Activities.

Request for Further Proposals for the RMA Reform Bill

Items.
Item 1:   NBR Column on Spatial Determinism.
Item 2   A Note from Randal O'Toole. 

*Entertainment 1:* The Public "Art" of Tyranny
*Entertainment 2:* Assuaging Guilt in the Style of Gore.

Request for Further Proposals for the RMA Reform Bill

A high court in Manitoba Canada has just ruled 
 that a municipality can 
take a private businessman's land (288 acres of it) for tourism business on the 
grounds it can make better use of it than the private land owner. This is even 
more worrying than the US Supreme Court ruling because these "British" cases set 
stronger precedents for the New Zealand Courts than US decisions. The Centre 
would appreciate any ideas on how we can strengthen our property rights to 
safeguard New Zealand landowners from such actions. The 'takers' begin with 
takings to protect natural landscapes and the like, but it is only a short step 
to other interpretations of the public interest. Any thoughts would be appreciated.


ITEMS

Item One: NBR Column on Spatial Determinism.

This column further develops the critique of spatial determinism the Centre 
Presented at the American Dream Coalition Conference in San Jose. In developing 
the argument it also mounts the case against mandatory housing as proposed by 
our new Minister of Housing, Maryan Street – who is certainly up the wrong 
street on this one. Go to:  Spatial Determinism

Item Two: A Note from Randal O'Toole.

If you want to become aware of the connection between Smart Growth, and the 
Sub-prime market to follow the link invitations in Randal's note below. This is 
scary reading because the steps taken in the US States which lead to these 
hugely overpriced housing markets have been repeated, step by step, in New 
Zealand, and those who promoted these actions and legislative changes new 
exactly what they were doing and what agenda they were following.

Tomorrow morning, the Cato Institute will publish my latest screed on
the effects of anti-sprawl planning on housing prices. You can
download a preview from here

Feel free to circulate it among friends today, and to anyone tomorrow.

I probobaly would have written the paper a little differently if I
had already seen Wendell Cox's excellent presentation on the same
subject at last month's Preserving the American Dream conference.
Wendell used similar data to present similar ideas but presented them
in some new and compelling ways.

However, I think the Cato paper succeeds in making two important
points. First, the recent housing bubble would not have happened
without anti-sprawl planning laws. Subprime mortgages fed the bubble,
but few would have had to resort to subprime mortgages if anti-sprawl
planning had not placed artificial limits on housing supplies.

Second, the report shows that Edward Glaeser's speculations
 that regional governments can keep
housing affordable by forcing cities to allow more housing are
unfounded and, in fact, dangerous. Instead, the report shows that
housing becomes unaffordable when cities gain land-use control over
the rural areas that surround them, and regional governments are an
excellent way for cities to get that control.

If you don't have time to read my whole report, an op-ed length
summary will appear in tomorrow morning's Antiplanner blog. Let me
know if you have any comments.


Entertainment One. (Courtesy of Peter Cresswell's Blog)

Throughout history, it is the deep-pocketed madmen who tend to leave behind 
the biggest wonders. And while last month's election of the New Seven Wonders of 
the World hints at this point -- the emperors who fed Christians to the lions in 
the Roman Coliseum were neither mild-mannered nor impoverished -- they're 
basically positive tributes to mankind's triumphant, enduring half. But what of 
the tyranny that drove men to produce such wonders? On some level, each of the 
New Seven is also a colossal monument to narcissism, either some ruler or some 
culture's desire to go bigger and leave a mark that cannot be erased -- a 
sentiment not unlike the one held by some of today's most ruthless dictators. 
With that in mind, we created the following list, celebrating those modern 
monuments from the totalitarian world that may or may not make it through the 
next coup. Check them out while you still can.

Fist Crushing U.S. Fighter Plane, Libya

Monument to President Laurent Kabila, Democratic Republic of Congo

Lenin’s Mausoleum, Russia

Monument to President Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan

Mao Leading the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, China

The Hands of Victory, Iraq

Monument to the Founding of the North Korean Worker's Party, North Korea

Entertainment Two.

You may have been scandalised by the reports that the 12,000 plus bureaucrats 
descending on Bali to tell us all to reduce GHG emissions will release as much 
tonnage of GHGs as 20,000 cars driving for a whole year. Rest assured, CRMS is 
taking care of things following in the footprints of Al Gore.
We have our carbon offsets. He purchased his from his own company so paid just 
as much as we did for the following.

Owen McShane's Carbon credits