I took the car in for scheduled service today, and while it was in the shop for about three hours, I wandered up Willingdon to the “Amazing” Brentwood here in Burnaby, BC. Had not yet been in the redeveloped mall.

Yes, it’s impressive in some ways.

But overall I found the ramble along kilometers of concrete sidewalks amid the ever-increasing density of massive new towers diminishing and depressing.

Yes, I know. People need places to live and to work. But the pyramid scheme of “endless” growth on a finite planet is increasingly troubling.

I’ve lived in New York City. I’ve lived in Tokyo. I’ve spent time in Hong Kong. . .

Perhaps I’m sounding NIMBY-ish on a city-wide scale. Perhaps for younger generations oceans of concrete and asphalt are “home.”

But give me lush forests, give me healthy creeks and lakes teeming with life other than human. . . We still have that in Burnaby. But it’s increasingly being hemmed in by walls of glass and steel.