WEBVTT

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[sil.]

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Imagine that some foreign power seized our
cities, tore down our best neighborhoods

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and forced us to be nomads
in our own country.

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We’d be imprisoned in our cars, separated
from our loved ones by great distances

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and made to watch helplessly as our
farms and forests were laid waste by

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bulldozers and backhoes. Why there’d be
a revolution? Isn’t that right? Right.

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When my mom is here visiting,
she just can’t get

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over the amount of time that I spend
in the car. You plan your life

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around the schedules and the drives and
where you’re going. Uh… you look around

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on the ground, the day you see broken
bottles, you see leaves, you see trash,

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you know, drugs on that corner. People would
not work and so it’s like they don’t care.

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You see this house in the middle of a field and
you think, \"Why?\" You know, there’s development.

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Why must you wreck a whole farm?
There’s no large area of… of

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open space left in this entire area.
I can’t think of one.

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Now, it’s just house after house uh… you know,
pavement after pavement, stretching in a pavement.

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And you start when you’re going
through the orthodontist. You start

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\"You know, will a 4 o’clock appointment be fine, Mrs.
Whitlatch?\" Well, no, not a 4 o’clock appointment

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coming down Fruitville Pike or even nuts. The
people that have moved in here like us to…

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keep the farms open so that
they can snowmobile or hunt,

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but we, we’re not supposed to be on the road when they wanna
go to work. You don’t see the… the grandmothers today

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because they’re hostages and they’re
at homes. They’re afraid to come out.

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Uh… It’s like we don’t have
control about community today.

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I’m Tom Hilton and this is my house
of 27 years, 222 Chestnut Street,

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Pottstown, Pennsylvania. From
the front door of my house,

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this is what I see, a parking lot.

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Beneath that asphalt lies the thread
connecting all the stories you just heard.

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When my wife and I moved here back in 1973,

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I was starting out as a reporter for the local
newspaper, The Mercury, and my wife got a job

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teaching at the local elementary school. This house
was perfect for us. The paper where I work was

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just a block away and my wife’s
school was just a 15 minute walk.

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And across the street, on the side of that
parking lot, was a beautiful old high school

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which had been converted
into a middle school.

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I love the sounds of the kids milling outside
in the morning. I like listening to the music

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wafting out the auditorium doors on warm days.
Thinking of all the kids who would go in there

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over the years, the fountains of
powerful memories that were born there

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right across from my house. It broke
my heart when they tore it down.

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Declining involvements, they said.
Now, it’s just rubble under here

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and my neighborhoods never been the same.
What really outraged me was

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even as the wrecking ball swung,

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the suburban school district just outside
of town was building a new middle school

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at a cost of millions of dollars
on what had been farmland.

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Skyrocketing in Wyomissing,
just a couple of miles away

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and it wasn’t just Pottstown, it was
all over America. My whole life,

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I’d been seeing wonderful towns being torn down
bit by bit while we covered the countryside

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with strip malls and subdivisions.
I couldn’t understand

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why we were doing this? Why
it had to be this way?

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So I started to study it and write
editorials about it to figure it all out.

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It’s been a long journey which
is what this program is about.

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But one thing I knew even then, when
they tore down my neighborhood school,

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they weren’t just tearing down a building,
they were tearing down heritage, community,

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stability, everything that’s precious

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about a traditional town like Pottstown.

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[music]

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My love for traditional towns began
here, Wyomissing, Pennsylvania,

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where I was born, a town of
big trees and cozy streets.

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I joined our first, 4th of July parade

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when I was one year old. 50 years
later, it’s still going strong.

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Wyomissing has become a
pretty exclusive place,

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but it began as a factory town.

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My mother moved here as a toddler in 1918, when the town
was just starting to take form. We were the second half,

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the second family to move there, but in
about a year, all the houses were sold

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and I had plenty of playmates. Wyomissing
was started by two German industrialists,

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Henry Janssen and Ferdinand Thun, to be the
home of their Berkshire Knitting Mills,

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at one time, the largest manufacturer
of women’s hosiery in the world.

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Janssen, and Thun, didn’t think of mill
town had to be dirty, noisy and unpleasant.

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They hired the foremost town
planner of their day, John Nolen

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who laid out Wyomissing with tree lined
streets, and parks, and schools.

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Wyomissing had all the elements of
society in less than one square mile.

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Our little rural house was just three blocks
from the mansions of Janssen and Thun,

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and just two blocks from the Berkshire.
We walked to school. And we would

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uh… you know, pick up people as we went along and we’d get
to school in a great big group. It was a very nice way.

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And then we came home at noon,
daddy came home for… for lunch

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and my mother had the meal ready on
the table 12:15 and we had lunch

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and we didn’t have to hurry and then we got
back to school by 1 o’clock. My father died

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at a young age and my family in
reduced financial circumstances

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moved to an apartment in nearby
Reading, a city of 100,000 people.

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Like other American cities at that time, Reading was
perfectly safe. I walked to all my friends’ houses.

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I walked to school where I
had a wide range of friends

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from the son of a janitor to the daughter of a
neurosurgeon. There were adults in my life too.

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At least once a week, I would walk to my
grandmother’s apartment on North 10th Street.

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I’d run errands for here at the corner store usually,
I have at least 12 cents left over for a tasty cake.

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In the mornings on the way to school,

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I’d admire all the beautiful big houses
on center Avenue. I never felt poor

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even though we didn’t have much money. I fully
expected that someday, I’d own a big house

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like one of these. But 35 years later,

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Reading’s changed. My old elementary school

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is now a mini mart, the
factories are vacant,

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the downtown stores are gone,

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the theatres I frequented on Saturday
afternoons are parking lots,

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the neighborhoods have declined, and
the crime rate is among the highest

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in Pennsylvania.

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But, no city filled as far
as fast as Philadelphia.

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This is the Germantown
section of Philadelphia.

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In the 1950s, it was one of the most
fashionable neighborhoods in Pennsylvania.

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Then in the 1960s, like schools
divided Philadelphia neighborhoods,

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it started to go downhill.

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My wife who lived in Nice town(ph), walked to
Germantown shell which was about a 60 block walk.

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Civic leader, Joe Egan grew up in the
working class neighborhood of Hunting Park.

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If you look at six street here right… right down, we were
coming up to, you had grocery stores, you had taverns,

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you had bakeries. Everything was here.
And you could walk there easily.

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I could walk in this area any time in
night, any time a day, absolutely safe,

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and any section in this neighborhood, any
time during the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s.

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You could walk to school, uh…
you could walk to your cleaner,

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you could walk to your baker. Umm… it…
it had, it had a… a scale about it,

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it made it very easy to live here.
In addition to that, the housing was

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very inexpensive and nice, straight
through, good quality stuff, even today,

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with all of the deterioration. There had housing staff,
you know, and this area is absolutely beautiful.

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You no longer have the jobs here anymore because the
industry that was here in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s is gone.

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It’s either in south or it’s off shore
completely. Okay, and when you saw,

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you know, apex or… or Keeblur, or SKF,

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and you saw that a lot, that those losses
of major industries and you could see

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the… the… the economics leave the neighborhood,
and then that led to the physical deterioration.

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I think one of the issues to the
wild card in cities is drugs.

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I don’t think anybody understood the impact of that
and enormity of the scale destruction that it’s run.

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I think fear is deadly to a city.
I think once you have fear,

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if people have an option
to move, they will move.

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Since World War II, the
city has lost more than

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a half million residents, most
of the middle class whites.

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Companies moved out just as quickly.
In 1960, Philadelphia had 2/3rd of

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the region’s employment that was
before it lost 250,000 jobs.

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As more of the city’s businesses
and productive citizens

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abandon the city, they fueled
a vicious downward trend.

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To compensate for declining tax base, the
city raised taxes and lowered services

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which drove away more businesses and middle class
residents. And when the middle class moved out

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taking their jobs with them, what
was left behind in many cases

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was the shell of the city. This is the (inaudible)
hotel. It was once an apartment building

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for middle class people that unfortunately,
it’s been abandoned for 30 years.

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Since 1950, we’ve lost uh… close
to 30% of the population.

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So we have housing units that

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uh… people don’t seem to want or don’t seem to need
anymore, and this has really placed a terrible burden

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on the city. We believe there’re about
22,000 vacant residential buildings

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in the city right now, umm… and about

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uh… 30,000 vacant lots that resulted from the demolition
of vacant houses that… that couldn’t be saved.

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The white middle class
also left behind the poor,

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African-Americans, Hispanics
and recent immigrants.

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Today, 70% of the students in the
Philadelphia School District

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come from poor families. To be
a child in this neighborhood

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umm… you know that safety is an
issue, and so… you’re not playing out

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on the street on a regular basis.
Uh… the other day, you might see,

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you know, drug activity on a regular
basis, walk by it, uh… homelessness,

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uh… there’s shootings and
uh… gun shots are heard.

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All of those things become natural to children who live in
this neighborhood. There’s no basketball place to go play at,

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there’re no trips or… or day camps and
things that keep kids busy. So what happens,

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7th and 8th graders get busy, and we
know what that is, they do get busy by

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uh… playing with each other or
they get busy by dealing drugs

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or all those kind of things because that’s
what’s available to them. Over a period of

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250 years, a wonderful
and efficient system of

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housing and employment for more than two
million people evolved in Philadelphia.

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Center City Philadelphia remains vibrant,

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but slowly, inexorably, the
neighborhood surrounding Center City

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began to die and it
wasn’t just Philadelphia.

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Hundreds of American cities and towns
of lost population since the 1950s,

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owes accompanied by roading neighborhoods
and dilapidated buildings.

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In Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh lost nearly half its
population. Scranton, Johnstown Easton Harrisburg,

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Chester, Williamsport, York, Altoona,
and Reading, all lost anywhere

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from the third to a half
of their population.

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Meanwhile, the countryside surrounding these cities
was experiencing a different kind of crisis.

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When the 422 bypass was finished

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and the 202 around Norristown, (inaudible),

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100 was straightened out, if all that
pressure started get created in here.

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For five generations, Horace Mowrer’s family
tilt the soil of Northern Chester County

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about 40 miles outside Philadelphia.
That my great grandfather my grandfather

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and my father and myself and my son.
But in 1988, he sold his farm

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and moved west to Huntington County.
It was hard to leave,

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but the fact that I’ve, if I wanted the farm,
I was gonna have to go farm somewhere else.

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What happened to Horace Mowrer has been happening
to farmers all over Southeastern Pennsylvania.

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In the last 25 years, the area has lost

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a quarter of its farmland, even
as its population decreased by

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a 150,000 residents. State
wide, Pennsylvania has lost

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a million acres of farmland
in just the last 10 years.

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That’s an area nearly the size of
Delaware that will never be farmed again.

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About the time Horace Mowrer
was selling his farm,

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I was chastising the Chester County commissioners
on the editorial pages of the Mercury

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for their failure to do anything about
sprawling development. The urban megalopolis

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was surging down the room 202 high
tech corridor printing oppression

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into the heart of the countryside. Strip
malls and luxury class level towns

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were elbowing into the Brandywine Valley from
Delaware. Scattered development was battering

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from the new route 422 expressway
into northern townships.

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It was like a wave. It really was uh… a
wave that uh… people were very concerned.

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Uh… People can get out of their driveways.
Umm… farms were disappearing.

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Uh… traffic was increasing. Uh… the vistas
that people were used to were gone.

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People wanted development stopped.
What they didn’t understand was

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that the local municipalities
have control over uh… land use.

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So we decided to tackle the
problem with forming a task force

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umm… made up of people that normally don’t sit
around the same table and discuss these issues.

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And uh… from the task force, we
came up with a County work plan

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which led to the recommendation of the $50
million bond issue. Yeah, that the bond,

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the 1989 bond issue essentially was a, was
money being provided to manage growth

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and to protect open space in
Chester County. It turned out

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that a great deal of the open space that
people really cared about was farms.

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The only way to say farm land in Pennsylvania is
you either have to buy the farm and derestricted,

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persuade the farmer to give you the easement
which provides you with a development rights

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in exchange for some tax benefits or
you’re paying for the development rights.

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Since the original bond issue was passed, Chester
County has spent more than $100 million dollars

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to preserve 15,000 acres of farmland
in open space. But at the same time,

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the county lost even more land to
development then it preserved.

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Meanwhile, Pennsylvania has established the second
largest farmland preservation program in the nation.

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In the past 10 years, more than
$280 million dollars has been spent

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to buy development rights to farms. But in
comparison to the amount of land we’re losing,

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it’s still only a drop in the bucket.

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So far, this program has protected
barely 2% of Pennsylvania’s farmland.

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Developments like this

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are cropping up all across Pennsylvania displacing
farmers and destroying beautiful scenery.

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With every passing decade,

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we’ve been consuming more and more land for
each house, store, and office we’ve built.

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With every decade, hundreds
of thousands of acres of

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Pennsylvania countryside has been lost
forever to strip malls, parking lots,

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and monotonous sprawl. And
remember, at the same time,

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thousands of acres of formerly thriving
neighborhoods in our cities have been

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neglected and abandoned. What
happened to bring this lunacy above?

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We’re building these houses because this, there are the
kind of houses that people want in today’s marketplace.

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And in order to be a successful builder,
we have to build what the people want.

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What do suburban homeowners want? Yeah,
certainly umm… where I grew up, we lived

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uh… in a neighborhood where there was a community park and
that’s where everybody congregated and the kids played and…

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Well, I could go down to the barber shop
and I would walk to the barber shop.

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Down, I mean, we take kids for a walk around the
neighborhood, but there’s literally you cannot walk

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to… to anything as far as any stores
or… or anything. If you want to

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be with others, you generally have to drive somewhere. It
should be a five minute travel, but… …five mile drive,

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but it’s 20, 20 minute drive. 20 minutes to 45 depending on
the travel. 20 minute drive depending… Fridays’ 30 minutes.

00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:39.999
If I could change anything about this area, I
would like to have stores that I could walk to,

00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:44.999
a grocery store, a pharmacy company like that.
Perhaps, uh… a pizza shop, boutique shop.

00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:49.999
Grocery store that you go town to, you
know… A place we can just hang out

00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:54.999
or that might have… have… have a beer with somebody. You don’t
have any of that today, and we don’t even try to build that in.

00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:59.999
I’d say if we had a little bit better
sidewalks, we had some at all,

00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:04.999
that would make it a lot easier to move around. When
I grew up, we had sidewalks, we had street lamps,

00:19:05.000 --> 00:19:09.999
and it would have been nice uh… not only safety
wise for the kids walking around. It gives you that

00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:14.999
uh… more the feel of the town rather than we just out here
where it’s so barren, you’ve got houses and you’ve got land.

00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:19.999
I think that the only limitation
without having sidewalks for the kids

00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:24.999
is that you really don’t get to know the other kids
in the neighborhood unless, you’re in the same school

00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:29.999
or the same class, and… many of the kids in
the neighborhood don’t go to public school.

00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:34.999
Umm… I’m a very accepting
person of all incomes.

00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:39.999
I don’t think you need to be a doctor or lawyer. Umm… To live in
a certain neighborhood, I think all jobs are equally important.

00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:44.999
There’re very few people
of my age for example.

00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:49.999
Well, it’s a shame, they don’t get to see more of uh…
you know, the older generation hear more about it.

00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:54.999
And uh… it’s again one of the tradeoffs.
Our big concern

00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:59.999
is the uncertainty of what’s going to happen with the
farm, right next door. That end. Because right now,

00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:04.999
it’s great because we’re, we’re living
that end, but if that ever gets developed

00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:09.999
which probably will then… uh… it may
not be as part of the street anymore.

00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:14.999
We can build developments that
allow people to walk to work,

00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:19.999
to walk to shopping, and have a
close relationship with nature

00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:24.999
as long as we can create zoning
and planning that will allow.

00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.999
Builders and developers are not in the business
to… to fight the existing zoning laws.

00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.999
It takes too much time, too much
effort, too much money. And so…

00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:39.999
It turns out that it’s not just the market,
but regulations that shape our communities.

00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:44.999
The story of sprawl began in the 1930s.

00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.999
Times were hard because of the great
depression. In order to make it easier

00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.999
for Americans to buy homes, Franklin Roosevelt
created the Federal Housing Administration.

00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
The FHA insured bank loans for homes

00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
making it possible for the first time for
citizens to buy a house with just 10% down.

00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
But, there were a couple of rules.

00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
It had to be a nice home in a good
neighborhood. The government to find that

00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
to mean things like a certain
minimum set back from the street,

00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
no stores, just single family
houses, space between buildings

00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
and new construction was favored over…
over houses. This meant that the house

00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
your parents and grandparents
grew up in just wouldn’t do.

00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
And if you happen to be
black, forget about it.

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
Naturally, this was disastrous
for city neighborhoods.

00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
But in a boom years following the 2nd World
War, it created thousands of acres of

00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
white middle class suburbs in fringe
of every metropolitan period.

00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
In 1954, President Eisenhower appointed

00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
a commission to study the need for
new highways. To held the committee,

00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.999
he appointed General Lucius Clay, a
member of the Board of General Motors.

00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
Two years later, the Interstate
Highway Act worth arise

00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
41,000 miles of new highways with
the federal government picking up

00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
90% of the tab, meanwhile,
public transportation systems

00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
got no support and many went bankrupt.
In the same way,

00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
the government subsidized new water and
sewer systems in sandy, rural areas

00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
and neglected urban the infrastructure.
To add insult to injury,

00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
the government built all its subsidized
housing for the poor in the cities.

00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
Instead of encouraging diversified neighborhoods
with equal opportunities for all,

00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
this concentrated poverty in
inner city neighborhoods,

00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
some of these projects
have proved so unlivable

00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
that they’ve been abandoned.

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
Here’s an example of still
another good idea go on a ride.

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
In 1980, new federal environmental regulations
made the owners of vacant industrial properties

00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
responsible to clean them up them up to
almost pristine Garden of Eden standards

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
before redeveloping them. As
a result, it’s far cheaper

00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
to build on farmland in
the country than to reuse

00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
prime real estate in the city like this.
Policies like this,

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
once they’re put in place
are really hard to change.

00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
In Pennsylvania, a lot of the
bad planning of the past is

00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
affectively nailed in place by zoning laws.
We’re in Allegheny County

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
here where Pittsburgh is located.
Allegheny County has

00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
128 individual municipalities.

00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
As many other states, each local
municipality does its own zoning

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
with little or no cooperative planning a
regional oversight. In Allegheny County,

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
that means there must be zones to
accommodate a 128 strip malls,

00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
a 128 corporate centers, a 128 landfills.

00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
Not to mention a 128 of every
kind of residential development

00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
from apartments to resorts.

00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
So if Wal-Mart wants to build a store
right here in the middle of a farm field,

00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
and the municipality wants
to say, \"No\", state law says

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
this little municipality has to
find some other spot to put it

00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
even though there may be six other Wal-Mart’s within
20 miles. Thanks to this crazy quilt zoning system.

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
Suburban municipalities
continue to attract development

00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
while cities like Pittsburgh
continue to lose it.

00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
What all these policies that
up to is a huge historic

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
government subsidy for suburban living.
It’s no wonder Pennsylvania’s countryside

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
has gotten all build up and the
city neighborhoods neglected.

00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:20.000
The real wonder when you think about it
is that our cities have survived at all.

00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
For a long time, I thought that’s
just the way things have to be.

00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
Urban decay and suburban sprawl are a fact of
life, the price of living in a modern society.

00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
But then, I had a revelation.

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
I was traveling here in England, the
first time I’d ever been abroad.

00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
I’m wondering about London on my first
day with my little flash map in hand,

00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
all excited about seeing the famous
landmarks I had read about for years.

00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
I’ve rounded the Tower of London

00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
and I’m heading back to my hotel
when suddenly dome sounded.

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
[music]

00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
I have just seen practically the whole
history of England and it’s only taken about

00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
an hour and a half, one foot.
All these parks and landmarks,

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
museums, theaters, train stations are
packed into an incredibly small area,

00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
so small, I can hardly believe it.

00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
And in the days that followed, I
made another amazing discovery.

00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
Except in the commercial areas, London
didn’t feel the least bit crowded.

00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
Every day, I sat down on this bench
on the south side of the Thames,

00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
keep in mind, this is a city
of seven million people

00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:54.999
in the height of the tourist season. In front
of me is the most famous Vista in England

00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:59.999
and every time I come here, I’ve
got the whole bench to myself.

00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
It occurs to me, you know, it’s really
easy to get around this place on foot

00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
and when people are on foot, they
really don’t take up much space.

00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
Think about it. This is me walking,

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
if you measure the space around me, it’s
about 4 square feet. And here’s my house,

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
back home in Pottstown. 2500
square feet, actually larger

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
than the average house currently built in
America. There’s my wife working in our yard.

00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
Our lawn is 1/10th of an acre. That’s
just the right size to give us

00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
all the yard we want and no more than we can handle.
Now, what happens if we move to the suburbs?

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
The first off, since we can’t
walk anywhere, we need two cars,

00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.999
one for my wife and one for me.
Standing still, each car takes about

00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:54.999
25 times more space than a human being.
But, put them in motion

00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:59.999
and they are really indeed machines.
At 60 miles an hour,

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.999
my car needs about 1000 square feet of pavement, you
know, that are really expensive pollution insurance.

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
Of course, everywhere I go, I need
a parking space at the other end.

00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
Office, grocery store,
mall, the health club,

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
since I’m not walking anymore. Experts
estimate there are six to seven parking spaces

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
for each of the 130 million
cars registered in America.

00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
That’s a lot of pavement. Not
to mention the ugly billboards

00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
advertisers are thrown up to
catch my eyes I’m speeding by.

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.999
I think you get the picture. Now,
where am I? Can you find me?

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
Here I am, just a little dot surrounded by
all that unnecessary grass and asphalt.

00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
If you look really… really closely,

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:54.999
you can see that I’m studying my bank balance
trying to figure out where all my money went.

00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.999
Anyway, I’m in London thinking
about all this and I wonder,

00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
\"What if the British Suburbs look like? What do
they do with their subdivisions and strip malls?\"

00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.999
Low and behold, there’s another surprise.
You get to the edge of the city

00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.999
and it just stops. There’re no strip malls,

00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.999
no endless line of car dealerships,
no subdivisions called Country creek,

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
or pleasant festa(ph), just an
honest to goodness country view.

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
Keep in mind, England is only slightly
bigger than Pennsylvania in land area

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
and it has four times as many people.

00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:40.000
Clearly, somebody did something right.
And I discovered something else here.

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
Remember, Wyomissing, where I was born.

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
Wyomissing has always been a model
for me of the ideal communities.

00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
Well, it turns out

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.999
Wyomissing was designed after this
town, just 30 miles north of London,

00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.999
Letchworth Garden City.

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.999
Back in the frontier days, when the U.S.
government was giving away land in the West,

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.999
it probably seemed to most Americans
that we’d never run out of space.

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
In England by contrast, there hadn’t
been any free land for centuries.

00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.999
The cities were getting crowded and
polluted and there was no place to escape.

00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.999
In 1898, a visionary Englishman
named Ebenezer Howard,

00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.999
proposed dealing with this problem by building
small satellite cities in the countryside

00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.999
called \"Garden Cities\" that would
allow people to live and work

00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:49.999
and lush leafy neighborhoods immediately
surrounded by large areas of open space.

00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.999
Letchworth was the first modern city.

00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:59.999
Today, Letchworth has 33,000
residents and 14,000 jobs

00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.999
plus schools, churches, and parks, all
within walking distance of each other,

00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.999
and all surrounded by a permanently
protected expanse of open country called,

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.999
\"The Greenbelt\" which residents are free to
enjoy. The nearby Garden City of Welland

00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:19.999
is designed around the Green
Central Square surrounded by shops

00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:24.999
and anchored by a large mall. On the inside,
the mall looks like any American Galleria,

00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:29.999
but shoppers can walk to this mall and
much of the parking is underground.

00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:34.999
The English have firmly embraced

00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:39.999
Ebenezer Howard’s ideal of
carefully planned towns.

00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.999
After the Second World War,

00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:49.999
instead of scattering development random
all over the countryside as we did,

00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.999
the English continued their tradition
of building, self-contained towns,

00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:59.999
connected to larger cities by public transportation
and surrounded by permanently protected open space.

00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.999
Historic cities like Bath(ph),

00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.999
have also been surrounded by green belts to
keep them from sprawling into the countryside.

00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.999
Nearly 60% of all new
housing built in England

00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.999
is built on recycled land like
this former industrial tract

00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.999
outside of London. Now I
know what you’re thinking,

00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.999
this is England. America is the land
of large lots and lavish lawns.

00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.999
Besides, we don’t want the
government telling us where to live.

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.999
But the fact is until the 1950s,

00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.999
most Americans did live in cities and
towns in close knit neighborhoods

00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:49.999
like this one in Letchworth.
It wasn’t until

00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:54.999
big government came along with
everything from highway subsidies,

00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.999
the zoning regulations that sprawl
became the law of the land.

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.999
But now, there’re actually places
in America that have succeeded

00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.999
in changing such laws.

00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.999
[music] This is the Willamette Valley

00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.999
which stretches South of Portland, Oregon, one of the
fastest growing metropolitan areas in the United States.

00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.999
I’m with Hector Macpherson whose
family has formed this land

00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
since the 1920s. Uh… We have a,
what I, what is the Peoria Road

00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:34.999
which is a road that leads directly to Carlos about
six or seven miles away and people were leaking out

00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.999
and buying small cracks of land along that.
This was simply development right along

00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.999
the… the major road to that area.
Um-hmm! But, then we also saw

00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:49.999
there’re… there’re certain actual
uh… subdivisions way out beyond

00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.999
any possible city services that were moving
in to take up the land, and to move out

00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.999
not just one or two, but in mass. And uh… you
know, this was the kind of thing that I feared.

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.999
And there was no… no brakes. There was
nothing in Linn County that I could turn

00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:09.999
to… to help me. There was absolutely no
planning or zoning, no construction controls,

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.999
no… no anything in… in the county.
So we finally, we were able to

00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:19.999
get a uh…petition pass by
the County commissioners to

00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.999
invite the first, to appoint
the first Planning Commission.

00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:29.999
Macpherson served on that Planning Commission and a
few years later, went to seek in the state senate.

00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:34.999
I did not go up to the, to the state with the idea
that I was going to uh… solve the Oregon problems

00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.999
and in land use planning. I went with
the idea that I wanted to uh… do

00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.999
uh… do something significant. And when I got there, I found
that I knew more about land use planning than most of my

00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:49.999
uh… contemporaries, senators and
representatives. And so at that point,

00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.999
I decided that it was time for me to put together legislation
which would help cure the problems that I saw in Oregon.

00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:59.999
Thanks to this legislation, 25
million acres of land in Oregon

00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.999
are now zoned exclusively
for farming and forestry.

00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:09.999
And a whole purpose of the
land use planning that I

00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.999
uh… believe in is to simply make the best
choices. And that’s what we’re trying to do here

00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:19.999
is to make the best choices. We have to allow a room
for people, but they can’t just go anywhere in Oregon,

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.999
and expect to be able to uh… buy a
bare piece of land and build a house.

00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:29.999
Oregon’s main planning tool is the growth boundary.
Cities and Counties in Oregon work together

00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.999
to draw boundaries around their
traditional cities and towns.

00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
They allow enough room for all foreseeable
growth for 20 years. Then they say, \"That’s it.

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.999
We’ll talk again in 10
years.\" Inside this line,

00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:49.999
development is given the red carpet
treatment. Outside, it’s heavily restricted.

00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:54.999
To see the impact this has had,
compare Metro Portland with

00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:59.999
Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
Portland has the same number of people,

00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.999
but living on half the land area.
We’ve achieved the livability

00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:09.999
and that’s the word I should get in here and
emphasize. Livability is the key word in Oregon

00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:14.999
and we want to have livability above all
else. But I had, of course, a specific thing

00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:19.999
that I was trying to say farmland, and that came
out very strongly in the legislation that we have.

00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.999
The remarkable thing is, Oregon’s
land use law initially designed to

00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:29.999
protect the countryside has made Oregon
cities among the healthiest in the nation.

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:34.999
Metro Portland is thriving.

00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:39.999
Instead of development continually pushing outward,
a roading the economic base of the center,

00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.999
abandoned land in the
city is being recycled.

00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:49.999
Instead of government pouring money into
new highways to keep up it’s sprawl,

00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.999
it’s invested in new light rail lines
which also helps keep the downtown

00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:59.999
from being clogged with cars. Living in the city
doesn’t have to mean townhouses and apartments.

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.999
Most residents of Metro Portland live
in single family detached houses

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:09.999
with private backyards. In the 25 years,
since Macpherson’s bill is passed,

00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.999
residents and even developers have
come to wholeheartedly support it.

00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:19.999
Oregonians prefer to live
close to the outdoors

00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.999
and enjoy it whole rather than
carving it up for suburban sprawl.

00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.999
Portland is proof that just because America
has a lower population density than England,

00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:34.999
doesn’t mean we have the sprawl. After all,
Oregon has twice the land area of Pennsylvania

00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:39.999
and only a quarter as many people.
Clearly, sprawl is not the inevitable

00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.999
result of having lots of land,
it’s the result of bad planning.

00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.999
Still, this part of natural
Portland is no garden city.

00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.999
It’s not nearly as nice as
Letchworth or Wyomissing.

00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.999
In fact, looks a little uh…
haphazard, in fact It is haphazard.

00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.999
In Portland, growth is contained,

00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:09.999
but not organized. It’s still a hodgepodge
rather than the carefully laid out

00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:14.999
mix of spaces that make Letchworth
and Wyomissing so attractive.

00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:19.999
Portland drew a line around the outside, but
there’re a handful of places in the U.S.

00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.999
that are planning from the middle as well.
This is Charlotte, North Carolina,

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:29.999
another rapidly growing metropolitan area.

00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:34.999
David Walters, a professor at the
University of North Carolina here

00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:39.999
was asked by several towns in the Charlotte region
such as Davidson, how they could plan their growth

00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.999
to create real communities
instead of sprawl?

00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:49.999
Walters’s English so we turned to
England’s garden cities for inspiration.

00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:54.999
And we began by identifying the flood plains,
the steep slopes areas that you couldn’t build,

00:38:55.000 --> 00:38:59.999
and then we moved on to choose areas of
particular scenic beauty along highways

00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:04.999
and so forth that were particularly valued by
the community in which they wanted to preserve.

00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:09.999
Then we linked these with Greenways and pops and
ball fields and made a series of green edges to

00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:14.999
uh… neighborhood so that the edges
were defined by the natural landscape.

00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:19.999
Then what happened was this map became the
basis for the official zoning maps of

00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:24.999
the towns adopted, and the
design standards in this design

00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:29.999
became integrated with the design
standards in their zoning ordinances.

00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:34.999
So far, six towns in the Charlotte area
have adopted new zoning ordinances

00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:39.999
to promote the development of traditional
neighborhoods. Residential areas have houses

00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:44.999
drawing close to the street on each
other to give them a traditional feel.

00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:49.999
Abundant sidewalks lined with large
shade trees encourage walking.

00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:54.999
Garages are placed behind the homes on
alleys so you can see front porches

00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:59.999
instead of driveways. The
town center district

00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.999
encourages a mix of single family detached
houses, apartments, offices, and shops

00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:09.999
so long as the buildings blend together.
Parking lots are placed in the rear

00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:14.999
to maintain attractive streets in a
pleasant environment for pedestrians.

00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:19.999
Well, interestingly enough one of the main
uh… uh… catalysts in this whole process

00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.999
was a big residential development here that
in one of our countless public meetings,

00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:29.999
he stood up and said, \"Now Walter, you’ll just make a complete
build out plan for the whole community just like towns

00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:34.999
used to do that way everybody will know what
the rules are.\" See one of his main fields

00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:39.999
is as a developer trying to do high quality
development was that somebody would come in next door

00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.999
and just produce some (inaudible) mediocrity
and under cut all his good efforts.

00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:49.999
So it was in his own economic self-interest
to have a master plan that would embody

00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.999
the high standards that apply to everybody.
And for complying with these standards,

00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:59.999
the developers are rewarded by incentive bonuses
and the freedom to mix and match housing types

00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.999
to be creative in their own development to
make the most of the market opportunities.

00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:09.999
From a developer standpoint, you’re not building one
neighborhood that’s burned up and potted over here

00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:14.999
from 150 to 180 and wondering if
you can hit that price point.

00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.999
Otherwise, I can hit… hit price points
from 120s to 140s, 140s to 200s,

00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.999
200s to 210s. One of the things from a
developer standpoint makes it attractive

00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.999
is that in one neighborhood, you really have five or six
combined, and you could also sell commercial property.

00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:34.999
We have a restaurant sites or tavern
sites, we have several sites here to build

00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:39.999
little neighborhood office buildings. So I can be a
commercial developer, a affordable housing developer,

00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.999
a high end developer, all in one spot.

00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:49.999
It’s really become more of a quest than… than in building a development.
It’s really trying to build something that people can enjoy,

00:41:50.000 --> 00:41:54.999
that people can always look at where people go
on vacation. They go to places like Savannah

00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:59.999
or trial stand. They go for a walkable neighborhood. And
my feeling is you can have that kind of neighborhood

00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.999
and live in it every day. You don’t have to be a tourist going
to these type of older neighborhoods that have survived.

00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:09.999
In Celebration Florida, we can see

00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.999
a town like this that is well underway.

00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:19.999
This town was made possible

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.999
because Disney Development Corporation
owned all the land and had a vision

00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:29.999
to design the ideal community of tomorrow.

00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:34.999
As it turned out, the ideal
community of tomorrow

00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:39.999
looks an awful lot like the
ideal town of yesterday.

00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:44.999
My daily routine here in Celebration is the kids
walk to school. We have about five houses down

00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:49.999
from the school. I walk on to work after school,
my daughter walks over here to the store,

00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.999
hangs out with me for a couple of hours and then we get to
walk home together. We’ve done away with one of our cars

00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:59.999
so we’re a one car family now.
And it’s a great place for kids.

00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:04.999
We feel very safe here. We feel like
the… the bigger kids are looking after,

00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:09.999
and we feel like the other adults around know them. You can’t
walk to downtown without seeing someone that you know.

00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:14.999
You can’t sit on your porch and have your cup of coffee without
going. \"Oh, there’s so and so. I wonder what they’re working on.

00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:19.999
Hey, what are you working on over there?\"
There’s truly a sense of community

00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:24.999
and it’s a very comfortable sense of community. The
variety of homes available allows all the different

00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:29.999
umm… individuals with different create patterns to pick
a home that’s best for them and their family members.

00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:34.999
You meet people that you wouldn’t on
ordinary circumstances in… in life.

00:43:35.000 --> 00:43:39.999
You’ll meet, every, anybody is in Celebration.
If you have retirees, you have young families,

00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:44.999
you have uh… double income, no children.
It’s not \"Oh, this side of town has

00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:49.999
great big homes and this side has smaller
homes.\" Nobody really looks at those things.

00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:54.999
Well, my wife and I like to do on date nights.
Umm… My mom will keep the kids for us

00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:59.999
or we’ll hire a babysitter. My wife and I’ll get
on our bicycles, we’ll ride down, park our bikes,

00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:04.999
go to the movie, then go to
dinner and uh… come back home

00:44:05.000 --> 00:44:09.999
and we don’t even have
to leave the community.

00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:14.999
This is Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,

00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:19.999
the richest farmland
east of the Mississippi.

00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:24.999
For decades, traditional Amish and Mennonite farmers in
Lancaster County have been getting pushed aside by developers.

00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:29.999
At the same time, the city of Lancaster

00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:34.999
has been struggling to deal with the
flight of wealth to the suburbs.

00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:39.999
Now, we’ve seen in Oregon, how growth boundaries
protect the countryside and revitalize towns.

00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:44.999
And we’ve seen in North Carolina,
how zoning walls can be changed

00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:49.999
to make it possible to build
traditional communities once again.

00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:54.999
Why can’t we apply these ideas here?

00:44:55.000 --> 00:44:59.999
Well, Lancaster County has been trying to follow
the model of places like Portland and Davidson,

00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.999
but as in other parts of the country,
antiquated land use laws get in the way.

00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:09.999
We have established urban growth boundaries to separate the
areas of the county that are appropriate for development

00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:14.999
in those areas that are not. Okay, so what
do we need to make these growth boundaries

00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:19.999
and Lancaster county or anywhere else in America really
effective? To be really successful in Pennsylvania,

00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:24.999
there are three things we need to do.
First, we need to change

00:45:25.000 --> 00:45:29.999
the laws that govern planning and zoning and taxing
in the state because these laws as they exist today

00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:34.999
encourage sprawl. We need to change
the law to give the power to counties

00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:39.999
and municipalities to plan on a regional
basis and to enforce growth boundaries.

00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:44.999
Secondly, we need to build traditional communities
like they’re building in other states.

00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:49.999
And finally, number three, we
need to encourage re-investment

00:45:50.000 --> 00:45:54.999
in our existing cities and towns.
America has thousands of acres of land

00:45:55.000 --> 00:45:59.999
strategically located with needed
infrastructure already in place

00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:04.999
just waiting to be developed. It’s
all those abandoned factories

00:46:05.000 --> 00:46:09.999
and other vacant lands
in our cities and towns.

00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:14.999
Here’s island directly across the Allegheny
River from Downtown, Pittsburgh was for years

00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:19.999
derelict and polluted, the sight of an
abandoned meat packing plant and scrap yard.

00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:24.999
Thanks to financing and tax incentives. It
has been turned into a lovely residential

00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:29.999
and office development called,
‘Washington’s landing’. The development is

00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:34.999
a leading example of Pennsylvania’s land
recycling program which offers grants and loans

00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:39.999
to clean up and reuse
vacant industrial sites.

00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:44.999
But it’s hard to imagine a less likely place
to build a neighborhood, the Nine Mile Run,

00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:49.999
a polluted stream running
through a gigantic slag dump

00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:54.999
along the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh.
From the 1920s to the 1970s,

00:46:55.000 --> 00:46:59.999
dozens of train loads of slag from nearby
steel mills were dumped here every day

00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:04.999
creating 250 acres of hideous moonscape.

00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:09.999
The same Pittsburgh architects who
helped design Celebration Florida

00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:14.999
have finished plans to transform this
dump into thriving neighborhoods.

00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:19.999
Not only a week reclaiming a
Brownfield site in a city,

00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:24.999
but what we’re putting in its place is the great
American neighborhood. One of the great inventions

00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:29.999
we’ve had in our country is the neighborhood, the
American neighborhood which is front porches

00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:34.999
and back alleys and streets, and neighborhood
parks, neighborhood schools, those are things

00:47:35.000 --> 00:47:39.999
that exist in the United States. And here, we
have the example of Brownfield reclamation

00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:44.999
and a great new traditional American
neighborhood coming together in one place

00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:49.999
and celebrating our diversity by making sure that
people of all incomes could live in this neighborhood.

00:47:50.000 --> 00:47:54.999
But the big idea is the park that’s gonna
be created right down here, Nine Mile Run

00:47:55.000 --> 00:47:59.999
which is now a polluted stream.
It’s going to be transformed

00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:04.999
with… with… with the most current techniques for transforming
streams and clean it with no wetlands will be created.

00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:09.999
The slopes themselves which you see now are
un-forested will be forested with new techniques.

00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:14.999
And so the front door, the address of this
neighborhood Somerset will be the extended

00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:19.999
(inaudible) park that will take you all the way of the
Mon River, right there. And we haven’t even mentioned

00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:24.999
the environmental consequences
of sprawl, air pollution,

00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:29.999
groundwater contamination, even global
warming. The governor commissioned a study

00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:34.999
uh… that worked for a year and produced a
report that said among other things that

00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:39.999
suburban sprawl was a biggest threat to
Pennsylvania’s environment in the 21st century.

00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.999
The Commission found that sprawl choose up farmland
and open space that destroys natural habitat

00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:49.999
for animals and plants, and it increases
both air and ground water pollution.

00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:54.999
Projects like Nine Mile Run are a big part of the solution
to urban sprawl. They reuse land we’ve already developed.

00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:59.999
They clean up sites that are polluted.
They reduce the pressure to develop farms

00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.999
and other open space and
they’re good places to live.

00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:09.999
There are reasons for optimism

00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.999
all across America. More than 20
states from Maryland to Arizona

00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:19.999
have begun efforts to curb sprawling development.
Builders environmentalist and businessmen

00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:24.999
are finding common ground in a new
concept called, ‘Smart Growth’

00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:29.999
that concentrates development
in and around existing towns

00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:34.999
and transportation corridors. Dozens of
traditional neighborhoods, places like

00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:39.999
Celebration are being built in rapidly
growing areas like Florida and California.

00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:44.999
Elsewhere, they’re being designed for
vacant lands in existing cities and towns,

00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:49.999
and there’s renewed interest in
preserving the wonderful neighborhoods

00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:54.999
and Main streets we already have. Public
interest groups are also involved

00:49:55.000 --> 00:49:59.999
and we’ll list a few websites and phone
numbers at the end of this program.

00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:04.999
But frankly, America will never save
its cities, towns and countryside

00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:09.999
as long as the dream home for most of us

00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:14.999
includes a half acre lot in the countryside
that’s far from stores, schools, and jobs.

00:50:15.000 --> 00:50:19.999
Sure a sprawl seems natural to us because
that’s what we’ve known in our lifetimes.

00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:24.999
But in the whole sweep of recorded
history, it’s just been a

00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:29.999
couple of ticks on the clock, a
recent experiment that’s proving

00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:34.999
disastrous for America. Just look
at where sprawls brought us.

00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:39.999
We’ve neglected our cities and towns,
we’ve turned beautiful landscapes

00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:44.999
into strip mall junk scape,
we’ve subdivided and paved over

00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:49.999
vast expanses of prime farmland,
we’ve condemned ourselves

00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:54.999
to a wearisome life of constant
driving, and perhaps worst of all,

00:50:55.000 --> 00:50:59.999
sprawl has helped to isolate us
black and white, rich and poor,

00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:04.999
and make us fearful of one another.
That’s no way to live

00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:09.999
and it doesn’t have to be that way.
Going back thousands of years

00:51:10.000 --> 00:51:14.999
from the days of the ancients
to the medieval era,

00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:19.999
colonial times, right up to
the 1950s here in America,

00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:24.999
the vast majority of people have
lived in villages, in towns,

00:51:25.000 --> 00:51:29.999
in the neighborhoods of cities because
they make so much sense as a way of life.

00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:34.999
Sure, our cities and towns were
far from perfect in the 1950s,

00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:39.999
but had we continued to invest in
them instead of abandoning them

00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:44.999
they could have become beautiful,
convenient and enriching places to live.

00:51:45.000 --> 00:51:49.999
And it’s not too late, we
still have the ability

00:51:50.000 --> 00:51:54.999
to rediscover and rebuild our
wonderful cities and towns.

00:51:55.000 --> 00:51:59.999
Just down the street from my house
here in Pottstown for example,

00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:04.999
is a vacant factory site, a former pine
manufacturing plant. Now, let’s think how we could

00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:09.999
reuse that site to make
a great place to live.

00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:14.999
Some of the old buildings are definitely
worth keeping. We could put shops

00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:19.999
on the 1st floor and offices upstairs. We don’t
want to place that only rich people can afford

00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:24.999
and we certainly don’t want another place where
just poor people live. So we’ll put in a mixture of

00:52:25.000 --> 00:52:29.999
large and small houses and attractive apartment
buildings. Play space for the children

00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:34.999
is really important so we put in lots of public
reins in playgrounds no more than a few blocks

00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:39.999
from every house. There’s a lot of
work in and right around Pottstown

00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:44.999
so we won’t need to drive long distances
to work. Still we’d like to be

00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:49.999
able to get to Philadelphia easily. So we’re gonna
turn this former Pennsylvania railroad line

00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:54.999
into a light rail line. In fact, there’s
already a plan in the works to do just that.

00:52:55.000 --> 00:52:59.999
We’ll give our development a village feel
by putting in front porches and sidewalks

00:53:00.000 --> 00:53:04.999
and street lamps and lots of shade trees.
That’ll make it safe

00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:09.999
and convenient for kids to walk to
the nearby schools and for parents

00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:14.999
to walk to Pottstown shopping district just a few
blocks away. We’ll get excess cars off the street

00:53:15.000 --> 00:53:19.999
by putting alleys and garages
behind the houses. What else?

00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:24.999
Well, we’d like to feel as close to the
countryside as we are to the downtown.

00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:29.999
So why don’t we create a wide green
way along the Schuylkill river

00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:34.999
with biking and walking trails? As it
happens again, there’s already a plan

00:53:35.000 --> 00:53:39.999
to make this area part of a green way that
stretches from Fairmont Park in Philadelphia,

00:53:40.000 --> 00:53:44.999
35 miles down river to
Pottsville, 50 miles up river.

00:53:45.000 --> 00:53:49.999
This wouldn’t be just another development.
It would be a real neighborhood.

00:53:50.000 --> 00:53:54.999
And you know, every town has a site like our Old
Pie Factory just waiting to be transformed.

00:53:55.000 --> 00:53:59.999
I love living in Pottstown.

00:54:00.000 --> 00:54:04.999
I like the sense of place. I like waking
up in the morning to that shines of

00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:09.999
the Trinity Church Caroline. And
every walking errand takes me past

00:54:10.000 --> 00:54:14.999
someone I know or something I love.

00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:19.999
I grew up in a white world,

00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:24.999
but 27 years of living in an integrated
neighborhood have taught me to respect blacks,

00:54:25.000 --> 00:54:29.999
Hispanics, and other people whose background
in education are not the same as my own.

00:54:30.000 --> 00:54:34.999
I didn’t move here because I’m
big on peace and brotherhood,

00:54:35.000 --> 00:54:39.999
I moved here because I wanted to walk
to work and I like the architecture.

00:54:40.000 --> 00:54:44.999
But now that I do live among people
of all ages, races, and incomes,

00:54:45.000 --> 00:54:49.999
I find I’m rather proud of it.
That’s what democracy is all about.

00:54:50.000 --> 00:54:54.999
That’s what William Penn had in mind

00:54:55.000 --> 00:54:59.999
when he founded Pennsylvania.

00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:04.999
Sitting on the patio behind my
home in a pleasant fall evening,

00:55:05.000 --> 00:55:09.999
looking over moonlit move tops of the clock
tower of Transfiguration Lutheran Church

00:55:10.000 --> 00:55:14.999
which has been standing since
the days of Abraham Lincoln,

00:55:15.000 --> 00:55:19.999
I feel a sense of kinship with my
neighbors and the generations before me

00:55:20.000 --> 00:55:24.999
that have lived under its glow. If we
want to encourage caring in America,

00:55:25.000 --> 00:55:30.000
I’ve come to believe, we
need places to care about.

00:56:05.000 --> 00:56:09.999
Funding for this program was provided by

00:56:10.000 --> 00:56:14.999
the Heinz Endowments, Wyomissing Foundation,
Chester County Community Foundation,

00:56:15.000 --> 00:56:19.999
Susquehanna Pfaltzgraff Company,
Montgomery County Lands Trust

00:56:20.000 --> 00:56:25.000
and the National Trust for
Historic Preservation.