Development of ‘New Town’

I am upset to learn that the natural quiet beauty tucked away in the Santa Clara River corridor is about to be replaced with the type of bulldozed development popping up everywhere one turns in this county. This explosion of development is odd, juxtaposed with Los Angeles’ deteriorating core. Why is it so much easier for L.A. County to build a “new town” than it is to fix a problem community it spawned? While county authorities should encourage improvements to infrastructure so that the city expands within its boundaries, they are instead contributing to the dilapidation of the inner city by outwardly diffusing real estate investment capital.

This county-sanctioned Newhall project is in many ways like the county’s Elsmere Canyon dump. Unless mandated by legislation to devise progressive alternatives, the county just lobbies for the national forest to house the endless garbage it generates. Must we wait until the available land has all been used before we look back at the crash and burn we’ve left?

No one really needs a “new town,” except for a few marketers and land leaseholders who stand to become fabulously wealthy.

Rash development is strangely expressive of the old Western mentality; when you saw a large animal you shot at it. There are too many people and too little land to perpetuate this mentality.

KURT LEVENS

Santa Clarita