The “S”-Word

I don’t like the word. I think it diminishes the importance and variance in factors that contribute to our situation. It’s derogatory. It begs for elaboration. It’s vague. It divides people.

I don’t even want to type it.

Sprawl. There it is. It undoubtedly puts pictures into our heads that we’ve developed sometime in our lives - inevitably imagery that we use to define some sense of who we are (or aren’t.) The problem is that the imagery for each of us isn’t the same. A much more insidious problem is that the imagery we conjure up most often belies the true nature of what causes inharmonious urban and suburban conditions.

It also makes it harder to fix the problems that already exist. “Urban Planning” seems to be the most commonly used term for the assorted issues that contribute to our built physical environment - and the pejorative is then “Bad Planning.” I like this better because it very efficiently promotes the idea that where there is “Bad Planning,” there very well could have been “Good Planning.”

Let’s see if in the entirely of the documentary we can get away with never using the “S”-Word and instead using “Bad Planning” or “Good Planning” where appropriate given our judgement.