At present, bickering …has left any discussions of how to plan sensibly for the future, while maintaining the natural character of place that lures newcomers in droves, in a quagmire.”That absolutely characterizes the situation in and around Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. The once-beautiful Rathdrum Prairie, filled with century-old farms, is rapidly getting developed with huge subdivisions of affordable houses as people pour into the area. The stretch from Postfalls, ID north to Rathdrum, ID is going to be non-stop subdivisions real soon and not one crop will be grown there.
Unfortunately, there is no solution. Without growth controls, the prairie farmland is lost. With strict zoning and growth controls, you have much higher land and housing prices making the area unaffordable (just as happened in the San Francisco Bay Area).
There was a lot more breathing room in the country when we had "only" 150 million people (when I was a kid).
This looks a lot like the Rathdrum Prairie of old. You can still glimpse parts of it today, but you have to hurry.
In 1972 I was working a summer job at a marina. Mowing, hauling fish guts and heads, watermelon rinds and such to the dump, etc. Real glamor job.
I would go inside the store there at lunch and watch the news while sitting on the floor to eat my lunch.
I distinctly remember the announcement of our population having passed 200,000,000 and thought there were too many people.
Since those days our little county has at least doubled in population. The highway in front of the farm is now more like a freeway. I once had to wait for a long time to hear a distant car coming down the road at night and now there are cars at 2 AM regularly going by.
There were only five houses in sight across the valley as seen from our little hill, now there are 12.
Things are not better, there are no more meaningful jobs than there were, there is more poverty, more aimless lives, more crime, more drugs and alcoholism, more pollution, more trash, less community pride and responsibility.
Once upon a time the location of jobs controlled population cells. Not now. The west will look like a series of strip mall developments. Most will never venture into the back country but there will be enough that do the area will be forever changed. Once you have so many people there is never the opportunity to escape with an original idea. If you have the thought of going to a quiet place on a pretty day so have 10,000 others. You will never be alone again except in your own small space. I wish I was surrounded by trees in my own little corner of the world instead of in the middle of a big pasture that is more like a fishbowl now.