Skip to footer

The upside to sprawl?

The undeniable upside to sprawl is comfort and space. But are those luxuries really worth it?

|
Cyrus McCrimmon/AP/The Denver Post
A man walks his baggage through empty lines to pass through security in the main terminal in a quiet Denver International Airport. Kahn spends a quiet afternoon in a roomy airport and ponders the lure of sprawl.

I am at the enormous new Sacramento airport waiting to fly back to LA.  I have learned my value of time.  I could have paid $120 to take a 3 hour earlier flight to LA but I said no and I have gotten a lot of work done in this quiet airport that offers free wifi. I can even vouch for the men's bathroom quality and space.  Roomy!  Maybe sprawl and new infrastructure has its advantages as there are almost no people at this airport but infinite amounts of space and cushy seats and electric sockets for plugging stuff into.  The folks at JFK airport in NYC should visit Sacramento to compare their craggy airport to this one.

I have more mixed feelings about Amtrak. To start on  a positive note, this morning I took a $9 dollar ride from Davis to Sacramento on Amtrak.  But, Amtrak kept me up last night. My hotel was in the middle of downtown Davis and the railroad stops downtown and the train tracks are right there.  As trains travel through Davis , they blow their horn and I kept waking up.  The same thing happens to me in Berkeley and when I was in Raleigh recently, I was told that the same thing happens there.  I don't know if Amtrak blows that horn for safety reasons but does have some noise pollution effects.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to The upside to sprawl?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Green-Economics/2012/0209/The-upside-to-sprawl
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe