The Long Island Question

I'm having a lot of trouble with Long Island. I grew up on the island, and it was a great place to grow up. But it's also very easy to criticize the place: (1) too many people, not enough land, (2) too car dependent for its own good, (3) too disjointed and therefore no physical sense of community. Yet it remains a very popular place to live, with soaring land values and a lot of construction. Some of this construction is beyond my understanding. Who would want to purchase one of these million dollar plus homes being built smack on top of the LIE service road or Shelter Rock Road or some other heavily traveled highway? Someone apparently, because they are selling. I think my disdain comes from a historical knowledge of what Long Island used to be, and no longer is. Let me be clear. That's not to say that Long Island should have been reserved as a playground only for the Vanderbilts, Whitneys, and Morgans. A walk (or more likely, a drive) through any one of Long Island's old villages reveals the historical presence of a middle class that coexisted with the captains of industry. I'm particularly inspired by a drive through the Village of Roslyn. Roslyn Road, with a Duck Pond to the east and "normal" (i.e., not estate) houses from the 17th through 20th centuries is a reminder of what Long Island used to be. It's sad to realize that now, and for the last forty years at least, this small village is just an enclave among the cookie-cutter subdevelopments that now cover much of East Hills and the Anytown, USA landscape of Northern Boulevard east of Queens and west of Glen Cove Road. East of Glen Cove Road, Northern Boulevard is decidedly more pastoral and less a series of traffic lights, gas stations, and car dealerships. But any observer can see that over the last five years, it too has become an access road to treeless subdevelopments of seemingly pre-fabricated multi-million dollar homes. My strong opinion against cookie-cutter homes and the removal of trees is sometimes dismissed as "elitist." But I should stress that I have particular disdain for those homes that pretend to have architectural merit, or at least the price tag to suggest a modicum of architectural creativity, but have absolutely none. I certainly do think that there is a place--in a more urban setting--for attached housing or similarly designed housing. Commonwealth Avenue in Boston is a prime example, but so too are the Post World War I (but Pre 1920s Red Scare) housing projects of Bridgeport, Connecticut. So too, I think, is the townhome community in which I live. But these three examples were designed as a whole--with principles of good architecture in mind. The designers were designing a community, not just a building to sell. Buildings sell at all kinds of prices. Communities, and a home in a community, also come at all types of prices. And everyone's entitled to their piece of a community. Unfortunately, it seems not everyone has the taste to prefer (and demand) a community.