Asheville
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3/14/2007
Asheville is a once charming city that is rapidly being ruined by out of state developers and a huge influx of wealthy newcomers and their gated communities who drive the already high cost of living even higher. The mountains that surround the city are gorgeous when you can seen them, but they are covered up by the deteriorating air quality in the summer than covers them in a thick haze of ozone and when that is gone in the cooler months the haze gives way so that you can see all the $800,000+ condos that have been built in the interim.
Wages are lower than the NC average (which are in turn lower than the national average) yet the cost of living is higher than both the state or national average and Asheville has the most expensive housing in NC.
The city may seem friendly at first blush but it is notoriously cliquish and more than a few observers used the term "Balkanization" to describe the social climate here with few people actually having much of any contact with people who don't think exactly like they do. It is not at all uncommon to read letters to the editor of the local daily paper, or in any of the numerous free weeklies from people who have moved to Asheville complain about the results of people moving here, so shut off in their own mentality as they are. The comment made by one poster here about the population of "man hating" women isn't an exaggeration and isn't limited to any one community. So many communities in Asheville keep to themselves and hold anyone who is not a part of it in contempt and the conflicts between the fundamentalist Baptists and the new agers are just one of the many conflicts that consume life in Asheville every day all of which contribute to the increasing divisions that plague the city. In many ways Asheville is ground zero for the red state/blue state divide.
Despite the efforts of a few local prophets to get the word out that a once charming place has been in the process of being ruined Asheville has sadly probably passed the point of no return and within the next 5 the prevailing sentiment will be "Asheville used to be such a nice place to live, what happened"?
Sad.
Abhd | ,