Natural Urbanity? or Urban Desert?

Growing up in Texas there was a keen awareness for me of the brutal oppression that is parking lots. If the mall or the wall-mart (or whatever equivalent) can be considered the castle of commerce... the parking lot is a moat of despair. God help you if you can't find parking close to the castle, because in Texas the sun beating down on that black asphalt is unforgiving. It is possible to suffer heat stroke just trying to get to the indoors from the parking hinterland. We live in a consumptive society that's all about TAKE TAKE TAKE.... and there's no concept of giving anything back. Once upon a time, before the parking lot there was an *ECO-SYSTEM* where things moved in a complete cycle... There may have been grass that a cow ate, then shat upon which fertilized the grass that the cow ate and so on... That cow didn't know it but it was giving back just as much as it was taking... In our natural state we do the same, we breath out carbon dioxide that trees need who then breath out oxygen. Instead of completing a cycle in our building process we work in incomplete semi-circles... We create huge amounts of waste that do nothing for any ecological concerns. Parking lots of that magnitude are wasteful in just about every sense. Waste of space, wasteful in that there can be no relief from heat that trees and grass provide, even the desert has more opportunity for heat relief... They're wasteful in that rain water (which is distilled water) is so polluted after running off the oil slicked asphalt that its completely useless... and the water runs off so fast, there is no where for it to be absorbed so it over taxes the rainwater collection systems that townships have... Its wasteful in that it destroys the ecosystem that keeps our planet in balance... And in what capacity do these moats of despair give back to our own environment... And I'm not talking about trailer parties.... Kickin' it in the back of an RV doesn't count, as fun as that sounds. As damning as I sound in all this its not the Architects fault per say, its the result of a short sighted economy that's focused on short term gains that sound like "Take take gimme gimme. " Architects are only tools in the hands of developers. Its who holds the purse strings that creates this world and its infrastructure. And our economy cares less about our grandkid's way of life than about quarterly gains. Yes man has failed, we are the ultimate rapists. We have been pissing upstream from our drinking well and we may see in our lifetime a generation who has to bear the cost of that irresponsibility. Resigning in cynicism by saying we'll all die in the process of evolution is a total cop-out. Then why bother to get up in the morning? Why champion civil rights? Why fight for women's rights? Because this life is worth living to its fullest while we are here, and its worth making it better for those after us, not worse.