I've been reading a local news blog, ElkGroveNews.net, that provides a nice source of local news with a bias similar to my own -- many of their short news articles are written by people (none of whom I know) who clearly decry the suburban landscape that Elk Grove has become.
I am not alone. I am not the only one who thinks our suburban sprawl and auto dependency over the past fifty/sixty odd years is what's contributed to the wholesale destruction of civility, of our environments, of our open spaces, of our global environments, and of our culture. I am not the only one who would prefer us to live differently, to live in more humane surroundings.
It's easy to blog about our bad living patterns. I can back it with observation and with facts, but the end result is that this is just a blog...it offers nothing to society as a whole, nothing -- not unless I back this up with action. But I don't take action. I don't, mainly because I don't identify with any particular group but also because I know that this city was bought and paid for a long time ago by pro-sprawl proponents. I have neither the energy nor the requisite money to piss away to attempt to effect change.
I live in a city whose council members require funds to get into and remain in office and those funds don't come from non-sprawl or local sources. Every city council candidate I've ever voted for in my city was pro-responsible growth. None of them have ever been elected and none of them ever will. To the extent that any candidate meets my requirements I vote; otherwise, I don't vote. Regardless, my candidates always lose.
That said, I don't maintain any hope we are going to willingly change our city's pattern of cancerous sprawl all the way to the Consumnes River and all the way to Galt. You can't confuse me with someone who maintains hope because I am smart enough to know that I cannot possibly yield enough consensus around better/sustainable-growth. I am smart enough to know that we will never collectively willingly change course. This is why, in my humble opinion, I am wholly looking forward to something that will forcefully effect change -- such as a water, oil, or some other resource scarcity, an economic meltdown, or a natural calamity. These are the only things that I see will have any real effect in curbing our insatiable lust for material growth, for culling the miscreants, assholes, and non-contributors from our ranks, and for forcing a change in our living arrangements where neighbors matter, where people matter...
I am open about my opinions, I identify myself, and I am not afraid to express my views. Interestingly, ElkGroveNews.net had a wide variety of anonymous comments on their articles until just last week, until the website required commenter registration due to uncivil comments from our "neighbors." As soon as Elk Grovians had to identify themselves they stopped commenting. As soon as Elk Grovians were required to take responsibility for their actions they stop taking action. If this doesn't show you how wretched a society we've become then I don't know what would.
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3 comments:
Curious as to why you don't move?
I share 90% of your opinions re: Elk Grove and what it has become and will be moving within the next year. Think we'll be heading out to Folsom, having a 50 mile bike loop around the lake in my backyard sounds appealing.
Perhaps you should make the leap as well.
Thanks for the reference.
Keep plugging away. You never know what will happen.
Take a look at my next post, my observations regarding Folsom -- I don't see that city being any different from Elk Grove, aside from certain exclusivities, status, and price. It is the same form of suburban sprawl, only more sprawled out and only more expensive.
I am someone who made a decision where to live in the past but who is now hamstrung by that decision. We bought in Elk Grove while only subconsciously aware of what living in suburbia represented. I drove everywhere all the time (I was a good American), it was an economic decision and a good one at that. But now, as someone who attempts to live differently, who attempts to find other ways around without a car, only now am I aware of the madness of trying to fit that into the car-dependency of Elk Grove.
Where do I move to? Suburban Folsom? Suburban Orangevale? Natomas? Lincoln? They all suffer from the same problems as Elk Grove -- car dependency, and in some cases extreme dependency.
I would need to find a pre-1946 development; I say this because those are the only areas built in a lower energy paradigm and where there is a correct mix of retail and residential, where streets are tree-lined, where pedestrians aren't brutalized by six-lane thoroughfares running down the middle. These can only be found in the Sacramento core and as it turns out, I also work in mid-town Sacramento. But I'm hamstrung because these are impossibly expensive areas, and while I'd love to downsize and live in such an environment, even if I could afford it, it would cost me an additional $80,000 in property taxes over the rest of my life compared to my current location.
There's another point I continue to raise -- that a human-scaled neighborhood is always more valuable than a car-scaled neighborhood; people know this yet everything we've built in Sacramento over the past sixty years ignores this. Everything in Elk Grove is scaled to moving vehicles, as is Folsom (with the exception of Old Folsom). This is most certainly not the case in many parts of mid-town Sacramento.
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