Urban planning: sustainable development, a pretext for restrictions on freedoms and a danger to private property
Change can only be imposed by waving the hope of a better situation. And this is precisely what the many international or national organizations in the West do when they talk about "sustainability." It is a wonderful, somewhat magical term that allows all dreams, all whims, all utopias to be slipped into it. It allows all areas, all sectors to be encompassed, whether economic, climatic, societal, spatial. It provides a sort of systemic standard against which everything is thought, weighed, reflected upon - including people. And it is necessarily eminently "moral."
Simply this catch-all, which has been used in all sauces since the end of the 1980s, actually carries all the progressive Marxist aspirations, starting with wokism. And urban planning policies are an integral part of this multifaceted project, as demonstrated by the activity of the very advanced American Planning Association (APA) in the United States. Because who says city, says population and therefore potential control, by standards and therefore restrictions. Individual freedoms including the all-important private property could find themselves, in the long run, greatly diminished, but this is the very concept of their "spatial justice".
A "comprehensive master plan for the reorganization of human society"
In 1993, when Agenda 21 was launched, since replaced by Agenda 2030 and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the UN clarified its objective by stating: "The effective implementation of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of the entire human society, unprecedented in world history." In 2007, Al Gore spoke of a "heartbreaking transformation" of human society. And to transform, you have to plan.
As Tom DeWeese points out in The New American , "So-called 'sustainability' policy is the umbrella term for local planning programs, from water and energy controls to building codes and traffic planning."
And in the United States, the typical organization is the American Planning Association (APA). It is considered the privileged guarantor of "common sense" community planning to guarantee healthy and happy neighborhoods that everyone can enjoy. The solutions would be local, adapted to the locals, for their entire benefit.
This is not the case. Principles come from above, are the same everywhere, and do not benefit everyone.
“Sustainability” is an organized submission
Above all, they belong to the progressive choices of the UN to which the APA subscribes absolutely. The proof: it is part of the Planners Network, a non-profit organization that claims to serve as a voice for social, economic and environmental justice through planning, since 1975. As soon as we talk about "justice" in urban planning, we must fear an assumed wokism...
His statements of principle on his website are evocative:
“We study, teach, practice and fight for a form of transformative and anti-racist planning, oriented towards the full realization of human rights, dignity and spatial justice. We seek public and social responsibility to meet these needs, because the private market was never designed to do so.
“We want to move away from racial capitalism (neo)colonialism and toward abolition and decolonization; away from environmental catastrophe and toward climate justice; away from patriarchy and toward feminist liberation; away from the status quo and toward freedom.”
A restriction of freedoms called "smart growth"
So many great concepts that have very concrete applications, which can sometimes even seem trivial, or even positive. We think again of the French law "zero net artificialization" (ZAN), resulting from the Climate and Resilience law of 2021 which considers soils as natural resources to be preserved, but poses threats to the construction of individual houses. Or even of the "quarter-hour city", a concept included in the agenda of the C40, this global network of mayors of the world's main cities, united in action to face the climate crisis... The city of micro-neighborhoods is supposed to ensure access to the main functions within a short distance: car traffic is in reality rationed, and freedom of movement can be restricted ( Anne Dolhein had mentioned the case of Oxford here ).
In mid-September, for example, the American city of Evanston received the Strategic Plan Award from the Illinois chapter of the APA as part of its Project Awards 2024: because its urban development plan prioritized pedestrian-friendly spaces and anti-displacement measures, while promoting “social cohesion”…
And then welcome to all-out electric. Welcome to arbitrary energy consumption “planning standards”, to international compliance requirements in terms of plumbing or electricity. Welcome to all the obligations affecting property owners…
Private property: target no. 1
Because this is probably the most beautiful attack: that of private property. And many constantly recall the threats weighing on this essential pillar of the economy, like the American political advisor Charlie Kolean, who notes that "the states and the federal government collectively embezzled a combined total of 68.8 billion dollars between 2000 and 2019 through confiscation". And the enjoyment of these landed assets is regularly undermined by excessive local ordinances and regulations, always under the guise of "community planning" and "sustainability". Economic prosperity and growth are necessarily hampered, but no doubt that is the objective.
Let us consider the rights of squatters in Western countries. Even in the United States, the meaning of property has evolved, owners are not able to evict unwanted people from their homes if a person claims to live there: this way of authorizing squatting allows for finding additional votes. Politics has won.
Everywhere, we hear more and more the little refrain: "Property is a form of exploitation." But pseudo spatial justice, pseudo territorial equity are indeed calculated obstacles that allow the redistribution of wealth, the mixing of populations, the progressive leveling up of all. Let it be said.
By Clementine Jallais for The Epoch Times
Defund the United Nations.
Sustainability is an emty, hyped word that is window dressed and means in reality to steal, kill, take away, destruct, to divide, to lie. Part of the word salad of the woke society, the green fascists, pretty words to hide real intent, because nothing is sustainable unless you squeeze 500 mill people into smart cities of control and kill the rest as fast as possible. Fast will be through false treacherous medication, bad sustainable plastic meat products and cricket powder proteins full of damaging parasites, proxy wars, stress damage (emotional and physical), and famine by proxy through sustainable process. You can only kill fast and effective by omitting , food, like Stalin did in Ukraine. It will be faster when we don't have backyard gardens and living like birds in skyscrapers (agenda 30?).