Population level: Calling all angels

Phil Marx Albemarle County
Published: May 4, 2008

A recent letter compared the Advocates for Sustainable Albemarle Population study of the optimal sustainable population level for Charlottesville and Albemarle County to spending money to determine how many angels can dance on the head of a pin (“Popula-tion objectives are suspect,” The Daily Progress, April 16).

Not a bad comparison.

If you consider that the county doesn’t even know what sort of population level will result from build-out under current zoning and yet it continues to approve higher- and higher-density developments, I think whatever it contributes to an independent study is well spent - and cheap!

This is something the county should already be doing, but now it’s reaping the benefit without having to foot even a small fraction of the bill.

Let’s put it this way: If you were an angel dancing on the head of a pin, and you liked it there, but someone else controlled how many more angels were allowed on that pinhead, wouldn’t you like to be sure that the person in control had some idea of the level of density that pinhead could handle before dancing became impossible?

Or at what level the quality and freedom of movement of your dance became restricted? Or, worse, at what level of density you might lose your hold on that pinhead and fall off the precipice?

We are, all of us, privileged to live in this area, and we should, all of us, want to be good custodians and protect that privilege by maintaining what it is about this area that makes us want to live here.

Don’t fear growth, because it’s inevitable, but instead learn when it becomes to our benefit to control or stop growth - before we can no longer dance, or we get shoved off our pin.