Blumenauer Responds To 'The American Dream'

10 May 2004 - 2:00pm

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, (D-Ore.) responds to media coverage of the April, "Preserving the American Dream" conference in Portland.

Writing in The Oregonian in response to the paper's coverage of the recent 'Preserving the American Dream' conference, Representative Earl Blumenauer who represents Oregon's 3rd Congressional District (including east Portland) argues: "In the minds of the conference sponsors and participants, 'the American Dream' we must preserve is the America of the Ozzie and Harriet suburb from 50 years ago -- a suburb supposedly created by 'the free market.' ... The 50-year-old version of the American Dream depended on hundreds of billions of dollars of federal funding for highways and sewers and water treatment plants and the relative starvation of funding for mass transit and intercity rail."

Source: The Oregonian, April 23, 2004
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It has been estimated that half of all Americans, and two-thirds of urban Americans, live in suburbia. Here are the key questions: Does suburbia exist because it is the natural "culmination of urban development"?