Sunday, February 17, 2008
Bigger isn't better
From the RoundTable blog
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Devan Malore
Malore, of Lexington, is in the construction industry.
As a person who has worked around construction for many years, I've followed with interest the debate about development on Mill Mountain. My views about development have changed over the years as I've seen the square-footage requirements rise and the frenzy to be part of the real estate boom. I think it is honest to say many of us who work in the construction field feel a little guilty about our part in the whole thing and wonder what to do now.
A recent article about the Toll Brothers developers, one of the largest producers of McMansions in the country, suggests there is still a demand for luxury housing. But it is hard to believe with the amount of information about global warming, environmental degradation and conflict related to overpopulation and overconsumption that luxury housing continues to make sense. Even a project such as the Mill Mountain development should be questioned.
My experience working in many houses is there is a great deal of room for people to collect things and a great number of rooms available for visiting guests who don't visit often. The big party also rarely happens now as more of us are out making money to pay for the house. Rooms are kept for the children who have moved away but are some day going to visit if they can. Many of us have also bought into the formula of what will be good real estate investments as soon as the market makes corrections.
It is a sad byproduct of our age of hyper-individualism, materialism and economic fundamentalism that assumes a build-it-and-they-will-come philosophy based on new housing. No doubt many of us growing up with limited means imagined some day having a nicer place to live or a place where we could paint the walls any color we wanted.
But to place so much value on housing at the expense of the quality of the environment around it, the surrounding community and the connections to people and services is sad in the short term and destructive in the long term. No amount of TV channels or high-speed connections can alleviate much of the loneliness and lack of connection many people feel in their homes. No amount of shopping or vacationing in exotic places can relieve the isolation many feel in their communities. No new restaurants can easily address health issues related to poor diet and too much food in general combined with our sedentary lifestyles. We have mastered the arts of the "how to do it" at the expense of deeper values and connections.
As a contractor, I am consciously working much less on bigger, better, more construction and devoting more time to pursuits such as environmental education, letter writing and volunteer work in the community.
The dilemma many of us feel when we are drawn to try to be part of real change is that we will become marginalized, poor and have to live in ugly areas surrounded by suffering. But we can no longer act as if some magic economic formula will create the wealth, prosperity and happiness we feel deserving of.
Environmental pressures have mounted to where we no longer have the luxury of believing that business and busyness as usual will solve all our problems.
Affordable, energy-efficient housing would be possible for many more of us if vast resources were not put into things like McMansions, military expenditures, prison construction, excessive consumerism and lifestyles based around driving from place to place.
The sooner we accept the dilemma we are in, the more possible it will be to deal with it. We don't need more leaders who can quote abstract numbers and economic theories. We need leaders wise and brave enough to feel the despair and sadness many of us deal with, so we can make real changes.
Please don't tell me another restaurant will create more than a few low-paying service jobs and a reason to burn more fuel getting to it. There are so many better ways we could invest in making a more livable city where people and infrastructure already exist. Please don't give us more of the old theories of economic growth based on bigger, better more construction. We deserve something more hopeful and visionary.
