Thomas Jefferson: The Founding Father Of Sprawl?

beatriz

Thomas Jefferson: The Founding Father Of Sprawl?
United States | Land Use
Planetizen, 20 February, 2006 - 7:00am
Author: Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

On this President's Day, are you stuck in traffic from your exurban house to the sale at the local Hummer dealer? It's Thomas Jefferson's fault. The genius who drafted the Declaration of Independence also espoused a far-ranging anti-urban philosophy, with policies setting the stage for two centuries of sprawling development and political biases against cities.

Maybe we should blame Thomas Jefferson. He was the godfather of the urban sprawl racket in America. Though he held contradictory ideas about many things -- including slavery -- Jefferson was of one mind about cities: he hated them.

"The mobs of great cities add just so much to support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body," Jefferson wrote.1 Though Jefferson partied in Paris and had a hand in shaping Washington D.C., he thought cities were dens of corruption and inequity that would spoil the young American republic.

He told James Madison: "I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get plied upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe."

As a writer, philosopher and leader, Jefferson was able to hard-wire an anti-urban bias into the culture of the United States. Consider the U.S. Constitution. What power does it give to cities and towns? None, nada, zip. In fact, the Constitution doesn't even mention cities and towns. It does give a lot of power to states. And states get more power -- through representatives -- by increasing their population.

It's a formula for urban sprawl and weak cities. States need to grow to get more representatives and more political power. State politicians could try getting more people into urban areas by encouraging compact development. But that would risk giving more electoral power to cities, which Jefferson and his friends and followers (the "Jeffersonians") thought were corrupt. The result? Encourage people to scatter on large plots of land -- of course after removing the Native Americans who happened to be living there at the time.

Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP, is an Instructor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He directs two programs there: Bloustein Online Continuing Education for Planners and APA/LeadershipPlenty. He is also a former chair of the Planners for Ethnic and Cultural Diversity Committee and principal author of "Lagging Behind" a study of ethnic diversity in the planning profession in the New York area.
(....)

continue reading: Planetizen, http://www.planetizen.com/node/18841/