Stephen Gerard Dietemann Design

Discussing ‘sprawl’ is all the rage these days in the Berkshires. Every day the newspaper seems to include a new article, letter or editorial concerned with the proliferation of sprawl : low-density, (usually) single story, stand-alone commercial or residential development surrounded by vast surface parking, including but not exclusively confined to fast food restaurants, strip malls, new and used car lots, grocery stores, gas stations, drive-up banks and ranch-style houses. The kind of development anyone familiar with the environs of Great Barrington can eloquently describe with just two words: ‘Route Seven’. The aforementioned articles, letters and editorials are united in their opposition to more sprawl. In fact, the only people I can recall to argue in favor of this late twentieth century phenomenon are architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown whose celebrated book (at least among architects and developers, for very different reasons), Learning from Las Vegas, exuberantly did so. And that was over twenty years ago.

I can’t speak for Robert Venturi, of course, but I desperately want to believe that even he would have his doubts about sprawl today. The problems caused by sprawl -- the loss of arable land, the degradation of air quality, the congestion, the sheer wastefulness of this type of development – are sobering in the extreme. Developer’s arguments to the contrary, the costs to the community in the form of increased services such as roads and sewer often exceed the economic benefit provided from sprawl development. In the final analysis the costs, economic and otherwise, are carried by the community, while the economic benefits are almost completely privatized.

How could this happen? A good answer, I believe, can be found in an essay written by Garrett Hardin entitled, “The Tragedy of the Commons” over thirty years ago. He argues that in the absence of community resistance or regulation, this result is inevitable. For the sake of this column, Hardin’s theory can be summed up in the example he gives of herdsmen sharing a common grazing area, or ‘commons’. The grazing area is limited, but each individual herdsman does not think about the limitations of the communal grazing area. Rather, he seeks, rationally enough Hardin notes, to add additional animals to his own herd since he gains exclusively from the sale of each of his animals while the cost of keeping his animals in the communal grazing area is shared by the entire community. “Each man,” Hardin writes, “ is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit – in a world that is limited.” The consequences are ominous indeed. “Ruin,” Hardin writes, “is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest….Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.”

Scary stuff, especially if you recognize the ‘commons’ as every arena of our communal lives, including our wilderness, farmlands, air, water, towns and villages. All are limited. Also implicit in Hardin’s argument is the conclusion that there are no easily identified ‘bad guys’ here; each developer is simply, “increasing his own herd”. Each McDonalds, each Burger King, Each Walmart is just doing the same thing. The commons – Berkshire County, for instance -- is not their primary concern, at least while there appears to be no limit to available land, water, gas, landfill or serious opposition to the status quo. In my opinion, if there are any ‘bad guys’ it is those individuals and groups who cynically stifle discussion concerning the balance between the rights of the individual and those of the community with dire warnings of ‘communism’, or those who equate unbridled personal economic gain with democracy itself. Yet the truth cannot be suppressed : the commons is finite. The continued construction of buildings and development that mock the very idea of community, aesthetically and socially, will lead inevitably to the ruin of all. This is not a theoretical argument. We are now living the consequences of the status quo in disintegrating communities, fouled air and water, and aesthetic blight. In short, we – each community -- must take the responsibility for the well being of the commons. Destroying the commons has no place in the genuine ‘American Dream’.

While the current debate about sprawl is a reason to be optimistic that the tide may be turning, we are by no means out of danger. An article in The New York Times of Sunday, March 14 provides a cautionary note. Entitled “With Neighborliness Fading, Fences Turn Inward”, it described a dispute which has arisen in Rockland County, New York, concerning the construction of wooden, stockade-style fences around homes there. The problem : some people are installing the ‘bad’ or structural side of the fence outward toward the neighbors and the ‘good’ or finished side toward themselves. This phenomenon is referred to as a ‘spite fence’ in the vernacular. The reporter noted the rising tension in the community and compared it to the, “ confrontation between fence-building homesteaders and cattle ranchers in the movie, “Shane”. She then interviewed a women who had just installed such a fence who explained her position this way: “I feel, if I am buying it, I should be able to see the nicer side.”

The commons be damned.