posted 03-14-2002 01:25 AM               

There are two issues that irk me about sprawl that Dave didn't bring up. Number one: traffic. Traffic congestion has gotten progressively worse in America's major cities over the past twenty years largely because the "metropolitan areas" of these cities have expanded in all directions. In pursuit of the quintessential house in the 'burbs, people have been willing to endure one- to two-hour commutes. There are a large number of people who commute from Philadelphia suburbs to work in lower Manhattan (as evidenced by the number of Philly-area families affected by the 9/11 attacks). Even more commute to New York by car from the Poconos in northeastern PA. Many people who work in Center City, Philadelphia drive in from Delaware, central New Jersey or even the Reading, PA area (what can be up to a two-hour drive, without traffic). This translates to a tremendous toll on PA's roads, particularly those that run through the heart of the city. These roads are in an almost constant need of repair, and construction to do so only backs up traffic even more. I should point out that many of these same super-commuters claim to have moved out of the city to avoid higher taxes. Well, who do they think is going to pay for all that road maintenance or the extra highway patrols, street cleaning, etc.? That's not even mentioning the toll on the environment and energy use. I believe last summer's high gas prices got so much media attention not only because of the number of SUVs on the roads, but because of the number of people who use almost a tank a day just getting to and from work.

posted 03-16-2002 05:22 AM               

Levittown was planned and constructed by William Levitt in 1952; my grandfather and grandmother bought a home a year later in its Goldenridge section and moved in October (carrying in tow the two-month-old daughter from whose loins the author of this post would, 22 years later, wetly issue). Suburbs as a phenomena had been flowering outside cities around America since the end of World War II; Levitt was simply the first to co-opt the concept, first near New York City and later near Philadelphia. Each home had a tree in the front yard, planted geometrically in the same plot at every parcel. Levitt built shopping centers, schools, playgrounds and even churches. We could call him the Jack Kirby of suburban sprawl, with his grandiose planning efforts and heavily detailed drawings that spread to every inch of every page of every one of his maps in the Bucks County Planning Commission.

Today, Levittown and its cousins -- Langhorne, Penndel, Yardley, Feasterville and many others -- is impossible. The streets were more likely designed by an Italian pasta chef than a city planner. Lackluster sustainable living plans have resulted in a mishmash of zoning regulations and allowed too many hafhearted businesses to sprout and die within months, leaving their empty husks on the landscape like molting locusts. Within walking distance of my home is a spot where two outlets specializing in check cashing and cigarette sales are within viewing distance of each other. A third is about to be built between them. As if that weren't bad enough, a neighboring township, one already choked with traffic and redundant retail stores, just gave the thumbs-up to a development group to build more useless junk.

I hate it, but it's where I live. Right now, I live in a house that I've always considered home. For better or worse, this is one of my hometowns.

Philosophically, this makes for an interesting development in the arguments surrounding suburban sprawl. Yesterday, I drove through a neighborhood my mother and I used to live in when I was in junior high school. I hadn't been there in years, and when I drove past a parcel of land that had once been home to brambly woods, I found dozens of new tract homes, each identical to the other, erect and angular descendents of the primates Levitt built in 1953. It sickened me; I used to play in those woods.

In contrast to myself, many of the opponents of the retail plaza in the neighboring township are people who live in homes similar in age and architecture to the homes I had driven past. These people, most of whom live in homes fewer than five years old, were arguing that development needs to stop now. I'm uncomfortable complaining about this, since my family comes from the mother of all housing developments, but hearing these people argue that suburban sprawl should stop right after their own homes are built made me just as uncomfortable.

The Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development makes grants available to county planning offices wishing to create strategic plans, which are growth outlines that map, over the coming decades, the expected growth of municipalities, as well as the plans of attack coordinated by planners and concerned citizens for merging housing and economic growth with environmental and asthetic concerns. Huntingdon County, where I used to live and work, has been working aggressively to created a strategic plan over the last several years. What's more, county officials and residents have been doing a bang-up job of it. I've been to meetings where people show up to talk about what they love about the county (its rolling hills and rivers, its close-knit nature, its clean air and water, its family-owned businesses) and what they hate (its permanently depressed economy, its lack of any realistic activity for anyone under the age of 55). Had Bucks County done this 30 or 40 or 50 years ago, when it looked like Huntingdon County does now, things might be a lot different today. And as the people of Bucks and Chester and Montgomery counties inevitably escape westward and the line between the environs of Philadelphia and Pittburgh blur, people will be glad the plan was made.

I've lived in the suburbs. I've lived within the limits of major cities on both coasts. I've lived in the middle of nowhere. I've lived in the business district of a small town. Each of these places had much to love, and much that needs to be erased from the map. Our responsibility as dutiful citizens of a great nation is to keep that nation great by cataloging which of those line items are the most important to us, and to keep that in mind as we continually and inevitably escape to new places.