Urban issues
Missouri's urban areas offer many benefits, but also have
major social and ecological problems that affect both urban
and surrounding rural areas. These social and ecological
issues are not separate but intimately connected. We
encourage the building of life-enhancing, sustainable
communities where people and nature fit together and where
people can come together to make direct democracy work. We
can create a social system that works and returns people's
sense of community and control over decision-making that
affects their lives. City planning can bring together
places for living, work, recreation, education, and
shopping.
Reliance on the internal combustion engine for
transportation in our cities results in: intolerable air
pollution; dangerous and demoralizing traffic; high city
budgets for roads, bridges, and parking lots; deterioration
of city cores; and suburban sprawl. We will explore
alternate living and transportation systems to solve these
problems.
We will improve the planning and administration of cities
to increase efficiency and decrease waste. Sewage treatment
plants waste energy to treat sewage insufficiently and
pollute rivers with what could be a resource for improving
the soil to grow food. Garbage dumps and incinerators turn
valuable resources into air and water pollutants. Each day
much food is wastefully put into landfills and sound
buildings are demolished while people go hungry and sleep
homeless on the streets. This waste and inefficiency throws
away jobs while increasing the cost of living.
As an alternative, we propose the development of "eco"
cities or "green" cities. In "eco" cities, common-sense
ecological principles address the root causes, and not just
the symptoms of many social problems. Ecological planning
and operation of cities save money, energy, and other
resources while promoting the physical and social health of
individuals and the community.
We support:
- Ecological city planning and a restructuring of urban
systems that are designed and democratically administered by
the communities themselves and provides job opportunities
for community members.
- Increased efficiency of resource use.
- Systems that reduce solid and liquid wastes and reuse
and recycle garbage for compost, and new products and jobs.
- Requiring businesses and industries to take care of
their own waste products in an environmentally safe way.
- Grants, low-cost loans, tax or other incentives for the
creation of locally-owned and operated businesses and co-
operatives.
- The development of cluster communities, which are--as
much as possible--self-contained and brings people together
rather than pushes them apart.
- Turning abandoned urban lands into community gardens,
parks, forests, and greenbelts and uncovering concrete-
encased streams and watercourses.
Go to Green Party of Missouri home page.
Go to Green Parties of
North America.
Formatted by C. L. Spitzer.
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