Urban Sprawl Threatens Locals

To the Editors:

As students at Oberlin, and even as professors, we have a tendency to pass through our time on campus never leaving the library, the classroom, our dorms or our homes. We spend years in a place, almost entirely unaware of the choices that are being made today that will affect the social, economic and environmental vitality of tomorrow.
Oberlin College sits in a quiet Ohio town, but this is changing. A “big-box store,” as in a Wal-Mart type store, is being planned just south of town. How will the downtown fair in the face of this strip-mall explosion?
An interchange has been approved to the north between Route 58 and I-80. Although the Turnpike Commission has not yet purchased the land, when the plans are executed they will bring with them an influx of residential and commercial development along the 58 corridor. There have been talks of widening Route 58 to a four-lane highway. You cannot widen Oberlin’s Main Street, so what will we do with the increased traffic? How many of the new houses will be affordable, and for whom? What is the future of farmland in this area?
The sprawling tide of Cleveland outmigration is surging into Lorain County. Developers and municipal authorities are making plans that, in several years, will change the landscape of the greater Oberlin area.
The Oberlin Review and the Oberlin News-Tribune need writers who will research the plans and policies that are being drafted right now. We need to keep the Oberlin community, both the College and the town, informed on the changes that could happen down the road. The best way to fight sprawl is to know your community and what’s happening around it.
Are you interested in the opportunity to do investigative reporting? If you want to get credit next semester to research development stories and patterns in the Oberlin area, contact the Oberlin Design Initiative at ohousing@oberlin.edu.

–Morgan Williams
College senior