Urban Sprawl
Urban sprawl is not a new phenomenon, and
the battle between environmentalists
and developers is well-known. But
perhaps the issue is not that the land is
being utterly stripped of life and
replaced by cookie cutter houses or
factories, which has been a controversy
for decades. Perhaps the fighting has
exposed a deeper problem: the American
acceptance of a false outside, seen
through lawns that mimic interiors.
People often perceive that any green space
is nature. As Michael Ventura
says, "America is form opposed to content"
(216). Contractors leave some
existing trees on lots not because it may be
costly to remove them but
because those trees also serve as a selling feature
for the houses built
between. Most people would rather spend their weekends at
an official,
regulated and landscaped park rather than hiking through some
un-named forest
track. While there is the standard human desire for new
experiences, people
often are only willing to try pre-tested experiences. Even
when one realizes
the societal manipulation, it still seems difficult to jump
over the railings
and really cut a new path. So if people are aware that
they’re being led by
the nose through a sterile, pre-chewed and mocked-up
environment, why don’t
they respond? Here’s why: People are simply cannot
deal with vast expanses of
"nothing." Afterall, it is more or less the
American motto to "tame" the
wilderness, to take what the land has to offer
and use it to better the
standard of human living. Just "being there," a
more Eastern philosophy,
seems only a waste of both money and resources to
American thinking. The
court system has even ruled several times along the lines
that a "loss of
open space amounts to an insignificant impact" to dissuade
new housing
developments ("Preservation Groups Lose Favor"). The planet
alone has been
deemed worthless without us, a belief which already ties in
nicely with some
Western religious rationalization, for "the ease of human
interface, comfort
of use, the accuracy of human perception" (Viola 226). Even
the National Park
Service doesn't seem to seem to be championing the planet to
simply safeguard
natural ecospheres ("Mission Statement"). They state:
Government has
always had an interest in the development of [American] land in a
beneficial,
efficient, and aesthetically pleasing manner. Since these variables
are
highly subjective, land use law, which covers environmental takings
and
zoning issues, are among the most contentious issues facing local, state,
and
federal officials. They preserve the land as it is because it will serve
them in
some function, that of some obscure goal of outside recreation for
the people.
Our "recreation" truely is based on "re-creation," as Ventura
points out
(216). The noble act is revealed as a selfish one, something that
will ensure
their remembrance as "good ancestors." They wish to please as
many people as
possible, marketing the land to satisfy expectations. However,
"safe, clean
and aesthetically-pleasing" is not natural nature. Powerful
storms become"natural disasters" to our eyes, and weather is judged "inclement"
based
on our perceptions. And those perceptions are not just the normal range
of
senses dictated by species, but are directly affected by the environment.
The
senses are heightened or dulled depending on dangers encountered in daily
life,
and the more one is shielded from the environment, the less one is
prepared to
handle it when it changes suddenly. A person living in a
so-called
under-developed country more easily accepts local phenomena - such
as sand
storms or tsunamis - than someone caught off-guard by an earthquake
in a city. A
resident of Florida posted desperate pleas on the Family
Gardening message
board, under the thread of "How do I get the sand out of my
lawn? HELP!"
after one particularly heavy rain ("Message Posting"). The
trouble just
seems to come with the territory, yet fifteen concerned replies
did follow,
explaining just how to remove the foreign matter from the sacred
backyard.
"What is real," Viola suggests, "is what is psychologically
meaningful"
(229). People now look at the stripped-down ecospheres
surrounding their
dwellings as an extension of their property: something that
is owned and must be
used. Artificial images do not portray reality
accurately, as "they aspire to
be the image and not the object" (Viola 226).
We know that crabgrass and
dandelions exist, but lawn-owners insist that such
defects shouldn’t. Lawns
are worse than simply a photograph--which, if
manipulated, is still an image. On
the other hand, a lawn is actually a
three-dimensional space that we can enter,
observe from all angles, drive by
and judge the proficiency of weed-whacking.
The introduction to a lawn
care website sums it up best: There's nothing like a
lawn. Large or small,
lawns are the irreplaceable pieces of American life. Our
lawns are the
welcome mats to our homes. They present our best face to visitors
and
neighbors, frame our houses, cradle our children, connect our property to
our
neighbor's but also serve as friendly boundaries ("Site Entrance").
That
opening alone can convey more patriotism than the monuments of the
entire East
Coast. The startling aspect of that passage, though, is that
it functions on a
much more personal level than official tourist attractions,
putting the pressure
on the home-owners. A good friend of mine for the past
nine years comes from
such a family. At any time, I could find her deeply
engaged in lawn care chores,
ranging from the simple task of mowing to the
raking of leaves to the
fertilization of carefully arranged flowers. She did
not enjoy wasting away her
free time with such work, but she never
complained, not even to me as I hung out
in her room playing video games
until she was eventually through. The reason for
her lack of protest was that
it was required and expected in her neighborhood to
tend yards in a certain
way, giving a uniform appearance to the blocks and
blocks of expensive but
uninspired homes. I’m so grateful to have never have
lived in a sub-division
of any kind--though I can see what the housing
developers had in mind when
they implanted this brain-washing into their
customers. Such regulations are
needed to ensure a certain status quo;
home-owners aren’t just buying a
building to live in--they’re buying into
the neighborhood. All you need is
one spirited but artistically-untraditional
individual--say for instance,
someone like me--to lower the surrounding property
values with a
non-conventional treatment outside the house. With the
mass-production of
subdivisions today, the neighborhood’s "personality"
must be pre-fabricated,
and the neighbors depend on each other to upkeep the
illusion. Instead of the
residents individually defining their living space (as
was the case before
the 1950’s), the community image is dictated by committee.
Just as
Michael Ventura argues that Americans have lost a sense of history to a
vague
nostalgia, maybe people have also have lost their connection to the
real
landscape, which leads toward that loss of history. Respect for the land
is not
wide-spread in America--perhaps because we have so much to spare.
Conversely,
the more Eastern philosophy probably derives from the fact that
space is a
commodity there. Just as lawns speak for American views, bonzai
can easily
represent the opposite. The art of bonzai does not seek to contort
nature into
human perceptions. It's main purpose is to thoughtfully imitate
the larger
theme. Instead of bringing the entire surrounding environment
"down to our
level," bonzai helps the viewer realize the enormity of real
nature. While
the typical American scurries around trying to meet the least
common denominator
in their lawn’s appearance, there still remains some
artistic expression in
the world that can coincide nature without infringing
upon it. Bill Viola, too,
looks for the residual human presence in the vast
expanses of nature, just as he
finds the residue of nature in the urban
non-places of parking lots. Nature and
civilization are not essentially
oppositions to face off, one against the other,
in predictable bouts of
logic. Rather, one is contained within the other,
sometimes hidden. However,
Ventura also says that "we have stripped the very
face of America of any
content, and reality, concentrating only as its power as
image" (216).
Landscape, therefore, conceals as much as it shows. While most
of us cannot
install a self-sufficient forest preserve on the small plots of our"property,"
it is up to us to ensure that the image is the only nature left
in the end.
Good ancestors don’t dictate what their descendants should
see.
Bibliography
"Message Posting." Family Gardening Web Site
Forum. 22 Nov. 1999. 24 Nov.
1999
"Mission Statement." National
Park Service Webpage. 1 Dec. 1999
"Preservation Groups Lose Favor." PAW
Archives. 13 Jan. 1995. 29 Nov. 1999
"Site Entrance." Meiyger Lawn Care
& Products. 15 Aug. 1999. 29 Nov.
1999
Ventura, Michael.
"Report From El Dorado." Vision and Revision: A Reader for
Writers
(Second Edition). Acton: Copley Custom Publishing Group, 1998.
211-23.
Viola, Bill. "The Visionary Landscape of Perception." Vision and
Revision: A
Reader for Writers (Second Edition). Acton: Copley Custom
Publishing Group,
1998.
224-29.