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Take a look around. Drive under the speed limit in a few residential neighborhoods in the Tualatin Valley. You will see that most houses, condominiums and apartment complexes are made of timber and other forest products. At this point you might wonder aloud, "Why is everything made from wood?"

Well, here's an idea as to why, and some historical background to mull over.

Because these materials are considered standard by today's housing industry, timber seems to be the only option for those developers wanting to build entire neighborhoods at one fell swoop. The infrastructure for using timber and manufactured wood products has been in place for many decades, creating a cycle that not only promotes its own growth through squeezing out and quickly forgetting the alternatives, but also by offering incentives like wholesale discounts to developers. This helps to re-enforce the compulsion to develop larger and larger areas.

Framing crews can use previously manufactured materials to frame several houses concurrently. So the convenience and the renewable supply of materials provided by well-managed forestlands have embedded this practice to the degree that makes every other part of the development process dependent on the use and sale of forest products.

It is the industry's codependency on finding more ways of increasing profit and lowering cost that has lead to building entire neighborhoods for the sake of ease and monetary benefit to the developers and their myriad suppliers without consideration for the area, its needs and resources, or the community that already exist there.

Building materials have not always been so limited, and timber has not always been the dominate choice. Prior to the completion of the transcontinental railroad system in the late 1860s, which helped unify a nation-wide network of transportation, choice of materials for homebuilding varied regionally. In the Midwest of North America, where grasslands flourished, the people made use of sod - a grass-covered topsoil held together by matted roots, which could be cut into blocks and used as bricks.

In hotter, drier climates of the Southwest, American Indians and Spanish immigrants used clay-heavy soil mixed with sand, straw, or sometimes animal dung, and water to form adobe bricks. Simple shelters of sod, adobe and cob sustained the pioneers of the same period on their trek to the Northwest. In the constant struggle to survive, dwellings made from earth keep them warm in the winter and cool in the summer

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