Advocacy Project: Letter to Public Official

TO: U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar
302 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

FROM: Kevin R
6 Brooklyn, MN 55444
April 28, 2009


Dear Senator Klobuchar,

I am writing to you in regards to a needed bill that will diminish "Urban Sprawl", of which is causing costs of living to go up for every U.S. citizizan. If we are going to have more and more people live on the edges of a city that city will become so spread out that public transportation cannot get to them. They will be forced to drive to work. If we can keep everyone in the city close to the buisness districts there will be more availablity for peope to walk, bike, and take a public form of transportation to work and to other needed destinations.

With many people not being in the "heart" of the city this forces a lot of people to drive from suburb to suburb rather than going from suburb to the Central Buisness district of their city. This causes major traffic lock from so many people traveling across their town and through the city and congesting traffic. If we can get people to all work and live in the same area there will be less need for cars, and there will be less need for travel. This will keep the cost of living down as their dependance on paying for gas and a car will be less (or even nonexistant). It is important to note that residents of sprawling neighborhoods tend to emit more pollution per person and suffer more traffic fatalities.

References
For more information on this topic you can vist http://www.sprawlcity.org/
They have a lot of information on the effects of urban sprawl to our nation's largest cities. This is a subject that doesn't have a lot of attention by fedural government. We need a bill that will help prevent Urban Sprawl. This will help keep people living in a more centralized location, which will help keep traffic conditions low as more people will be able to walk to work and the local buisness district. The use of public transportation will be increased as you will not need to lengthen out the reach of buses and other local public transportation by keeping the people of the city in a centralized location. The benifits of having a bill for this cause will be benificial on gas emission to be cut down as walking and biking will be more prevalent.

Normandale Community College Professor Ron Ward talks about Urban Sprawl in his class "Intro to Geography". He is a great resource person to get more information on the subjec of Urban Sprawl and how it affects people whom live in urban, and suburban areas.

Normandale Community College
9700 France Avenue South, Bloomington, MN 55431
Normandale main office phone: (952) 487-8200

Prof. Ron Ward
His office phone (952) 487-7437

What to do about it
What I would suggest is to create a bill that promotes people to live near the central buisness district of their city. A suggestion I have for this is to keep land taxes cheaper, the reason being if you live in a more population dense area you should have lower taxes. If you live in a less population dense area there should be a higher tax on land for such luxury. Another idea to prevent urban sprawl I have is to start promoting to people and educating home buyers that if they live near the city they will have a cheaper cost of living (and have an easier way of life) by not needing to drive to work everyday, they can take the bus or walk to work.

These are the quick references to my suggestions
-Promote the prevention of urban sprawl
- Lower the taxes on population dense areas of the city, and raise taxes on low population dense areas.
- Bring forth a bill that will prevent Urban Sprawl

Sincerly,

Kevin R
6 Brooklyn, MN 554444