>>1694306>greenbelt I lived in a house for 5 years with one of these behind it. It was a mere 0.1ac, and seemed magical. Filled with verdant nature, it was a place to go an safely and peacefully learn what it meant to be human on Earth
I moved away and then came back to visit 30 years later.
In the intervening years, most houses surrounding the greenbelt had put up fences. In the beginning, the properties were sold, without fences, and all opened to the greenbelt.
As the years went by, one by one, dog owners moved in. Each dog owner of course had to build a fence. Each yard that backed to the greenbelt used to be as verdant as the greenbelt itself. Now it was ruined by the dogs, beaten down to mud.
The greenbelt itself was walled off with a fence on one side, making it impossible to pass through as I used to as a kid.
This is the story of human settlement. It starts with a plan, if that plan has a commons, the commons is degraded and exploited until it is ruined, without exception. Even if only 10% of the replacement population is a ruiner, large footprint type, given enough years, the quality of a given area will decline.
As dog owners move from place to place, their built fences stay. Eventually fences are everywhere, dogs are everywhere, poop is everywhere, old junk piles everywhere, cars and trucks and oil spills everywhere. It never ends
>Can sprawl be prevented by simply paying ranches and farms not to sell outLand is appraised and zoned for "highest and best use". Once the land is subdivided, zoned, platted out, developed, and in the hands of private property, with owners electing the officials who tax everyone to keep the roads resurfaced, there is literally no way to change anything except for the most extreme method: eminent domain.
I imagine the ONLY way to build out a sustainable, walkable community in harmony with nature is to somehow build a whole town from the ground up and keep out all stupid people
