#over-development

[vanishingsydney]

1960's-era apartment building facade. Not a cedar tree in sight, and only a few tenants remain. Prime target to be demolished to make way for an ugly,  swanky, high-rise residential development. Marrickville.

[environmentguru]

Bondi Pavilion saved from privatisation

Jim McIlroySydneySaturday, October 21, 2017The iconic Bondi Pavilion on the foreshore of Bondi Beach has been saved from privatisation, and discussions have commenced about plans for its future as a cultural centre and creative hub. The big swing aga https://www.environmentguru.com/pages/elements/element.aspx?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr&id=5641523

[hurleybirleynotsogurly]

Environmental rant of a different sort

I live in an apartment complex in the burbs smack dab in the middle of way too much commercial and industrial properties. Most of the industrial sites are empty or very close to it. Every strip mall has more than a few vacant places. The old mom and pop motels site empty most nights, unless there is a convention in town. And let's not forget the 2 new hotels that popped up in the last year. It is really sort of sad and a perfect example of corporate waste. 

Anyway, there are more skunks in my neighborhood than usual. Most summers, I would see one or two on rare occasions. I watched five from my balcony last night. The other night, while walking my dog I noticed one just strutting around the playground.On tonight's walk we had to back track and duck behind buildings three times to avoid the black and white menaces. 

So, I got to talking with a neighbor. She was out with her dog and I warned her of one I saw near her place. She said the apartment managers were going to try to do "something" about the problem. But what caused the problem?

A few months ago, some developer bought a chunk of land next to our complex. 

They cleared out all of the trees and grass and have a big side stated they will be build to suit for sale of lease.

Will they replant the trees so the skunks can have their homes back?

I've also noticed more groundhogs.

A few possums.

A raccoon.

Not to mention an increase in fox sightings, but they are really rare.

Nature lived here first. And the animals really don't need another bank or Chinese buffet. 

[evokit-notes]

My worst case scenario is ....a kind of hyper-developed society at just below the level at which ecological limits are reached. In other words, you can keep this over-civilized anthill society going indefinitely. Everyone's in a race. ..... There's a kind of division developing in the green movement over this. The greens have failed to prevent over-development pushing ecosystems beyond their limits, and all of the traditional methods that we all tried for years don't work on anything like the scale they need to. And faced with this .... a couple of camps [are] developing. ..... One of them you could say Dark Mountain is part of, which people who see the system hitting the buffers and who think we have to negotiate our way through that, culturally and practically. The other camp is the old-fashioned cornucopians, who are coming back strongly at the moment. Steward Brand seems to be their current spiritual leader! They can also see that the old green solutions have failed, but they argue that the world populations want to live in cities and wants advanced technology and this isn't going to change, so we need to work with it. They're all about this hi-tech, centralised future with GM foods and nuclear power and hyper-capitalism and synthetic biology, and high density cities, all very controlled and rational, lots of wild nature growing outside the boundaries, you know .... we're all Gods

Paul Kingsnorth | Dark Mountain - Issue 3 | p142-143