Political Quotes

“yesterday there appeared an article in The New York Times entitled, ``There's Plenty of Space for Suburbs to Keep Sprawling''. This article, I feel, represents a wrong turn in the discussion about our communities and how to make them more livable. The facts are true but beside the point. It is true that we have only increased the amount of developed land in this condition by two-tenths of a percent in recent years. It is true that we have a great deal of farmland. It is true that we are protecting more open space around the country. But I think it is important for us to take a deep breath, step back, and look at what those facts represent. To suggest somehow that we do not have a problem in terms of development in this country because we have a large inventory of land is a lot like suggesting that just because the earth is 78 percent water we do not have problems of water supply and quality. The fact is for much of the world, and many places in the United States, we often have too much water or we do not have enough or it is too polluted or sometimes we have a combination of all three of those problems. As it relates to the quantity of farmland, the fact is that we have generated this farmland in the past in ways that we are probably not likely to do in the future: filling in wetlands, irrigating the desert, destroying forest lands. Many of these practices today we now recognize are harmful.…”