When cities are "planned," these are the considerations: aesthetics, safety, slums, decay, reconstruction and renewal, transportation, suburbanization, environmental factors and light and sound.

Over-marketed tech gadgets have nothing to do with "appropriate" technology. Appropriate technology is intelligently designed to serve a purpose.

GPS systems just 2 years old are now obsolete. They are marketing GPS systems for our shoes!

Waking up to "trends" which are cancers of intelligently designed cities, are what we are discussing with the onslaught of AT&T's expansion at our cost.

What we are seeing today is a marketing war to sell "consumers" yet another distraction to their realities.

Clutter and blight occur when marketing determines demands.

Look at the expense in advertising campaigns Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center employs to "sell" its "services." We all know where it is, and we don't need its scans and enormous plastic flower "cancer billboard" staring us in the face. A simple, clean clinic would suffice.

Tech toys create aesthetic slums in our environment. They are more dangerous than alcohol when used while driving. They create slums in tower locations and cause cultural decay.

The new body language of cell-phone users is a sad byproduct of overselling. Users never look up at the sky. Their heads are down, arms bent with the device next to their brains in a total stupor; no real connection with anything; they are addicted to a device.

As far as reconstruction and renewal, let's look at a model: Walmart, a gigantic cheap-dump of junky plastic gadgets and tech toys for those who must consume to feel alive.

Our city planners should have nipped this one in the bud.

AT&T, Apple and Verizon are bringing blight to Santa Fe, creating unsafe conditions with the products they produce.

The research is available and it is lengthy. Whyfry.org is a great site that shows how other cities have been triumphant in just saying no.

If we don't use critical thinking at this point, we are doomed as a city and a diverse culture.

We need a more educated and responsible local and state government. Plus, we need citizens who can create the new world by better use of the dollars they have to spend.

Sally Blakemore is owner and creative director of Arty Projects Studio, Ltd. in Santa Fe.