Thursday, August 15, 2013
The Suburbs: A Post in Progress
Linh Dinh essay on the suburbs.
Looking at Amazon for Leigh Gallagher's new book The End of the Suburbs, I found a book I've never heard of, by Stanley Kurtz: Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. If I saw this book at the library book sale, then I might pick it up. But I can guess that it blames suburbs' woes not on any inherent vice but on an Alinskyite conspiracy. Well....
20 August update: Reporter Yasha Levine found a book by David Bach that summed up the get-rich-quick mentality, inflating the housing bubble in the process.
On another note, my family and I went on a day trip to Kona last Friday. I can't begin to describe what it looks like. Kona developed very differently than Hilo did, and so it's much more sprawly. (After the 1960 tidal wave, Hilo moved inland. Since this development happened after cars became more common, those areas were more convenient for drivers, not pedestrians, with wide streets and vast parking lots.) Even when I was a small kid vacationing in Kona, that was the case. But now there are more big-box stores, and on the hills, more houses. It's late summer so there were a lot more tourists. We checked out the Royal Kona Resort (f.k.a. the Kona Hilton): no bougainvillea spilling from the balconies, no roof at the porte-cochere, but they have little gates at the parking lots. I guess people have to pay for parking now (even guests?).
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3 comments:
The suburbs are more and more dumping grounds for the poor. And look where the money goes in Hawaii. Not to the Big Island but to Honolulu. Except for the military build up, of course, which is of no economic benefit to us and just tears up the environment.
I plan to read Leigh Gallagher's book. Kunstler also has a good book on sprawl, The Geography of Nowhere.
Yes, the Big Island gets the short end of the stick. We do have a lot of rich part- and full-time residents, though. On the drive to Kona, on the makai side of the road, around Laupahoehoe, one can see big houses advertised as "oceanfront estates" and there are rumors that big-time entertainers live there, if only on vacation.
I read your post mentioning that. It must be referring to the expansion of Pohakuloa Training Area.
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