For nearly two centuries, our town ran on a softer currency. Green, serene, laid-back. The heart of the Garden Route. The kind of place you visited once and started planning a way to come back for good. You could feel it before you could explain it.
Ask any resident what George was, and they reach for a feeling, not numbers. Ask what George is today, and the currency has changed entirely.
Density, expansion, more, and more. Somewhere in the last few years, the shift stopped creeping and started running. The very thing that made people want to be here is now steadily being dismantled by the growth it caused.
Make no mistake, growth is inevitable, and we are in the middle of probably the biggest growth surge this town has ever seen. But growth and progress are not the same word, and history has a habit of remembering booms by what they cost, not what they built.
To many it may yet be remembered as the town's greatest defeat. The real question isn't whether George is growing too fast or fast enough. It's whether the growth can be redirected to restore and protect the town's sense of place, people and nature.
Is George already a memoir for the history books, or a story with its best chapters still ahead?
