Smart Growth Argumentative Analysis

In 1992, during the Earth Summit in Reo de Janeiro, United Nations representatives from 178 countries signed a non-binding sustainable development action plan known as Agenda 21. The plan that primarily promotes smart growth and long-term sustainability came under the spotlight for its vague political interpretation that produced a number of conspiracy theories, accusing Agenda 21 of undermining national sovereignty and eroding individual property rights. In his controversial book “Agenda 21”, Glenn Beck argues that this agreement would force people out of their single-detached homes into concrete high-rises, take away their private automobiles, and even dictate how many children they should have. Other theories tangle up smart growth with

First of all, smart growth addresses human contribution to the climate change as a result of excessive carbon-fuel use. This sensitive topic involves a number of strong political and economic interests that participate in the decision-making process, trying to secure favorable gpolicy outcomes. Second is that the definition of smart growth itself is somewhat vague and broad, making it easy to turn this ambiguity into an anti-smart-growth argument during the political debate. And finally, there has been so much resistance to turning smart growth principles into implemented policies that some might say that smart growth has lost its

Lewis (2015) tries to place smart growth on the political spectrum to account for the differences between the political right and left in their views on compact development. He uses social psychologists’ theory of moral institutionism to explain why liberals are generally more supportive of smart growth than conservatives. He argues that political ideologies are associated with certain sets of values and personal traits that shape opinions and expectations about both built form and lifestyle. The fact that many intuition-based and emotion-led impulses override high-order reasoning explains why liberals and conservatives develop certain mental-maps they associate with a particular urban environment; for example, a dense, walkable, mixed-use development aligns with liberal values such as social opportunities and fairness whereas conservatives respond with a mental image of disorder and crime (Lewis, 2015). This same line of reasoning can explain a range of attitudes beyond the political spectrum. Different socio-economic groups also weight moral values differently depending on race, age, gender, etc, creating distinct consumer preferences under the influence of such factors as a sense of national belonging, religious affiliation, and anti-immigration sentiment (Lewis,