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Creek debate reveals divide

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Staff

James Carnahan

A comment by Chris Bond on The Carrboro Citizen website about Dave Otto’s recent column regarding Bolin Creek Greenway (“The façade of saving Bolin Creek,” 2/25/10) sums up a larger issue that divides our community: “Instead of using ‘increasingly urban environment’ as justification for paving the forests, use it as justification to stop urbanization.”

Urbanization is not what is wrecking our local environment. It is important not to confuse “urban” with the suburban pattern that has dominated for the past six decades. Sprawling land use (even in “green” Orange County) is what batters our local resources, requiring widespread removal of topsoil and trees, mass grading and soil compaction, riparian buffer disturbance, squandering of water, excessive parking and dependence on cars.

Careful and strategic urbanization is actually good land use, enabling conservation of forests and waterways by accommodating growth efficiently and impacting the smallest possible amount of land. Compact, well-planned development reduces per-capita carbon emissions by allowing people to bike, walk and take transit to meet their basic daily needs.

With this in mind, I thank Dave Otto for his decades of work to protect Bolin Creek and for his recent efforts to make the greenway a safe and continuous corridor for pedestrians, joggers, strollers and birdwatchers. As Otto notes, greenways are useful for:

• connecting homes to schools, parks and restaurants;
• providing pathways for wildlife to access more habitats;
• enabling people to get places without having to drive and find parking;
• providing contact with nature, which is essential for our mental well-being; and
• linking Carrboro and Chapel Hill residents with each other and with our local economy and culture.

Otto wrote that the role of this greenway in environmental preservation is “secondary,” but I differ on this point. “Environment” isn’t just about wild, uninhabited areas. The global environmental crisis challenges us to find ways to meet our basic needs locally and without pollution and reckless resource consumption. Urbanization is the optimal path, and reaching a consensus about how we urbanize is a prerequisite for making our towns and cities wonderful and worthwhile places to live, work and play.

Providing universal access to woodlands conserved within our boundaries is one key to making livable the kind of vibrant urban centers that can support human activity without compromising the health of the global ecosystem. In that sense, paving the Bolin Creek Greenway helps leave the planet inhabitable and enjoyable for our children and grandchildren.

I urge the Carrboro Board of Aldermen to pursue a paved pedestrian, bike and wheelchair-accessible artery that links us to one another, to community activities and to a lovely, soul-replenishing natural corridor. And thank you, Dave Otto, for your vision and leadership.

Carnahan is a founder of The Village Project and former chair of the Carrboro Planning Board.

1 thought on “Creek debate reveals divide”

  1. Chris Bond says:
    March 11, 2010 at 2:44 pm

    James, I was responding to Dave Otto’s choice of words. Urbanization or suburbanization, it does not matter. What matters is that you and Dave Otto think paving a trail through the woods will make the woods better, that it will enhance nature and make nature a better human experience. I disagree with that point.

    To your bullet points, here are my rebuttals:

    • connecting homes to schools, parks and restaurants;

    We have this already. They are called roads and sidewalks.

    • providing pathways for wildlife to access more habitats;

    This is true of greenways built in urban environments that remove many traces of human development. But we would be doing the exact opposite in Bolin Creek. Wildlife does not need us to build pathways to travel on in those woods. If you look closely you will see is already has made its own paths. And on Monday I plan on bringing some studies by the NC State Greenways Commission that show how paved trails decrease wildlife activity. So, if your plan for the greenway hinges on the fact that if will improve “the health of the global ecosystem” you will be agreeing with me that the greenway should not be paved.

    • enabling people to get places without having to drive and find parking;

    This is fully possible to do now. I have not owned a car in this town for the last ten years and we have an excellent free bus system.

    • providing contact with nature, which is essential for our mental well-being;

    If you put a cement trail through the woods it will not be nature anymore, it will be human nature. Nature is messy, muddy, wet, dangerous, unpredictable, exciting, unknown, peaceful, un-conceptual, safe, and unlabeled. The plan provided by Greenway, Inc will ruin all of those things. It is nature right now, we can go into those woods right now.

    • linking Carrboro and Chapel Hill residents with each other and with our local economy and culture.

    Again, we already have roads and sidewalks that perform this function and in my opinion you are padding your bullet points. If you want to create walkable communities you should ban personal use of cars from the town. No planning involved. We will be forced to come up with ideas to solve the problem of living in a town without cars.

    You are very clear on how you feel the greenway will help humans, but show very little evidence on how it will help nature. You are a planner by profession, a planner for humans. But nature does not need planning.

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