An intriguing New York Times Article on the private provision of public goods.
Ms. Beresford-Kroeger, 63, is a native of Ireland who has bachelor’s degrees in medical biochemistry and botany, and has worked as a Ph.D.-level researcher at the University of Ottawa school of medicine, where she published several papers on the chemistry of artificial blood. She calls herself a renegade scientist, however, because she tries to bring together aboriginal healing, Western medicine and botany to advocate an unusual role for trees.
She favors what she terms a bioplan, reforesting cities and rural areas with trees according to the medicinal, environmental, nutritional, pesticidal and herbicidal properties she claims for them, which she calls ecofunctions.
For the enitre article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/science/12prof.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin
I’ve always respected many of the ethical and environmental practices of the Amish (and find it strange that their nutritional practices don’t seem to follow their other environmental ethic).
A recent Chicago Tribune article finds they are expanding:
The Amish are expanding their presence in states far beyond Pennsylvania Dutch country as they search for affordable farmland to accommodate a population that has nearly doubled in the past 16 years, a new study found.
States such as Missouri, Kentucky and Minnesota have seen increases of more than 130 percent in their Amish populations. The Amish now number an estimated 227,000 nationwide, up from 123,000 in 1992, according to Elizabethtown College researchers.
“When we think they might be dying out or merely surviving, they are actually thriving,” said professor Don Kraybill, who shared data from an upcoming book with The Associated Press.
The Amish are Christians who reject most modern conveniences. They began arriving in Pennsylvania around 1730. Amish couples typically have five or more children. With more than four out of every five deciding in young adulthood to remain in the church, their population has grown. More than half the population is younger than 21. A small portion of the increase is also due to conversions to the faith.
A few weeks ago I posted the cost-of-services economic analysis done in Rhode Island. It related the nine-fold increase in the State’s budget since 1950 to the ‘cost of suburbanization’.
From an infrastructure perspective, the suburb and the suburban subdivision are socially expensive. They have also used environmental services randomly and, until recently, without much ‘ecosystem service’ planning. Current energy costs put these already strained techo-social systems in more financial stress.
The New York Times did a forum addressing the ‘future of suburbia’. I recommend it…to start thinking of how ecosystem service perspectives can solve suburbia’s dilemma.
Anthony Flint of the Lincoln Institute writes:
California has been a policy innovator on a lot of things — coastal management, clean air, vehicle fuel efficiency, and now the connection between land use and greenhouse gas emissions. But in public finance and the property tax, the Golden State is a cautionary tale. Thirty years ago this summer, Proposition 13 was passed, setting a maximum rate of property taxation at 1 percent, and limiting annual increases in assessed values at 2 percent. The measure followed the property tax “revolt” in California through the 1970s, when some homeowners saw annual increases of 30 percent or more.
But assessment limits are not a particularly good instrument for property tax relief. Assessment limits leave some homeowners paying more than others, even in identical homes, and encourage families not to move, even to be closer to a new job, for example, because market value is reset in the relocation process. “Severing the connection between property values and property taxes creates a new set of problems,” said Joan Youngman, senior fellow and chair of the Department of Valuation and Taxation (at the Lincoln Institute). More effective paths to property tax relief include circuit breakers targeted on ability to pay, more deferral and exemption options, and truth in taxation to combat so-called “invisible” tax increases that occur when property values rise but nominal tax rates stay the same.
For the Lincoln Institute Report abstract:
I’ve found in traveling that there are times when it is IMPOSSIBLE to get across the street to a restaurant or shop that you can see a block away….
This site sorts out the ‘walkability’ factor:
Richard Pace 