Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re:

[King Collins (greenmac]

Rob said:

>Arguing about whether urban sprawl is good or bad is a waste of time.  Urban
>sprawl IS. And I see nothing to stop it short of total
>eco/environmental/social catastrophe, an event I hope not to live to see.

I would agree that urban sprawl will continue for awhile but I detect a
fatalism in your words. Yes, in the near run of say 3-5 years the old
development games will continue, but it seems to me that at some time in
the not-too-distant future there will be a significant change of attitude
on the part of a significant number of people. It does not take everybody
to change the course of history. At some point an awareness reaches a
conscious level where it is understood by that significant number of people
in a way that they can act on it.

The actions can be to block developments that are only for profit and to
simultaneously promote those that are for community.

Someone said that imagination is the greatest power. If our thought is
fundamentally practical, then with imagination we can do everything we
think we can.

In other words, I am an optimist about the human spirit. I think people
will choose to live rather than be strangled by unfettered profit driven
development and I definitely sense a change in attitude building.

The cohousing movement and the intelligent dialog around it is part of what
fuels my optimism.

king