Ultimate solution to urban sprawl: Ruin the village in order to save it

Many who grew up around here consider the rampant residential development of the Charleston area a revolting development.

Summerville Town Council will soon consider a "moratorium" on building permits.

Remember when Summerville was considered "out in the country"?

Heck, if you grew up around here and are old enough to fondly recall the Magnolia and North 52 drive-in theaters, you can probably also recall when James Island and Mount Pleasant were "out in the country."

Times, and populations, change.

Lots of people from "off" caught on that this is a great place to live.

Thus, lots more people live here than did in the good old days when Bee's Ferry and Rifle Range roads were remote getaways (and unofficial raceways -- "wanna drag?") rather than busy avenues flanked by proliferating, single-entrance neighborhoods.

This formula for urban sprawl, a breeder reactor of sorts, is familiar by now, here and elsewhere in our increasingly crowded nation:

Build more houses, you get more traffic and need more roads. Build more roads to serve that need, you get more houses, then more traffic, and need even more roads.

Plenty of formerly small communities stumble into the trap of fostering additional development to cover the costs (schools, police and fire protection, garbage collection, etc.) of prior development.

Then, by the belated time they figure out the losing nature of this game, they clamp down on building permits, ramping up housing prices via the inexorable forces of supply and demand.

More inexorable developments:

Children grow up in communities where they can't afford to live once they leave their parents' home.

Workers toil in communities where they can't afford to live.

That elevates the mileage driven by adult offspring visiting Mom and Dad and workers going to and from their jobs, the number of cars on our overburdened roads and the aggravation level of our overwrought citizenry.

Would-be escapees from this blight who flee ever farther "out in the country" merely drag the dreaded sprawl with them.

Experts propose "smart growth" solutions, including beneficial boosts in: housing choices, "walk- able" neighborhoods, population density, "mixed use" development, pedestrian and bike paths, open space, and presumably, human contentment.

Sounds smart, presuming such progress can be fairly and effectively imposed upon a public now set in its sprawling ways.

Hey, if we were smart, we would never have gotten stuck in this mess -- or in so much traffic -- in the first place.

As for that traffic, some local residents still laugh at the notion that it's unbearable.

Those who've survived the rigors of regularly driving the hectic thoroughfares in and around Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dallas, Washington, Philadelphia and New York are unlikely to find road congestion in and around Charleston, Mount Pleasant, Summerville, Moncks Corner and Hollywood (S.C.) worthy of consternation.

Then again, the relentless rise of our traffic has been accompanied by a discernible decline in the amusement such contrasts provide for our relative newcomers from the big cities.

The ultimate solution to the growth of local growth could be the flip side of its source:

When the quality of life around here sinks low enough, people will quit coming, right?

Maybe. Eventually.

But when?

And people already here are unlikely to leave. After all, where would they go? Walterboro?

This isn't the only place with growing pains. Population trends: South Carolina--2.4 million (1960), 3.1 million (1980), 4 million (2005). United States--179 million (1960), 225 million (1980), 295 million (2005). World--3 billion (1960), 4.4 billion (1980), 6.4 billion (2005).

Detect a pattern?

Capitalism has a grand knack for fulfilling public demand. Perhaps market-driven smart growth will rescue us from the ravages of runaway population growth.

Yet must population growth forever be a prerequisite for economic growth? Must economic growth forever be sustained?

How?

And long before this Super Sunday, didn't some other local folks rightly regard a steady influx of outsiders as cause for concern?

Those locals were the Kiawah, Stono, Wando and Etiwan.

So before blaming your new neighbors in the new development down the new road for choosing the same locale you and maybe your ancestors chose, remember, the turf on which you now live was once "undeveloped," too.