Wasted Resources

I'm feeling simultaneously virtuous and suckered. What can induce this state of mind? Why, doing yardwork on a beautiful holiday afternoon, of course. I mowed the lawn today. If ever there was a human activity more wasteful of both human resources and petroleum resources than keeping a lawn, I'd like to know what it is. Next year shall be the year of the edible landscape, and I don't mean for sheep and goats. (I'd have a goat, but city ordinances forbid me to keep even a chicken or two on my quarter acre, so I'm pretty sure goats are ruled out, too.)

Here are two Main Street sites that illustrate another way to waste precious real estate. Neither of these buildings seems to want to be on Main Street, as demonstrated by the vast expanses of asphalt that they have placed between themselves and the sidewalk. Both of them would be more at home in a strip mall. Fortunately for the rest of Main Street, these buildings are almost directly across the street from each other, and so can keep each other company.

The supermarket is within walking distance of several multiple housing units, both rentals and condos, and yet the parking lot was clearly designed for far more automobiles than I have ever seen there. Maybe this is the only way that the big chain supermarkets know how to build, regardless of the location. They could have used some advice from Gristedes in New York City or Caraluzzi's in Bethel, and located it with an entrance, or at least a walkway, from the sidewalk, so as to be more welcoming to pedestrians.

The smaller building, by contrast, seems to have too few parking spaces for its purposes. I wish the building had been sited so that the entrance would be closer to the sidewalk, and with the parking spaces at the rear of the building, as many Main Street commercial buildings have done.