Like a handful of new schools set to be built in the mid-Hudson, the new Cornwall high will be far from any village, reached only by cars and by buses. And if it's zoned for residential, this is America you can build where you want. Zoning was once seen as necessary when the middle classes abandoned cities in the '50s and '60s and caused suburbia. But it's now seen as a chief culprit. Much of current, traditional zoning pulls apart the elements of life you live here, you work 12 miles away, the school is another five miles from there, shopping is across town.
Costs go up highway, road transportation costs.
So we become automobile dependent and subtle but deep we become strangers, lonesome for a neighborhood. It's not just land that gets ripped up by sprawl. George Thurston sees a toll on people. He sees it in Blooming Grove where he lives and in Monroe-Woodbury where his kids go to school. This growth is very divisive.