From The
Idiot Factor:
It seems like every Summer I write
about urban sprawl and the lack of open spaces in my part
of Sedgwick County. So why should this year be any different?
When I moved to Maize, KS almost 20
years ago, it was a lot like living in the country. There used to be an open
field across the street from me. Maize Road went from my house, to a stop light
south of me. From there Maize was a 55 mile per hour stretch of black top road
that went through empty lots—wide open spaces with wheat, weeds or something
else along the way to 21st Street. It was like most stretches of road in
the country—wide open spaces and a few tree lines along the farmed areas.
Today there is a 40 mile per hour four
lane road blacktop road lined with either strip malls, large superstores such
as Menards, Sam's Club or Lowe's Home Improvement, or buildings still being
built. It looks like there is a contest to see who can cram the most buildings
on every single site along the road from 53 Street in Maize towards 21st
Street.
There are about four stoplights now.
And I dread driving down to the corner of 21st and Maize where New Market
Square, is a mega market that has lots of useless crap I will never want or use
and where such mega-rip offs as Wal-Mart are located.
My front yard is about 1/4th gone. The
once lazy road in front is now a busy street. The noise and light pollution are
never ending.
Once empty
spaces of wheat or prairie grass. Now just urban clutter.
There is a new plan for a park along
the road were Cadillac lake[1] used to
be. It sounds like a good idea.
According to The Wichita
Eagle:
Seeking to
balance nature and commercial development in an ecologically sensitive area,
the Wichita City Council reviewed plans this week for a $7.2 million wetland
park to be built at Cadillac Lake in northwest Wichita.
The primary
features of the park will be flood-proof galvanized steel boardwalks and wildlife observation stations modeled on the
leaves of native lotus plants, said Hans Klein-Hewett, landscape architect with
RDg Planning and Design, the company hired by the city to design the park.
The park is
planned for a wetlands area near Maize
Road and 29th Street North.
This all sounds great. At fist the city
originally decided to move Cadillac Lake somewhere else, years
ago, so the rush to develop all this land was not compromised by actual
wildlife. The new plans look OK, but lets look at how the city did
with Wichita's WaterWalk. It was suppose to give us something like they
have in San Antonio, Texas, with all those neat canals and
boats. After 15 years and $41 million in taxpayer subsidies to
the WaterWalk, the city of Wichita has gotten no money from a
profit-sharing agreement attached to the development deal. The canals aren't
built. The developers just took a lot of city development money and they ran.
So what if they do that out here? What if our water park is just one more city
development rip off. Tax payers like me will get another area of blight to
stare at.
This place already looks like clutter.
There is nothing but strip malls with large mega stores behind them. It
looks like shit. A once beautiful country drive is now a cluttered clusterfuck
of businesses and buildings of which most of them I will never make use of.
More clutter
and traffic lights.
I live in a county where most of the
people vote for knuckle headed backward people who haven't studied anything new
on city development since the 1950s. They are stupid dolts who couldn't plan a
modern city if their life depended on it.
So the rest of us pay. We have ugly
over-development. The natural beauty of this land is being ruined by these
stupid dolts.
I guess for now all I can do is just
put up with it and hope they might actually do what they have promised to do
with the Cadillac Lake Park. They might get it right for once in
their lives. But I'm not holding my breath.
[1] Cadillac Lake
An endless
stream of clutter.
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