This is the
old, traditional New England house: Small front yard, perhaps 20 feet, at most,
set back from a sidewalk; probably some turf grass and likely one or more big
shade trees (sugar maple, sycamore, etc.); and a driveway (likely a
dirt-and-gravel affair) leading around to the rear of the house and a one-car
garage or carport; a bigger yard out back where the first family’s children
played.
The modern,
sprawl version: A McMansion (ranchette) set way back from a street capable of
sustaining three lanes of traffic if need be, likely 50 or more feet back from
the curb/sidewalk (if there’s one at all); a three-car garage that dominates the
street view and takes up roughly half of the house’s frontal appearance; a
two-lane driveway filled with cars, at least one of which is parked so as to
block the sidewalk; lots and lots of turf grass, the boundary of which is
marked by a little white flag left behind by the chemical fertilizer applicator;
a parade of small shrubs stuck in the clay-like soil around the foundation
(nearly all of them exotic species like, e.g., Japanese yew, Japanese barberry,
mugo pine; and one shade tree, likely a Norway maple (another invasive, alien
species) whose trunk is buried beneath a mulch volcano of dyed-red bark mulch.
That’s a
quick look, for sure. But the one thing that stands out when considering the
modern, trophy home is this: The way in which cars are treated as royalty, even
to the point of giving them a luxury bedroom (aka the garage).
More often
than not, the “modern” home is at least a mile (likely much more) from the
nearest retail store and likely even further from any grocery. The paltry
walkability of such houses is easy to determine: Click on Walkscore.com, type
in a given address and click again to get the walk “score” for that address.
My own home –
a condo, actually – in sprawl-happy Williston has a weak score of 38. That
means it is a hike (a real hike) to reach the nearest super-duper market and
all the other necessities of daily life (except the local gas station, which is
only a quarter-mile away).
What this
all means, in the end, is this: Nearly all errands require a car, and that
means more pollution, more personal income devoted to caring the automobile
(i.e., fuel, insurance, an occasional wash; some detailing perhaps; annual
registration; tags and safety inspection, . . .
The
car-centric society of which the modern house is a flag-bearer means paving
over Wild Nature. I’m reminded of a trailside sign at Bande
How much “growth”
is enough? Has enough land been set aside to preserve our natural heritage, the
diversity of life we are all dependent on?
