I live in the suburbs. When we moved in, the main road was just re-built from two lanes to six. I actually saw them remove the construction zone signs. Since then, eight years ago, we have gotten a mall, four strip malls, four gas stations, at least five more apartment mega complexes and town homes. And it is not done yet. We now have three Starbucks between us and the freeway. The last farms around us are slowly going down, becoming asphalt and shopping.
Can this really be sustainable? Can this really go on? And do I really want it?
I know what is going to happen. I just have to go four miles closer into town. Our roads will be that congested. The storefronts will be older. Some will be empty. But more will be built west from us.
Do we need all these stores? Do I need three Starbucks, a Caribou Coffee, and a Daily Grind? Do I need almost every chain restaurant imaginable and some home grown ones within four miles?
How much energy does it take to spread us out like this? How much energy does it take to have restaurants make all the food for us?
I can understand the need to have services where people live and more and more people live near me. And I can understand the neolithic need for territory. I need my two tenths of an acre. I need my space no matter how small. But this is not sustainable. I have been in New York City and that may be too tight for me to live in, but that seems sustainable. A city where one can walk to work. Right now, it is over a mile and a half to the grocery store; how many groceries are in the same area in NYC?
We used to live closer in town, but as the kids grew, we had a choice. Keep the house we had and pay for private school or go to the suburbs and have them go to great public schools. We moved for the kids and in doing so we may have ruined the future for our kids. I believe that we were like most urban couples: Forced to leave the city we loved for better education. Would a better education system have kept us in town? It would have been a tougher decision to make.
But as long as education is funded by property values, cities will lose in the race to educate our young. Compare this to Kerala, a state in India. Everyone there gets excellent education and therefore their life expectancy is high, their population growth is low. And even though they are a poor state, they have community values that we seem to lack on our always developing developed world.
If we are developed, why is there always more construction and more land being stripped of anything green? Can’t we just stop and enjoy what we have?
