observations near the border

We spent an interesting day today. First we drove through Irvine, CA, supposedly the safest city in the country. It isn't much of a city however, more like an endless sprawl of suburbia. One tract of housing after another, with a few business districts in between and a few malls. The latter two can be recognized by the enormous parking lots that surround them. The whole area is so non-descript, it could be anywhere. You can find neighborhoods like it in Pleasanton, Walnut Creek, Sacramento, and all over the LA basin I am sure. Cookie cutter luxury would be the word for it. Neighborhoods that are very pedestrian or bike-unfriendly. Only suited for cars, preferably big suburban SUV type cars.

And shortly afterwards we drove through Mexico, a different kind of sprawl here, mostly the result of poverty and neglect. Equally unsustainable really, although living in Irvine is probably more pleasant. Being in Mexico felt like being in a prison camp. We drove several roads that ran parallel to the border, a kind of no-man's land with high voltage lighting, lookout towers and other features you associate with concentration camps. The road went up and down a lot and so one had great vistas of a line drawn in the sand, with a fence next to it. On the right was Mexico, with housing and roads leaning against the border. On the left was a cleared zone, a kind of DMZ, or a no-man's land reminiscent of the space between the trenches in world war I.

And to top it all of, we spend one hour standing in a line waiting to cross the border to paradise. With us were hundreds of other cars, all moving at a snails pace in 7 parallel lanes that stretched for nearly a mile. All full of oversized vehicles, spewing out greenhouse gases. The amount of pollution generated for doing nothing was just staggering. All these cars with their engines running, their air conditioners or heaters blowing, all sitting nearly frozen on the road, waiting for the homeland security folks to do their thing. And what is that thing you ask ? They look in the car, they look at your papers and they say, go or welcome home. Or they pull the car aside for a closer look. It is senseless pollution on a grand scale.