Change Is Difficult

One of the major reasons I support developments such as Ponte Vista is that environmentally and economically we cannot afford to continue building single-family detached homes in metropolitan areas.

Change is difficult. And this particular subject is probably one of the more difficult ideas for Americans to accept. The house with the white picket-fence has become ingrained as part of the American dream. But it is a concept which can no longer be supported by our environment, or our economy. Especially in Southern California.

First of all, in case anyone has forgotten, Southern California is a desert. What water we have to keep everything green comes from Northern California and Nevada. Through the unregulated draining of Mono Lake and the Salton Sea, we have almost destroyed a couple of the most diverse, beautiful, unique eco-systems in the world.

Why does everyone need a huge lawn around their home which they rarely use? I've been told that most children have favorite neighbor kid's house at which they congregate most of the time. So the rest of the lawns go to crabgrass, and take up huge amounts of water to keep them green. We cannot afford to waste the precious resource of water.

Secondly, if everyone held out for a single-family detached home, we would have to develop every acre between here and Needles to accommodate everyone. Think of all the natural beauty we would be destroying because people can't think of anyone but themselves. Millions and millions of acres of suburban sprawl. And you think traffic and commute times are bad now!

Speaking of commuting, hasn't anyone thought of the astronomical cost in gasoline and other fossil fuel products the commuting would cost and the pollution it would spew into our air? What about the hours lost for the people commuting to their jobs? The lost time with their families? Isn't this a quality-of-life issue?

Americans have gotten too used to having their scaled-down version of a vast prairie homestead, right here in an urban area. It just is not feasible any longer. We need to look to our European roots and look to their cities. Why should one house have a lawn the size of a park which is rarely used, instead of the homes having no lawns and having extensive use of the parks? Europeans seem to handle this issue very well and their children do not seem to be emotionally damaged by growing up in a "flat", or "apartment", or "condo". Whatever label you choose to give it, it is the same concept; efficient use of available land.

Taking that subject a little further. How many of you have spent time really talking to young people in their twenties? The baby-boomers and their hippies might have started the back-to-nature movement. But the young people coming up have taken it further than the hippies ever dreamt. And, after all, isn't it their world anyway? Don't we have a duty of stewardship to preserve as much of the environment for them as we can? Talk to them, they will be the first to tell you that multi-family housing is the only efficient way to live in a large metropolitan area. If this is what they want, do we have the right to squander their trust fund? Especially as most of the people so rabidly espousing R-1 are already ensconced in their own home, so it really does not affect their situation at all. (Except perhaps to raise their property values because of artificially restricted supply.)

We owe it to our children and our children's children to be as efficient as possible in our development of housing. We cannot squander their future because of the loud and boisterous demands of those few people who want to preserve their panoramas, or spend 30 seconds less waiting at a traffic light. I, for one, would gladly spend more time getting around town, so my grandchildren can have a better world to live in.