Summary: Community plans are specifically designed to reflect aesthetically the collective values they seek to impose -- at the expense of individual expression and privacy.

Summary:
BELLEVILLE, Ill. -- What can appear to be choices may very well be the result of manipulation or contrivance. Wendell Cox writes about the striking similarities between the "groupthink" tactics of Fidel Castro and the "visioning" processes that occur in urban development and regional planning exercises.

Summary: The people of Santa Cruz County truly believed in 1978 that by allowing the government to limit growth in the County, they would be able to preserve the small town character of the county that they loved. But, by giving the County apparently unlimited control over the free market and building permits, they have created the opposite situation.

Summary: Santa Cruz County officials claim that the Housing Element is necessary to solve a housing shortage problem, but once it is approved and goes into effect, residents will not have many of the common amenities now available. By this analysis, the only housing choice available to most families will be dense multi-family units with limited parking.

When you hear terms like, "Community Plans", "Town Plans" and "Village Plans"... take notice and take action!

Ask 100 people about "smart growth" and likely 99 will look blank or reply, "Sounds great!" -- the desired response of proponents of this regional land use control measure. The following comments reflect concerns of smart growth-savvy citizens from both sides of the Bay -- and portray implications every Contra Costa County resident should understand about the county-wide project called "Shaping Our Future-Contra Costa County" (SOF-CCC), generically labeled "smart growth."

Summary: After being freed from slavery in the 1860's, Joe Neal's great-grandfather bought 75 acres of wooded land and turned it into a fertile farmland that has been managed by Neal's family for three generations. But, if Sustainable Development / Smart Growth planners get their way, Neal and his neighbors will lose their heritage in the name of "the environment". In this Insight story by John Berlau, you will see how the posterity of slavery has long fought for its freedom and rights, but today are faced with threats to their livelihood and property that that are greater than anything they've faced from segregationist politicians.

With the Sierra Club, and its government and non-government organization partners, being referred to as a "chapter of the KKK", Smart Growth may be threatening the rights of these citizens, but could ultimately change the political landscape of South Carolina. Santa Cruz residents will find an uncanny similarity between the Town and Country Plan that is threatening Neal's property and the Santa Cruz Local Agenda 21 Action Plan that has guided our local planners since 1995.

From one end of the country to the other, "Smart Growth" has become the politically-correct buzz-word to mask a variety of policy initiatives designed to bring about sustainable development of sustainable communities that will produce sustainable lifestyles - as determined by the authors and promoters of Agenda 21... Anything less is a major erosion of the first principle of freedom: legitimate government is empowered by the consent of the governed - not by the recommendations of Agenda 21, the President's Council on Sustainable Development, or by the "visions" on non-elected professionals, no matter how well-meaning they may be.