These aren’t contradictory. If you build up instead of out, it’s easier to save green spaces and make sure that they’re accessible. If you keep cars off the road with good public transit, less green spaces need to get paved to make ugly ass parking lots, you get fewer shitty drive throughs, you get more walkable spaces and small businesses instead of big box marts, and everything is generally less polluted and shitty.
The problem comes when everyone wants their own little slice of private green space (that is, suburbia). You eventually end up in a single family home desert with a 5 sqft yard and some fucking dork with too much time on their hands coming along to measure your grass with a ruler and bitching at you about how your car doesn’t look as nice as your neighbors’, and how it’s ruining the character of the neighborhood. Meanwhile you look over Steven’s shoulder and it occurs to you again how every house looks exactly the same, everything is artificial and sanitized looking, like you live in a CGI scene from the late 90s. How long has it been since you’ve seen a bird? Kids playing outside? When was the last time you wanted to go outside? The last time your kids wanted to go out? You got them a bike, but they never bothered to learn to ride it, it’s quietly rusting away in a corner of the garage. You tried taking it yourself one time and got yelled at by someone in the neighborhood after they almost ran you over while driving recklessly (and maybe drunk). Actually, isn’t there some insect apocalypse happening right now? Come to think of it, when was the last time you saw a ladybug or a butterfly? This all feels wrong. You tried to find the little dipper to show it to your kids a few weeks ago, but you couldn’t find it at all. You definitely remember seeing more stars as a kid. Maybe you should just refuse to cut the postage stamp lawn and let the tickets pile up, you’ll go into the woods and live off mushrooms, become a witch, and come back and terrorize your neighbors and grow trees in their living rooms. Where did that come from? Haha. Anyway, you don’t even know your other neighbors even though you’ve lived here for years. It’d be cool if there was some reason to run into them, like a shop or cafe down on the corner or something, but that doesn’t exist and you don’t want to bother anyone. You “oh, yeah, sorry” as Steven chides you to stop putting the garbage out the night before the garbage truck runs, and then bid him a nice day, even if you don’t mean it. No, Steven, I can’t go to your church this weekend. I’m, uh, busy.
These aren’t contradictory. If you build up instead of out, it’s easier to save green spaces and make sure that they’re accessible. If you keep cars off the road with good public transit, less green spaces need to get paved to make ugly ass parking lots, you get fewer shitty drive throughs, you get more walkable spaces and small businesses instead of big box marts, and everything is generally less polluted and shitty.
The problem comes when everyone wants their own little slice of private green space (that is, suburbia). You eventually end up in a single family home desert with a 5 sqft yard and some fucking dork with too much time on their hands coming along to measure your grass with a ruler and bitching at you about how your car doesn’t look as nice as your neighbors’, and how it’s ruining the character of the neighborhood. Meanwhile you look over Steven’s shoulder and it occurs to you again how every house looks exactly the same, everything is artificial and sanitized looking, like you live in a CGI scene from the late 90s. How long has it been since you’ve seen a bird? Kids playing outside? When was the last time you wanted to go outside? The last time your kids wanted to go out? You got them a bike, but they never bothered to learn to ride it, it’s quietly rusting away in a corner of the garage. You tried taking it yourself one time and got yelled at by someone in the neighborhood after they almost ran you over while driving recklessly (and maybe drunk). Actually, isn’t there some insect apocalypse happening right now? Come to think of it, when was the last time you saw a ladybug or a butterfly? This all feels wrong. You tried to find the little dipper to show it to your kids a few weeks ago, but you couldn’t find it at all. You definitely remember seeing more stars as a kid. Maybe you should just refuse to cut the postage stamp lawn and let the tickets pile up, you’ll go into the woods and live off mushrooms, become a witch, and come back and terrorize your neighbors and grow trees in their living rooms. Where did that come from? Haha. Anyway, you don’t even know your other neighbors even though you’ve lived here for years. It’d be cool if there was some reason to run into them, like a shop or cafe down on the corner or something, but that doesn’t exist and you don’t want to bother anyone. You “oh, yeah, sorry” as Steven chides you to stop putting the garbage out the night before the garbage truck runs, and then bid him a nice day, even if you don’t mean it. No, Steven, I can’t go to your church this weekend. I’m, uh, busy.