Does the Greenville Area Need to Keep Growing?

Greenville County is growing. This is not shocking news to anyone who lives here. One take on the growth I never run into is, “I love this growth and wish that it would continue as it has been.” Why?

When we think about people wanting our current growth patterns to change, breaking down this desire is essential. My wife and I had a child in February; everyone has been excited to meet him, so I will assume this is not the “bad” type of growth. So let’s consider the development that irks most people is caused by people moving into our community. However, I don’t encounter many people who dislike welcoming specific neighbors to their neighborhoods. So I think it points more to the desire for growth's effects to stop. 

However, I don’t think it’s all the effects of growth. I like the new variety of shopping and dining options in our community. The new Harris Teeter being built at Hudson and Old Spartanburg Roads will bring a variety of new options I would have had to go several more miles to find. I like seeing concerts of artists at the Peace Center. I like watching our community's increasing size create more opportunities for entrepreneurs and small businesses to thrive.

So when we say we don’t like the effects of growth, we’re talking about the adverse effects. We don’t like the busy roads, the hard time you can have trying to find a new place to rent or buy, and the sprawl of homes out into the county's undeveloped northern and southern ends. We don’t like how the new development can displace underserved communities from their homes. We don’t like how the place we knew so well can all of a sudden not feel like home at all.

A solution I hear a lot is, “Can’t we just make all this growth stop and stay the way we are?” If that were possible, I would love that. But let’s consider the three standard options: growth, status quo, and decline. Remembering that the status quo in any system is nearly impossible to maintain (you generally slide into decline), the choice seems to be between growth or decline, right?

There is another way, I believe: growth dictated by the vision for the community we want to build. This is the most challenging option. The choice to try to guide the development we want for our community will cause us to grapple with many complicated trade-offs. The choices that lead to unmanaged growth and decline deal with absolutes; we either take our hands off the wheel or slam the brakes. Guiding growth well leads us to make many hard decisions.

Another challenge is that these problems don’t fall neatly into traditional political divides. Because of this, they don’t get the attention they deserve. This gives us a unique opportunity to pause and reflect: What do we want our community to look like? What do we value?

As is laid out in recent court orders*, these are questions our elected officials must grapple with. It’s up to us to provide them the incentives to grapple with them well. We must resist the urge to be sucked into the political fight of the day and work collaboratively with our representatives at the local level to help them have a clear sense of what our community truly values instead of just showing up to yell when a decision is made we disagree with. 

So take some time to find your local elected officials and email them, call them, invite them to lunch, and talk about the community you want to live in. Help them have a real face in mind as they make their decisions. You can use this tool to find your representatives in Greenville County.

Over the next few months, we’ll aim to talk about some practical ways you can be helpful to your community leaders in giving your input on your community’s vision and direction. 

One of the main ways you can help us do this is to support our work financially. None of our board members, myself included, are paid for our work here. So every dollar you give supports our mission of making Taylors a place everyone can belong through awareness, advocacy, and action. A monthly gift of just $10 dollars a month can go a long way. So please consider how you can give to support our mission. You can setup a recurring gift in moments by clicking here.