Comments on: Brilliant Treatise on the Future of Suburbia by James Knustler

By: WD

WD — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:37:04 +0000

Your point about big egos for big projects is correct; reference Robert Moses and the re-shaping of modern New York. I guess what is really bothering me here is the fact that we jumped so blindly into a new sort of lifestyle without stopping to think about the consequences. Our desire for constantly expanding the suburbs (into exurbs as you mention,) and our highway and transit policies has been an overall disenfranchising endeavor, one partly motivated by racism. Think of some of the effects of suburbanization: many city neighborhoods were bisected by large highways, urban housing stock and mass transportation were severely neglected, the poor (disproportionately minority) were left to fester there. Did you know that Moses designed the bridges on his parkways to be too low for busses (to prevent the “negro” masses from reaching the roads’ destinations?)

Contrary to being opposed to public works, I am a strong supporter of them. I have pointed out here that there are some lovely bridges and other structures in New Orleans’ city park that were built by the WPA; they are about the only things not falling apart here. We need to move away from junk culture embodied by poorly built housing in nowhere but somewhere away from “the city” and close to the highway. But one of the components to revitalizing our cities includes the gainful employment of most Americans, as cities often function as national bellwethers to a country’s health (see Detroit.) So, let’s focus on smarter public-works projects, including: building a national high speed rail system, re-implementing urban mass transit (not busses but rather rail that operates within its own ROW,) re-developing entire areas of cities currently underutilized with green, new urbanist communities, and starting to retract from the atomization movement that has so splintered our society and helped turn us into some of the most ‘out of touch’ citizens cum consumers.

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 14:27:49 +0000

Doye, we read City of Quartz together smart guy. So the entire highway system is just a big conspiracy to make cars the dominant method of transportation? Come on – that’s a bit hard to swallow. Detroit may have undue influence in our national politics, but a large part of the reason for the highway projects was to keep people working after the total engagement of industry during the war.

I see this less as “fighting the man” as arguing against one of the greatest facets of Americanism, which is to exploit massive amounts of cheap labor in the service of equally massive egos of powerful men to create some of the largest things on earth. You’ll also recall that Los Angeles wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for some guy re-directing the Colorado river and building hundreds of miles of pipelines and aqueducts into the desert. Indeed, to criticize these efforts is to criticize manifest destiny – a completely different argument.

In any case, we’re looking at the same kind of infrastructure outlays to buoy the economy once Obama gets elected. Do you question the wisdom of spending to keep people employed during a major recession?

By: WD

WD — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 02:12:45 +0000

Miss fighting the man in Central Europe, Dan? Agreed that Knustler is somewhat hyperbolic. However, his premise is correct. As you know, the housing/highway projects were some of if not the largest programmatic non-wartime outlays this country has ever made. No conspiracy theories here, just greed. GM wishes to hasten car ownership with the masses? Buy up streetcar and other light rail systems and put them to sleep. It’s funny that the ones who most want our help now are the very orchestrators of this appropriation of public good for private greed. Check out Mike Davis, you’d like him. SF turned me on to that

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 20:54:50 +0000

This comes across as a lot of heated rhetoric with little or no substantive reasoning (aka “proof”), and I am tempted to call BS on all of it. While car culture and highway infrastructure helped create the exurb (what Knustler is really talking about here, not “suburbs”, which are the towns and villages within easy range of resources that he mentions in the middle paragraph), his doomsday scenario fails to acknowledge the massive gains that can be made not just in terms of fuel and building efficiency, but also the fact that human ingenuity is what brought us here, and what will eventually bring us through to a more sustainable future.

Really, anyone throwing around phrases like “epochal demographic shift” is immediately suspect. Talk about a guy with an axe to grind on his meaningless childhood in suburbia…

By: Claudette

Claudette — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:42:31 +0000

I dont think that really is at the core of the problem though perhaps one of the symptoms. The problem of waste is pervasive in this society, it is everywhere you look.

Check out Tom Friedman’s lastest column…depressing but onpoint.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/opinion/26friedman.html?hp