Cookie-cutter subdivisions

I don’t want to see miles of cookie‐cutter subdivisions on treeless, scalped lots. _{– 2024 Fairhope Comprehensive Plan}

The expression “cookie-cutter” appears 13 times in Fairhope’s 2024 Comprehensive Plan. For what it’s worth, “Smart-Growth” only appears twice in the Comprehensive Plan, and “If you’re not growing, you’re dying” doesn’t appear at all.

This past Sunday the family and I headed deep into cookie-cutter land, to Fairhope Falls. I have written and spoken previously about how the people in some of our subdivisions probably socialize and enjoy life more than those of us in the older neighborhoods, and Sunday’s outing proved me right. In the half hour I spent introducing myself and handing out flyers, I met four different men cutting their own lawns with walk behind mowers, two men trying to program a robot lawn mower, four or five people out walking, a dozen or more people hanging out at the pool, and two boys who had laid their bikes in the grass, and were fishing in the pond.

Several garages were open, and each was full of tools and projects. (I didn’t see a Spitfire fuselage in any one’s garage, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if I had). We enjoyed ourselves so much that I intend to devote most of the time left in this campaign to meeting people in the boring & repetitive subdivisions (two more words I stole from the Comprehensive Plan).

Having said all that, I don’t want to see ground broken for one more big residential development around Fairhope. I feel the same way about the newest Fairhopers that grandparents feel about a grandchild they have been asked to raise unexpectedly. They love that child as their own, and will do anything in the world to see him succeed (just ask Obama or J.D. Vance), but they are not asking the child’s mother to give them six more.

Let’s slow down, and do our best to make Fairhope one town again. These aren’t cookie-cutters, they’re people, and the ones I’ve met are pretty great.