Golf courses – those rolling inexperienced hills on which elites spend their halcyon days – occupy roughly 3,500 sq. miles of land in the US, a land mass larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware.
A ‘Trump’ helicopter sits near a placing inexperienced during a ribbon cutting event for a model new clubhouse at Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point, in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Not only is their operation alone expensive and environmentally tolling, however additionally they do affirmative harm to the communities in which they’re housed, in myriad ways. Those harms are imposed almost solely on those who do not use golf courses, whereas those that do use them reap all the benefits of their existence.
The concept of the tragedy of the commons – developed by Garrett Hardin – is usually used to explain situations during which individual residents of a community would possibly extract all the benefits from a typical useful resource, causing resource depletion and infrequently pushing the burdens and costs of that exploitation onto others. Hardin’s chilling words on his theory? “Freedom in an unmanaged commons brings wreck to all”.
Golf course and the environment
First and foremost, golf programs are environmental hazards. The typical golf course uses over 300,000 gallons of water a day and applies dangerous pesticides and fertiliser to the grass, which then can typically leach into groundwater and water techniques. The lawnmowers that manicure that grass make vital contributions to greenhouse fuel emissions. And – as a outcome of many programs were built earlier than the laws that may have required an environmental impact assertion previous to their construction – these results are almost never taken into account when contemplating the true cost of working and sustaining golf programs today.
But arguably more egregious are the costs to local communities from the presence of golf programs. Many municipal golf courses function at a loss, meaning these inside a community who do not use those courses are underwriting the play of those who do. Private courses additionally get gigantic tax windfalls in plenty of states and communities.
California regulation shields many courses in that state from having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes each year. In Seattle, two personal courses are reportedly valued at roughly 5% of the valuation of neighbouring properties per sq. foot, which means town forgoes millions of dollars in taxes annually on account of this differential tax remedy for golf programs.
There are additionally opportunity prices to tying so much land up in golf courses. The area might be put to higher use – that might benefit the broader community – like affordable housing, parks, photo voltaic or wind farms, tenting sites, playgrounds, public swimming pools or urban farming.
Discrimination in golf
To make issues worse, golf programs usually are not a real commons, as a outcome of, historically, not everyone has had access to them. This is the case despite the very fact that George Franklin Grant, the primary African-American professor at Harvard, invented the golf tee. Joseph Bartholomew, a gifted African-American golf course planner, couldn’t play on the very programs he designed.
Black people were typically groundskeepers, club chefs and caddies. The more skilled caddies counselled their white patrons on the nuances of the sport, altering an in any other case dramatic imbalance of wealth, energy and privilege. Indeed, golf courses have been the locus of bias and exclusion, with entry limited to rich white males for generations, preventing those outdoors the “old boys’ club” from the opportunities for professional and social development that these environments created.
Today, golf programs are nonetheless locations of exclusion, even municipal ones, as it is expensive and time-consuming to play. There is probably no higher instance of America’s golf course problem than the Trump Links course in New York City. Located on the south-east nook of one of many poorest counties within the country, this prime stretch of over 200 acres of waterfront property may certainly be better used for its community.
Yet, the City of New York closely subsidised the construction of this course to the tune of over $120m in taxpayer money and leases it by way of a sweetheart deal to a Trump company that siphons off millions in revenue from its operation. Not solely is it probably the most costly municipal course ever constructed, at taxpayer expense, however it is also one of the costly public programs on which to play, costing nearly $200 for a round of golf on a weekend, nicely more than a day’s wage for someone earning the minimum wage in New York City.
Our communities have to take stock of the environmental harms golf programs cause and the tax subsidies they receive and adjust the price to play to compensate communities for this injury. Admittedly, if those that use golf programs truly needed to pay for “externalities” – the harms that golf programs create – it is probably that the sport will turn out to be even more elitist, however at least it would now not be subsidised by the taxpayers who by no means play golf in the first place.
Looking throughout the emerald rolling hills of the courses unfold throughout the country, are there better uses for some of this land? Could we no much less than require, at a minimal, that golfers ought to really bear the prices that the courses impose on the community? Golf courses, as centres of exclusion, exploit neighbouring communities and extract subsidies from those that will never play on them.
The average resident of a community with a golf course positive aspects little, if something, from its presence. Perhaps it’s time that the US rethinks its golf course problem – before their environmental and financial toll brings damage to us all.
[Read more: Should cities be turning golf courses into parks?]