Bin Gregory Productions

Do you enjoy staring out the window during your commute or while on vacation? Chances are pretty good you are gazing on land that is managed by state, county or city road departments. How they choose to manage that land directly influences what kind of experience you have on your commute. I remember as a kid growing up in Southeast Michigan staring out at the trees along the freeway and imagining what vast expanse of forest we were traveling through. The fact is that the strips of woods I was staring at were precisely that: strips, probably no more than the hundred feet or so it takes to block vision through the trees. If you enjoy the woodsy feel of the drive up 23/75 to the Mackinac Bridge, you are being taken in by the same illusion. By and large, the woods you see extend no further than the right-of-way. But that’s not a bad thing. Your enjoyment is real, and the woods serve an ecological function, humble as it may be. My point is that those trees are there only by the grace of the governing road department, who have decided to manage those areas according to the principles of Integrated Roadside Vegetation Management.

Now, if all it takes is a slender strip of land and fairly hands-off management to create that enjoyment and impart that illusion, why not bring that into the city? If you’ve driven the Southfield or the Lodge this summer, or any summer for that matter, you have probably seen the dead grass, the eroded slopes, the blowing dust, the lawnmower ruts, the stunted trees that come from trying to maintain an english lawn on a 1:4 slope in the middle of a sea of concrete and asphalt. (‘d like to provide a picture here, but I don’t want to get run over. Maybe the next traffic jam I sit in.) In fact, this is starting to happen. Check out I-75 north and south of the 696 interchange. Isn’t that nice? Typically, if the slope reaches the shoulder, they’ll mow a courtesy strip and let the upper slope naturalize. The only reason you don’t see more of it, I’m sure, is because the departments are afraid of bad reactions from the public. So give them a call or send an email and tell them what you like.

More from OpenDemocracy.net

Planting has become an intensely political act. Palestinians are continuously planting olive groves to secure ownership of land not built on; Israel does the same, but with faster-growing pine trees. These kinds of trees became undeclared symbols of the two national groups’ ownership claims. In both cases planting is replaced by construction when the time allows for it.

The choice of trees is interesting. Perhaps the Palestinians are so close to the bone that they cannot afford to plant something that bears no food, even in strategic circumstances, whereas the Israeli “bedroom colonies” have no such constraint. There must be some kind of squatter’s law in effect to make this necessary, whereby if the land is not serving some use it can be legally taken over by squatters after a time.

Following up on the previous post, here is a picture showing the Israeli-only modern freeway overpass with a winding dirt road below it for Palestinians.