New Swag?
I’ve decided I need a new t-shirt… and maybe buttons and bumper stickers and even coffee mugs. Something like this quick sketch-up:
Maybe I should add something about “Damn Yankees”… or “Take yer !@#@$ ‘Development’, ‘Driving’ and ‘Service Industry’ with you.”
Huw blogged this on June 27th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Category: asheville
Discussion: You came too late to this party
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Category: asheville
Discussion: You came too late to this party
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Does that mean I would have to go as well. Regardless I am with you on this, working for the local service company I see more and more homes going up everyday to only be sold 2 years later because someone can’t afford them. Matter of fact I just saw a new spot bulldozed over just south of the Blue Ridge Parkway on Sweeten Creek. Half of the places that are being built are built like crap. Nothing like ruining this beautiful area. MFr’s
Just thought I’d let you know that we’re covering this post over at Mountainx.com. What’s the story behind this? You seem like a “turn the other cheek” sort of dude.
As for turning the other cheek yes I agree we should, but there is also the point of reason as well as being taken advantage of. When I first moved from Hendersonville to my current location the WalMart moved in right down the block causing more traffic on our side of the highway. Now with my current job I see mountainsides and gorgeous woods completely torn down, for what, more homes. And believe it or not most of them are oversized and not the only home owned. Asheville is beautiful area, but at the rate we are building it will start to look like Tegucigalpa. I have watched it happen in my hometown, and I am saddened to see it happening again. Whats worse is that most of these people are not bringing work to the area other than temporary construction, the same thing that happened in Denver, CO.
I think I am going to go buy a trailer in Madison Cnty.
Hey Steve – it was a bad day for errand running: filled with blue hair from the orange groves, attitude in the parking lots and painfully slow driving behind FLA plates.
(The stuff about urban sprawl and houses on sides of hills is kind of always on my mind so today it just blew up.)
Todd – there’s a difference between Yankee Fans and Damn Yankees :-)
Steve – When I was living in SF we would watch “yet another” hillside get eaten up with a development. Most of the north slope of the San Bruno Mtns vanished in the 7 years that I lived there.
Driving home from Canada yesterday – and relishing the beauty of the mtns coming down I40, I realised it’s only a matter of time before all of this vanishes, swallowed up by people who can afford to pay for million dollar homes.
My coworker, Ed, reports that not a month goes by that he doesn’t receive an offer on his farm. The best so far has been $1,000,000 for his 125 acres. I told him the damn developers are going to divide that into 1/2 – 1 acre lots and sell them for at least 1/2 a million each. The next time they contact him he should say, “OK, I’ll sell, but not for less than $125,000 per acre.” We’ll see what the Developers say about that!
So, how can we Ashevillians fix this? I’m trying to spark a brainstorming session on our blogs. If you have any thoughts on the subject, would you mind passing them along? It’s here.
How can we fix this: we need to decide we’re going to be a city – then we need to allow for city growth. Which means avoiding “urban sprawl” and stop acting like downtown is some pretty place worth preserving as it is. Sorry, there’s nothing to do and no reason at all to keep it untouched.
And the longer we keep the “big renters” from living down town, the more they will keep buying up property for Golf Courses on the edge of the BRP.
Sidewalks are important: we don’t build them at all.
Turning downtown into one-way traffic hell while building four-lanes through the sprawl is not a good idea.
Filling up the burbs with Super Centres while forcing up rents downtown and driving out decent businesses – leaving room for art galleries but not hardware shops – not good.
My old post (from 2005) on SHould I move to Asheville has some very scattered thoughts on this too, and some good comments posted by someone who used the pseudonym “fl2nc2fl”. The comments are closed over there now – and the post needs to be seriously updated. But ok…