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Thursday, June 30, 2005
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OCM Back in ‘thesda now, UD wants to say one more word about Ocean City, Maryland before returning to the subject of universities. She wants to say a word about the irony of Municipal League officials from all over the state of Maryland choosing to meet in one of the worst urbanized resort settings UD has ever seen, in order to talk about how they can improve the look of their own cities and towns. UD’s husband attended a number of talks at Ocean City’s bayside convention center about how Maryland can turn deadly sprawl into living urbanism. Yet at no point did any speaker remark that the very building in which he or she was speaking was surrounded for ten miles on both sides by clogged traffic, cracked concrete parking lots, strip malls, and dead motels. When you turn on your tv in an Ocean City hotel room, a public service announcement appears, asking that you not kill or maim yourself, as so many have, crossing the six lanes of cars you have to cross to get to the beach. It’s the beach part that gets to UD. UD’s been around. She spent time a couple of summers ago in Biarritz. She lived on Bali for a long summer. She spent a birthday once on Santorini. She’s on intimate terms with Seven Mile Beach on Grand Cayman Island, and with the great sandy coves around Huatulco. UD has never seen so spectacular a beach as the one at Ocean City. It’s enormous. It goes on forever. Its sand is soft and tan and young and lovely. UD should be proud that she was born in Johns Hopkins Hospital, a few miles from one of the world’s great beaches; she should be proud that her father graduated from Ocean City High. But she’s ashamed that this hulking ruin of a cityscape is the Maryland coastal resort. No doubt it was politeness to one’s host that stayed the hand of the urban planners who spoke in theoretical terms of dangerous and depressing American landscapes when they could simply have walked their listeners outside. We have met the enemy, these speakers could have said, and he is us. |