Day 101, August 27, 2010

The most promising prospects for the future of our communities mostly lie fallow. They rest before their forgotten fields, peeling, rotting hollow shells. These once-prominent farm homes are often the step children of bitter disputes between ambitious developers and local zoning boards. Eventually, these farms fall, one-by-one, and often like children of thoughtless, irrational divorce, the results are long-lasting and difficult to cure.

Quite often, the only ones able to pay for intact farms are big developers with big box tenants. It seems that every time a new Stop & Shop opens on virgin land, another one down the road simply closes, becomes a Home Depot or Lowes. The new stores get bigger, and yet the cost of groceries never seems to go down with these ostensibly new efficiencies. I believe that store development is a predatory practice which weakens the entire market over time.

It's been the same way with housing. We have become a land of sub divisions and cul de sacs....

Everyone wants land and privacy, and the result is miles and miles of roads and utilities, and expenses to municipalities... All in the name of two acre zoning, and higher taxes. Each and every family must now tame the wilderness around them. They wonder why there are bears in their beds, and bucks on their blossoms, and why they must drive everywhere... in a vehicle sufficient to transport their woodland beasts to a distant park.

It seems that the places we best remember living and playing in as kids are the traditional neighborhoods. These are simple villages or towns. Places like Noank or Mystic Connecticut, or Upper Montclair, New Jersey. There are narrower streets with single and two family homes, with neighbors living closer together. There are parks and places of worship, and stores in scale with the community. When we were children, octogenarians lived next door to starter families. Today, these are the most desirable communities, but as the authors of Suburban Nation point out in their treatise on new urbanism, it is mostly illegal to build the communities that seem to make the most sense to an enduring quality of life. Our present system of zoning encourages, unintentionally, it would seem, the consumption of vast amounts of land for relatively small, select, groups of homeowners.

Four months in the field, on a farm, have brought back challenge, peace and quiet, and reflection to my life. Soon, my crops will return to the ground, but I hope to take from my experience a purpose and a passion to preserve farms, bring awareness to their value. I believe that there are forces in motion that respect and reward a local way of life. Yet, if the answers were all apparent, then everyone would be doing it. There are options to traditional development, and it is our responsibility as a region to serve a common good.

We still need supermarkets, and Walmart is not going away. Nor should it! Yet with the decline in property values to more realistic levels, and with the unfortunate, but necessary diminishment of our immediate expectations, it may be possible to change the term, "Highest and Best Use" to simply "Best Use." And who better to put valuable property to use for, than the needs of an entire community?

In the end, we have engaged in an experiment in whiz-kid thinking since the end of World War II. This experiment has led to a consumption society, where our value as humans has been measured by the size of our homes, and the depth of our soft drinks. We drink "Tanks" of Iced Coffee, and the only way to afford the Suburban and the Food Service Gas Grill in the back of a raised ranch is to convince more of us to buy one, too.

There is something about a farm and a living community that is exciting. There's something appealing about being able to count on our neighbors, or simply walking, breathing... and living again.