By Cap'n O

It is time for those who truly love this city, for those who have a special vision of how this gem of the desert should look in 20 years, to act now and fight for the imposition of an urban growth boundary around Albuquerque.

Fight daily and with all your might for a line beyond which urban development will be illegal. Call city councilors, legislators, the Mayor's Office, opinion makers and anyone who will listen and demand on behalf of the truth that only the righteous can claim that they support an urban growth boundary.

It will be a brutal battle. Developers and bankers will fight ferociously for their own poisonous agenda. But don't be deterred. For it is only through an urban growth boundary that we can guarantee that Albuquerque will take its special place among cities and become a paradise populated largely by well-off white people.

Imagine a city with no more bums, poor people, middle income louts, just enough minorities to do the floors and dishes and very few Indians or grungy college students; a city where no home costs less than $200,000; a city that's loaded with high-end coffee shops where the enlightened sip java and compliment each other.

This can be ours if we act now and impose an urban growth boundary around Albuquerque. It's already the reality in Seattle and Portland, two wonderfully, predominately white, upscale cities where you won't find many wage-earners owning nice homes.

Portland imposed its urban growth boundary in 1979. Seattle put its in place three years ago. In only 18 years, Portland has evolved from a place where men dressed in coveralls and smelled like fish to one of the least affordable cities in the nation.

In just three years, Seattle's housing costs have zoomed upward. It's now nearly impossible to find a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house with a moderately sized yard in Seattle for under $200,000. Housing prices there are rising by an average of $1,000 a month. Ain't no poor people or middle-class slugs ever going to afford to live there. God bless urban growth boundaries!

Coupled with our finite water supply, an urban growth boundary around Albuquerque will triple housing prices in just a few years. Even the dumps around the university will go for $250,000. And all those who don't live on trust funds or inheritances will have to get out. Office cleaners, retail clerks, teachers, secretaries, people who work for this newspaper and churls who eat sausage instead of organically grown shallots will be forced out. Then, only progressives like us who sip lattes and espressos while reading our bad poetry to each other will be able to afford to live here. Bravo for urban growth boundaries!

The hoi polloi can live in Belen and Los Lunas. We'll build them mass transit so they don't drive their clunky sedans into our city and pollute our air. And since we're already here, we don't have to ride buses with them and endure their foul odors.

And why should we allow inadequately compensated people and those with laborer-class skills in? They don't know how to properly use precious resources like the bosque. We do. An urban growth boundary would make the bosque the private reserve of well-heeled progressives like us. Give us the boundary. Please!

Oh, we can let some of the unwashed into our walled compound. But we'll stack them up in flimsy, cramped high-rises. If they complain, we'll sit in our large yards, sip wine and lecture them that they must change and learn to live more compact lifestyles in order to preserve the common good.

Developers will war against the new urbanists and environmentalists who demand growth boundaries. But consider their agenda. They build on the city's fringe where land is cheaper, thus ensuring that a house that would cost $200,000 in the city's heart will cost only $125,000 on the fringe. That makes houses affordable to the sausage eaters. Impose the boundary now!

It is only through urban growth boundaries that we can price poor and moderate-income people out of Albuquerque and make this city safe for the upper middle class. Screw the working people. Support those who want the boundary and give fervent thanks that they exist.

Because who needs right-wing politicians now that we've got environmentalists and new-age planners.