Suburbs of the World
This afternoon I was traveling around the world. One thing I noticed from San Francisco, USA to Perth, Australia to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil were the suburbs. In each country they were plainly identifiable. Most certainly they had their differences, but they were overtly similar. Are the suburbs taking over the world?
I think they might be. Bill Vaughan said, “Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.” The problem with suburbs is that they constantly grow larger and larger, instead of growing up, or down. If suburbs continue to grow we will eventually run out of land suitable for construction. But before that, we will run out of land where a person can be completely alone in the wilderness.
Don’t get me wrong, I love developments and futuristic fantasies, such as Coruscant, but I also love the isolation created by the vast expanses of nature without any human feature or touch. No roads, power lines, radio or cellphone towers; the flawless creation of God. If we don’t examine our urban sprawl and look to developing a smarter growth solution, it might be a very gray world with a few, small perfectly-pruned and watered patches of green.
A quick Google search and you’ll find many organizations and articles fighting urban sprawl and promoting smart developing methods, yet I live in the exurbs, at the moment, and the signs of growth are still building. Do you want the world to look like this picture on every piece of stable ground? What can you or I do to promote smart development plans? I don’t know, but we need to do something before it’s too late; before we are looking at trees in a museum.
