Saw where Carl Hiassen had a birthday the other day (he turned 63 on March 12th.) He is the author I recently discovered thru recommendations from my buddies Robert Willey and John Carbone (click here for previous post on this.).
Now that I’ve done a little research on Carl, I find that he is very much an anti-growth kind of guy as many of his Florida-based novels center around plotlines involving how developers are taking over. Similarly, Robert recently had this letter to the Enterprise that I thought had a “Hiassenian” ring to it:
Traffic congestion is being discussed by the Navy and the County Commissioners who are uniquely positioned to do something about it because the current situation is the direct result of decisions made by their predecessors. Future unmanaged growth promises to make the problem worse. The stage was set when the Naval Air Systems Command moved out of rented spaces in Crystal City, an area served by public transportation, to the Patuxent River Naval Air Station on a peninsula without public transportation ensuring that everyone must drive to work. Traffic flows south in the morning and north in the evening which shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone.
The Navy now wants to double down on the problem. On one hand the Naval Air Station has decided that 6,400 acres is not enough land and they want to restrict nearby development while on the other hand they want to put more office space on the base and off the tax rolls. Bring more cars on the base and simultaneously starve the public coffers needed for road improvement.
County government has done its part. Lexington Park was once the business center in the area but lax zoning has rendered it a blighted shadow of its former self and created a gauntlet of traffic lights along route 235. Arteriosclerosis has been marching north through California with two developments now proposed in Hollywood. Attending planning meetings makes it easy to understand how it got this way.
The Planning Commission tends to look at each proposed development in isolation and often focuses on such things as tot lots and foundation cladding while any real planning is done by the developers with an eye for making the most money from a piece of land. When the traffic situation becomes intolerable the county lobbies the state for yet another traffic light.
When you go to a meeting on a proposal you see a bewildering color coded map that resembles a Jackson Pollack painting with town centers, development districts, overlays, and an alphanumeric stew of zoning codes. It is busy work for bureaucrats and employment for the developer’s support staff because at the end of the day the developer often gets his way while citizen concerns are politely ignored. No one ever seems to look at the big picture and it shows, particularly in California with its now crowded roads and mud choked creeks.
Development decisions have traffic consequences; just consider the future for the Route 235 and Route 4 intersection. Near this junction is permitted an additional 1,200 or so homes in Wildwood and Woods at Myrtle Point as well as the commercial build out of Lexington Exchange. There is also the possible commercial development of the western corner of that intersection so things don’t look good.
The population in Saint Mary’s County has grown rapidly and local government focuses more on attracting future residents and meeting their perceived needs than accommodating current residents. Hopefully county government and the Navy together can do a better job in planning future growth.
Robert paints a pretty bleak picture of a fairly bleak situation. I remember a college professor describing urban growth as a tiger on the loose that you either controlled completely or you simply let him run wild. There was no in between as he noted that most jurisdictions choose to try and ride the tiger and thereby control it by degrees which never works out.
Speaking of strip malls, one of Hiassen’s many novels was made into a movie:
Robert paints a pretty bleak picture of a fairly bleak situation. I remember a college professor describing urban growth as a tiger on the loose that you either controlled completely or you simply let him run wild. There was no in between as he noted that most jurisdictions choose to try and ride the tiger and thereby control it by degrees which never works out.
Speaking of strip malls, one of Hiassen’s many novels was made into a movie:
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| From http://www.carlhiaasen.com/bio.shtml |
The scene referred to is at the 1:00 mark in this movie trailer. I’m not so sure I agree with Carl about how “landmark a moment” it is in American cinema:
