The news item states: “For now, the most immediate answer is less the planting strategy than the preservation one, something that can best be achieved by curbing sprawl and downsizing our taste for too-big homes.?EUR??,,????'?????<

Who is going to determine where people can live and who is going to pay those individuals whose land is “preserved”? Who is to make the determination of what size a home should be? Possibly urban areas are also losing trees because of bad choices made many years ago. Trees that were once beautiful are now lifting sidewalks (can you say lawsuit?); dead branches falling during storms or trees whose growth habits were never considered.

Possibly China has the correct idea about growth. Penalize families for having too many children (who’s going to make that decision?), or possibly simply abort the extra children. That should reduce sprawl. Some of the facts to be considered may be that our population is expanding and requires a good place to live, secondly, if urban areas are such great place to live, why are people constantly leaving and redevelopment plans constantly being funded? The answers to these questions are hard and I pray that the landscape architects that write these articles (ed. note: news item was written by an editor) will not be the people making the final decisions.

Martin Sikorski, PLS, PP, CLA
VHB, Inc.
Chief of Survey, Landscape Architecture
Edison, N.J.

Also re: ?EUR??,,????'?????<