Strip
Mall Mentality
The underground comic godfather R. Crumb, drew a twelve-paneled
comic in 1979 entitled “A Short History of America.”
The first panel shows a forest on the edge of a field, green and
lush with a flock of birds across a blue sky. By the last panel
the forest is gone and the field obliterated. In its place are
metal lamp poles, multilayered telephone wires and posts, a crowd
of street signs and billboards, cement sidewalks, asphalt paved
streets and parking lots, a traffic jam of hulking cars, TV antennas,
apartment complexes, one exceedingly small patch of token greenery,
and a question in the bottom right corner asking “What Next?”
What happens between those two panels is subtle. A train track
is put through the forest. A road and a house are built. More
houses are built. The road gets wider and is intersected by another
road. A factory shows up. Soon, trolley cars, traffic lights and
sidewalks appear. The last real tree is cut down. Buildings go
up and get torn down or added on to. Trains and trolleys make
way for cars and buses. Everything is crowded – a concrete
jungle from end to end.
If you’ve ever been to the corner of Three Mile and Hammond
Road, six miles southeast of Traverse City, you might notice the
sprawl cells dividing rapidly. That is, if you’re new to
the area. If you’ve been calling that area home for the
last 15 years, you might not just be “noticing” the
sprawl, you might be asking yourself, “How in the hell did
this happen?”
You see, back in the proverbial day, there used to be –
in the vicinity of that corner – Roy’s party store,
Cherry Knoll Elementary, the East Bay branch of the public library,
and the township hall. In 1992, East Junior High opened behind
Cherry Knoll. Soon thereafter, a Shell Station appeared, Roy’s
added a BP Station, and a Chicken Coop hatched itself north of
Roy’s. Then last year, Olson’s opened up in a strip
mall right on the corner. Its neighbors include a video store,
a pizza joint, Espresso Bay, and a Curves fitness center. In addition
to all of this, two other schools opened nearby, one south and
the other east. And six hundred yards east of the intersection,
another coffee shop in another strip mall abuts a road that ends
at the Centre I.C.E. Arena.
Now I consider myself an environmentally conscious person with
tree hugger tendencies, but I’m not going to act like some
narrow-minded jackass. I understand development is, for the most
part, inevitable. However, after watching Three Mile and Hammond
Road start to confuse itself with Wayne County, I’ve got
a few questions. For example, does it have to look like pure shit?
Does it have to appear as if there’s no underlying plan
to retain an area’s former appealing aesthetic? Which, if
I can remember, were the open fields, trees and windswept hills
– you know, Nature. A vibrant and living rural setting.
Because, I’ve got to say, the current development is the
equivalent of giving a giant middle finger to Nature — and
to me for that matter.
But what do I expect? Giant green parks with cascading water fountain
displays? Waterfowl rehabilitation facilities? A multi-tiered
rose garden? No. But what I do expect is the people who live here
to remember why they moved here – an escape to an area where
the environment still held power in people’s eyes. An escape
to an environment that made you feel good to live in. A place
where one could wrap their arms around Nature and feel the love.
“People who move here from downstate continue to add to
the problem of urban sprawl,” writes outdoor enthusiast
David Richey. “They come north with bright hopes of moving
into an idyllic location, and they bring their downstate baggage
with them.”
He’s not the only local resident to have such thoughts.
It would be easy to grumble about downstaters “ruining”
our area. But let’s see this through more realistic eyes.
I spent six years living in southern Michigan, and Traverse City
is a paradise compared to those Bowels of Hell. Let’s say
you grew up in the Detroit area. You’re used to urban sprawl
on an unfathomable level. You’re used to a complex web of
highways, long commutes, gray concrete plastered everywhere, and
backgrounds consisting of ugly, horrifying industrial plants.
You’re used to driving to strip malls to shop – you
don’t think twice about it. Many people moving to Traverse
City bring this attitude with them. Like David Richey states,
they also bring baggage. But it is more a frame-of-mind –
they can’t help but give back what they’ve learned.
Even those that aren’t directly responsible for sprawl contribute
to the problem by not being outraged – they just don’t
understand what the big deal is. It’s normal for them. In
fact, it might be comforting.
Yet, as I’ve said, it’s hardly just our new neighbors
who deserve the blame. In an article entitled, “Breaking
the Sprawl Addiction,” Keith Schneider writes, “Garfield
[township] planned for a sprawling pattern of economic growth.
They mapped out a conventional zoning plan in the early 1970s
that devoted thousands of acres to new businesses, subdivisions,
malls, and one-story office complexes.”
A lot of us remember when the Grand Traverse Mall and the Wal-Mart
strip mall were just two open fields. Now they’re simply
good examples of how to make a giant clusterfuck with ample parking.
Some people can even recall when the Cherryland Plaza was an open
field before being converted into an unsightly, low-slung building
in the middle of wall-to-wall asphalt carpeting. Ask anybody if
they like driving through Garfield Township and the answer will
usually end with, “I avoid it when I can.”
Maybe township planners can’t think very far ahead. Maybe
the sprawl is the result of the “free market” –
a sign of economic growth encouraged by cheap lot prices and tax
breaks. This is certainly not an area of my expertise. But I grew
up here, and I remember when it felt better to live here.
Now, I’m not trying to paint some over-the-top horror story
about how Traverse City is ruined forever. I still think it’s
beautiful here, but we are losing our environment to this strip
mall mentality – little by little, tree by tree, and field
by field. And this is just the beginning. Wait another fifteen
years and much of our outlying areas will look like a suped-up
version of Three Mile and Hammond. We will not be able to escape
or avoid similarities to Woodward Ave. in Detroit.
Sprawl is occurring in every region across the state – across
all states. It’s accepted. It’s perceived as normal.
It’s our modern American architectural solution to life.
We will make Nature ours, and our version of Nature won’t
seem very natural – or livable – when we’re
finished. What can we do to reverse the trend? For starters, we
can ditch the notion that business, efficiency, and automobile
access are the only variables worth taking into account when planning
for growth. There’s also peace of mind.
Publisher
of Kerplunk zine, M. Decker is an old softy for trees.
Particularly the Stinkwood, the Stilt-rooted Mangrove and the
Hard Milkwood. His allergic reaction to strip malls stems from
a childhood incident involving a mental patient chewing blueberry
flavored bubble-gum and a rusted-out muffler in an old Giantway
parking lot.
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