Here you find me driving (and taking a picture at the same time which may or may not be safe) toward that place we call a city. This asphalt is essentially what we have created to replace rivers in our modern society. Trains, certainly, course through our nation, but it is roads that have become more prolific over the last 100 years. They have done nothing for the identity of an area, roads do not add life to a field, and there is no way you could make the argument that a road is place that Americans call home. We are comfortable on roads because we grow up on roads, but a home is a place that you inhabit, improve and in which you invest.
There's little "commitment" to our areas of development and developers often "leap frog" over entire regions to become the next big new development. Thus we move out farther and farther into the hinterlands and it is roads like this one that have allowed the expansion. Unfortunately, the empty department stores along the way tell us that our system is not very sustainable.
I have to add that there's a condo development downtown that has made it's slogan, "No commute time, just live time." Of course there's no front yard, but in my experience I tend to use yards less than I imagined I would ... and now that I have a 30+ minute commute I almost never go outside. If I lived where I worked? Maybe I'd spend more time outside, maybe not, but I wouldn't burn gas in the process.
No comments:
Post a Comment