A swath of fresh real estate development has taken over North Texas. New subdivisions are springing up all along major thoroughfares, with real estate developers stalking out new plots by the week. One can travel up to a hundred miles outside of downtown Dallas and still see acres of land being razed for construction. Some observers have warned about the burgeoning development, citing increased traffic, worsening pollution, and blighted construction projects which sometimes span for miles.
The increase in sprawl is believed to be tied to the region’s cheap cost of land, good school districts, and a bevy of economic opportunities. A growth in the region’s technology sector, which has grown by forty-percent over the last decade, has brought thousands of new residents to the area. Of the 6.5 million people who now inhabit the Dallas-Fort Worth region, more than half live in the suburbs, and that number is expected to rise. Sherie Hammet, a resident of Plano and recent transplant to the Northern Texas suburbs, sometimes drives a hundred miles just to run errands, an unpleasant trade-off for what she cites as the benefit of “enjoying the coziness and quality of life that comes with living in a suburban community.”
The increased sprawl in Northern Texas, and the apparent homogeneity and blankness associated with it, is similar to the suburban phenomena that Lewis Mumford describes in The City in History. In his piece, he talks about the long travel times associated with movement from the city to the suburbs, and how it leads to a commuting conundrum in which inhabitants get caught in a spin cycle between different versions of hell. The movement away from the city, which still seems to hold a veritable enough function to compel those living in the suburbs to travel great distance, has caused many inhabitants of the region to toil away in excessive travel just to enjoy the prepackaged benefit of “cozy” suburban living. Oddly enough, this coziness doesn’t appear to be directly tied to any natural desire for authentic community.
urs300 