism, the outer-core suburbs -- where the population growth and income are the highest and driving economically -- should be in charge of everything, especially quesitons of economic policy.  To be sure, no one from the urban core would ever agree to it, but that is sort of the point, no?