Sprawling Over Pennsylvania
By
David E. Wilson, Jr.
 trolling
along the unspoiled streets of State College or Strausburg, it's
hard to imagine how planning and zoning went haywire beginning in
the 1950's. Before then, towns and cities were the places just about
everyone lived. Black, White, Hispanic, and folks from all racial
and socio-economic backgrounds lived, worked, and played together
in a cultural symphony that was at once efficient, economical, personal,
and practical.
 oday,
much has changed in the places that supplied the essence of American
culture. The mass exodus to the countryside has meant more than
just environmental degradation and a financial burden on local governments.
The dubious flight has fundamentally changed the perceptions, beliefs,
and lives of those living within and outside of cities and towns.
educed
by the lure of the half-acre lot, the economically advantaged began
abandoning their cities some 50 year ago in search of solitude and
green space — a search that ironically has now undermined
itself. Meanwhile, with dwindling tax revenues and resources, the
poor and minorities have remained in the country's cities, ostensibly
re-segregating the nation.
 ulitzer
prize-winning journalist and planner Tom Hylton, a Pennsylvania
native, put it well when he wrote, "We no longer build places that
include people of all ages and all incomes. We no longer experience
the informal meetings and greetings on Main Street that earlier
generations took for granted. We don't even have real towns to call
home anymore. Instead, we have colorless subdivisions named for
the things that were destroyed when they were built. The names notwithstanding,
there is little that is beautiful, or inspiring, or memorable about
them. Yet for decades that is all we've been building..."
he
concatenation of welfare dependency, crime, poverty, and hatred
perpetuates itself by encouraging the urban flight that caused it
in the first place. Nationwide, most cities have lost 10-40 percent
of their population since 1950. Most people reading this prose probably
walked to school when they were young. I'm guessing none of their
children do.
 long
the East Coast as a whole, the population has not substantially
increased in the past 20 years. Federal, state, and county governments
have simply spent billions of dollars to take the existing population
and spread it across the countryside.
 eanwhile,
for every dollar raised in tax revenues from residential use, local
governments are spending about $1.14 for services to accommodate
roads, schools, and other infrastructure. For every dollar generated
from forest and farmland, only about 45 cents is spent. And with
the separation of commercial, industrial, and residential zoning,
the notion of walking to work or almost anywhere has become antiquated.
Instead, work, friends, family and even a loaf of bread require
a trip in the auto — the direct cause of one third of the nutrients
entering East Coast waterways. Where once there were farms and forest,
there are now millions of acres of roads and parking lots.
he
hidden tragedy of sprawl is that it has separated and alienated
us from each other and from our surroundings. By directing growth
in and around town centers a handful of states, with Maryland in
the lead, have begun to direct or in some cases demand growth in
designated growth areas or within set boundaries.
 ylton
made manifest the urgency of such direction when he called planning
the linchpin of our society. "You may not see the connections-at
first glance or on first consideration-between suburban development
and poverty, between zoning laws and the human spirit. But the connections
are there...," he said.
 hen
I reflect on his words I look at my beloved York County and think
about what could have been. I am angry about what should be.
he social, economic, and natural resource casualties were a clear
result of ignorance of the gravity of proper planning and zoning.
Across the country, the linchpin was lynched a half century ago,
and with only a few exceptions, it is still hanging from the tree.
Contact Dave Wilson
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