Local Example of the Growth Economy Social Traps 

Our Lee County Board of County Commissioners John Albion sponsored a "Transportation Forum" at FGCU in Feb of 2006.  At the forum we learned that our area of South Lee County has permitted commercial space for the equivalent of 15 new Edison Malls.  Many residents and elected representatives on the panel were demanding immediate relief for the traffic on our roads.  

One lightning rod for discussion and debate is a $10 million appropriation for a Coconut Road Interchange for I-75 in September of 2005. 

 The appropriation has ignited a firestorm of fury and debate about the relationship between roads, and our growth economy.  Find out more about the issue.

The Naples Daily News offers free access to its paper, including comprehensive archives. Check their growth and development pages for more and the related issues of affordable housing.

Check it out when you are ready to examine these issues.

Sample creative journal entry written by Nora Egan Demers on February 24, 2006.  The growth forum at FGCU was called by BoCC Rep. John Albion

At the growth/transportation forum at FGCU yesterday many the residents of the gated communities were provided seats as panel members, demanding immediate solutions, while their public servant tried again to explain the issue.  The police and firemen who keep getting caught in traffic were left in the audience, along with other hopeful residents and educators.  By the time the panelists stopped talking, everyone was exhausted and even more frustrated. The vast majority of the members of "audience", the service providers, had left. We've been having these "forums" for years.  I've attended at least a dozen since I moved here in '97 to join the faculty at FGCU! We have not made much progress toward a solution, but rather appear to be demanding to do more of the same. If we keep talking to each other, and asking the solution to come from continuing to implement the plan that created this situation we'll never make any progress to fix the problems. 

The traffic is only a symptom. We are all dependent on each other and it would be nice if we could act like it. We must if we are to survive. The traffic models are based on so many flawed assumptions.  We keep trying to build more roads that we cannot afford and do not want to pay for, to get us to the beaches and rivers that are displaying more symptoms. Even if we could build the roads, there are not enough workers to build them.  Why not?  Because they, and their familes, cannot afford to live in the area.

As an immunologist, I'll provide an analogy that makes sense to me. Consider a human body. We are a huge conglomeration of individual cells, each an entity unto itself.  The cells are arranged into organs.  No single organ in the body is considered an organism in itself. The organs work together to create an entire being. There are thousands of components working together to keep the body alive (and hopefully healthy). Each component is necessary to sustain life. In a living organism, each organ has some of the cells needed to help keep it alive as well as cells that provide the scaffolding to support diversity of cells that makes up the organ.  Individual cells re-grow to replace others. Bones provide the scaffolding that help keep the pieces fitted together and able to move the humans around this gorgeous planet. The largest bones contain individual cells that diversify to restock and replace cells in each organ. The body uses capillaries to circulate the blood providing those cells with  the necessary materials to continuously rebuild. Individual cells full of hemoglobin are needed to deliver the vast amounts of oxygen each cell requires, and removes the by-products it produces. Energy is circulated, along with resources to rebuild individual cells.  Other cells remove used components and damaged cells. Still others monitor for problems, sending signals etc.  If one capillary gets clogged the blood is re-routed so it can go around the clot. If it can't, then individual cell dies, sometimes causing irreparable damage to the organ.  The organism suffers and eventually dies, not from old age, but from lack of support. Sometimes a cell gets starts to grow uncontrollably.  It is able to redirect the common workings of the individual cell.  It sends signals for angiogenesis to provide more resources so it can continue to grow uncontrollably.  If not stopped, the tumor eventually saps energy from the organ, and the body dies.

In the analogy, each home is a living cell, and a set of homes an organ in the body of an amazing organism. A living organism is not composed of individual cells, or individual organs. All resources are not provided within each organ separately.  We cannot take away the support cells, and remove the capillaries replacing them with giant arteries. This will never be a living organism.

In southwest Florida some unintelligent designer is at play, attempting to create individual homes along numerous dead end streets, providing a single egress for residents from individual sets of homes, rather than putting together diverse homes and providing a way for the other needed materials and cells to replenish and replace the original cells. The residents of the homes have paid dearly for the impressive edifices, excellently built, and full of exotic prizes.  They are looking forward to living out their time in a wonderful environment. There are more coming each day, and the designer is getting stronger.

These members of individual cells leave the gates of the community, (not to get the services they need because, they can afford to have them brought in) but rather to enjoy the "luxuries" the money has earned; to go consume more goods (which adds to that need for service folks). We are upset because the only major "arteries" (notice the use of the same term as in physiology) are getting clogged. Organisms have not evolved to form life from boxes connected together with tubes to provides a single way for oxygen, waste and all the other material to be transported to each cell. 

A powerful monster is force-feeding individual cells trying to create an organism in a swamp, (once considered uninhabitable by the white man).  Consumerism is this unintelligent designer.  We appear to enjoy being  hopelessly oblivious to the fact that this weak attempt at intelligent behavior will never create an organism.  Support cells are not present within the organs. Diverse cells are not working together to make organs, and eventually organisms. What we have is segregated cells. The cells that are needed to provide resources are starving in another spot and being kicked out to make room for other cells. Rather than amazing individuals cooperating and providing each other with what is needed to be called life, we have become cancerous tumors. The growth economic is presuming to feed the amazing macromolecules that make up cells with far more than they need. Capillaries are not feeding each individual cell, but rather giant arteries are being built to attempt to provide a way to get more supplies to those unsuspecting cells. Instead they are drowning them.  Left alone, these tumors will continue to spread to invade the entire body, and eventually kill it. 

A deaf, dumb and blind kid can do better job (and play a mean pinball ;-)

Trying to sustain a region by building roads (arteries) to separated areas full of the supplies only exasperates the situation.  It is no wonder that it is not working.  

Isn't that what is happening?     

Our best chance of resuscitating the organism is by trying to retro-fit the area (body) to re-create a real community from this mess instead of trying to make the barriers between the boxes higher by segregating cells by socio-economic class.  Instead, this powerful monster appears to be deluding us into thinking that if we try again, in another place maybe we can model what it takes to create life. 

How are those calculations for determining the tax rate calculated?  If we try to make impact fees on NEW building help address the issue we need to make them fit this area, we'll suffocate in our own waste.   Fortunately we have become aware of how unintelligent the designer is.

How do we determine how many affordable homes are necessary for each gated community?  If a single home requires lawn service and cleaning service, and then we add the repairman, and the policeman, and the EMT we've got 5 folks.  Now let's have those community members leave the "safety (?)" of the gates. They will encounter the guard at the gate, and at the grocery store, the managers, shelf stockers, clerk at the checkout counter, and the nice person who carries their bags to the car.  Then we stop at the shops that allow us to buy all those material goods that our society seems to encourage us all to demand.  Add in those candy stores, staff too.  And then lets get more candy from the store next store (ad nauseum it seems!).  Now add a family for each of those helpers, or subtract one or two since some of those helpers are the retired folks (because one or two of them MAY be living in those gated communities).  Although the gated community may not have children in the area, the support providers do.  So we get to add teachers to the mix.  Now, let's calculate that forward and what do we get?  I think American have become spoiled children being encouraged to eat only candy, and we have become an obese adult who could soon die.   We are teaching the other children to be just like us!  Older and wiser adults keep trying to persuade us that it is not healthy.

Each new (or old) city is a perfect example of what is happening. To quote David Orr, the "social trap" called consumerism has helped create this situation. Consider for example the latest city called Bonita Springs.  We are dismantling communities, making them into boxes, connecting them with tubes and trying to call it life.  Or look at Naples and Fort Myers.  Apartments houses are being converted to high-end condos.  New high rises are proliferating like tumors that have spread to yet another organ.

I will go to my grave working trying to work with other like-minded individuals to try and exercise, eat right and get healthy. 

If you have made it this far, then thanks for listening to my rant.

Nora Demers