The Great Housing Project of Earth
Mother used to tell me that before the Big Building Boom, people actually walked on dirt. Real dirt! Not the composite-engineered-soil-substitute we keep in those sad little window boxes, but authentic, straight-from-the-ground dirt that supposedly went on for miles. I always thought she was being dramatic, like when she claimed people once slept without white noise machines programmed to "Construction Site Ambiance."
It started, as these things often do, with a perfectly reasonable need to not freeze to death. Our ancestors, bless their primitive hearts, got tired of foraging for berries while developing hypothermia and thought, "Hey, what if we didn't do that?" So they built houses. Simple enough.
These houses, naturally, led to babies, because that's what happens when people aren't spending all their time being cold and miserable. And these babies grew up with the radical notion that they too deserved to not freeze to death, so they built more houses. The cycle continued with the relentless momentum of a homeowners' association planning committee.
My great-grandmother kept a photo of the Last Tree, which stood somewhere in what used to be Nebraska. The photo shows a scraggly oak surrounded by building permits and surveyor stakes. Legend has it that three different contractors got into a fistfight over who had the right to bulldoze it. Now it's a duplex with excellent subway access and "authentic woodland-inspired decorative elements."
These days, our planet is less "third rock from the sun" and more "largest gated community in the solar system." Every square inch is covered in houses, apartments, condos, and the occasional artisanal coffee shop (there's one every three doors, by law). The ocean? Houseboats as far as the eye can see. The mountains? Terraced housing developments with "dramatic views of other housing developments." Even the deserts are now just endless subdivisions with really effective air conditioning.
Last week, my daughter asked me what "outside" meant. I tried explaining the concept of unenclosed space, but she just laughed and asked if I was telling her another one of those silly stories about dirt.
Sometimes I stand on my roof deck (which is technically someone else's ground floor) and look up at the stars. I can't help but wonder if alien civilizations are up there, pointing at our planet and saying, "Look at that weird gray ball covered in HOA violations." Though I suppose if they ever visited, we'd just build them a house too. It's kind of our thing.
