| I agree, but I think the biggest issue with urban development comes from a lack of self-governance. To be more specific, of the two levels of governance that primarily dictates how a city develops (municipal law & state law), neither actually represents "the city" in it's truest sense. If I had unlimited power to reshape state boundaries, I'd redraw states to each represent one metropolitan statistical areas. An example of why: MA state law dictates that zoning requires a supermajority of town/city vote to change. Recently there were efforts to amend this law to allow upzoning with simple majority when considered beneficial (e.g. near major transit lines). And yet, this bill and bills like it never go anywhere: MA state government also represents cape cod, central MA including Worcester metropolitan area, and western MA including Springfield metropolitan area. None of these areas are likely to benefit from changes to MA zoning law. To put it another way, if the point of federalism is to maximize representation in government decision making, our antiquated state lines have done the opposite. Culturally I'm more similar to the guy who commutes into Boston from New Hampshire than I am to most anybody in western MA. Changes to MA state law that affect dense cities will affect him more than the person out in a small town in cape cod. Our state lines were drawn to provide people representation. They now are used to deny people representation. If you were drawing state lines by scratch, why on earth would you put southern California and northern California in the same state? Or South Florida and the Panhandle? Upstate New York and NYC? State lines were drawn a long time ago, in some cases hundreds of years when we were a mostly agrarian society, and here we are acting like they mean anything years later. Anyways just a rant. I don't think state lines are the biggest issue we have in the modern world, but it's a major pet peeve of mine. |