The estimable blogger Anne Wilson is ticked off at the Boston Globe for editorializing against urban sprawl.
She writes: “The omissions glare like headlamps. First off, the editorial makes no mention whatever of the bitter Boston desegregation battle, where white students were forcibly bussed to achieve racial integration within the city schools. Sprawl today is largely the consequence of these racial battles of 25-30 years ago, as people moved outside the bounds of court-ordered bussing.”
Believe it or not, the Boston Globe editorialist argues that sprawl is making American kids fatter by keeping them from walking to school. Wilson ain’t buying it. For the record, I hate the way sprawl looks, and believe that more intelligent design could mitigate the worst aspects of sprawl. But all it takes is riding the NYC subway daily, and having to live with fear and loathing of the violent, profane and altogether anti-social teenagers who make public spaces here their playpens, to understand why middle-class people get fed up and move the hell out of town to raise their kids.