Dante in the City: Where Have All the Yellow Mustard, Orange Poppies and Blue Lupine Gone?
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Green anemones with black tegulas, North Moonstone beach near Cambria, California; tidepool at -1.3 low tide. January 2015 by Peter D. Tillman. Wikimedia Commons
by Julia Sneden
Most of the towns along the San Francisco peninsula are lined up along a north/south road called El Camino Real (The King's Highway), which runs the length of California as US Highway 101. When I was very young, open fields or orchards separated those towns from one another. Driving by in the springtime, you could look between the trees down long rows filled with bright green grass and yellow mustard and orange poppies and blue lupine, all spread out under the pink or white blossoms of the trees above. It was a lovely sight. By the time you got close to San Jose, there were only orchards for miles and miles on each side of the city.
Then World War II came along, and California's population boomed as people came west to work in the shipyards and the defense industry. After the war, they not only stayed: they also invited their relatives to come out and enjoy the good weather, and the relatives stayed, too. Rather quickly, El Camino became one long strip of auto repair shops, hotdog stands, small businesses, factories, warehouses, etc.
By the time I left for college in the mid-'50's, the roadside views down the long rows between fruit trees had all but disappeared, and the urban sprawl that is now The Bay Area and Silicon Valley had taken over.
When I moved to North Carolina in the late 60's, I was delighted to see that the towns were still largely self-contained, separated by open countryside or small farms. As the population grew, however, those towns soon faced the kind of urban sprawl that California had seen. Surely, I thought, people have observed and learned a lesson from the large urban areas in the northeast and far west — but no, our small cities have replicated the poor planning and nutty zoning that have allowed the destruction of roadside beauty all over the country. We're right up there with the big guys. The roads that lead into our towns and cities are lined with fast-food joints and factories and car dealerships and shopping centers, so that reaching the center of town seems to take f-o-r-e-v-e-r.
Worse yet, when you get to the center of the town, there's often no there there. In far too many cities, stores and office buildings are shabby and deserted. Where has commerce gone? The answer is that commerce hasn't gone; it's in a state of flux as it moves farther and farther out of town. Radiating out from the edges of the city, like the circles of hell in Dante's Inferno, are shopping centers in various stages of desertion, decay, full service, or a-building.
The big towns and cities speak bravely of revitalizing their downtown areas. Commissions and committees of local citizens are appointed to consult about the problem. Sometimes outside experts are hired. All too often they come up with plans that fail or simply are never implemented.
Perhaps there's a simple answer for why they fail. The word is greed. Americans are stuck in the pioneering frame of mind that tells us we have a right to the land: a right to seize it, to own it and to do with it as we like.
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