About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the 21st century.
At an evening gathering, a newcomer held forth on the positive attributes of our Berkshires, reminding locals of what we can take for granted. He talked about feeling at home or as if he arrived home. He felt comfortable and a part of something. What is power of place? How is it created and how is it maintained? Is the environment — how a place looks — synonymous with its character? Could current angst and dysfunction be a product of our modern built environment?
James Howard Kunstler thinks so. In “The Geography of Nowhere,” he equates how we build to how we think and how we act. He equates open space, town squares, narrower streets (building for people, not cars), and eschewing homogeneous buildings with democracy and community. He equates maintaining buildings with history with a sense of belonging — a desire to belong.
Is erosion of physical attributes concomitant with erosion of the character of a place? Is the homogeneity of chain restaurants and stores synonymous with the erosion of a sense of place? Does a community overrun by chains lose its unique character just because chain stores and restaurants all look the same no matter in which community you find them?
Is the beauty of a place related to the safety of a place? The “broken windows theory” was introduced in 1982 by social scientists James Wilson and George Kelling. It is a theory that visible signs of crime and antisocial behavior such as unrepaired broken windows create an environment of unrest that encourages further crime and disorder. The theory has been debated but, by and large, it has been adopted in cities and accepted as a theory with merit. So perhaps how a place looks is relevant to how a community behaves.
If we value our unique Berkshire communities, how do we protect and maintain them in this modern world? We have zoning bylaws and the officials meant to enforce them. Zoning bylaws are written to “protect the town’s significant environmental features, preserve the natural, scenic and aesthetic qualities of the community, and minimize the adverse effects of development on the town’s unique environmental and historic features.”
Some Berkshire towns have professional town managers but, by and large, we are governed by our citizens who willingly take on a huge obligation for a pittance. They do it, presumably, for love of place. At the same time, they face great and increasing pressure.
In planning meetings, rely upon a voice or voices pushing for “entering the 21st century” — making available to our tiny communities the technology of the modern urban world. It comes, if at all, at a price. The price is a change in how we look: What we must build and what we tear down to build it.
Another pressure our hard-working elected and appointed officials face is the same now as it was three centuries ago. It is interesting that what draws many to Berkshire today is no different than what drew people in the 18th century: land. The world outside our circle of mountains becomes more and more densely populated, more crowded, and Berkshire still has open land. That draws both chains and developers.
Patrick Sheehan purchased 320 acres in Stockbridge, a former Gilded Age estate. He wanted to develop it to include “a hotel with 40-50 guest rooms and suites, 139 condominium units adjacent to the hotel designed to mirror the historic era of the hotel, 34 single family residences in the rear of the property, restaurants, event space and amenities expected in a full-service resort open to the public, 15-20 acres of sustainable farmland open for the use of all residents, and access to hiking trails.”
Imagine only two people occupied the proposed units — that would mean an addition of 446 people in 223 units on approximately .5 square miles. That number swells when you include more than two people per unit and the staff necessary to run the operation. Allowance also has to be made for parking for the number of cars necessary to transport more than 446 people to the new place. That was the proposal made to a village with a population 1,947 people in an area of 23.7 square miles.
If there is any validity to any theory that proposes the relationship between physical attributes and the character of a community, Sheehan’s project would forever change Stockbridge. The scale is wrong. It flies in the face of every current zoning bylaw meant to protect the town.
In the alternative, Sheehan proposes to clearcut the trees for logging; install a major solar array; and build a few large, single-family houses on 2- or 4-acre lots. Is any buyer in Berkshire searching for a large, expensive, single-family home on a treeless lot that backs up to a solar farm?
If density, history and ethos, if the spirit and atmosphere of a community is worth preserving, then those who come here to make profits should find ways to help our beleaguered officials preserve it. If, by their coming, they destroy the very things that drew them here, at a minimum, they will lose money. Berkshire citizens, as the newcomer reminded us, lose a sense of place — a sense of coming home.
