California
urbanization spirals out of control
Bradley
Zint
I
love California. If God put nearly all
the Earth’s treasures and put them
in one place, California would be it.
Where else on a section of Earth does
one find arid deserts, open prairies,
centuries-old forests of towering trees,
snow-capped majestic mountains, some
of the richest soil in the world, world-class
metropolitan cities and hundreds of miles
of coastline with waves crashing upon
the rocks and sand?
If you’re not sure what I mean, ride Soarin’ Over California at
Disney’s California Adventure just once. You’ll be inspired after
seeing what California boasts end-to-end and in-between: coastal San Diego,
metropolitan Los Angeles, the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco, the Mojave
Desert, Yosemite Valley and Redwood Forest. That ride still gets me every time.
Unfortunately, I cannot keep such optimism for long. And while I still firmly
believe California must be the greatest place on Earth, I am noticing bit by
bit, acre by acre, California is losing the greatness that once made it the
dreamland of the West.
California is buckling under its own mighty success. To make such a claim,
I refer back to California’s unique history.
For many years, the first explorers erroneously thought California was an island.
Eventually geography proved that flat out wrong, but tales of gold and open
land caused many to migrate here with starry eyes and big dreams. Soon enough,
the railroad connected the state with the rest of the country, fortunes were
made and cities began to grow rapidly.
And so California kept growing as a shining example of enterprise, prosperity
and man’s innovational spirit. California’s southern region in
particular was built by the ideas of just a handful of men, men whose power,
money and influence shaped what today are some of America’s largest cities.
Take a step back and imagine a California not too long ago, back when it was
still “new.” Imagine looking over the L.A. basin and seeing the
beginnings of its development with miles of open land to spare. Imagine the
feeling of conquering the treacherous Golden Gate by constructing a magnificent
bridge. Imagine finding underground water in an otherwise arid Coachella Valley.
Imagine Orange County when there were still orange groves. Imagine being the
first to climb Half Dome in Yosemite and proclaim it a national treasure. Imagine
Long Beach when there was, well, still a beach.
Yes, things must have been great.
But now what do we have? We have land that isn’t so open anymore. We
have air that isn’t so clean anymore. We have freeways that aren’t
so fast anymore.
We have replaced orchards with cookie-cutter tract housing. We have torn down
trees for parking lots. We have built over rolling hillsides to make golf courses.
In other words, piece by piece, California has experienced the process of urbanization
fueled by man’s capitalistic desires. Of course, urbanization is a fact
of life and an inevitable transformation of our natural world. It’s sometimes
a good thing, but in the case of California, enough is enough.
My point is that California’s golden age of urban development is long
over and now we’re growing out of control.
Back in 2000, James Goldsborough wrote in the San Diego Union-Tribune, “California’s
population is growing too fast for its own good. People aren’t paying
attention because the good times are rolling, but eventually they will notice.
Politicians ignore the issue…they chatter about more jobs, faster growth
and bigger highways as though California were still in the 1950s, with a comfy
population of 12 million, water to spare and highways as rare as traffic jams.”
What Goldsborough predicted in 2000 is even truer today, with California’s
2005 population at a no-longer-comfy 36 million—more than the entire
country of Canada. Goldsborough also wrote,—“Were California a
nation, as its area and population justify, it would have stopped this nonsense
years ago.
Nations protect their borders, regulate their immigration and seek balance
among population, resources and infrastructure. America’s 50 states can’t
do that.”
I’ve talked to many people from all over California who remember seeing
land near their house become developed, in other words, urbanized or suburbanized.
In all those conversations, I’ve never heard anyone enthusiastically
support the new development just beyond his or her backyard. It appears everyone
but the now-rich real estate developers are upset that fields are being swallowed
up. Land that was once beautiful is now ugly. Roads that were once open are
now congested.
Maybe a few people, now that they realize what’s happening to California,
are getting the point. Urbanization sucks.
Take the case in Livermore, Calif., a city east of the San Francisco Bay area.
North of its highway, Interstate 580, developers have long wanted to build
on the open lands. Local residents have protested the idea, citing overpopulation
concerns and increased traffic. They won their case and kept the many open
acres above intact.
Unfortunately, not all such efforts have succeeded. Back in 2000, Los Angeles
County approved building in the hills of Santa Clarita, despite protests from
anti-growth activists in nearby Ventura County.
Greater Los Angeles (which constitutes L.A. County, Orange County, Ventura
County, and some of San Bernardino and Riverside counties) is California’s
prime example of uncontrolled growth, complete with the de-beautification of
land, insufficient transportation infrastructure to handle the commuting population
and smog that spreads unfortunately to both the California Central Valley and
San Diego.
Slowly but surely, other places like San Diego and the Bay Area are experiencing
urbanization pressures. Groups like the Sierra Club often protest new urban
developments or advocate more controlled growth, usually citing a need to protect
natural habitats or endangered species.
Even if they don’t care about some endangered owl or mountain lion, all
Californians ought to wake up and realize our state’s growth has plummeted
out of control. Someday there may be no land left to enjoy or live on, no water
to drink and traffic so bad we won’t want to leave the house.
Maybe then politicians will address our population problem. Stop building,
California. There may be nothing left soon.
Until then, I’m awfully there are national parks to keep the land beautiful.
If it weren’t for Teddy Roosevelt establishing the National Park system,
there probably would be tract housing all over Yosemite.
Bradley Zint is a junior journalism and political science major and the
opinion editor of the Daily Forty-Niner. |
