# Will America's Electric Car Policy Promote More Sprawl?



## EVDL Archive (Jul 26, 2007)

Obama Administration's electric car battery subsidy seen as perpetuating America's suburban sprawl, rather than encouraging more urbanism.

More...


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## PhantomPholly (Aug 20, 2008)

Since "Urbanism" seems to lead simply to more crime, poverty, and drug abuse than sprawl, perhaps something good will accidentally result from Obama's term in office.


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## lowcrawler (Jun 27, 2011)

"Urbanism" only leads to those things because of sprawl... oddly enough.

If sprawling "white flight" wasn't as easy, property values in the city would stay higher, lower-income people wouldn't dominate, and concentrate the resulting additional crime they bring.

That said, our zoning laws create more sprawl and reliance upon cars than anything...


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## PhantomPholly (Aug 20, 2008)

lowcrawler said:


> "Urbanism" only leads to those things because of sprawl... oddly enough.


What studies are you basing this apparently baseless opinion on?



> If sprawling "white flight" wasn't as easy, property values in the city would stay higher, lower-income people wouldn't dominate, and concentrate the resulting additional crime they bring.


That's simply racist horseradish. Blacks and Latinos who can afford to do so leave the slums in equal numbers as "whites" (whatever "white" is - which is simply a racist word inducted into law by commies trying to invoke class envy). The rich do not like to live with the poor, because when they do the poor tend to steal from them. Thus it ever was, and ever will be.



> That said, our zoning laws create more sprawl and reliance upon cars than anything...


There is nothing at all wrong with "reliance on cars," which was my original point. The only issue is finding cheap, plentiful, and clean fuel for those cars.

20 years from today this will all be a non-issue.


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## lowcrawler (Jun 27, 2011)

PhantomPholly said:


> What studies are you basing this apparently baseless opinion on?


It's in the article, actually. (and also further discussed in the comments on the article)

Take a look at redeveloped neighborhoods (the ones revamped rather than let decay as the 'haves' flee to their 1.5 hour commutes)... crime drops. If people REdeveloped rather than developed, their would be less dilapidation. Less dilapidation -> more pride in community -> less crime. 

Do a quick read on New Urbanism and also look into the broken window theory of community development/maintenance.



> That's simply racist horseradish.


It's not meant to be racist. (not to mention, it was, (and is) very real. Commenting on a real and documented phenomenon is not 'racist')

"White flight" started as a racial-based fleeing of people of European decent from the more racially diverse inner-city areas. It's evolved (evolving) to basically mean "those with means leave the inner city for the sub/ex-urbs".

Perhaps I could have used a less racially-originated term, (perhaps "rich flight"?) but that was succinct and anyone who wasn't looking to make a race-baiting comment wouldn't have had a problem with the term whereas "rich flight" would have likely required explanation.



> The rich do not like to live with the poor, because when they do the poor tend to steal from them. Thus it ever was, and ever will be.


One of the interesting things about that is that crime actually stems from increasing densities of poor and their segregation from the 'haves', not juxtaposition of poor and rich.



> There is nothing at all wrong with "reliance on cars," which was my original point.


If our zoning laws and political powers didn't push us to needing cars to live in the modern american society, we wouldn't need to wait for the 'next big breakthrough' in finding cheap, plentiful, and clean energy.


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