Bend newspaper favors city sprawl, not sustainability

Hines Sight:

Bend is a great city in central Oregon. My wife and I have envisioned ourselves living there someday.

But the Bend newspaper, the Bulletin, should recognize that editorializing in favor of LA-like sprawl rather than sustainability isn't going to encourage environmentally-minded people to move to the area.

There's plenty of places in the country where subdivisions checkerboard the countryside and big box stores dominate the shopping landscape. In fact, Bend already has done a good (actually, bad) job of uglifying itself along its major highways.

Yet today the not-so-wise editorial board of the Bulletin whipped itself into a frenzy, castigating Greg Macpherson -- a member of the Land Conservation and Development Commission (LCDC) -- for daring to suggest that Bend's desire to increase the size of its Urban Growth Boundary by 40% needs some rethinking.

Read the full article here. Discuss below.

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