“Devil take the hindmost: don’t look back.” It’s a good survival policy for today’s society. “Whew! That was close . . . I better stop daydreaming and pick up the pace.”
“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Devil take the hindmost” Bumper sticker
Tag: rural community
“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “The only transparency . . .” Bumper sticker
“Tompkins County: The only transparency is the thinness of their excuses.” It’s filling in the form without accountability for what you write. It’s giving an answer . . . without answering the question. It’s the throng that cheers the dictator; because someone might report that you weren’t there – or didn’t cheer. The reasons for their policy decisions carry the weight of no alternative. Who cares what you believe.
“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Destroying rural communities” Bumper sticker
“Tompkins County: Destroying everything that enables rural communities – enabling everything that destroys rural communities.” Rural residents don’t need to see written confirmation from authorities — they see it everywhere around them. County policy of denying representation, remediation, and even basic law enforcement to rural communities [Tompkins County refuses to provide more than one deputy sheriff to police two rural towns] – and their constant tax and assessment increases on poor rural property owners is driving out those who were the community’s foundation – and leaving a vacuum to suck in the drug dealers, law breakers and unwanted.
A recent “Adult Entertainment Ordinance” was enacted to limit all sexual businesses to the town’s rural and agricultural zones [where the families are unprotected and more isolated] “to promote the health, safety, morals and general welfare of the citizens of the Town.”
There’s much more . . . but you get the picture.
“Tompkins County and Tammany Hall” – Complete Streets
Cornell’s Design Connect: Transportation Issue Assessment and Best Practices Guide leaves out the most important planning ingredient: the people. Its self-serving New Urbanism vision sees rural Lansing’s urban sprawl bedroom community as a solution; not a problem – and its recommendations are designed to maximize the community’s size and density. The town’s original rural residents are never mentioned – except as an obstacle. They are “outside the Study area” — outsiders in their own town.
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COMPLETE STREETS
A children’s puzzle-book approach to solving real-world problems
It’s NIMBY planning with Ivy League backing: Cornell’s Design Connect Complete Streets transportation “design interventions” drop the traffic and esthetic of a “mini-city” urban sprawl bedroom community into the middle of a green rural landscape.
It’s part of the University’s plan to solve Ithaca’s residential development and housing problems — by dumping them on someone else: the rural town of Lansing.
Cornell’s Design Connect isn’t just looking to help residents; they’re advocating “changes to town policy and planning procedure” as well.
It isn’t surprising that their policy recommendations echo every other “helping” voice – since it’s all the same voice and the same agenda. While the Design Connect study uses every possible reason for increasing the construction of residential housing in Lansing; it declares that the town should: “Limit the acreage of land zoned for commercial and light industrial uses in the Town. Dis-courage strip commercial development through appropriate zoning mechanisms. Limit heavy industry to existing Industrial/Research (IR) Districts.”
“County” planning has decided that Ithaca should be the only business center, and has actively worked to block Lansing’s attempts bring businesses into town — the Tompkins County Legislature actually went to Albany to stop NYSEG from supplying Lansing with the natural gas that was needed for new commercial and industrial development.
“. . . the southern portion of the town of Lansing will likely continue to serve as a bedroom community for Ithaca professionals and other workers.”
Design Connect’s “Best Planning Practices” not only accept the existence of a major urban sprawl bedroom community in the rural town of Lansing; they seek to greatly increase its size and density through “urban design overlay zones,” and recommend that the town “increase density and provide affordable housing,” change zoning with “reduced minimum open space requirements,” “Density Bonuses,” and “Amended Density Requirements,” – and build a new infrastructure to accommodate that increase – merely tacking on the goals of efficiency and low carbon emissions onto what is clearly not the “best planning practice” for a rural community.
Their recommendations for Lansing include “redevelopment of underutilized properties”; while at the same time there are block after block of old wood-frame houses in downtown Ithaca that would be perfect sites for redevelopment as high-density housing, and thousands of unused acres suitable for building surrounding the City’s core.
The redevelopment of Ithaca’s unused and underutilized building lots, and creation of affordable and appropriate urban housing, will solve the housing shortage, require no new infrastructures, efficiently use existing bus routes, be in the closest proximity to jobs in the education, business, institutional, and health care sectors, increase access to the cultural center of the county, and have the highest possible walkability and the greatest alternative transport choices for residents, while at the same time reducing the carbon footprint for transportation to a minimum.
It would solve every one of Lansing’s housing and transportation problems but one: Cornell does not want that solution.
Everywhere; there is the exhortation for more higher-density housing in the town of Lansing: high-density housing for affordable housing, high-density housing for sustainability, high-density housing for the environment, high-density housing for lower taxes, for the aging, for reducing carbon emissions, for curing cancer, for bringing about World Peace . . . the high-density housing that is needed in rural Lansing to maintain Ithaca’s gentrified, college-town pastiche for students – taking four years of memories, going to a six-figure salary, and adding more coin to Cornell’s corporate coffers.
“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Rise of the Evil Ones” – “Lossy Abattoir”
The New Urbanism is Urban Colonialism; and their “vibrant” urban centers require that rural lands be used for food production, recreation, and the unwanted.
They’re bringing civilization to the rural natives by destroying their cultural matrix and setting them adrift in an elitist society that has no use for them; except as consumables.
In Tompkins County’s Cornell led planning “vision” of the future — the county’s rural communities will no longer exist.
“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Farm Harm” Gameboard
“Farm Harm” is a game where you are constantly moving forward, and moving backward; but never getting anywhere — like the mothers in “Ikiru”: passing from one section to another and ending up back where you started. That’s if you use the Bureaucrat’s Rules – if you change the rules; you can change the outcome.
“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “No one left behind.” Except . . . Bumper sticker
“No one left behind.” Except the elderly, those living in rural areas, and anyone of the wrong race, gender, or ethnicity. Like the “people beloved” titles of dictators; the titles of our government’s policies, and policy actions, are a mockery of human freedom and worth — a lie that remains unexposed out of fear.
The most blatant discriminatory actions are carried out while claiming that “discrimination is against the law” – and with a “diversity” that speaks, not to ethnic mix; but to ethnic purity.
It used to be said that an elephant was a mouse “built to government specifications” — it can now be said that our government’s social policies are: “discrimination in pursuit of a goal – that would have already been reached if they had not enacted those policies.”
“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Honesty may be the best policy” Bumper sticker
“Honesty may be the best policy – But it was never enacted by Congress.” With all the transparency of a transparent liar – our government leaders say whatever it takes to get their plans approved.
While every court show warns of the dangers of cosigning a loan – Congressional leaders forge our names on every credit acquisition scheme they can think of — and lead us by throwing the first stone. . . and getting in the first lifeboat.
“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “You live and you learn” Bumper sticker
“You live and you learn. You learn and you live.” There’s more than a symmetry to this pair – there’s a utility: Learning means survival. So it’s important to learn from your living; and not just from what you are taught. Although, “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” Learning that a flame can burn; may stop you from learning that a flame can give warmth and illumination.
What does this mean? No matter what you’re given, and no matter what you’ve learned – you can still fuck things up. That’s us.
“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Discrimination is the infection” Bumper sticker
“You can’t heal the wound until you stop the infection. Discrimination is the infection.” You might as well pull yourself up by your bootstraps; as end discrimination by a policy of discrimination — so what’s in it for government? Unstoppable power and privilege.
The evilly sharp wedge of the “greater good” excuse has prized open the door – leaving society unprotected to this New Millennium Predation. Gender, Race, and Ethnicity has become the all-important reason and aim of everything – a doctrine of profit, privilege and hate.
The end may not justify the means: but the means, more often than not, preordains the end.