Living Car Free - NPR segment: Old Cities Can Profit from New Sprawl

All Things Considered, May 17, 2006 · The author of a new book defending sprawl says millions of people are able to live more comfortably in places that are cleaner, greener and safer than where their grandparents lived. Some cities benefit, too. Aurora, Illi., is a case in point: The city was losing population and businesses in the 1970s and '80s, but it is booming now, mostly by annexing new subdivisions.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5412129



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Cities did NOT benefit from sprawl.

After white flight fled the cities, most of them became slums including Chicago. Many cities did NOT recover so this book is just revisionist junk that's trying to put a spin on what really happened.

Cities are not annexing these subdivisions at all. Many of these subdivisions belong to other cities and pay their taxes to other towns. What you are seeing is a rebirth of many cities after decades of decay due to the high price of homes in the burbs.

The first thing I thought of was "I wonder what Kunstler thinks about this."
Sure enough, on page one of his blog-


May 18, 2006
Last night, NPR ran a feature on Robert Bruegmann's new book, Sprawl, which advertises the idea that suburbia is okay because Americans like it. Bruegmann is a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago campus.
It happens that I recently wrote a review of Bruegmann's stupid book for the academic journal, Salmagundi. Since they are not actually publishing it until the fall of 2006, I'm only allowed to run a fragment of it here, as follows:

There is a species of fatuous thinking these days in America which states, in so many words, that suburbia is fine and dandy because so many people like it. Variations on this theme range from the idea that suburbia is the highest expression of free markets, to the notion that it is the natural outcome of our democracy, to the belief that God has ordained it. This has been the reasoning of some public intellectuals such as New York Times columnist David Brooks, Joel Kotkin, of the New America Foundation, and the preposterous Peter Huber of Forbes Magazine and the Manhattan Institute. Now Robert Bruegmann, professor of art history, architecture, and urban planning at the University of Illinois, Chicago, weighs in from academia with essentially the same argument floated on barges of statistical analysis.
That so many editors, foundation board members, and deans of faculty allow this obvious casuistry to pass as thinking at all says a lot about what a nation of morons we have become, and how deep the intellectual rot runs. The various above-named characters may differ somewhat in style, but they all employ the same specious logic in support of the status quo.

For the rest of the article, go to Salmagundi sometime this fall

http://www.kunstler.com/

I'm in accord with steve and kris on this issue.

Maybe most people are satisfied, or even happy with things the way they are. I really don't know. But I do know that I personally am a lot happier because I'm not involved much with that sprawl mentality.

If you ask them, lots of fat people say they're happy with their bodies. Drug addicts often deny that they even have a problem. So when you ask people if they are happy with sprawl, and they say sure, you can't necessarily believe it.

A person's way of life is so engrained that he/she usually can't even see existing alternatives. And there's a lot of fear involved in changing life patterns, so often it's easier just to deny the problems.

Wonder how many people will be happy with sprawl when the energy needs for transportation so it can be serviced start getting to the point of absurdity? I dont care how ingrained people's beliefs and thoughts are, they will wake up sooner or later.

Wonder how many people will be happy with sprawl when the energy needs for transportation so it can be serviced start getting to the point of absurdity? I dont care how ingrained people's beliefs and thoughts are, they will wake up sooner or later.

Will higher energy prices reverse sprawl or will it, instead, accelerate the trend for businesses to decentralize the work space? Businesses that require all employees report daily to a common office are artifacts of the pre-Information age.

If one can have the huge suburban tract home on an acre of ground and a job telecommuting to an office located 100, 1000, or 10000 miles away would they choose to do so?

Will higher energy prices reverse sprawl or will it, instead, accelerate the trend for businesses to decentralize the work space? Businesses that require all employees report daily to a common office are artifacts of the pre-Information age.

If one can have the huge suburban tract home on an acre of ground and a job telecommuting to an office located 100, 1000, or 10000 miles away would they choose to do so?

One can't telecommute food.

If one really knows their stuff, they can grow enough food to survive on one acre... per person.

Telecommuting requires electricity and an internet connection. Unless one is generating thier own electricity, someone has to maintain the grid infrastructure, not to mention the network infrastructure, which will also become more expensive as fuel prices increase. After all, pipes break, wires break, roads decay.

Clothes aren't technically a "need", but I'm betting most people will still prefer to use them. It will be difficult to keep transporting them from where most are currently made. True of virtually all manufacturing in fact.

The "Information Age" only exists because cheap fuel has made it possible to shunt all of those pesky, noisy, polluting manufacturing processes to other countries. So until someone figures out a way to "Inform" things into existance, manufacturing will have to return to all of the "Information Economy" countries in a big way.

Look around you, everything you see that didn't spring from the ground in its currently location was probably manufactured, and was certainly transported to where it is now. It all takes energy.

One can't telecommute food.

If one really knows their stuff, they can grow enough food to survive on one acre... per person.

Telecommuting requires electricity and an internet connection. Unless one is generating thier own electricity, someone has to maintain the grid infrastructure, not to mention the network infrastructure, which will also become more expensive as fuel prices increase. After all, pipes break, wires break, roads decay.

Clothes aren't technically a "need", but I'm betting most people will still prefer to use them. It will be difficult to keep transporting them from where most are currently made. True of virtually all manufacturing in fact.

The "Information Age" only exists because cheap fuel has made it possible to shunt all of those pesky, noisy, polluting manufacturing processes to other countries. So until someone figures out a way to "Inform" things into existance, manufacturing will have to return to all of the "Information Economy" countries in a big way.

Look around you, everything you see that didn't spring from the ground in its currently location was probably manufactured, and was certainly transported to where it is now. It all takes energy.

+1
Hate to be such a "Party Pooper," which I actually think would be a better term than "peaknik" for Kunstler and his ilk, but that's just how it is. :)

I wouldnt assume telecommuting and the "information age internet" will be as stable and robust as it is now either. Everything is affected by energy. Just as food for thought, servers these days consume anywhere from about 500 watts to just over 1000 watts EACH, and consider most places in that kind of business have hundreds or thousands of them. They are already feeling the energy crunch, its become a major issue for them. Yes power consumption is coming down on their equipment due to technology but they still have to deal with it, power is an issue. When energy prices jump 40% per year this is serious, dont care what business it is. Suburbia has NO future in an energy light world. Powering down means exactly that and all the consequences that come with it.

Telecommuting has a couple inherent flaws. People are social animals, and we accomplish most when we work co-operatively. Good creative ideas are nurtured when we interact with one another. Also, we need much complex interactive patterns to establish social heirarchies like boss/subordinate. Unless telecommuting takes all this into account--perhaps with lots of chat and informal communication, as well as formal electronic conferences and meetings--it will not be efficient in the long run.

Gee some of you guys are scaring me with your gloomy outlook. If gasoline prices continue going higher and reach that magic level (whatever that may be - I've heard anywhere from $3.50 to $5.00 a gallon) people will begin to make changes in their lives.

Some will move to be closer to their jobs. Some will quit their current jobs and take another closer to home. And, this is my point, businesses, in order to attract and keep a quality workforce, will start to reinvent the office as a virtual work place.

Is telecommuting the same as working physically together? Of course not - but it has its own advantages. And as technology and our comfort level with it improves I think it will become an acceptable substitute. Especially if the cost of personal transportation rises so high that the only way to get the employees you need is to have them logging in from afar.