Re: [pf] we took the wrong track, in the '50s and '60s

by tully

11 December 2000 05:39 UTC

At 07:54 PM 12/10/00 -0500, Sharon Flesher wrote:
>My parents live in the suburban blight of Cary, where they have lived since
>1976 (I graduated from Apex High). My brother lives near Fuquay and my
>sister and her husband recently purchased 5 acres near Pittsboro.

Pittsboro is the closest town to me, 12 miles to the south.  There's some 
great country left around here.  I was lucky to find this place which is 
not part of a subdivision and is surrounded by various members of one 
family who own hundreds of acres and all of whom I like immensely and they 
like me.  They assure me they would not sell to a subdivision.  The privacy 
is the best possible as I can see no neighbors and they can't see me.  Plus 
the road frontage is all woods, so if I don't mow the grass, no one cares 
but me!  I'd rather live in the city than live in a suburban development.

>I know of
>the conditions of which you speak, and don't blame you in the slightest for
>wanting to be removed from them! The sprawl makes establishing a public
>transit system extremely difficult.

North Carolina is not known for its public transit system.  Chapel Hill has 
lots of busses (its one of the few liberal areas in the state, Pittsboro is 
another) but the bus system in Raleigh, Durham, and RTP is pathetic.  I 
don't think the Carolinian Amtrak is making serious runs around here yet, 
only running once a day in each direction that I know of.  I think a light 
rail is in the planning stages.  They need something badly since traffic on 
I-40 comes to a dead stop all around the Triangle and it can take 30 
minutes to an hour to go 5 miles...  Too many cars and not enough 
lanes.  Sound familiar?

>Most people may be surprised to learn that a mere 20 percent of all car
>trips involve the commute to/from work.

That is not the case for me.  When the nearest grocery store is 12 miles 
away (Pittsboro again), one must plan a little better and do all shopping 
on the way home from work.  I rarely drive anywhere during weekends unless 
its to take Eric to some school function and the school is 20 miles 
away.  The school bus covers 61 miles each morning to pick up kids in my 
area, and again to drop them off, since we are so far flung.  I'd say that 
80% of my miles are commuter miles.  At 70 miles a day, they rack up fast.

>I think mass transit could work for getting people to/from work at those RTP
>campuses if houses were incorporated into "neighborhoods" with schools,
>groceries, parks, bookstores, etc., instead of subdivisions with swimming
>pools and golf courses, which seems to be the focus of most Triangle
>"development."

You got that right.  My company recently moved 5 miles from RTP to 
Morrisville, right next to the airport, which made my commute that much 
longer and the traffic that much worse.  The stores are few and far between 
with no department stores, no Radio Shack, and very few homes since the 
massive corporate buildings everywhere take all the space with their 
greenbelts of intensive landscaping supposedly making it nicer.  The homes 
that are there were grandfathered in apparently and are all rather old, 
rundown, and small, which makes them unappealing to all the yuppies in the 
area who drive their SUVs to work instead from the mini-mansion 
subdivisions you mention.

>And how do people afford all those mini-mansions? We get down
>to see the folks once a year, and I'm always aghast at the plethora of new
>subs with such huge houses.

Isn't it amazing to find these gigantic 3 story houses with all those silly 
2 foot dormers poking in every direction filling nearly every inch on those 
1/8 acre lots that you could stand between and touch both houses?  There 
are many people (and companies) fleeing California's Silicon Valley, who 
find the prices of those homes to be 1/4 of what they'd pay for 4 times the 
space they'd get out west.  Places like that are being scarfed up as fast 
as they can be built.  Its a real plague, like locusts...

>Telecommuting has pros/cons. I worked via modem for a couple of years when
>we first moved here. I was immensely productive, having no distractions from
>co-workers stopping by my desk.

Yes, I am far more productive for the same reason.  Can't get anything done 
if I go to work.

>But being a fairly social person, I found it
>pretty lonely. I know there are people who don't need much social contact
>and can handle it well.

I am one of the latter.  I must have some solitude and I have felt deprived 
of it since I got married.  I stayed home for 7 solid years and was left 
alone by husband and son for 8 hours a day and it still wasn't enough.  I 
think its because I get so little real down time any more, the ability to 
go inward and shut out the world, to vege in bliss.  Before I got married, 
before I took on all this crazy stuff like a house and family, I think I 
did get enough solitude, and that's when I did go out and party 
hearty.  But in those days, it was always my choice to partake in 
socializing, not a demand made of me.  I could readily turn it off whenever 
I desired.  After I was married, that choice was taken away as my ex could 
not accept my need to "cave."  When the marriage ended, I had to go back to 
work and was again forced into socializing, so now I have a bad solitude 
debt going, and too often, I just wish the world would go away and leave me 
in peace.  Yes, I'm a perfect candidate for telecommuting...

> From a land-use perspective, telecommuting has been
>negative, at least from where I sit. The farms, orchards and forests of
>northern Michigan are becoming overrun with mini-mansions and subs, many
>owned by telecommuters. And because, as I noted that most car trips are NOT
>for commuting, it has put tremendous pressure on our road system. Because
>most of these new homes are on 1-acre or larger lots, they will never be
>served by a public transport system.

I think the real solution is to start sharing the mini-mansions with other 
people.  Instead of the gluttony of separate rooms for all those separate 
functions, which means most rooms are vacant at any given time, combine all 
them into one room and provide the other rooms to like-minded people who 
would for the room and board be willing to help with laundry, meals, 
cleanup, gardening, etc., all of which would mean the telecommuter would 
not have to do those things.  With resources pooled, meals made from 
scratch instead of fast-fooded and food gardened instead of bought, enough 
money (and health) would be saved by the telecommuter to make it well worth 
the small amounts of money it would take to accomplish.  It would no doubt 
save the telecommuter much money in the end.  It could also take alot of 
people out of the work force which would drive the remaining salaries up, 
allow for rampant consumption to be steadily reduced as one trip a month to 
town for consumables could be readily done (I made that work rather 
easily).  While this could work for a single mini-mansion (devoting the 
entire backyard to a garden is hardly out of the question), imagine if 
several households within the sub started to work together, perhaps each 
hosting a different crop each year, with many hands available to help 
plant, cultivate, harvest, and process.  Its no longer miserable work when 
there are plenty of people to share the load, and can indeed be fun when 
the job is manageable.  The main reason why the other back to the land 
movements failed IMO is because a single modern family group is simply not 
enough hands to do the job.  I'd say ten able people are a minimum to 
start.  I can see why farming people had 10 and 12 kids, along with full 
extended families of aunts/uncles, grandparents, etc.  Its the only way to 
make something like that work.  A man, wife, 2 kids and a tractor simply 
cannot do it, especially if one is working.  I know.  I tried.  Since our 
families now are so small, I see the solution to simply create our own 
communities.  Right in our own homes, to start.  Heaven knows, our houses 
are certainly large enough.  Mine is 1200 square foot and with some 
rearranging, I could manage 4 private bedrooms in that space and additional 
bathrooms.  Then there is the attic, the garage, and the 100x25 foot cedar 
log chickenhouse, six acres to park mobile rooms...  I could have a town 
here...  ;)

>OTOH, someone posted to this list (I think it was this list) several months
>ago an article from a Toronto paper that reported an increase in urban real
>estate prices driven by telecommuters. The explanation was that many people
>who worked at home all day wanted to live in a neighborhood where they could
>pop out at 5 p.m. and walk to the corner tavern or coffee shop and have some
>social contact.

They could have as much social contact as they could ever possibly want 
with my solution.  Even homemade beer and wine, which simply can't be 
beat.  Our isolated existences are self-inflicted.

>Unfortunately, there's not an ounce of political will to raise gas taxes.
>You could bet your house that Congress would have LOWERED the gas tax this
>summer if they could have done it without gutting highway programs -- all
>because so many people were squealing about $2/gallon gas.

We have almost everyone on this list agreeing with the need to raise fuel 
prices.  Lets take every opportunity to argue our point with everyone we 
know.  I can't tell you how many people I've shocked by my declaration that 
prices must go up.  Yet, after they've heard me out, its rare to find much 
reasonable objection that isn't readily shot down.  At the very least, I've 
made them aware of the "unthinkable."  The message is getting out 
there.  I've been surprised recently to find people immediately agreeing 
with me, but they were simply too afraid to speak up.  Plant as many seeds 
as possible and a few are bound to sprout to produce new seeds...  a major 
attitude shift can start with just a few people and we already have more 
than that.  Let's be environmental missionaries and spread the word!  ;)