Shorter George Will--"Portland is the Enemy of All Things American"

Has George Will gotten stupider? Or is his stupidity just more out of touch with the times?

In recent months, he has denied the existence of human-created climate change because he doesn't want to believe it. And then he railed against the greatest threat to human decency since Attila the Hun--blue jeans.

Now he identifies another huge threat to American values--planned cities! Will creates a false historical straw man to make his point:

For many generations—before automobiles were common, but trolleys ran to the edges of towns—Americans by the scores of millions have been happily trading distance for space, living farther from their jobs in order to enjoy ample backyards and other aspects of low-density living. And long before climate change became another excuse for disparaging America's "automobile culture," many liberal intellectuals were bothered by the automobile. It subverted their agenda of expanding government—meaning their—supervision of other people's lives. Drivers moving around where and when they please? Without government supervision? Depriving themselves and others of communitarian moments on mass transit? No good could come of this.

Then he whines about how this is taking away our freedoms? And what evidence does he have for this? The phasing out of incandescent light bulbs. As if anyone cares about this. Also, biking, which he claims no one does. Of course, Will's never done a thing for himself in his entire life, so what does he know about biking? For that matter, what does Will know about anything? I suppose at one time, Will was a conservative you were supposed to take seriously. If that was ever true, it ain't now, because in column after column Will shows how out of touch he is with the American people. How out of touch is he? The man he slams in the article is Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood--a Republican.

Via Jay Stevens

The Exurbs

Via Yglesias, Ben Adler has an excellent piece up on exurbs and walkable suburbs. He compares Leesburg, VA to Kentlands, MD. Leesburg is the ultimate exurban disaster. Far from the metro, the community has not invested in public transportation, sidewalks, or any amenities of urban life. It exists to facilitate whatever developers want. Its primary concern about growth is traffic. On the other hand, Kentlands was a dense suburban community from the beginning with good public transportation and sidewalks. People use this public infrastructure, creating a strong community.

These are the two models of suburban development in the United States. Probably 90% of America has followed the Leesburg model. In Texas, probably 100%. Here in Georgetown, at the northern edge of the Austin suburbs, about 1/2 of the streets do not have sidewalks. It's an old city, but most of the commercial infrastructure has moved to newish strip malls on the edges of town. It's virtually impossible to survive here without a car. When I walk to work, I have to walk on the road most of the time. And people frequently pull over to ask me if I need a ride. That's nice of them and all, but they do it because they think why on earth would a white guy be walking down the road if his car didn't break down? That walking is such a foreign concept here suggests real problems in American urban and suburban living.

While I highly recommend Adler's article, I do think he misses on his predictions for the future.

The edge of today's civilization could be tomorrow's exurb. Despite the current state of the economy, plenty more Leesburgs are likely to be in America's future. According to a study by the Brookings Institution, half of our built environment in 2030 will have been developed from 2000 onward. We know the next generation of exurbs is coming, and we'd better plan for it.

But I'm not sure this is true. There's a lot of structural issues getting in the way of this analysis. First is oil prices. While oil prices are down significantly from where they were a year ago, that's strictly because of the economic downturn. Even time there's even a hint of good economic news, oil prices inch up. When the recession ends and people start consuming and producing again, petroleum costs will again skyrocket. While I know that predicting oil futures is notoriously difficult, this fact seems clear enough to me.

Second, already existing signs suggest that a lot of people are opting out of suburban life. Adler himself cites this information. He points out that one zip code in suburban Virginia has seen home prices drop by 44.7% between September 2007 and September 2008 versus a 3.9% drop in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The exurbs are overbuilt at a time when a lot of people no longer want to live there. Moreover, we have millions of homes, mostly in suburban developments, that have foreclosed. Now owned by the banks, there is little demand for these buildings. We're probably seeing a long-term cultural shift toward urban living by a big chunk of young Americans. There's no doubt that cities now need to provide infrastructure for families, including good schools. Until that happens, a lot of people will want to live in the suburbs. But what kind of suburbs? My guess is that they will flock to places like Kentlands, where they can still live a semi-urban kind of life and get to the city on public transportation.

So I don't think that in 2030 half of our infrastructure will have been built since 2000. Or if that's true, a lot of it will be rebuilt urban infrastructure. I wonder if the future of a place like Leesburg is not one of poverty. Will the United States become like Europe, with the wealthy in the city and the poor in the suburbs? Probably not precisely because of our love affair with the car and with the idealized suburban American Dream that still affects many people. But I can see a day in the near future with the wealthy in the cities, in semi-urban suburban developments like Kentlands, and in pricey exclusive subdivisions with lots of land on the far edges. In the vision, the working-class are basically priced out of the cities and are forced to live in these Leesburg-like subdivisions, living in places with poor schools, rotting infrastructure, and forced to spend much of their meagre income on gas to get to work in the cities. I don't think of this as ideal by any means, but I do believe that we have seen the end of exurban development as far as space from the central city goes.

Toll Roads

I usually like DarkSyde's posts over at Kos, but his attack on Texas toll roads has a lot of problems.

Over the past decade, Texas has decided to create toll roads out of a few of its many highways. While I recognize that a toll road is a regressive tax, in the current anti-tax climate continuing to dominate the United States, user fees are one way for states to earn money. I don't know exactly how the state spends the toll money--it could be spent poorly. Knowing Texas, it probably is misspent, but DarkSyde doesn't really explore this question.

What really bothers me about this post is that DarkSyde buys Republican anti-tax sentiment whole hog. The thrust of the post is this: "We're taxed on everything else and now we are being taxed to drive on our roads! An outrage!" Well, lots of states have toll roads and things seem to be just fine. Moreover, one can make a quite legitimate argument that people should be taxed to drive, much as they are taxed to drink and smoke. Again, while I recognize the regressive nature of this tax, ultimately if we are serious about dealing with climate change, we have to either reduce incentives to drive or tax the action to pay for the changes we need.

People can choose to take individual roads because they are faster if they want to pay for it. This leads to another problem with the post--as far as I know, there is not a single case where someone is forced to take a toll road because they face a lack of other roads. This is Texas. There are new roads being created or expanded all the time. There are lots of ways to go. Toll roads provide people a choice. Certainly, it'd be great if some of that money was going to public transportation and other progressive urban planning legislation, but even this problem is marginal to DarkSyde's argument of being pissed off when he has to pay a toll.

But again, the real problem here is the anti-tax sentiment. It's going to be a long rhetorical battle to fight back the Republicans on this issue. We have a long ways to go to convince people of taxation's benefits. Using Republican arguments when we face an issue we don't personally like is really damaging. That was a really irresponsible post that I hope other people also take to task.

The Alaskan Way Viaduct

Before you skip past a post about a road you have never heard of, I urge you to read on for a larger discussion of cities in the early 21st century.

The Alaskan Way Viaduct is one of the most hated freeways in the United States. A couple of years ago, I wrote a post arguing that we needed to save this road. This is how I closed that post:

One great thing about the Viaduct is that it is a reminder of Seattle's industrial past. We need to remember that cities used to be places of work. Seattle played a vital role in building America. Literally, as it was a lumber town. The industrial past is increasingly hard to find in modern Seattle. The old Rainer brewery that was originially taken over by Tully's Coffee has now been sold to a developer to create live/work spaces for artists. Little if any lumber is milled in Seattle today. The warehouse district in south Seattle is seen as a blight, despite its absolutely necessary function in creating and moving products around the nation. Today, the best reminder of this past in Seattle might be wood carvings of salmon in upscale shopping malls. The Alaskan Way Viaduct is both a democratic structure (all you need is a car to get those views) and a reminder of Seattle's past. For me, the fate of the Viaduct comes down to this question--does egalitarianism and unsanitized history have a role to play in 21st century urban America?

I feel the same today. Recently, the Congress of New Urbanism named the Alaskan Way Viaduct the worst freeway in America. I was talking to my friend Jeff Sanders, an assistant professor of history at Washington State University and the author of a forthcoming book and nature and Seattle in the 1960s and 70s, about this. Here was his response:

First of all I am uncomfortable with the Congress of New Urbanism, even if I agree with many of their highest aspirations--to make a more beautiful, walkable, healthy, and just urban environment. According to their ideas then, the viaduct should never have been built in the first place. And if I had been around in the 50s when it was being built I think, with my current attitudes, I would have opposed its construction. I have a lot of trouble now with the idea of demolishing or removing mid-century evidence of bad design or good. The New Urbanists want the viaduct gone so they can build pretty condos on the waterfront and big lame open spaces--instead of strange and creepy cramped ones. I've grown to love--in a perverse way--the viaduct. It feels dangerous, and I like that. There's never quite enough room on it for all the cars. But you get the best view of the city and the Sound from it. You pass right through downtown and peak into windows as you pass through. And under the viaduct is a whole other skanky McQ world that I remember from my childhood (I went to the Ace Novelty Shop just under the viaduct to purchase fake vomit when I was a kid). I like the shadow it casts and the danger that it suggests. I saw Bill Frisell at the OK Hotel in the early 90s--right under the viaduct. I love the loud crazy sound of cars clack clacking above. The viaduct creates a kind of environment and suggests a creepy history. I would hate for it to be eliminated. If they wanted to make a highline kind of thing with it I'd be happier, but not much. And I realize it's really, really unsafe. But the New Urbanists want to build a tunnel to accommodate its traffic for billions. I say leave or shore it up. Ultimately I think a city needs some ugly. And this tells me that time is critical here. Time for structures to grow on you and for you to create sets of associations with them, no matter how ugly.

Jeff is getting at core questions of cities in the 21st century. Is there any room for ugly? What about democracy and viewlines? It is clear that developers want the thing gone so they can further develop the waterfront. Should developers have almost total control to reshape urban landscapes so they can make money? What rights do poor people have to enjoy the city in the same ways the rich can?

The road sucks in a lot of ways. A big earthquake would remind us all of the Bay Bridge in 1989. It is pretty unattractive. It reminds us of a time when the United States made an awful lot of mistakes in its cities, leading to the urban crisis of the 1960s-1980s. We all want to save historic structures. Shouldn't we save some of our poor decisions too, especially when they define a city as much as the Viaduct? Despite its many problems, the road is a democratic structure and a monument to the role of the car in reshaping Seattle. For that alone, it should be saved.

Microhouses

While not as appealing to me as large apartment complexes, I love the idea of microhomes that Julia Steinberger writes about.

A huge problem with fighting environmental problems is our reliance on home building for economic growth. That home building is simply not environmentally sustainable. Moreover, Americans' consumer demands have led to these gigantic starter castles popping up all over the landscape. Even trailer homes now can clock in at over 2000 square feet. This is simply unacceptable. It leads to the overuse of resources, the spatial dispersion of homes, and massive uses of energy.

One good first step would be change how we calculate property taxes. Instead of being taxed solely by the value of your own, basing a significant amount of the tax on your square footage would be a great idea. Your house should be as nice as you can make it, but if you are living in an 800 square foot space, you should pay less than someone with 2000 square feet.

Plus microhouses can have a wonderful charm that starter castles or even the average home built in this decade almost never have. The picture above from Reno is quite lovely. I would certainly live in such a place if I could.

Pedestrian Zones

I grew up just outside of Eugene, Oregon. One thing we never did was go to downtown Eugene. In the 1970s, Eugene, like many American cities, closed their downtowns to traffic and created a pedestrian mall. It failed. By the time I was in high school in the late 80s and early 90s, you only went down there if you were looking to a place to ride your skateboard or you were looking to score drugs, not that the two were mutually exclusive. In the late 90s, Eugene again opened up its downtown to automobiles and the place took off.

But did it succeed because of automobiles or because of the timing? I'm not sure. Daniel Nairn has an interesting article about creating a pedestrian mall in Missoula, Montana. While noting the historical failures of pedestrian malls, he also shows how Burlington and Charlottesville made their malls work. Increasingly, people are coming back downtown to live. Even in Sun Belt cities like Dallas, Albuquerque, and Knoxville, we see this happening. Boulder and Denver have quite impressive pedestrian malls.

So does this mean that we should reconsider the pedestrian mall? I think it is time to do so. I believe the project failed in the 1970s for multiple reasons that were unique to the time. First, suburbanization continued unabated during those years. The malls were created as an alternative to big shopping mall developments, but people were really into shopping malls in the 70s and 80s. Given those trends, pedestrian zones may have been a poorly conceived, though well-meaning, idea. Second, oil prices collapsed in the 80s. Part of the appeal of shopping downtown was supposed to be as a way to save gas money. That was fine for the 70s, but once gas prices declined, Americans stopped caring about such things, dooming the pedestrian developments. Third, the 1970s and 80s were a time when municipalities were letting their downtowns rot away. Without a broader investment in making downtown an appealing place, these malls were not going to work.

But all of these conditions have changed. The historical tide of urban development seems to be moving back toward central living. Oil prices have skyrocketed and given Chinese, Indian, and Brazilian demands, it is highly unlikely they will ever fall again, making pedestrian options more appealing. Finally, the return of whites with money to the downtowns has spurred cities to invest in those areas, making them incredibly appealing as a place for people to live and shop.

While I think truly auto-free zones are off in the future, creating pedestrian malls with limited auto access for people who live downtown is a good option for today's developers. I'd certainly be willing to give it a shot as a place to live.

Democrats, Urban Sprawl, and Exurban Voters

Max Bergmann at Democracy Arsenal has an interesting point about exurban voters turning to the Democrats because of transportation issues. This is the kind of issue Democrats can really be leaders on. Living in the far-out exurbs sucks. Certainly some of the blame goes to the people who choose to live in these places. Everyone wants their big house (after all, how did humans live for so long with less than 1500 square feet per dwelling?) and their yard. The American Dream remains strong in our mythology. While lots of people are moving back into the cities, lots more continue to pour into ever expanding suburban development.

For years, these people voted for the Republicans, in large part because of racial issues and to some extent over taxes as well. But as Bergmann points out, this is changing. Much of the Democratic resurgence in Virginia has come from these areas. People move out there and then realize that the complete lack of urban planning makes their dreams a lot more like nightmares than they thought. With the collapsing housing market, massive debt load many of these homeowners took on, and the Republican crackdown on bankruptcies, a lot of voters seem to be reconsidering their political allegiances. Democrats are taking advantage and becoming increasingly competitive in places like Virginia, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado--all states that face these problems.

I am also stealing Bergmann's photo here of the line between development and farmland. It's worth seeing what happens to America's beauty when we decide to live in the suburbs. The massive expansion of northern Virginia has destroyed tens of thousands of acres of our most beautiful and historical land. Does this beauty, so well-contrasted here with suburban dreck, not deserve to be saved? Obviously this is no wilderness, as if there really is such a thing anyway, but just because Europeans have a long historical interaction with a piece of land does not mean that we shouldn't save it from pointless development.

Update on Creative Music Crisis in New York

My friend Todd Nicholson who forwarded me the information concerning the crisis of creative music in New York also notes that there is a website on the matter now:

www.takeittothebridge.com

At the site there is also a petition there asking for support on the matter.

The State of Creative Music in New York

I recently received the e-mail copied below about the increasingly desperate state of creative music in New York City. Essentially, real estate prices have become so high that clubs cannot stay open anymore. In particular, this is addressing the closing of Tonic, the Lower East Side club that had promoted experimental and creative music for the last decade or so. Here's the e-mail. The action referenced in the e-mail took place a week ago, but the message is still valuable and needs to be spread.

We Must Demand:

An adequate, affordable space, centrally located in the LES!

Tonic is being handed over to the realtors.

We are making an appeal to the City, to either give us this space or one comparable in size for the use of avantjazz/new music/indie community.

We can not lose such an Important Home!

YOUR PRESENCE - YOUR MUSIC- YOUR VOICE – YOUR ART - IS ESSENTIAL.

SHOW THE CITY YOU CARE ABOUT WHAT IS HAPPENING.

DON’T LET REALTORS DECIDE NEW YORK CITY’S CULTURAL FATE!

STOP the loss of important venues, one by one forced to close by rent increases at an alarming rate.

STOP the destruction of the LES as a center of diverse & varied & unique culture.

Tonic is scheduled to close on Friday, April 13th, 2007.

The following day, we will gather to fight the eviction of this crucial venue, the diminishment of our livelihoods, and the destruction of our culture by peacefully resisting. Please join us.

For the last nine years Tonic has been at the center of NYC experimental music. When the tsunami of rent increases and mal-development engulfing the LES forces its closure, NYC will have lost the last avant-jazz/indie/new music club in Manhattan with a capacity over 90. A vibrant community of musicians and fans worked for years to maintain Tonic -- raising over 100,000 dollars through benefit concerts and donations to pay off debt, fund repairs, buy a sound system, and keep the club open in devastating times such as following 9/11/01.

We’re taking action now to dramatize the market failure of which Tonic’s closing is a symptom, and to ask that the city save this home for us or provide a minimum 200 capacity, centrally located venue for experimental jazz, indie, and new music.

We want for ourselves and the communities around us the right to stay around long enough to enjoy the culture we’ve created, not harassment and a bum’s rush into eviction the minute real estate decides we’ve made the neighborhood ‘safe’ and ‘cultured’ enough for them to cash in.

This is where we tell the landlords, developers, and the city: Enough. Genucht. Basta ya!

Coming on the heels of the closing of CBGB's, Sin-e, Fez, The Continental, and numerous other varied downtown venues, the closing of Tonic represents the shutting down of NYC's most important live music experimental jazz, indie, and new music scene.

This wave of live music space closings constitutes a market failure. The downsized or geographically marginal venues arising in the wake of the established club closings are not generating enough to maintain the economic viability of this scene. If there is not immediate and sufficient PUBLIC INTERVENTION, either in the form of limiting rents, or supplying alternate space and funding - or both - New York City will lose an essential part of its heritage, culture, and economy.

“My band plays some of the biggest festivals in Europe...Meanwhile there’s only one club I can play in New York and it’s about to close.”

Steven Bernstein, Trumpet player and leader of Sex Mob and the Millennial Territory Orchestra

(NY Times)

According to Patricia Nicholson Parker, organizer of the Vision Festival:

“We have come together to say we deserve a space and in essence, we have already paid for our space. Musicians contribute to the economy of this city every day with world class performances. In the case of Tonic, many musicians came together and invested in the space. Through benefits and organizing they raised significant sums of money (100+ grand) for the venue, Tonic. The city needs to acknowledge this. It is good for the city and good for the artists and their audiences that the city make available a musician-friendly community club/space which holds up to 200 audience members. It is important that it not be in the outer boroughs but be centrally located in the LES where this serious alternative music has been birthed and where it can be easily accessed by audiences.”

This issue revolves around one basic question: Does a city, and in particular New York, have an interest in their city remaining the center of American culture and art, or does nothing matter except for real estate prices?

For at least a century, and probably going as far back as the arrival of Stephen Foster in 1860, New York has served as the center of American music. Does it anymore? Does it care enough to support, even through such basic actions such as rent control or subsidizing art spaces, music? Under the Guiliani and Bloomberg administrations, the answer is clearly no. This music can move to Brooklyn or Queens I suppose, but what is to keep it affordable there in another 10 years? The future of creative music in New York will say a lot about the future vitality of the city as an artistic center, as well as the state of music in the United States.

More on Building and Climate Change

A while back I talked about the connections between buildings and climate change, but here's a link from an expert. Ed Mazria, a prominent green architect, writes in part:

"Today, in the US and globally, buildings and developments are responsible for almost half of all the GHG emissions fueling global warming. Tomorrow’s buildings and developments must be the solution to the problem. To begin to realize this, we must think about how buildings might operate if there were no fossil fuels available, what they might look like, what they could provide - the possibilities are endless when we are resourceful, innovative and diligent. There are no cookie-cutter solutions; the slate is clean and the best techniques and design strategies will quickly materialize. Carbon-neutral is where we are headed, and included in the benefits are a worldwide economic boom, positive health implications and an incredible potential for increased productivity."

This is true. We can make a real difference through architecture and urban planning, but it's going to take a lot of education to make people want to live in a more Earth-friendly way as well.

Housing and Climate Change

Ben Adler is right to lightly chide Time magazine for not including urban planning as a major way people can fight climate change. Heating and cooling individual housing units causes at least as much climate change as auto emissions, as Time rightfully discusses. But as Adler points out, "But Americans cannot live an eco-friendly, auto-independent lifestyle under current zoning restrictions. Right now, it is illegal to build dense apartment buildings or row houses in much of the country, illegal to build mixed-use commercial and residential districts, and all new shopping centers take the form of strip mall development because of the minimum parking requirements."

Sadly, I have little confidence that Americans will ever organize over these issues. While everyone says Americans love their cars, Americans also love their individual housing units. Of course, the two phenomena are inexorably intertwined. I believe that if people lived in high-density housing units, as people do in Europe and Asia, our share of causing climate change would decline significantly, we would have a stronger social fabric, and we would have a significantly more eco-friendly society, with more walking, bicycling, and light rail, green space, and healthy ecosystems.

But Americans don't want that. They don't want to give up the SUV, the ranch house, or the 3 acres. I imagine that Time didn't include urban planning in their issue because they figured that most people would scoff. And that's awfully sad.