Suburbia, the preferred way of life across the advanced capitalist world, is under an unprecedented attack -- one that seeks to replace single-family residences and shopping centers with an "anti-sprawl" model beloved of planners and environmental activists.
This kind of imposed "vision" is proliferating in major metropolitan regions around the world.
All this reflects a widespread prejudice endemic at planning departments in universities, within city bureaucracies, and in much of the media. Across a broad spectrum of planning schools and practitioners, suburbs and single-family neighborhoods are linked to everything from obesity, rampant consumerism, environmental degradation, the current energy crisis -- and even the predominance of conservative political tendencies.
Planners in Albuquerque have suggested banning backyards -- despised as wasteful and "anti-social" by new urbanists and environmentalists, although it is near-impossible to find a family that doesn't want one.
Experts differ on the impact of these regulations, but it certainly has not created the new urbanist nirvana widely promoted by Portland's boosters.
This experience may soon be repeated elsewhere as planners and self-proclaimed visionaries run up against people's aspirations for a single-family home and low-to-moderate-density environment. Such desires may constitute, as late Robert Moses once noted, "details too intimate" to merit the attention of the university-trained.
But nowhere is this commitment to low-density living greater than in the U.S. Roughly 51% of Americans, according to recent polls, prefer to live in the suburbs, while only 13% opt for life in a dense urban place. A third would go for an even more low-density existence in the countryside.
It is time politicians recognized how their constituents actually want to live. If not, they will only hurt their communities, and force aspiring middle-class families to migrate ever further out to the periphery for the privacy, personal space and ownership that constitutes the basis of their common dreams.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Inner Tyrant
When someone seems unable to resist the urge to dictate how everyone else should live, I like to say that they are intouch with their inner tyrant. This article by Joel Kotkin reminds me how pervasive this sentiment can be. By allowing people the freedom to live as they prefer we hold tyranny at bay. Most problems real or imagined arising from these choices can be adjusted to or overcome with new knowledge and technology. Here are some excerpts:
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9 comments:
[S]uburbs and single-family neighborhoods are linked to everything from obesity, rampant consumerism, environmental degradation, the current energy crisis...
Well, all of those charges are true. The 'burbs DO promote all of those ills.
However, I agree that the solution isn't to ban single-family dwellings with yards, but instead to work WITH people, and minimize the impact of their choices, within the framework of people's desires.
Mixed-development, for instance, where commercial and residential properties are closely adjacent, so people don't NEED to drive a car to run a minor errand.
Oroborous:
The 'burbs DO promote all of those ills.
Do they?
Here in Detroit, obesity is far worse in the inner city.
Rampant consumerism (whatever the heck that is, besides anyone have more toys than I do) is part and parcel of human nature.
Environmental degradation? Easy to say, hard to substantiate. My subdivision is far more ecologically diverse than the surrounding countryside -- the local, natural, forests are monocultures in comparison. The place is rife with all kinds of wildlife.
As for roads and cars? Fooey. From the air, roads simply do not dominate the landscape, and modern cars are amazingly clean machines.
What energy crisis?
I would prefer to drive less than I do, but unless one wishes to compel peopel to live in stack-a-prole flats, the network topology is what it is.
The inner-city obesity is related to socioeconomic factors, not due to environmental factors.
A better comparison is between middle class white suburb-dwellers vs. middle class white urban-dwellers.
"Rampant consumerism" is having so many toys that you don't even play with most of 'em anymore.
People may spend their money in (almost) any way that they like, but it really causes me sorrow when I see people who have thousands of dollars worth of "stuff" collecting dust, when it only costs $ 200 a year to educate an underclass Nicaraguan youth, or $ 700 to give a poor third-world family a flock of goats and a pod of pigs, with which they can feed themselves FOREVER.
Toys are for children, no ?
"The energy crisis" isn't about a permanent lack of supply, but rather about the level of price, which at this point has a 25% "speculators' premium" on top of the effects of a tight supply.
While it's not critical, it's still a problem, and causes hardship, particularly among those whose lives are already hard.
The American middle class' love affair with SUVs and big houses clearly exacerbates that problem, particularly with regard to causing a tight enough supply/demand ratio to allow speculation to flourish.
Oroborous:
Middle class suburb-dwellers are not the same as their urban counterparts. The former, by and large, have wives and children. Few of the latter are married, a vanishingly small proportion of those have kids.
... but it really causes me sorrow when I see people who have thousands of dollars worth of "stuff" collecting dust, when it only costs $ 200 a year to educate an underclass Nicaraguan youth, or $ 700 to give a poor third-world family a flock of goats and a pod of pigs ...
True enough. But. First off, all that stuff meant jobs for someone else. Secondly, the most likely reason the Nicaraguan is uneducated, or a third world family is livestockless, probably has far more to do with lousy government than any inherent lack of education or animals. Should we take all the money chewed up by that rampant consumerism and do more worthy things with it, not only would we increase unemployment, we would also be fomenting moral hazard.
Harsh? Yes, and if true, only in general.
However, charity is far from an analloyed good, no matter how much we would prefer to think otherwise.
Any use to which we put available resources will result in opportunity costs and unintentional effects.
However, giving a child a basic education, or rescuing an entire family from being malnourished, will result in DRAMATICALLY positive effects on them, and marginal effects for Americans.
If ONE fewer luxury RV were purchased per year in the U.S., no jobs would be lost, although many people would be very slightly less well-off, but if we spent that money on providing livestock and education in animal husbandry to third-world families, 1,200 people could be elevated from peasant to freeholder, and enter their country's middle class, as humble as that group might appear to the reigning Lords of the Earth, Americans.
Maybe 800 children would be spared the potentially life-crippling effects of malnutrition, at least for a few years, and many of the receiving families would never suffer from a lack of basic wants again - depending, as always, on luck and wise choices.
In other words, I agree that what you've said is true, but the magnitude of those effects is swamped by the results of applying a tiny percentage of the available resources towards ennobling the downtrodden, where so little goes such a long way.
For the Lords of the Earth to refrain from throwing the starving hordes a crust of bread, because it might make them dependent, is ugly, ugly behavior.
For them to use the same resources to make merry with wine and song while the hordes die of want is beyond ugly, it's an abomination.
Yet, Americans are incredibly generous, when their attention can be engaged, so I don't think that it's so much a social or cultural issue as it is one of apathy and a lack of education.
free trade and encouraging good governance (people don't like this answer) would do more to help the poor of the world than any amount of direct aid...
Very true, but I can't force the U.S. government to stop subsidizing the American agricultural industry, nor can I force third-world governments to operate without corruption, be responsive to their citizens' needs, and generally to follow policies that would encourage economic growth.
I can give a third-world family the means with which to support themselves at a basic level for years, possibly always, and for an annual cost to me that's less than I spend on ENTERTAINMENT.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good; we can save lives while pressing for American and global social and governmental change.
Should the day ever dawn when there's global free trade, no subsidies anywhere, and world-wide clean governance, that will indeed be a joyous day for the world's poor, but if we do nothing but sit around waiting for Perfect Day to arrive, millions who could have been saved will needlessly die.
Oroborous said "I can give a third-world family the means with which to support themselves at a basic level for years, possibly always,..."
Are you sure? Or will the bad government just take it away?
There are many places where the people cannot be helped, like in North Korea.
However, there are many places, particularly in Central and So. America, where acquiring a few assets isn't a cause for further oppression by the gov't, especially if those assets are farm animals.
We DO have to do some homework before contributing, but not much at all.
Simply assuming that nothing can be done, or that micro-aid to individuals will automatically be confiscated by a rapacious government, is not an accurate assessment of the entire global situation.
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