Sprawl

In the new suburbs of America every place looks like every other place, or so it seems: Wide arterial roads, chain retail and scattered office buildings, subdivisions, and a regional shopping mall.

For several years now, many of us have been predicting — or even celebrating — the end of the era of unfettered sprawl. That seems to be mostly true, but not entirely.

We have a lot more isolated, supersized, energy-sucking housing than we want or can afford. And we have a lot less compact, close-in, energy-efficient neighborhoods than we need.

Compact development patterns could have dramatically decreased the 41 million acres of rural land that the US lost to development from 1982 to 2007.

As troubling as the trends and forecasts are for forests and farms lost to development, it does not have to be this way.  Market trends favor closer-in, more walkable places.

At the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, our culture may have hit a new low. Twenty-seven dead, most of them first graders, at a time for celebrating peace and joy.

I live in a traditional town and am surrounded daily by anecdotal evidence reinforcing my cities-are-good-for-kids instincts. But are there aspects of modern life, that my child won’t be prepared for?

“I don’t shop at Walmart.” Talk about a loaded phrase. Five simple words, but issue them collectively and you effectively open a Pandora’s Box of suggestion.