The many sides of the "housing crisis" — it’s later than you think in California and Texas

We bemoan the loss of pristine nature.

We cherish it, enshrine it in national parks, visit it, protect it, photograph it, promote it.

And yet will will lose more and more of it, because that is the way things go.

More and more people, with our ravenous appetites for novelty. New continents, new forests, new ports, new riches to harvest, new people to conquer.

A smaller world in 2008 than in 1492.

All the gifts of Nature, it seems, are to be brought under the whip of Mankind.

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The Unforeseen, executive produced by Terrence Malick and Robert Redford, premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Called “the best film at the festival, hands down,” the film documents the struggles between development and preservation of Austin Texas.

 

View the trailer, reviews and latest news at  http://www.theunforeseenfilm.com.

2008 Theater Showings:
March 7 - Boston - Kendall Square Cinema
March 14 - Los Angeles - NuArt
March 14 - San Francisco - Lumiere
March 14 - Berkeley, CA - Shattuck
March 28 - Austin, TX - Alamo South Lamar
April 4 - Seattle, WA - Varsity
April 11 - Denver, CO - Landmark
April 18 - Philadelphia, PA - Ritz Theater
April 18 - San Diego, CA - Ken Cinema
May 17 - Columbus, OH - Wexner Center for the Arts
more cities coming soon....

And another movie about suburban sprawl: Radiant City.

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And in today's Los Angeles Times: “A stoic little town faces tomorrow. A massive housing project may mean the end for Neenach, in the Antelope Valley.” Be sure to watch the Times's video, which is beautifully produced and photographed. They simply listen in on some of the folksy wisdom of Sigfried Carrle, a 76 year old man who moved out to this rural setting in Los Angeles County years ago.

Listen to a discussion on KCRW radio today, where they speak with New York Times business columnist Gretchen Morgenson:

The Housing Crisis Is Eating America's Economy
Home foreclosure may become an industry in itself. Today's New York Times features a California company called You Walk Away, which is looking for clients whose mortgages are now worth more than their houses, so they can't refinance to meet rising payments. For less than a thousand dollars, You Walk Away will show them how to deliver their problems back to the bank by foreclosure. Part of the problem is the idea that housing is not just a place to live, but a gold-plated investment whose value just keeps going up. What goes up must come down, leaving tens of thousands of people with increased payments on loans worth more than their houses. Are greedy banks and investors at fault? What about homebuyers themselves? And what's the impact on an economy that depends on consumer spending?

Don't tell me you didn't see this coming.

 

Technorati Tags: Austin, nature, oil, OilAddiction, overpopulation, pollution, sprawl, suburb, suburbansprawl, Texas, TheUnforseen, traffic

Lancaster's Post Office mural: a desert scene with Joshua trees

The 1940 post office in Lancaster, California (above) has this WPA mural inside. According to the site, the mural is titled “Hauling Water Pipe through Antelope Valley” - oil on canvas, by Jose Moya del Piño (1941).

Check out New Deal Art During the Great Depression.

Technorati Tags: AntelopeValley, JoshuaTree, Lancaster, mural, PostOffice, WorksProgressAdministration

Desert dumping

I'm constantly amazed at how we as a society are willing to tolerate blatant environmental abuse. Can we not instill in ourselves a sense of caring for the land, sea, and sky? And can we not afford to clean up its defilement by careless and callouse human action? We could, if we made it a priority.

I would suggest that our priorities are messed up.

Report desert dumping in the Antelope Valley here: call (888)-8-DUMPING between 7 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.,  Monday through Thursday.

Technorati Tags: environment

Tejon Ranch, Ritter Ranch ~ more goodbyes to California

The last great rancho in California, Tejon Ranch, is in the process of going under the knife. Some of this landscape is now a paradise of rolling hills, native perennial bunchgrasses, streams, wildflowers, and ancient oak stands. If the Tejon Ranch Corporation has its way, it will become just another sprawling developer-driven “community” of 70,000 people living in 23,000 homes, set in the once-open California landscape 60 miles north of the last century's booming metropolis, Los Angeles  (see John Gertner's story in the Sunday March 18, 2007 New York Times, “Playing SimCity for Real”).

The giant master-planned development will encompass nearly 12,000 acres, and will, no doubt, require huge amounts of energy to build and sustain, from the energy expended to build a city from scratch so far away from the urban centers — with its roads and water and sewage and electricty and cable TV — to the energy needed by residents who, we can be sure, will be regular folks driving regular inefficient cars and cooling their oversized homes in the scorching California sun.

Below: typical suburban sprawl in California, 2006.

Below: future site of Centennial, California, seen in 2003. This area is just east of the Interstate 5 / Highway 138 interchange (Google map), a 70 minute drive north of Los Angeles.

Another massive project is underway in the nearby Anaverde Valley, where a gorgeous landscape is now being scraped over to build more thousands of homes far away from anything. Below, grading the land in November 2006, for either Ritter Ranch or Anaverde (does it really even matter?).

More about suburbs, sprawl, and all that jazz:

• Save Tejon Ranch and especially their map with photo tour
• Even the Injuns done sold out: Ritter Ranch breaks ground [Le Blog]
• Ritter Ranch in Palmdale: The Bulldozing of California Goes On [Le Blog]
• The Geography of Suburban Sprawl in Southern California’s Antelope Valley
• Suburban sprawl and other calamities ~ panoramic photos
• Antelope Valley // desert suburbs ~ photo collection

“‘We have invested all our wealth in a living arrangement with no future,’ said James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency which postulates the end of suburbia. ‘In building suburbia we embarked on the greatest misallocation of wealth in the history of the world.’”

February 5, 2007: Driving Obsession photo exhibit ~ Auto Carnage

On Monday, February 5, 2007, my Auto Carnage photos (some here, and more here) will be part of a one-night event called “Driving Obsession,” organized by the San Francisco Writer's Grotto.

Details on their Web site:

Driving Obsession

Grotto Nights is back and it's furious, fast, and free. Join us for a night of reportage, science, and art in the form of a subversive Valentine to our cars.

When: MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5 at 7 p.m. (doors open at 6:30; seats available on a first come first served basis; early arrival is highly recommended). After the event there will be a party for audience and performers.

Where: MEZZANINE (444 Jessie Street@ Mint, San Francisco 94103). No-Host Bar/21+

Fee: Unlike gasoline, it's FREE!!

DRIVING OBSESSION is a fond, provocative look at our obsession with cars and driving, and how it's changing the world.

Technorati Tags: automobile, DrivingObsession, MattJalbert, Mezzanine, AutoCarnage, SanFrancisco, SanFranciscoWritersGrotto, TheGrotto

Down in the Antelope Valley: pictures of the place

Down in the Antelope Valley, where the homes and the roads did roam… photographs of the Valley as I've seen it.

(above) New homes under construction in the Quartz Hill area, 2005.

(above) A cinderblock wall marks the boundry of a housing subdivision, 1994.

(above) Lancaster Boulevard, the main drag in downtown Lancaster, California, 2006. Lancaster is the second largest settlement in the Antelope Valley after Palmdale, the next town south.

(above) Moonrise behind Saddleback Butte State Park, 1994.

(above) A cemetery near Palmdale in the Antelope Valley, 1995.

Photos copyright Matt Jalbert. All rights reserved.   Contact.

Technorati Tags: AntelopeValley, HousingBoom, HousingBubble, Lancaster, MojaveDesert, Palmdale, SouthernCalifornia, sprawl

And now for something completely

« the antelope va//ey »

California State Prison, Los Angeles County (LAC)

In beautiful Lancaster, California.

Check out “Crime Rave: Law-and-order demagoguery,” by Anthony Platt, about the increasing incarceration of our country's poor.

Technorati Tags: AntelopeValley, CaliforniaStatePrison, Lancaster

Ritter Ranch in Palmdale: The Bulldozing of California Goes On

Google's satellite photos shows the massive bulldozing of California's beautiful foothills for the building of thousands of homes in the Antelope Valley as part of the Ritter Ranch housing development.

Click image for an enlargement. Or view the nearby Anaverde development on Google Maps (scroll west to see Ritter Ranch).

Here comes traffic, chain stores, people living their lives in gigantically wasteful homes filled with the debt-financed trappings of advertiser-driven middle class life. The future residents will likely be Republicans despite the party leadership's abuse of their demographic; Christians in name only; and disconnected from and suspicious of one another and especially of The Urban Other — anything and anyone from “down below” in Los Angeles. Oh, it's gonna be a great life.

Below: future homesite, circa 1994, on Quartz Hill in the Antelope Valley.



Below: a 2004 view of the Pelona Vista foothills with a small sampling of the discards that are frequently dumped there, near the site of Ritter Ranch in the Antelope Valley, California.


As a wise man once wrote, “Farewell, promised land..”

Joshua Tree in the Antelope Valley

Do you ever really need a reason to take pictures of Joshua Trees? Found in southern California's Antelope Valley, November 2005.

Wildfire in the Antelope Valley

From the July 7, 2005 Antelope Valley Press:

“PALMDALE - Smoke still billowed above the hills and mountains south of Palmdale on Wednesday, casting a gray shadow over the charred remnants of the previous night's fire.

The 1,200-acre fire was first reported around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday and quickly spread around the Ana Verde Hills. The fire is believed to have started on Sierra Pelona Road, a dirt road in the hills.

Though the mountains were charred, and 20 houses were evacuated, no structures were burned in the fire that kept 250 firefighters working all night.”

Even the Injuns done sold out: Ritter Ranch breaks ground.

On the one hand, you have the Antelope Valley being celebrated for its abundant spring wildflowers:

(Photo: Bill MacKenzie, Antelope Valley Press)

And on the other hand, you have the Valley being bulldozed into oblivion for suburban sprawl development. This, from the Antelope Valley Press, Wednesday April 6, 2005:

“Bulldozers grade dirt at the site of the new Ritter Ranch housing development Tuesday during groundbreaking ceremonies at the Palmdale development. The planned community is envisioned as the site of 7,200 homes, along with parks, schools and recreation in the rolling hills west of Palmdale.”

(Photo: Antelope Valley Press)

Here are some friendly fellows doing the heavy digging:

(Photo: Jeff Goldwater / LA Daily News)

The AV Press story includes this bizarre reportage:

“A Native American tribal leader fanned sprigs of burning sage with his ceremonial eagle feather and blessed the dedication of the Ritter Ranch development…”

Even the Injuns done sold out!

Check out the video of the groundbreaking on SunCal's website. What do the developers have to say about this? “Our goal is to create a premium master-planned community that will offer a superior lifestyle.” Yeah, whatever that means.

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Where in the world -- ok, where in the Antelope Valley of southern California -- is Ritter Ranch? The development is bounded generally by 40th and 60th Streets West, Elizabeth Lake Road and the Pelona Vista foothills. Check out this Google satellite view of the hillside grading.

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Liquor Store in the Antelope Valley, Los Angeles County

Things I saw at a liquor store in the Antelope Valley, Los Angeles County, on a Saturday night around 7pm in January 2005: a weathered tall skinny old guy in jeans and black t-shirt, bushy gray beard and baseball cap, buying a can of Pepsi and two packs of Marlboros; a chunky white woman, late 20s, wearing loose-fitting sweats, telling the Asian shopkeepers, “l’ll get that $9.99 bottle of vodka.”

Below: Sunday morning, Antelope Valley strip mall parking lot.