sprawl

Paw-Paw Action Alert

John Lane — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 10:38:20 -0400

I understand special interest groups are hard at work alerting their membership about the series of meetings on zoning possibilities and changes to our Spartanburg County land use ordinances.

I'd like to offer a few talking points of my own and focus on a small part of the changes under discussion with our county ordinances: stream-side buffers.

Not Another Boiling Springs

John Lane — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 08:27:25 -0400

There's a theory that everyone has an opposite somewhere in the world, a person that is you, only it's your dark twin turned 180 degrees. I just spent a week in a vibrant little village in southern Ohio. Boiling Springs, South Carolina, meet Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Spartanburg County Council's Lost Decade

John Lane — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 08:23:29 -0400

Spartanburg County Council is contemplating entry into the modern era of land-use planning. As Yogi Berra so famously said, "It's déjà vu all over again."

You see, talk of Spartanburg County land-use planning is nothing new. It came up here a decade ago. There's talk now of a referendum in November with a single question to see which way the land-use winds are blowing.

Last Harvest

John Lane — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 07:05:16 -0400

I've been reading a book called THE LAST HARVEST by Witold Rybcznski. It's the story of the building of a new subdivision in rural Pennsylvania. Simply stated, Rybcznski follows the development of 90 acres of cornfield from idea to completion, but it's more. In 200 pages THE LAST HARVEST tells the story of real estate development in America. What could be more relevant for our region?

Triple Bogey or Hole in One?

John Lane — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 09:23:42 -0400

This past week a $100 million redevelopment plan was announced for the Lan Yair golf course on Spartanburg's Halfway Branch, one of the largest tributaries of Lawson's Fork Creek. Halfway Branch rises just north of East Main Street. The unassuming creek and several bold streams that feed it were dammed long ago to form the old ponds of the golf course.

Small and Smaller

John Lane — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 07:47:22 -0500

My writer/activist friend Janisse Ray has recently written an essay called "Bleeding Fields," all about rural exodus in the South. Janisse grew up in Baxley, a small farming town in south Georgia. Though she wasn't raised on a farm (her father ran a junk yard), her grandparents were still on the land just outside of town all through her girlhood. She grew up eating home-grown okra and tomatoes. She knew the smell of tilled fields, could recognize a chicken shack and a mule. She grew up believing in small communities like Baxley and the surrounding rural culture that supported them.

The Duke of Deliverance and the Prince of Tides

John Lane — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 07:37:24 -0500

Last weekend I was asked to attend a conference at the University of South Carolina on the 10th anniversary of James Dickey's death. Acclaimed poet, author of Deliverance, and mentor to hundreds, Dickey taught in Columbia for nearly thirty years. Along with Pat Conroy, James Dickey is one of the two great literary figures South Carolina has produced since World War II. Their poetry and prose form gigantic rocky peaks still looming over all aspiring writers wanting to float their voices out on South Carolina's literary waters.

Sprawl Southern Style

John Lane — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 18:46:27 -0500

We set out on our Cornbread and Sushi road trip to look for the changing South, and driving through Charlotte, Chapel Hill, Roanoke, and Charlottesville we found it-towns changed to edge-cities, farmland changed to suburbs, two-lanes changed to four-lanes, small-scale farming changed to corporate agriculture, mom-and-pop businesses changed to chain stores.

Riding the Hogback Highway

John Lane — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 08:07:19 -0500

This week we drove U.S. Highway 176 north to Landrum three days in a row to watch our son play in a basketball tournament at the new District 1 high school. We could have driven faster, more sterile I-26, but taking the old highway has its advantages and insights.

Come Hell or High Water

John Lane — Mon, 08 Jan 2001 00:00:00 -0500

(Appeared in Blue Ridge Syndicate, 1/8/2001)

With a $1 billion project on the line, South Carolina developer Burroughs & Chapin in late December filed the last of an extraordinary volley of documents aimed at persuading the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to revise the floodplain map of the Congaree River.