Development and Destruction in Georgia

June 28, 2007

In recounting the life of Kit Carson, Hampton Sides reflects on the way the world had changed around Carson:

Everything he touched, it seemed, had withered. The beaver he had trapped were on the verge of extinction. The Indians he had lived among had been decimated by disease. Virgin solitudes he once loved had been captured by the disenchanting tools of the topographers. The annual rendezvous of the mountain men was a thing of the past. Even the seemingly indestructible Bent's Fort was no more... [249]

Sides points out how the new West was in a large part the creation of Carson and his associates. That strikes me as typical of America. Even as we embrace the land and its vastness, we are working to destroy it. The culprit is never quite "us". It is always a force outside our control, some economic necessity or historic inevitability.

This morning I took a walk around Snellville and through another housing development. The houses were not mansions.. like the ones in Roswell.. yet they raise some of the same issues of sustainability. A certain allergy to thinking ahead seems to flourish among us. Consider the following points:

1. Without public transportation, these housing developments lock America more unalterably into the oil economy. We can talk until we are blue in the face about energy independence, but the physical arrangement of the Atlanta suburbs (and the suburbs of other cities) are a major part of the problem as the only way they are manageable is by long commutes.

2. The ubiquitous green sloping lawns in these developments obviously require a lot of water. Large houses are livable only because of central air conditioning. So by constructing these sorts of housing developments we are making large scale future commitments with respect to water and energy use. Both are likely to be drains on our economy in the future.

3. These housing developments bring together families within a similar income band. Small houses are never intermixed among the mansions. If you were to move into a suburban development, you could rest assured that you would be around people a lot like you in terms of economic resources. That kind of residential choice has social ramifications.. but whether that is a choice we as a society want to make has never been up for debate. It is a choice that is being made for us.

4. Presumably America's population will continue to grow in the next century or two. How do we imagine the American landscape at the end of that process? The assumption of recent suburban development is that the suburbs will just keep expanding in an ever-widening circle. No need to worry about a plan. But I am not sure that is realistic.. in terms of actual space or realistic transportation possibilities. So again the real possibility looms that we will be locked into a living arrangement which is fundamentally irrational and unsustainable.

What is needed is some kind of broad and forward-looking land use policy.. requiring a comprehensive plan for urban centers in the US. That would be an unlikely turn of events.. I know. We like to treat our land as a great pyramid scheme. Get out of it whatever you can get right now! Let those who come later figure out what to do for themselves. At that point the American myth of technology enters: issues will be solved by advances in technological know-how.

Near to where we are staying in Snellville is the E.R. Snell Contractor, Inc. headquarters. The connection between the family name Snell and the city name Snellville is not coincidental. Sitting in back of the headquarters are a few pieces of heavy earth-moving machinery.. ready to go. The website for E.R. Snell lists a number of large multi-million dollar contracts that they have won.. among which are important road projects.

I wonder how it must feel to reside in an area that your family arrived at back at the end of the 19th century.. and then to be major participants in the development (and therefore destruction) of the very landscape your family would have known. It must sometimes.. on some nights.. be like the feeling that might have come over Kit Carson: "Everything he touched, it seemed, had withered." If one is reflective, that is a feeling that should come often to Americans.