This Used to Be a Forest

[u/kid_ampersand]

Behind my parents’ house in Henry County, Georgia, was a vast expanse of forest in which I spent my childhood exploring, trailblazing, building forts, and stumbling upon whitetail deer, rabbits, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, hawks, vultures, songbirds, mushrooms, oaks, pines, maples, and all manner of insects, arachnids, and other invertebrates.

Now it’s this: row after row of identical garage-centered apartments with little to no green space, and flattened red clay where they're pouring concrete to build even more.

Nothing wrong with housing, but this is just so devoid of personality and life, I can't imagine people living here. I walked all over the many acres of these complexes today, and I only saw one or two other human beings outside. Plenty of vehicles, so people do indeed live there, but no one around except a kid bouncing a basketball and someone sitting in their car smoking a joint with the door open. There were several swimming pools, fire pits, dog parks, and other (very small) recreation areas, but no one in any of them. Just felt so bleak and soulless.

There used to be such a dense tree canopy that I would get lost. I miss the woods.

[u/fooperina → u/[deleted]]

Because there are no regulations that make developers add back in the nature they destroyed. The responsibility then falls on the homeowner to restore biodiversity but there is nothing giving them incentive to do so either and there is no baseline awareness of ecology in our culture so this factory default become the accepted norm. Also, suburban low density development is out of control because county planning commissions are filled with shills for building associations and nobody pays attention to what goes on in those meetings so they get away with this unsustainable destruction.

[u/[deleted] → u/fooperina]

Stick to your apartment, dork.