“You’re terminated, hippie.” — Where does that leave local sustainability?

Federal government to sustainability efforts: You’re terminated.

In a blockbuster-style showdown, the House Appropriations Committee started a furor this month as they proposed the elimination of HUD, USDOT and EPA sustainability programs in 2011-12, as well as suggesting the rescinding of dollars already awarded by the Sustainability and TIGER grant programs. As municipalities, counties and regional COGs scramble to find ways to focus the weak development market forces into more sustainable patterns of walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods, the possible removal of the federal support is discouraging.

Looks like we’re gonna have to go indie.

No fate but what we make? Sorry, hippie, you're terminated.

In this new age of municipal austerity, forward-thinking local and regional governments are looking for ways to spend our remaining cheap oil in human-centric ways, instead of our auto-centric habits of the last 80 years. For obvious reasons.

We’ve talked last week about being stripped of the comfortable delusion that somebody else will pick up the tab, and how new partnerships are generating Smarter Growth. We’ve been making the case for how great placemaking can save money and grow the economy. We’ve looked at urban retail downtown and sprawl repair in the ‘burbs, and their wealth-building potential at both ends of the spectrum.

Such conversation is good but, lest you get lulled into thinking that’s enough, I turn now to three of my colleagues-in-arms, currently slugging it out in the trenches of community building, for some wider insight.

Full story on PlaceShakers, including interviews of Dan Reuter, Scott Polikov, and Joe Minicozzi.