Recommended Viewing
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“Driven To Despair”
Link (PBS)
“With gas prices spiking and home values crumbling, the American dream of commuting to work from the fringes of suburbia has become an American nightmare. Many are facing a hard choice: Paying for gas or paying the mortgage. How did it come to this? It’s not just about America’s financial crisis; it’s also about big problems with our national infrastructure. Overstressed highways and too few public transportation options are wreaking havoc on people’s lives and hitting the brakes on our already-stretched economy.”
Learn where we’re coming from, where we’re headed, and why we need to change.
Even intentionally unbiased sources like PBS continue to miss the point, emphasizing infrastructure and alternative transportation modes as the solution to commuting from the suburbs and exurbs. The fundamental problem isn’t lack of appropriate infrastructure. It’s S P R A W L. Just as I used space in excess of function with that word, so contemporary living patterns with oversized houses on oversized lots far from commercial centers use land and energy in excess of function.
The notion of living in pastoral splendor, in lage many-gabled homes on large, manicured lots, is well entrenched. People who grew up with it raise a clamor any time anyone proposes building utilitarian retail nearby. The concepts of mixed-use development and walkable neighborhoods threaten the ideals they, their parents, and possibly their grandparents have come to equate with proof of worthiness and achievement.
Even though the suburbs and exurbs greatly increase overall infrastructure costs, those costs are often spread uniformly across the community, with property owners in dense, long-established urban neighborhoods carrying an unfair share of the direct and indirect excess costs generated by suburban and exurban development.
What do you think they mean when they talk about infrastructure? Sprawl is one of the problems with our national infrastructure.
Nevermind, I misunderstood your meaning of sprawl, after reading the entirety of your post.
You’re forgiven. I often take a long and winding road to get where I’m going. Garrison Keillor is my favorite role model, but I usually don’t manage those complicated and convoluted journeys with the eloquence that he does.