The question, how that affects Sacramento’s Parkway is put succinctly in this editorial:
“One issue that urban dwellers ponder is how to make everyday life more agreeable. This country is vast, with far more living space per inhabitant than many countries. But we tend to crowd together so much that it often doesn’t feel spacious. Urban congestion and the irritation and environmental strains that go with it are being addressed with too little imagination and too little sense of urgency.”
This goes directly to the core of the primary value of our Parkway.
It is a vital natural sanctuary in the heart of a growing urban area.
What is needed are three key initiatives:
1) Strengthening its attributes, particularly through land acquisition.
2) Protecting and expanding its funding source.
3) Preserving the ambiance of the natural sanctuary
Virtually none of these key management actions are being done very well by current Parkway management.
Our strategy is to have government, who owns the Parkway, contract with a nonprofit organization to provide management (as is being done with the Sacramento Zoo locally, and Central Park in New York) as a much more effective way of providing those three key management initiatives.
An excerpt.
Editorial: And baby makes 300M
- Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, October 8, 2006
Any day now, the Population Clock outside the U.S. Census Bureau in Washington will record the 300 millionth U.S. resident. It could be a newborn Latino boy or Anglo girl or even an immigrant: 40 percent of U.S. population growth in recent decades has come from immigration.
The 300 million number is an educated guess, based on surveys and government calculations that add births (one every 7 seconds), subtract deaths (every 13 seconds), then add new immigrants (every 30 seconds).
This milestone amounts to a tripling of the population since 1915, during a long period of high immigration. (It reached 200 million in 1967.) Much has happened in 91 years: wars, a major depression, countless fads, assassinations, riots, medical progress bringing longer life expectancy, huge economic growth and greater individual prosperity. An American house now costs an average $225,000 compared with $3,200 in 1915 -- $64,000 in 2006 dollars; a gallon of gasoline is about $2.50, nominally 10 times the 1915 price but a bargain when inflation is factored in (that 1915 quarter bought as much as $5 does today).
These facts and figures raise important questions -- about who we are; what we hope to achieve; how we can improve the lives of a large, poor minority amid so much plenty; and how to improve relations with the rest of the world and with each other.
One issue that urban dwellers ponder is how to make everyday life more agreeable. This country is vast, with far more living space per inhabitant than many countries. But we tend to crowd together so much that it often doesn't feel spacious. Urban congestion and the irritation and environmental strains that go with it are being addressed with too little imagination and too little sense of urgency.
