For those of you who do not live in this state, this is the situation which is quickly becoming reality across this area. (Meaning North Carolina). If there is any kind of land, trees or no trees, which is not inhabited by a 30-foot tall, 50-foot wide, 40,000 pounds-of-ugly-concrete building, it will be very shortly. No matter what the protests of the community, they are almost pushed aside by shortsighted city planning fools. More on that later.
"Urban planning", and "North Carolina" do not belong in the same sentence together. In most states that I have been to, there has at least been some kind of rail/subway system. In this state, the state planners and politicians must have been smoking something when they said that a rail system would be ugly, unnecessary, and besides, there was no room for it. Now if the drunken monkeys (AKA urban planners) had left space for the rails in between the four-lane (2 on each side) highways, they might have been able to fit them in. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but two-lane roads cannot handle the several million new citizens who come to this state for whatever reason. On top of that, which is uglier: a semi-clean (barring any New York City-type graffiti) and efficient rail/subway network, or a bunch of roads built in 1947 (last resurfaced in 1986) with potholes the size of Hibachis?
The worst example of drunken monkeying around is the utter lack of regard for trees, plants, and nature in general. (By the way, I fully realize the irony of using a computer to say that.) The developers, for the most part, run the show in North Carolina, second only to hog and tobacco farmers. If there is a piece of land anywhere within 100 miles of a city, there is a developer's name and sign posted on it. Some of these signs have been there so long that they have faded or been overgrown by several species of weeds. Some of these developers have bizarre Southern nicknames like "Boots". How this developer got this particular nickname is unknown to me, and personally I would not want to know. Back to the lack of respect: if there is a tree anywhere on the property, more likely than not it will be knocked down by some schmuck with a bulldozer. Also, for some reason, the developers around here destroy more than they create (translation: build ugly structures).
Any guy I know, and most men overall, love to operate heavy machinery like tanks, cranes, etc. However, some of these men go overboard on the operating equipment bit. This is why some newly-sold properties look like testing sites for land mines. Where there IS grass, usually it will be about six blades that were shielded by a cigarette butt, or something to that effect. Developers and their hired apes generally destroy every tree more than four feet tall, then replace them with mutant trees, which I call "shrubs". Shrubs are easily spotted, as they are the pencil-thin "trees" out front that grow about one inch every eight years. Blue spruce trees grow faster than these things. For some reason, there are large gaps between the shrubs. Is that really necessary? It is not like these things are going to grow any time soon, and filling the gap between said shrubs would only take around 100 years.
Finally, the last topic of this rant: what land they build on. It does not matter what the land is, if they can fit a bathroom and bedroom on it, they build on it. This is the mentality behind the new houses that are built. Once they built a house on top of a 50-foot tall hill with a 45 degree angle to get up to the garage. It looks like a Lego house assembled by a stoned chimpanzee, since the "yard" is something like four feet of what used to be grass, then a 40-foot dropoff onto the road. Unless the buyer is Tarzan, this property should have been used as a playground slide or something. Picture one of those California flood shots where the house was sliding into the river, and you would get a general idea of where houses are built. Basically, if they can fit a bulldozer and a blasting cap onto the property, who knows what will be built next?