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The "Garden State" needs to hold onto the few remaining public green
spaces that are left! Strengthen the Green Acres program and ensure that
monies spent go to true environmental protection and community access to
green spaces. Build more mass transit and bicycle paths to cut down on
road-building and cars. Shift construction of homes from McMansions in
remote suburbs to affordable and sustainable approaches to housing in
urban areas, with upgraded park and recreational space to improve our
cities' quality of life. Protect and preserve our farmland and encourage
organic farming. Enact taxes on developers of housing for the wealthy to
finance housing for low-income people. Provide training and union jobs for
unemployed and underemployed inner city residents in inner- c i t y
housing construction projects.
Green Party of the United States Platform:
1. Land Ownership and Property Rights
We encourage the social ownership and use of land at the community,
local, and regional level, for example in the form of community and
conservation land trusts, under covenants of ecological responsibility.)
2. Communities and Urbanism
Greens find inspiration in building healthy, livable communities.
Communities must be designed or redesigned so that they are built with
energy efficiency in mind, on a human scale, with integrated land uses. Such
integrated land uses should provide, for example, ready access between home
and work, and to schools, a local supply of food, shopping, worship, medical
care, recreation and natural areas. Integrated land use should also
de-emphasize individual motorized transport and place more emphasis on
ecologically responsible mass transit, bicycling, and the pedestrian.
We promote urban design and architecture that does not alienate, but
fulfills, the spirit and that is compatible with human, social, artistic,
and environmental values. Greens support the concepts advanced by the NEW
URBANISM movement. As there is much to learn about human-scale development
and neighborly social interaction from historical patterns of urbanism, we
support historic preservation.
Recreational opportunities are the beginning of lifelong
appreciation of our natural environment. We should all have opportunities to
experience nature firsthand.
3. Land Use Planning
It is imperative that we as a nation find a means to CONTROL URBAN
SPRAWL. The ecological, social, and fiscal crises engendered by sprawl are
becoming ever-more apparent. Greens enthusiastically endorse the
Metropolitics movement, which seeks to control sprawl by integrating such
measures as urban growth boundaries, tax base sharing, fair housing, and
metropolitan transportation. Urban areas can be revitalized through
“brownfields” redevelopment although standards for the clean up of
contaminated sites must not be lowered. Rural areas and farmland should be
preserved, through such measures as purchase of development rights.
WATERSHED PLANNING should be undertaken to mitigate the impacts of
urban development on our streams, rivers, and lakes. Storm water management,
soil erosion and sedimentation control, the establishment of vegetative
buffers, and performance standards for development are appropriate measures
in this area. Special attention must be given to the restoration and
protection of riparian areas, which are critical habitats in healthy
ecosystems.
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