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Show The Park Record Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, July 30-August 2, 2005 A-7 WRITERS ON THE RANGE Fabric Clearance By D.J. Waldie Los Angeles in your future '. Los Angeles is nearly built out. The last empty bits of the metropolis arc already being fitted into a titanic grid of neighborhoods that extends, except for mountains and coastline, 60 miles from south to north and from the Pacific Ocean deep into theUesert. ; The closing of the suburban frontier in Los Angeles ends a 100year experiment in place making on an almost unimaginable scale. And because of its notable failures, I'm grateful that it's nearly over. • Still, all those miles of suburbs reflect an enduring consensus about the way ordinary people ought to be housed, beginning with turn-of-the-20(h-century belief in the power of a "home in its garden" to improve the lives of working people, and ending in the 1950s with affordable, mass-produced housing for average Joes. There are, of course, plenty of toxic places to live in the McMansion wastelands and bunker suburbs of the West, but that's not the sort of suburb in which I and most Californians live. Where I live is in an ordinary house on a block of more tract houses in a neighborhood of even more of the same. I've lived here my entire life, in the 957-square-foot house my parents bought in 1946, when the idea of suburbia was brand-new, and when no one knew what would happen when tens of thousands of working-class husbands and wives were thrown together without any instruction manual and expected to make a fit place to live. What happened after that was the usual mix of joy and tragedy. There are Westerners who wouldn't regard a house like mine as a place of pilgrimage, but my parents and their friends in Lakewood did. They weren't ironists; they were grateful for the comforts of their not-quite-middle class life. For those who came to Lakewood, (and still come) the aspiration wasn't for more, but only for enough. Urban planners tell me that my neighborhood, like many others in it's never noted by the "smart growth" cheerleaders, for whom L.A. is the future to be avoided: The regional authority that manages development in Portland and three adjoining counties concluded, after a 1994 study of the nation's 50 largest urban regions, that "with respect to density and road per capita mileage, (Los Angeles) displays an investment pattern we desire to replicate." The density of Portland's metro area is about 3,500 per square mile. The city's master plan for the year ££ 2040 calls for increasing density to 7.000 per square mile, just There are Westerners who wouldn't regions in the about like Los Angeles today. So builtregard a house like mine as a place of Ta'kewood" out Portland will be another LA., with the same traffic congestion, pilgrimage, but my parents and their ^{ i r e I ]' unaffordable housing and overhyped light-rail transit system. friends in Lakewood did. They weren't 1950s, the Given the overwhelming preference for neighborhoods that ironists; they were grateful for the com- been ** look an awful lot like mine, it's forts of their not-quite-middle class life." Today, its 8,000 easy to predict that other metro^ persons per politan areas in the West will also - D.J. Waldie square mile. look a lot like Los Angeles. Density, Welcome to the future. n o w that Los that Westerners: It's L.A. L.A., should have been bulldozed Angeles is built out, is increasing long ago to make room for some fast. This brings us monumental D. J. Waldie is a contributor to better paradise of the ordinary, traffic congestion, long commutes Writers on the Range, a service of and yet Lakewood's tract houses and bad air quality, the downside High Country News in Paonia, stubbornly resist, loyal to an idea of what other urban regions in the Coio. (hen. org). He is the author of of how a neighborhood can be West face, even if their goal has "Where We Are Now: Notes from made. It's an incomplete idea, but been something different. Los Angeles. " it's still enough in Lakewood to Thirty years ago in Portland. bring out 400 sports coaches in the Ore., for example, voters adopted fall, and 600 to clean up the weedy strict growth limits to prevent yards of the disabled on Volunteer "Californication" of their landDay in April, and over 2,000 to lis- scape. Recently, a statewide vote ten to summer concerts in the pushed the pendulum the other park. way, toward more rights for I don't live in a teardown neigh- landowners to develop their propborhood, but one that is making erty. some effort to build itself up. And here's the irony: Although Congress set to pass energy bill By MIKE SORAGHAN MediaNewsGroup Wire Service Washington - Congress is set to pass a sweeping energy bill on Friday intended to boost domestic production amid a hoom in oil and gas drilling across the West. The legislation passed the House 275 to 156 on Thursday and is expected to be voted on Friday by the Senate. It contains $14.5 billion in tax breaks for oil and gas drillers, coal companies and nuclear plants, aloug with breaks for renewable energy and conservation. It will also streamline permitting for gas wells on public land in the West and accelerate development of oil shale in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Nationally, it will extend daylight savings time, set new standards for electric utilities, and order an inventory of oil and gas resources in coastal areas, which some see as a first step toward drilling in areas currently offijmits. \\ What it won't do, critics and Supporters agree, is lower gasoline prices. Critics say it simply £ads the profits of petroleum companies, while supporters say it makes a long-term investment in more stable prices. President Bush has been pushing for broad energy legislation almost since he took office, and White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Thursday that Bush will sign the bill. "We have waited on an energy plan for more than a decade. It has been far too long for the American people," McClellan said. Some Democrats were less supportive. "This bill fails to reduce our reliance on foreign oil or sufficiently fund the renewable energy we will need for our future," said Rep. Diana DeGette. DColo. Environmental and taxpayer groups say the legislation can't boost domestic production because companies are already at full capacity and raking in huge profits. "With record prices the industry doesn't need a dime of taxpayer money," said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "In the past we've softened the bust cycle. Special "Step-Down" Sale If other Westerners are as lucky, this kind of suburbia -- with its 5,000-square-foot lots and pedestrian-friendly streets -- will endure in the West's growing cities, even though, to suburbia's furious critics, my piece of Los Angeles is (he epicenter of sprawl. But even that's not accurate. Density is one measure of sprawl, and the Los Angeles metropolitan region, with more than 7,783 people per square mile (based on 2000 census data), has one of the highest densities of all major metro Now we're guaranteeing the boom cycle." But producers say the breaks bring stability that will be needed when the current boom subsides. Lee Fuller of the Independent Petroleum Association of America noted that several lax breaks, such as one for hard-toreach "deep gas." were stripped out of the final version of the bill because of budget constraints. "Our money goes back to producing more domestic resources," Fuller said. "This is a way to get more capital into the process." Natural gas production is already surging in the West. More than 6,000 wells were approved last year for public lands. Companies drilled nearly 4,000 wells, more than twice the number drilled in 1996. A liability waiver for makers of the fuel additive MTBE. which can pollute groundwater, was stripped out of the bill. The bill does not open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. Supporters are planning to use other legislation to open the refuge. Over 500 bolts of drapery and upholstery fabric on sale. The price goes down every week. 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