{"id":1754,"date":"2026-08-30T08:20:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T08:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1754"},"modified":"2026-08-30T08:20:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T08:20:14","slug":"the-smartening-of-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1754","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018Smartening\u2019 of America"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The formerly sleepy suburb of Menlo Park, where I live, suddenly appeared on everyone\u2019s radar in 2011 when Facebook moved in. Then-Mayor Rich Cline presciently called it \u201cthe single biggest event in our town\u2019s history.\u201d And we\u2019re about to make national headlines once more, as we face what amounts to a hostile takeover by progressive change agents, driven by a perfect storm of political chicanery and undue influence by big-money interests.<\/p>\n

Read more Sciolistic and Treadless: The Democrats\u2019 Rough 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Their plan? To turn our inviting, \u201cvillage character\u201d shopping district into a high-density, low-income subsidized housing enclave, replete with eight-story apartment complexes in our downtown parking lots that would quickly signal the end of our upscale, one-story family businesses.<\/p>\n

The storm arrived courtesy of the heir to the Intel fortune, Karen Grove, who, as \u201cluck\u201d would have it, also lives in Menlo Park. In 2018, she formed a group of like-minded progressive utopians, three of whom went on to become members of Menlo Park\u2019s City Council. And three seats equals a majority in our five-member council.<\/p>\n

Philanthropist Grove is the kind of do-gooder C.S. Lewis describes thus:<\/p>\n

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.<\/p>\n

Henry Grady Weaver concurs:<\/p>\n

The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders<\/strong>, who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s doubtful Ms. Grove has read the works of these sages.<\/p>\n

INTEL HEIRESS KAREN GROVE\u2019S CRUSADE AGAINST MENLO PARK<\/strong><\/p>\n

Board chair of the hefty Grove Foundation as well as a multimillionaire in her own right, Ms. Grove is on a mission to help \u201cthe poor.\u201d And she wants to help them in Menlo Park\u2019s one and only downtown shopping district. I think it was Bill Gates who coined the term \u201ccatalytic philanthropy,\u201d which would be better described as \u201ccoercive philanthropy\u201d masquerading as altruism.<\/p>\n

And she has ample support from the Menlo Park City Council. In fact, a key founding member at the launch of her organization in 2018 happens to be our current mayor, Betsy Nash, who got her start in local politics immediately after connecting with Ms. Grove\u2014make of that what you will.<\/p>\n

The goal Karen and Betsy share is that of turning Menlo Park\u2019s downtown\u2014an inviting main street lined with mostly one-story, unique small businesses\u2014into an enclave of subsidized apartment towers, aka tenements-in-the-making. It doesn\u2019t take rocket scientists to figure out that removing the parking lots our businesses rely on will force them to close, whether during the four years of construction with its noise, dirt, cement trucks, and detour signs, or in the aftermath when the monolithic towers loom over our formerly appealing downtown.<\/p>\n

Why would the mayor of Menlo Park want to destroy her own downtown? Residents have mostly given up on that question and put an initiative on the ballot to override her plan rather than awaiting her answer.<\/p>\n

But these ladies didn\u2019t come up with this idea out of the blue: it\u2019s a \u201cvision\u201d of a \u201cwalkable,\u201d largely carless downtown with a mixture of people of all income levels and, um, ethnicities, who supposedly will live and work and find their recreation smack in the middle of our downtown. The World Economic Forum dubbed this paradigm the \u201c15-minute city,\u201d which is actually a refinement of an earlier version that seeks to urbanize our suburbs out of existence, cloaked behind the feel-good label of \u201cSmart Growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

SMART GROWTH: NEWSPEAK FOR AGENDA 21 HOUSING PROJECTS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Smart Growth \u201cRevitalization\u201d in Dubuque, Iowa\u2019s Millwork District<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back in the 1990s, when Clinton was president, a new concept was born: that of \u201cSmart Growth.\u201d Though he didn\u2019t invent it, Clinton is largely responsible for its early implementation.<\/p>\n

And the source of this new paradigm that was to be shortly unveiled in cities all across our nation? The United Nations\u2019 Agenda for the 21st<\/sup> Century, aka Agenda 21\u2014alternatively referred to as Sustainable Development, the Green New Deal, the Great Reset, or the New World Order.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what , a Clinton advisor on the \u201cPresident\u2019s Council on Sustainable Development,\u201d had to say in 1998:<\/p>\n

Participating in a U.N. advocated planning process would very likely bring out many of the conspiracy-fixated groups and individuals in our society\u2026 This segment of our society who fear \u2018one-world government\u2019 and a U.N. invasion of the United States through which our individual freedom would be stripped away would actively work to defeat any elected official who joined \u2018the conspiracy\u2019 by undertaking Local Agenda 21. So we will call our process something else, such as \u2018comprehensive planning,\u2019 \u2018growth management,\u2019 or \u2018smart growth.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a translation by Freedom Advocates founder Michael Shaw in 2003: \u201cSmart Growth is designed to depopulate rural areas and transition human populations into high-density occupation zones.\u201d<\/p>\n

THE WAR ON OUR SUBURBAN HAVENS<\/strong><\/p>\n

In California, the high-density enclaves are called \u201cPriority Development Areas\u201d (PDAs) or \u201cSustainable Development Areas (SDAs),\u201d in contrast to land our globalist masters want more or less free of inhabitants: \u201cPriority Conservation Areas\u201d (PCAs).<\/p>\n

And while California appears to be the poster child for this radical social engineering project, between 2010 and 2020, the following states likewise succumbed to the U.N.\u2019s Programme on land use, though some use slightly different terminology, such as \u201cTransit-oriented Corridors,\u201d \u201cNode Clustering,\u201d \u201cPriority Funding Areas,\u201d \u201cUrban Growth Boundaries,\u201d and \u201cConservation Opportunity Areas\u201d\u2014to put us off the track: Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Connecticut, Georgia, Arizona, Indiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. In fact, I\u2019d be very surprised if any state in the union is not following suit as well.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the kicker: the following U.S. governmental agencies also support Smart Growth:<\/p>\n