After thirteen days, twelve roadside motels, a speeding ticket or two, countless meals ranging from mediocre to just plain scary, and an experience that can never be forgotten, my fiance and I have completed our over 4,000-mile journey across this great nation. From Los Angeles to New York, with a detour up the Pacific coast to Seattle, we saw that what it means to be an "American" can mean almost an infinite number of permutations. In San Francisco, Portland and Seattle we saw vibrant city centers occupied by earnest city dwellers. Aided by geography and land use planning, these towns have preserved their core settlements, despite the pull of sprawl impacting all three. Even Portland, a model of land use efficiency, has Nike's world headquarters stationed on its outskirts in suburban Beaverton. Ellensburg, Washington is a sleepy town along Interstate 90 that survives thanks to the influx of spending power of Central Washington University and its students. We passed a night in Gillette, Wyoming, which the denizens happily tout as the coal capital of the nation. Mount Rushmore, and the tourist-dependent Keystone, South Dakota, at its entrance, mine the Black Hills for modern-day sources of income from the land. We drove along the edge of the behemoth that is Chicago, and observed the aggressive push of the metropolis into the Illinois prairie.
The examples were endless across this nation, of people adapting the land where they have settled to a hospitable and profitable place to live. What I came to realize was that no matter what the land offered, its inhabitants have found a way to make "productive" use of it. Even out in the expanses of South Dakota and Minnesota that we drove across, the plots have been subdivided into separate tracts whose owners cultivate the soil for agricultural purposes. In the grasslands of Wyoming, the federal government has leased these lands for grazing by cattle, sheep, llamas and any other domesticated animal seen fit. In Oregon, we wandered off the Pacific Coast Highway to seek out a fish hatchery, and saw fishermen parked along the side of the road, standing in the stream that ran along side. Even in the Crow Nation's reservation in Montana, cell towers rise along the roadway where on either side it appears there is "nothing."
This of course is not meant to imply that every square inch of the continent is occupied, but it is to say that land use takes many forms. Most of the press and attention does go towards what's happening on the urban fringe, and to big developments meant to revitalize city centers. But in all that "in between" space between the two coasts is an enormous amount of activity that cannot be ignored. Putting aside the metropolises that aren't located on an ocean, the world that is rural America offers a fascinating glimpse into why people choose to live in places that aren't hot real estate markets. Each place provides an attractive reason, whatever it may be. Otherwise, the settlement would have completely crumbled, just as it has in western "ghost towns" that some attempt to revive as tourist attractions.
If anything, our excursion across the nation reminded me of the richness of this country and its people, and the need to keep that in mind whenever seeking to explain the collective decisions by this country. From a land use perspective, it opens up for me a new interest in rural land use, and how it interacts with metropolitan pressures. Coming from "the city," it reminds me that in my future work, rural concerns are just as critical as those that impact the existing built environment, because the rural world is as much a part of the economy and the debate as the urban realm. If only the press would realize that as well. Apparently all it takes is a two-week sojourn across the continent.
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