With Hawaii hesitant to emerge from long days of pandemic life, and people take stock of what they have learned and what parts of “normal” life they actually haven’t missed during the many months of isolated existence, this might be a good time to do this to examine the concept of “growth” and how it has got Hawaii into so much trouble.
Hawaii doesn’t have to constantly strive for “growth” unless it’s about food crops and sustainable resources. In terms of tourism, construction, miles of freeway, Hawaii has more than it needs.
In addition to growth, there are other measures of success and progress that better correspond to the realities of an island state. Perhaps the next decade’s success may be the opposite of tourism growth, government tax revenues, and relentless urbanization; such as the number of hectares of land that have been returned to farmland from urban use or the number of hotel rooms that have been converted into rental apartments.
Crazy, right? But not as crazy as the creed of constant growth on a small chain of islands far out in the Pacific.
In human life, we measure growth physically in the first phase of life and most intensely in infancy. Babies are weighed and measured and compared to other babies of the same age. As soon as a child gets a little older, we stop measuring every week or month and focus on things other than numbers, like developmental milestones and behavioral stages.
When a person reaches adulthood, growth is measured in different ways – the ability to take care of themselves, the ability to care for others, the role one plays in a healthy community, etc. Unstoppable, unregulated growth in an adult human is basically cancer and so it is on an island too.
Hawaii has to go the other way. Bigger is not always better. There’s a lot to be said for a nice, comfortable fit.
There are many advantages to downsizing.
For example, all of the grandiose plans for a new Aloha Stadium obscure the fact that the University of Hawaii has struggled to fill football spots over the years. The stadium has a capacity of 50,000. If the space for a game was half full in recent years, it was considered a good audience.
However, the UH soccer team will be playing on campus in the new / old Clarence TC Ching sports complex for (at least) the next three years.
Imagine a football game on Saturday night right on campus, just like at a large university. Imagine that each of the 9,000 seats is occupied. Imagine a UH soccer game where people are screaming to get in and tickets are hard to come by. That excitement would feel like a success – maybe not quantifiable, but tangible.
What if the rental car industry didn’t have to send back thousands of cars and tourists had to rent bikes, take shuttles, or just stay on resort property and spend money to support the economy instead of driving to a remote area that is off limits? injured, stranded and in need of rescue? Fewer rental cars on the road should be a goal. Visitors to Hawaii are currently struggling to get around because there aren’t enough cars to rent, but the traffic is terrible.
And then there is the rail, which reliably provides the worst example of any bad policy and practice in Hawaii. Even before construction began, the capacity was higher than the forecast number of passengers. People had to be persuaded to take the train.
Bigger is not always better. There’s a lot to be said for a nice, comfortable fit.
Having proven feasible for many companies and preferable for many workers for more than a year now, and now that remote and hybrid work is part of the classroom from kindergarten to graduate programs, the need for the railroad no longer seems to be needed to be so big. It’s another project that was started to meet projected or even hopeful growth forecasts, like the Hawaii Convention Center, which was intended as a venue for high-end international conferences and ended up being just another Neal Blaisdell exhibition hall with nicer bathrooms and newer carpeting.
There are better ways to measure progress in Hawaii, methods that take into account quality of life, the health of coastal waters and beaches, open space restoration, peaceful neighborhoods, and safe roads.
With the toughest of stay-at-home orders, we had all of that. It was hard to admit at the time, but there were actually things to love about the shutdown. Hawaii felt more like Hawaii, and home felt more like home, as the relentless urge to grow subsided for a while and the focus was on staying healthy and taking care of ourselves and our loved ones.
Future goals and measures of success must take these life lessons into account. Constant growth is a problem. We have to strive for better things.
