Recently I started a job for an employer in Windsor who lives in the "Smart Growth" complex on the Downtown Windsor Green in Windsor, California. This person who lives on the Town Green has another job which he commutes to three or four times a week in Fairfax (some 45 miles away.) I remember thinking to myself when I first heard about this particular situation, "This isn't the way smart growth is supposed to work." Just so everybody knows, smart growth is (among other things) supposed to be about living above where you work so you don't need to drive a car to work every day. I subsequently began to ponder the obvious question here which was "Is this guy the rule, or is he the exception to the rule?" Obviously, in cases like this, the truth usually lies somewhere between the two extremes. Hence I though it might be incumbent upon me to find out the truth about the efficacy of smart growth.

I was able to talk to about 90 % of the employees working on the first floor of the Windsor Town green. Only a realty company and a hair salon didn't seem to be too thrilled about their employees being interrupted with such trivial matters. Oh well. My research revealed that approximately 90 % of the people I interviewed working on the first floor of the businesses located on the Windsor Town Green travel an average of 16 miles to and from work every day they are on the job, in a car, by themselves. How smart is that? The previous figure illustrates a major problem with the smart growth philosophy and that is the problem of human nature. People who can buy cheap gas love to do so as a rule, especially in America (hence the term, "Typical American Overconsumer"). That exemplifies a simple fact. Until we start electing political leaders who have the guts to inspire Americans to get out of there cars, or until the price of gasoline reflects all of the externalities involved, things probably won't change much. One thing I noticed about the Smart Growth complex in Windsor is the huge abundance of parking spaces (and garages) for cars. Parking spaces completely surround the grassy area of the Town Green on both sides of the street. If smart growth is really about getting people out of their cars, what in the heck do they need all of those parking spaces for?

Several other realities help keep the smart growth philosophy relegated to the zone of utopian fantasy. Among these is the system of political prostitution that has so indigenously infested all trophic levels of our political food chain. Yes, that's right, even at the local level. The condos above the businesses on the first floor of the Windsor Town Green all sell for well over $300,000. There is little chance that the employees of the businesses on the first floor who probably aren't averaging much more than $10 an hour, if even that, will be able to live in the high priced condos above where they work. Only one person I interviewed working on the first floor as an employee lived in one of the second floor condos, and only three or four of the business owners lived anywhere in the complex. The builder of the Windsor Town Green contributes nice sums of money in the form of campaign donations to at least a couple of members of the Windsor Town Council. This relationship allows and perhaps even encourages the builder to produce higher priced condos on the site which of course, returns a much higher profit margin than the types of housing that lower wage earners can afford. This forces the workers to jack up their carbon footprint by living farther away.

Another tenet of "Smart Growth" requires that these complexes be built next to train stations. The idea here being that everyone in the smart growth complex will take the train instead of driving a car. Building a housing complex next to a train station and expecting everyone in the housing complex to ride the train is kind of like building a housing complex next to a vegetable stand and expecting everybody in the housing complex to turn into vegetarians. It just doesn't always happen that way. Here again we get back to the human nature problem. This points out another obvious flaw in the smart growth philosophy; the whole idea is based entirely upon best case scenarios. Which happens more often in life, best case scenarios or murphy's law?

Another fallacy of the smart growth idea has to do with the real sustainability level of the worldwide population. Many environmental scientists are now saying the real sustainability level of our planet might be as low as 1.6 billion people, and that is if we were all vegans. One particular study that realized this number was done using soil loss rates as their guide. This study showed that it takes 15 years to replace the amount of soil lost in one year using "today's modern farming techniques." They then extrapolated that figure to all of the usable agricultural land on the planet and 1.6 billion people was the number they came up with. Soil loss is among the most serious of today's modern environmental problems. In Iowa, a major corn growing state, there used to be 12 feet of topsoil. Now there is six feet of topsoil. With there now being over 7 billion people on this planet and about 80 million people being added to the worldwide population annually, the last thing we need is more population increase in the U.S. which has the highest per capita consumption rates of any country in the world. To put it another way, the average American needs 24 acres to sustain themselves. In California there are approximately 100 million acres of land area. If one were to do the math , they would quickly realize that there should only be about 4 million people living in California, yet right now there are 37.8 million people living in the Golden State. This means there are about ten times as many people living in California as there should be, yet we are still allowing our population to rise. Keeping these facts in mind, how can anyone legitamately call any type of growth "smart?" This is a perfect example of the reductionist thinking that all elected Democrats, Republicans, and even Greens are guilty of. It is time for our political system to understand the big picture and their role in it.

So is smart growth just another utopian fantasy or a serious attempt to deceive the American public about the realities of population growth? Perhaps smart growth represents the corporate answer to overpopulation and perhaps this could be why Professor Albert Bartlett from the University of Colorado has been quoted as saying "Smart growth ultimately gets you to the same place as dumb growth, it just gets you there first class." As long as our population continues to rise, then smart growth will only serve as a decoy to a much needed conversation about what might very well be the most under-rated problem of today’s society and the environment.