Feature Story
The Urban Aesthetic and
its Sway on Suburbia
by Derek Shaw
Meadowlarks mark the place
Where the animals still reign
Where people stare but never see a thing
Here the heath is chipped away
It’s how the sows and calves are killed
It’s why the fish now flop atop clay
Wal-Mart, McDonald’s and Starbucks are pervasive in overtaking the street corners of every city in every major country around the world. Public institutions with cultural bearing, historical significance and classic architecture are demolished in favor of parking garages and bigger buildings. People crave luxury and convenience, merely a quick fix away at liquor stores, strip malls and fast food restaurants—hardly metropolitan pleasures considering their inextricable suburban appeal.
The trend of urbanization is not exclusive to North America. On the sprawling march toward homogenization, we are entering uncharted waters as a global civilization. In 2003, a United Nations study determined that 74 percent of citizens in “developed countries” qualified as urban, whereas only 42 percent of “less developed” populations were urban. That figure, however, is estimated to reach nearly 60 percent by 2030.
Unfortunately, the bottom dollar often wins out in America, and our civic environment reflects the sacrificial business of bulk. Urban and suburban landscapes are designed based on community needs and the greater public good. Still, it’s no secret that preference in land use is granted to the party with the most persuasive case (often the most money).
Artistic and architectural ingenuity is compromised for the fastest and cheapest alternatives. Hurry up and pick from floor plan A or B while it’s still got that new home smell. Cookie cutter condos...get them while they’re hot! You’ll soon be enveloped by neighbors, but there’s no need to go door-to-door introducing yourself with a cherry pie anymore. Leisurely waves from the porch and front lawn barbeques are becoming lost pastimes. The party is still on, but it’s moved to the backyard or indoors altogether.
Cars take us where we need to go, and cell phones do the talking. Community is inherent in the term communication, but the former surely suffers without the latter. Jobs confine us to cubicles and computers, and after clocking out, we retreat to more bubbles, walls and screens. It’s a vicious cycle that promotes isolationism and precludes interaction. We are supposedly a fully integrated culture boasting equality, but what purpose does diversity serve if strangers seldom interact?
The branching out from big cities to provincial communities commenced after WWII in response to several social factors. For the first time, cars and houses were affordable for average Americans. Home-buying subsidies provided by the GI Bill allowed soldiers to settle down. Road building projects and cheap gas lured everyone to jump on the bandwagon.
This upward mobility yielded infrastructure legislation and the 1956 Highway Trust Fund, which facilitated the formation of freeways. Urbanization created a renewed industrial market as families left the farm for factory jobs. The population nestled around metropolitan centers and pronged into smaller suburbs. The American Farmland Trust reported that between 1970 and 1990, over 19 million acres of rural land were developed. Of the remaining desirable farmland, 70 percent currently stands in the path of approaching development.
Government subsidies to big developers back corporate housing projects. Their tentacles consume untapped resources and breach the pastoral countryside. Only real estate’s woes have slowed down the tract house train. Banks are burdened, foreclosures abound and bankruptcies have become commonplace. Overzealous development and irresponsible lending practices are straining the economy even further.
Misguided federal policies continue to plague the domestic archetype and ravage our invaluable landscape. The 1998 Sierra Club Sprawl Report concluded that federal tax laws, transportation spending bills and mortgage deductions are luring people away from cities with existing services and established infrastructure. Accordingly, the expansion of public services to growing suburbs is a heavy burden on local taxpayers.
Our society is a model of planned and plotted modern living—for many, it’s become the American dream. A quiet home in a bedroom community is undeniably appealing to young families. Suburbia’s brochure boasts fenced-in lawns, cheaper housing and sanctuary from the hustle-bustle. Unfortunately, formerly small towns have become so inundated and oversaturated that traffic and crime are nearly as bad as in cities. By the same token, once thriving communities have lost their old-fashioned charm, suffered from urban flight and fallen into disrepair, contamination, unemployment and poverty. What’s lost is the sense of kinship and cooperation.
Urban sprawl is a process that involves extending city perimeters into the country with little plan as to where the development is heading and no concept of when it will cease. We’re finally suffering the fallout from generations of haphazard expansion as burgeoning suburbs feel the crunch of congestion.
Sudden population booms accompanied by a lack of foresight and unsatisfactory city planning have resulted in bottlenecked roads, backed up traffic signals, long lines and incessant jackhammers—ironic since suburbanites were evading density by leaving the city. The Federal Highway Administration found that while the U.S. population grew 22.5 percent from 1970 to 1990, the number of vehicular miles traveled increased 98.4 percent. In fact, the Bureau of Labor reveals that the average American family spends one-sixth of its budget on transportation, which eclipses the total expenses for food, healthcare and clothing.
The 21st century suburban prototype breeds monotony and routine through its insular design. Smart growth, on the other hand, seeks to create more tightly knit communities from the bottom-up. It employs mixed-use residential and commercial development, suggesting that neighborhoods be designed with shorter blocks, smaller yards and connecting streets rather than dead-ends and cul-de-sacs. The Urban Land Institute estimated that of the 1.6 million homes built in 2001, only five percent to 15 percent of new developments followed the criteria for walkable neighborhoods.
Incompetent zoning and inadequate infrastructure translates into a lack of sidewalks, crosswalks, hiking trails, gardens, parks, civic centers and entertainment venues. Schools, jobs and grocery stores are miles away from home, herding the population along wide roads and highways, which still manage to be jam-packed. Americans must go out of their way to stay healthy and exercise so it’s not surprising that obesity and diabetes have set record levels since the early 90s. A 2007 study of changing land use patterns in Maryland found that increasing sprawl contributes to rising rates of obesity.
Providing bike racks, building sidewalks and widening the shoulders of roads encourages people to hit the pavement. Widespread neighborhoods without immediate access to public resources perpetuate the automobile paradigm. People don’t walk places anymore, and public transportation lacks government funding and popular demand. Suburbs were designed to spawn a car culture of commuters; consequently, walking accounts for less than 6 percent of the average American’s daily travel, according to the Federal Highway System. Children only underscore this lack of physical mobility, as fewer than 13 percent of kids walk to school.
Pedestrians are the foundation of urban accessibility, but most modern communities are simply not walkable. Moreover, much of the nation has developed distaste for taking a bus, trolley, or train as if it’s a demeaning act. The east coast is a glaring exception, in that everyone from lawyers to beatniks rides the subway, which makes for a dynamic union of classes, races and persuasions. People rubbing shoulders and propping each other up—now that’s a community.
The reality is that culture has thrived off the public transportation system for centuries, and it promotes symbiotic interaction among its citizenry. San Francisco was the first big city in the west and the lone municipality designed on the east coast model of providing dense housing, central gathering places and public transit. Hi-speed railways, bicycle networks, car-share programs and other traffic assuaging measures make the streets more harmonious between drivers and pedestrians.
It’s easy to focus on the follies of cities, but we should take a lesson from their logical planning and infrastructure. Urban centers are efficient and self-sustained communities with compact residential housing, strict zoning laws and advanced public transportation systems. Furthermore, many cities are aggressively pursuing alternative energy and green urban design, which is not only socially conscious but economically stimulating.
Another way to make cities more vibrant is to commission art installations. Many local governments allot stipends to painters, sculptors, engineers and architects to enrich the public landscape. Children must be inspired to be creative and imaginative, as they are products of their environment. Greening and beautifying our communities is not only good for property values; it’s also imperative to one’s mental welfare and physical resilience.
The Sierra Club offers additional sprawl solutions to remedy the consequences of urbanization. Community leaders and concerned citizens are applying alternative approaches to grow on their own terms. They are scientifically sound, cost-effective policies that are good for the community, economy and environment.
The 1998 Sprawl Report noted that many cities are now purchasing environmentally sensitive property and agricultural terrain to prevent development and avoid subdivision of land. Another approach is creating urban growth boundaries, which are lines that separate urban areas from surrounding greenbelts of farms, forests, watersheds and parks. It protects the diversity of natural resources by creating designated growth areas and integrating residential development with ecological preservation.
You might think that people moving to suburbs would appreciate local wildlife, but in reality, overdevelopment with blinders creates a culture of aliens, a society that not only lacks a connection to nature but itself. All the while, city centers crumble, taxes hike, and infrastructure is rendered obsolete.
People are finally taking a stand and putting a halt to sprawl. Voters in recent elections have approved city and state measures to raise revenues for the protection of open space. Grassroots efforts voice the demand for improved social services, public transit, tax-base sharing, fair zoning laws and smart growth. Local politicians are responding to average citizens becoming engaged in the decision-making process.
According to the Sierra Club, states can alleviate sprawl’s side effects by encouraging municipalities to require local plans consistent with state goals, channeling state funds to urban areas and empowering regions to use a variety of growth management techniques. The purpose is to protect our precious backcountry, water quality and natural resources.
Remember that humans are not the only ones getting the squeeze. Cosmopolitan habits and urban ecosystems are transplanted to the countryside, thereby disrupting the native habitat. We must begin thinking of family in broader terms than bloodlines, of neighbors as more than just the folks next door. This planet is a big cradle, and we’re all being rocked along and lulled to sleep. Sprawl may seem like a regional issue, but its ramifications actually contribute to the global problems of climate change and unsustainable development.
The Sprawl Report warns that building in the floodplains, paving over wetlands and filling in open space present serious environmental hazards. These infrastructure deficiencies are coming to light with the collapse of bridges, deterioration of roads and flooding throughout the Midwest.
According to Adams and Lindsey’s Urban Wildlife Management, we misuse our resources by tampering with indigenous species, fragmenting the natural landscape and destabilizing the ecosystem. Native wildlife and vegetation are threatened with the introduction of exotic and domestic species. Between pets and pests; runoff and diseases; hunting and ornamental landscaping, it is no wonder that Mother Nature is evolving and occasionally retaliating.
Adams and Lindsey attribute sprawl to the escalating number of nuisance wildlife complaints; meanwhile, scooping up scavengers has become big business. The private wildlife removal trade eradicates those critters outside municipal animal control’s jurisdiction. Highly adaptive coyotes, skunks, snakes, possums and raccoons take to the streets in the moonlight, preying on loose garbage and cat food. Land mismanagement and lack of conservation continue to blur the line between native and human habitats.
The dispute over territory between people and animals is longstanding, but the tension swells with continued encroachment upon open space. Speaking of wildlife…just wait until the bear economy shows its razor-sharp teeth. When everyone’s finances are in jeopardy—finally, we’ll be unable to afford the expenses of our own vanity. Now that’ll be ugly.