A Constructive Example?

China seems an awfully problematic place to turn when looking for inspiration to jumpstart the still shameful rebuilding efforts in New Orleans.

 

However one feels about its other policies, the Chinese government is clearly not afraid to invest in the future of its cities…

 

Meanwhile, three full years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, much of the city remains a wasteland…

 

…

 

Yet the kind of visionary urban plan that could address these issues in a bold and thoughtful way has yet to materialize. Instead, some of the country’s greatest architectural minds are inventing the future in cities like Beijing, Shenzhen and Dubai, where their talents are more appreciated

 

You’d think forced evictions, inadequate compensation, repression of dissent and official corruption would be enough to disqualify China as an model example of anything, much less the monumental physical, economic and social task of rebuilding a predominantly poor and black American city.

 

One might even infer the ability of the Chinese to “invest” in their cities in such an impressive way may be inextricable from their “other policies”. Policies so problematic that even some of those “greatest architectural minds” often stop to consider what it means to sell their talents to an “appreciative” client like China.

 

Small Town Values

It’s long been conventional wisdom that one political party (rhymes with ublican) truly understands the “small town values” of Americans, while the elites in the other party, drunk on their chardonnay and lattes, are simply incapable of relating to the average, hard working family. This cynical and transparent (though rather useful) political maneuver has served the GOP very well, even as they have used the governing powers gained by this nonsense to systematically undermine the livelihoods of those very small town voters.

 

You’d think this long discredited trope would have faded from our discourse by now, but of course, you’d be wrong. The GOP has now dressed the meme of “small town values” up in bear skin and whale blubber and trotted it back out in front of the cameras, as if no one would notice. Thomas Frank, in today’s Wall Street Journal, calls bullshit on the charade:

 

Small town people, Mrs. Palin went on, are “the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food and run our factories and fight our wars.” They are authentic; they are noble, and they are her own: “I grew up with those people.”…

 

Leave the fantasy land of convention rhetoric, and you will find that small-town America, this legendary place of honesty and sincerity and dignity, is not doing very well…

 

…For decades now we have been electing people like Sarah Palin who claimed to love and respect the folksy conservatism of small towns, and yet who have unfailingly enacted laws to aid the small town’s mortal enemies.

 

…they have permitted fantastic concentration in the various industries that buy the farmer’s crops. They have undone the New Deal system of agricultural price supports in favor of schemes called “Freedom to Farm” and loan deficiency payments — each reform apparently designed to secure just one thing out of small town America: cheap commodities for the big food processors. Richard Nixon’s Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz put the conservative attitude toward small farmers most bluntly back in the 1970s when he warned, “Get big or get out.”

 

In his excellent book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan goes into some depth about the legislative undermining of the New Deal agriculture supports and the consequent devastation that continues to burden farmers and farming communities across America.

 

So it shouldn’t be surprising that the National Farmer’s Union gives Barack Obama a 100% legislative rating on issues relating to small farm agriculture, while John McCain receives 0%.

 

That’s zero. Zip. No legislative help whatsoever, from Mr. “I chose a moose shooter as my soul mate”, regarding the values and interests of farming communities; otherwise known as small towns.

 

What is it going to take for people to vote for leaders and policies that exhibit and foster the very values that everyone seems to breathlessly champion, rather than simply voting for the most entertaining teevee personality?

 

Don’t answer that.

 

The Problem with Reality TeeVee

This insightful post from Atrios illuminates a vague, low-grade dread I’ve been feeling since the presidential campaign turned from cynical to farcical:

 

…While chatting a man came up and discussed registering to vote, but seemed more interested in proudly trumpeting his Hamletesque indecision as a mark of principled independence or something. Apparently had Obama chosen Clinton, but, well, now he likes Palin…

Anyway, he was clearly a member of that segment of the population for whom politics is just another reality TV show, and his vote is simply about which of the candidates is his “favorite” and who will spend the next 4 years entertaining him as the star of The Presidency…

It’s probably completely rational for many people to approach politics this way. They’re in a class and at a point in life such that actual policies are unlikely to impact them directly very much. Add in a touch of narcissism and a lack of empathy, and the choice really does come down to who you want to see on the teevee.

 

More hope, less teevee.

 

Speedier Buses

Giving priority to mass transit with dedicated lanes and preferential traffic signals makes a lot of sense. And it also makes the buses run faster, which makes the people happy!

 

Buses travel in red-painted lanes that are off limits to other vehicles during busy times of day, and additional police officers are deployed to keep the lanes clear. Traffic signals…have been equipped to communicate electronically with the buses, allowing, for example, a green signal to be extended for a few seconds to let a bus through or shortening a red signal’s time.

 

A trip from end to end on the Bx12 route that previously took close to an hour now takes about 12 minutes less, a time saving of 20 percent…

…

“They need to do all the buses like this,” she said. “It’ll make life a lot easier.”

 

Glass Houses

From the once esteemed Wall Street Journal, we learn that many homeowners are simply shocked to find that their newly minted, west facing, high rise apartments, with full walls of glass, actually require window shades.

 

The air conditioning could barely keep the temperature tolerable as sun baked the $1.5 million apartment on summer afternoons. And the sun bleached her pair of brightly colored European sectional sofas, which cost $20,000.

 

In June, Ms. Antani gave in, spending $12,000 on motorized shades that she keeps lowered during the day. “I love being able to see everything,” says Ms. Antani, a 23-year-old graduate student. But “the sun’s just in your eyes; you can’t focus. Everything is so bright.” [Emphasis mine].

 

She “gave in”? Spending .8% of the condo cost on an essential furnishing is a sacrifice? C’mon folks, better journalism please.

 

And setting aside the socio-economic implications of a 23 year old grad student affording a $1.5 million condo, glazing technology is simply much better than is being described here. It sounds like our heroine (and her prized “European sectional sofas”) might have bought into an over-priced and cheaply made building.

 

The problem, which the article barely acknowledges, is that glass residential towers are de rigueur in urban real estate these days, yet only a small fraction are built with the budgets and design integrity required to responsibly integrate all that glass. The annoyances expressed by miss sun-in-her-eyes and others in the article suggest cheaply made glass towers are surely energy hogs of the highest order.

 

Buildings account for roughly 40% of all energy use in the U.S.(residential buildings account for 54% of that). We need better policies at all levels of government to raise the quality of our built environment and reduce energy use by buildings, especially as it relates to irresponsible developers out to make a quick buck on a high-end fad. I’d like to see stories focusing on that rather than the banal hardships of un-savvy luxury condo buyers.

 

And by the way, the issue of dead birds is very real.

 

America’s Pastime

Who can possibly afford to go see a baseball game these days? Don’t even bother trying to answer that, because now, even those who can are complaining:

 

Fans are now calculating how expensive it will be for many of them to attend games at the new stadiums. Tickets for the best seats at the 85-year-old Yankee Stadium, which sold for $1,000 a seat this season, will jump at the new ballpark to $2,500; in other areas of the stadium, they will range from $135 to $500 for season tickets. Prices for single-game tickets, which ranged from $14 to $400 this season, will be released later.

 

The current business model for baseball is seriously out of whack, especially as casual fans are concerned (I among them). Players’ salaries are incomprehensibly high, requiring teams to generate enormous revenue. Shiny new stadiums (and all teams must have one to “compete”) are economically extravagant affairs, built often at great expense to taxpayers and not always with local communities’ interest in mind. And ticket prices are out of reach of most everyone but the very wealthy, while scalping has been legalized and encouraged. All of which has repositioned baseball as a market, rather than a game – hometown team as international commodity.

 

Baseball is a historically populist game. Any kid can play with just a stick and a ball. It’s simple and poetic, that’s its charm: “mom and apple pie”, and all that. I remember as a kid going with my grandpa to watch the pathetic Cleveland Indians (ugh, Indians, can we please change the name already?) at old, drafty, peeling, Cleveland Municipal Stadium. They were a terrible team, and the stadium was a nightmare, but being at the game was magical. A day at the ballpark for a 9 year old kid had the sanctity of an epic and rhythmic benediction.

 

Phillip Roth wrote this in a Times op-ed on opening day 1973:

 

…baseball was a kind of secular church that reached into every class and region of the nation and bound millions upon millions of us together in common concerns, loyalties, rituals, enthusiasms, and antagonisms. Baseball made me understand what patriotism was about, at its best.

…

It seems to me that through baseball I was put in touch with a more humane and tender brand of patriotism, lyrical rather than martial or righteous in spirit, and without the reek of saintly zeal, a patriotism that could not so easily be sloganized, or contained in a high-sounding formula to which you had to pledge something vague but all-encompassing called your “allegiance.”

 

That’s baseball at its best – America at its best. But at a time when the President asks citizens to sacrifice for their country by shopping, I suppose it’s fitting that the patriotism described above has been replaced by a pseudo-patriotic-capitalist-fandom. Show allegiance to your team (to your country): Buy season tickets! Buy merchandise! Shopping is the new American pastime.

 

Later in the op-ed, Roth adds this:

 

…baseball – with its lore and legends, its cultural power, its seasonal associations, its native authenticity, its simple rules and transparent strategies, its longueurs and thrills, its spaciousness, its suspensefullness, its heroics, its nuances, its lingo, its “characters,” its peculiarly hypnotic tedium, its mythic transformation of the immediate – was the literature of my boyhood.

 

That’s a lyrical and poignant sentiment, written more than a quarter century ago. And it begs the question: does anyone even read literature anymore?

 

Trouble the Water

This important film about Hurricane Katrina is now playing in New York and LA. From the Times review:

 

Ms. Roberts didn’t wait out the storm from her home in the Lower Ninth Ward; she chased it. Roaming her neighborhood on foot and bicycle, she videotaped the gathering dark clouds and her stranded neighbors with a newly bought camera, watching with mounting concern as the drizzle grew into a deluge. Her rough, untutored camerawork has an ugliness and urgency that only add to the escalating sense of chaos and unease. As her sightlines roughly shift from one fugitive image to the next — wary adults, giggly children, nervous dogs, a stop sign that will soon be almost entirely under water — you can feel the pressure of the moment. Excitement courses through her free-ranging chatter and the palsied, swerving visuals.

 

As someone in the film says, “Katrina is still goin’ on”. Indeed it is. Let’s hope this film receives a wide release, which may help this conversation gather the urgency it desperately deserves. See it if you can and better yet, get involved.

 

 

Crabgrass Modern

 

 

Imagine that, environmentally conscious landscape design.

 

…a number of (landscape) designers have begun to champion an approach to landscaping that marries traditional environmental concerns — sustainability, biodiversity, restoration, conservation — with a sensitivity to aesthetics and a flexibility that they said was missing from green-gardening crusades of the past.

 

This is obviously a wonderful thing, and some of the work in the Times piece is outstanding, but articles like this tend to read a bit like trend-spotting, rather than journalism (I do realize it’s the Home & Garden section).

 

Another point: conventions are extremely powerful and once set, quite difficult to alter. Getting clients, much less entire industries, to shift from broken, destructive conventions is no small task:

 

Still, he and other designers said, the message of conservation and environmental responsibility cannot be couched in punitive terms if it is to succeed. “People shouldn’t have to make a choice between beauty and sustainability,” Ms. Cochran said. “Our work is designed so that I am able to say to our clients during a presentation, ‘Oh, and by the way, its also sustainable.’ ”

 

If articles like this help the cause as part of broader popular narrative that’s great, but let’s try to avoid giving “sustainability” the whiff of second-home-exceptionalism.

 

Gulf Coast Civic Works Act

Please support this far reaching and extremely important effort.

 

The Gulf Coast Civic Works Act would hire 100,000 Gulf Coast residents and evacuees, providing them with training and jobs to rebuild their homes and communities. It’s a solution that would give all Katrina survivors a fair chance to rebuild their lives, while revitalizing the Gulf Coast’s economy and rebuilding its infrastructure.

 

You can read more here.

 

Pay as You Drive

 

 

This concept seems like a winning idea.

Many of the ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will require major changes in behavior and/or impose serious costs. However, there is one mechanism that could lead to substantial reductions in emission with no cost: pay-as-you-drive auto insurance.

…

The impact would be large. The average cost of insurance per mile driven is close to 8 cents. This means that if insurance were paid on a per mile basis, for a car that gets 20 miles to a gallon, pay-as-you-drive insurance would provide the same disincentive to drive as a $1.60 a gallon gas tax. This can easily lead to reductions in gas consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from the auto sector of 10 percent or more.

As gasoline remains comparatively inexpensive, pay-as-you-drive insurance, combined with smart ideas like car shares may begin to shift people’s driving habits. Add to that vigorous investment in transportation infrastructure and a long-needed shift in community planning toward increased densities, and we may actually be onto something.

Adding, obviously driving disincentives of any kind, including higher gas prices, risk disproportionately affecting rural and exurban residents due to a generally woeful lack of alternatives. The solution: more and better infrastructure.

 

One Track in Front of the Other

The Times had an encouraging piece last week about American cities re-investing in streetcars, a form of transportation abandoned long ago in favor of single occupancy autos.

“Today, young, educated workers move to cities with a sense of place. And if businesses see us laying rail down on a street, they’ll know that’s a permanent route that will have people passing by seven days a week.”

All Politics is Local

Bob Herbert’s column yesterday in the Times illustrates a quietly infuriating aspect of life here in America. Namely, that our infrastructure is woefully underfunded and perhaps worse yet, under-imagined.

This includes the scope of transportation alternatives, community services like police and fire, but also things like high speed internet access: all things that make communities feel safe, rooted and relevant. Investment in a broad combination of infrastructure will more than pay for itself in healthy, creative and productive communities.  

PS – And why is it that so often U.S. Mayors are at the forefront of big ideas?

The Internets and You

It appears access to high speed internet remains an embarrassment here in America.

Affordable, universal high speed access is in everyone’s interest and should be a national priority. It would be nice to see this issue widely considered in the same breath as other essential infrastructures.

This NPR piece is indicative of the effect high speed access can have on rural communities, for instance.

“Living in a rural community is a larger impediment to Internet use than either race or class. The isolated rural community of Greene County, N.C., turned itself upside down to get its citizens online in five short years.”