Ideas for this column arise in multiple ways. One is from friends who email me something that gets me thinking, laughing, philosophizing, wondering. When one of those emotions is charged, I save the email and let it percolate.
Sometimes the percolation lasts for weeks, sometimes months, and occasionally for years. The phrase “annihilating city crowding” was the topic of one of those emails I pulled from my pile, and ironically it was dated almost exactly to today’s date two years ago. A bit of serendipity.
The genesis of the email thread had to do with “issues that destroy our society.” The word “destroy” is a bit strong. The theme was more about what is a big issue that causes major problems for our society in the United States.
My writing friend posited two as quoted here: “The two big issues that destroy our society are boredom in rural areas and overcrowding in cities.” Let that percolate a bit.
There’s a lot that goes into both of those issues – causes, intensity levels depending on where you live exactly, the size of a metro (what is too big?) or rural (when is it too small?) area, homogeneity of the community, the growth or contraction that the community has experienced in the past 10-30 years, and more. We’re stereotyping here in forming judgments generically about these two types of communities.
Anyway, my friend wrote the solution in the email, a bit simplistic, as follows: “Destroy small town boredom; annihilate city crowding.” There you have it. Slap your hands, dust them off, and the problem(s) are solved. Or that is just a small start toward problem solving.
As most thinking people recognize, nothing is that simple. But there is a huge truth in the two points from my friend.
They are this: In rural communities, there is a greater need for services, jobs, businesses necessary for life’s basic necessities. Those towns could lack access to a hospital or internet service. Population loss could mean closing schools and students having to be bussed 30-100 miles to consolidate with the closest high school. The only supermarket might have closed. And, so on.
In cities, on the other hand, stress, traffic congestion, rising prices of housing are but three of the major outcomes due to consolidating too many people in a give square mile. We are not meant to live in those types of crowded conditions, and it often leads to sewage, air pollution, electrical grid capacity and garbage taxing systems not designed to absorb higher populations. Services can’t keep up.
There were a couple simple planks to my writer friend’s presidential platform that we elaborated in the email. On destroying small town boredom: “Install a movie theater with rotating venues of old movies, comedy clubs, concerts in towns with populations 1,000-10,000.”
On annihilating city crowding: “Mandate bike/hike paths with greenery to wind through any new or redeveloped parcel of land in communities with populations over 100,000.”
Simplistic, yes. Doable, yes. And, there are many communities dealing with these issues and taking on solutions along the lines noted above.
I think what we both took away from our email conversation was that we need to recognize as a first step the different challenges for communities based on population and transportation connectedness. It’s going to take individuals, communities, businesses, leadership and government to come together because deep thought and long-term planning is the only way for us to make this happen. It’s not going to happen overnight. We need to all roll up our sleeves and get to work.
Sometimes the percolation lasts for weeks, sometimes months, and occasionally for years. The phrase “annihilating city crowding” was the topic of one of those emails I pulled from my pile, and ironically it was dated almost exactly to today’s date two years ago. A bit of serendipity.
The genesis of the email thread had to do with “issues that destroy our society.” The word “destroy” is a bit strong. The theme was more about what is a big issue that causes major problems for our society in the United States.
My writing friend posited two as quoted here: “The two big issues that destroy our society are boredom in rural areas and overcrowding in cities.” Let that percolate a bit.
There’s a lot that goes into both of those issues – causes, intensity levels depending on where you live exactly, the size of a metro (what is too big?) or rural (when is it too small?) area, homogeneity of the community, the growth or contraction that the community has experienced in the past 10-30 years, and more. We’re stereotyping here in forming judgments generically about these two types of communities.
Anyway, my friend wrote the solution in the email, a bit simplistic, as follows: “Destroy small town boredom; annihilate city crowding.” There you have it. Slap your hands, dust them off, and the problem(s) are solved. Or that is just a small start toward problem solving.
As most thinking people recognize, nothing is that simple. But there is a huge truth in the two points from my friend.
They are this: In rural communities, there is a greater need for services, jobs, businesses necessary for life’s basic necessities. Those towns could lack access to a hospital or internet service. Population loss could mean closing schools and students having to be bussed 30-100 miles to consolidate with the closest high school. The only supermarket might have closed. And, so on.
In cities, on the other hand, stress, traffic congestion, rising prices of housing are but three of the major outcomes due to consolidating too many people in a give square mile. We are not meant to live in those types of crowded conditions, and it often leads to sewage, air pollution, electrical grid capacity and garbage taxing systems not designed to absorb higher populations. Services can’t keep up.
There were a couple simple planks to my writer friend’s presidential platform that we elaborated in the email. On destroying small town boredom: “Install a movie theater with rotating venues of old movies, comedy clubs, concerts in towns with populations 1,000-10,000.”
On annihilating city crowding: “Mandate bike/hike paths with greenery to wind through any new or redeveloped parcel of land in communities with populations over 100,000.”
Simplistic, yes. Doable, yes. And, there are many communities dealing with these issues and taking on solutions along the lines noted above.
I think what we both took away from our email conversation was that we need to recognize as a first step the different challenges for communities based on population and transportation connectedness. It’s going to take individuals, communities, businesses, leadership and government to come together because deep thought and long-term planning is the only way for us to make this happen. It’s not going to happen overnight. We need to all roll up our sleeves and get to work.