Howling about Urban Sprawl

“Your quality of life is more than a cheap pair of underwear”

– Al Norman

Any journey down Lee Street or the ironically named High Point Road in Greensboro, North Carolina is enough to make me howl out loud even though I’m not the sort to rant about much of anything. But, even for types like myself who try to make a habit of finding something to appreciate everywhere, I find this locale to provide an Olympic grade challenge. I wonder if Greensboro could take the biscuit for zoning and urban planning nationwide.

Unfortunately, probably not. Take any exit off any major freeway and you are likely to find the similar conditions, especially if you travel inward toward the city through the rust stained asphalt and decaying carcasses of strip malls, through layers of shopping centers that , even in their prime were thrown together with aluminum barn siding facades and cheap plastic molded signs in garish ketchup mustard and pickle color combinations.

I can hear Jackie DeShannon singing, Hal David’s lyrics:

“Lord, we don’t need another meadow,
There are cornfields and wheatfields enough to grow,
There are sunbeams and moonbeams enough to shine,
Oh listen Lord, if you want to know…oh…

Amazing to think we once thought that so.

In my wildest dreams the seemingly endless concrete and asphalt would be ripped up to make way for meadow, trees, weeds even,… ah but even wildest dreams can get the urban blues here. They give way to the Christo-scale commentary of this rat photo essay. Maybe that will have to do for now. A journey down these roads ,makes me think as I often do of a future like the one envisioned in The Jetsons. I thought we’d at least be riding monorails, possibly using jetpacks. I thought we’d be smarter. I thought we’d at least have an aesthetic.

Interestingly on this very street a remnant of that old vision still remains: probably the most aesthetically pleasurable sight along a ten mile patch of road.

Cool interior too!

Well, North Carolina still has a few cathedrals standing. I’m all for preserving them, though my outlook has long since been updated to a green one. We can build up not out. We can live in gardens if that is our dream. Humans don’t have to leave a trash pile in the wake for the sake of development.

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