Hai guise.
I'm posting here - for a change - because what I have to say fits more in line with what I'd originally set up this blog in order to do: comment on the state of the world at large, and maybe social, geographical, economic and environmental things specifically.
I was asked this morning by my boss to read an article by Richard Florida (The Rise of the Creative Class), published in The Atlantic, entitled, "How the Crash will Reshape America." Our little town of Sumter, SC is participating in Earth Day's "Spotlight Conversations," which is kind of a big deal.
As I read, I found my lips curling as I imagined Jim Kunstler's reaction to the article. Seriously, I wanna toss those two in a room and just listen to what happens. It could be kind of explosively awesome.
Even more awesome would be if Osha Davidson chimed in and gave his 45 cents worth.
hee.
NEW SPN TONITE. At some point I really still need to write that blog post about how the Impala is awesome and may actually save the Universe. No, really.
Also - I never blogged about election day in Horatio, South Carolina. I really am fail.
Showing posts with label jim kunstler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jim kunstler. Show all posts
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Monday, June 23, 2008
the plural of impetus
...is supposedly "impetuses." this sounds ungracious to me; not something a southern lady would say in public. but i digress.
Development in Flood Plains Continued after '93 Floods
I just have to underscore the stupidity of purchasing property in - or even near - flood plains, and am very sorry to actually have to say it. People seem to think that it's perfectly fine "because the government approved it," or something equally ignorant. No one realizes - or acknowledges - the fact that the government approves whatever developers (aka private property owners) ask them to approve. It is anyone's god-given right to develop privately-owned property in the United States. Meaning, that line on the map? Actually means nothing. FEMA cannot keep up with how quickly it moves. Picture a sponge, representing the ground, and a massive steel plate being pushed down in the middle of it, representing development (which, for you unimaginative ones and non-scientists, means increased impervious surface. I'm sorry - that would be a big word. It means paving and rooftops where rain cannot percolate into the ground). Water can't seep thru the steel plate. Therefore, what does it do?
Maybe you smart ones might try this experiment at home. Maybe the light will go on. This should not take a degree in hydrology to figure out.
Somehow, however, I doubt it will seep in for most of you, if you pardon the pun. People are just too dense where their land investments are concerned, especially if the particular investment in question represents HOME. But this is why I don't listen to the reports of distressed, displaced property owners any more. I do, however, have a high measure of condolence for those people who purchased their property well out of a flood plain 30 or more years ago, and now find themselves being flooded out because of increased development around them. If you're one of those people? I'm right beside you, loading up my word-cannon, wanting to blast the living daylights out of those greedy-assed creeps. Yeah.
Sorry, I'm a conservationist and a rebel at heart. And I like to shoot things that need shooting. Sometimes shooting relieves the stress that built up over a decade and a half of trying to convince people that building there wouldn't work out in the long run. I talked myself blue in the face, and people laughed and said, "You're crazy."
So yeah - I'm laughing now.
You property owners who purchased property in the past five or ten years or so, thinking you had all the rights in the world to go on imagining that you were safe or the government would protect you because your property was approved? And bitched and complained because the locality or bank made you purchase flood insurance, and the stupid government employee that you hounded down at the building permit office actually did his or her job and refused to write the letter you requested so you could save a measly few hundred dollars a year on your homeowners insurance? Hey, FUCK YOU. I'm fiddling while your proverbial property rights get washed out to sea, baby. Hahahahahahahahaha.
If I had a dollar for every individual who stormed out of my office because I refused to write that letter, lying so that they could close on their house by noon that day, I'd be able to take a vacation in Cancun on the savings. But I don't. Not that I wasn't offered all manner of return favors, and plied with everything from lottery tickets to free lunches to write that letter.
FEMA is not the bad guy. But you government-reform assholes have certaily ensured it is pretty much unable to do the job it was formed to do: Protect property values, water quality, and habitat. You idiots whittled away at government regulation until it is no more than a dancing puppet, unable to do anything but be an ineffective shadow tracing the lines of its original purpose. Don't whine to me, Argentina. You made your bed by insisting we allow you to develop that property to its "highest and best use," god DAMN that term, so now you get to lie down in it, and splash around with the ducks.
The only thing FEMA actually does anyway is approve your ability to purchase government-subsidized flood insurance should you be stupid enough to purchase property in a mapped flood-prone area. FEMA cannot prevent you from building there... they shove that responsibility off to the states, who in turn shove it off onto the localities, who blithely ignore it. It's actually illegal under federal law for participants in the National Flood Insurance program to issue building permits in certain flood-prone areas, for all kinds of excellent reasons that ensure property rights in the long run are preserved. But the administrative wherewithall for ensuring that gets enforced is placed with individuals who have a vested interest in seeing that it is NOT enforced: Tax Assessors and County Administrators, whose directive from the people who hired them (politicians) is: INCREASE THE TAX BASE AND TO HELL WITH GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS.
Who in their right mind thinks about the long run? People are human. The long run means nothing, except when it becomes the short run.
So no, I really, really don't even care about all the millions of dollars worth of property damage out there. You get the government you deserve; your karma, baby. As a geographer, I find it unbelievable that people can't see that water coming years before it gets there. As a person raised under the ideals of common sense, I still can't believe it.
You don't have to be a geographer to understand that when you cover the ground with buildings, pavement, and roads - the water can't seep into the ground. It collects in the low places. And the more you cover the ground, the fewer places it has to collect. It fills the low places, and then creeps up to less low places. Soon, what used to not be designated "flood zone," eventually qualifies, baby. It gets Wet. THIS IS COMMON SENSE.
Or, you could look at it this way: God is Punishing You for Your Ignorant Stupidity. The End is Near. The Apocalypse is Imminent.
I love how these people are always the same mouths who yammered for me to approve their goddamned flood-prone building lots. As if Christianity itself depended upon their getting that return on their investment.
Heh.
Either way you look at it - apocalypse or science, Shit Happens. We can't go on deranging drainage systems and drying up habitat and paving over flood plain and think God Won't Get Pissed Off Eventually. Or the earth will eventually take back what is hers.
Here's some bottom-line advice: Don't Build There. Buy a park bench and sit on it and enjoy the sunset. Bring your fishing rod, and a cooler of beers. Pitch a goddamned tent. But DON'T BUILD A HOUSE. A few localities that participate in the National Flood Insurance Program do actually refuse building permits for structures that meet certain criteria in mapped flood-prone areas. The reason I say "a few" is because out of the multiplicity of localities and regional governments that I personally have experience working for and/or with across the southern US, most administrators 1) do not understand the requirements for participation and 2) do not give a flying flip about them. Tax assessors routinely push to have building permits issued wherever and whenever they are requested, in order to increase the value of property, in order that taxes may be collected.
I really, really look forward to this day. Except a part of me doesn't actually believe it will happen. Soothsayers Rule #1: The future will be like nothing you have imagined, but when you get there, you will realize it is exactly what you expected.
Prometheans hate spelling things out. But apparently, you asked for it. And I have no doubt, will continue ignoring it. And humanity will survive, in spite of our angst.
Or not.
Blithe Cassandra, that would be me. I've done my duty in warning you, now I'll go back to what I prefer to do with my free time, which is sitting up here in my 18th century house high above the flood plain, writing porn about Jensen Ackles.
La,
S
i can hear: The Black Crowes, Wiser Time
it's my party & i'm: in your face
lost or found: down by the river
stats: sunny & breezy with a touch of headache
Development in Flood Plains Continued after '93 Floods
I just have to underscore the stupidity of purchasing property in - or even near - flood plains, and am very sorry to actually have to say it. People seem to think that it's perfectly fine "because the government approved it," or something equally ignorant. No one realizes - or acknowledges - the fact that the government approves whatever developers (aka private property owners) ask them to approve. It is anyone's god-given right to develop privately-owned property in the United States. Meaning, that line on the map? Actually means nothing. FEMA cannot keep up with how quickly it moves. Picture a sponge, representing the ground, and a massive steel plate being pushed down in the middle of it, representing development (which, for you unimaginative ones and non-scientists, means increased impervious surface. I'm sorry - that would be a big word. It means paving and rooftops where rain cannot percolate into the ground). Water can't seep thru the steel plate. Therefore, what does it do?
Maybe you smart ones might try this experiment at home. Maybe the light will go on. This should not take a degree in hydrology to figure out.
Somehow, however, I doubt it will seep in for most of you, if you pardon the pun. People are just too dense where their land investments are concerned, especially if the particular investment in question represents HOME. But this is why I don't listen to the reports of distressed, displaced property owners any more. I do, however, have a high measure of condolence for those people who purchased their property well out of a flood plain 30 or more years ago, and now find themselves being flooded out because of increased development around them. If you're one of those people? I'm right beside you, loading up my word-cannon, wanting to blast the living daylights out of those greedy-assed creeps. Yeah.
Sorry, I'm a conservationist and a rebel at heart. And I like to shoot things that need shooting. Sometimes shooting relieves the stress that built up over a decade and a half of trying to convince people that building there wouldn't work out in the long run. I talked myself blue in the face, and people laughed and said, "You're crazy."
So yeah - I'm laughing now.
You property owners who purchased property in the past five or ten years or so, thinking you had all the rights in the world to go on imagining that you were safe or the government would protect you because your property was approved? And bitched and complained because the locality or bank made you purchase flood insurance, and the stupid government employee that you hounded down at the building permit office actually did his or her job and refused to write the letter you requested so you could save a measly few hundred dollars a year on your homeowners insurance? Hey, FUCK YOU. I'm fiddling while your proverbial property rights get washed out to sea, baby. Hahahahahahahahaha.
If I had a dollar for every individual who stormed out of my office because I refused to write that letter, lying so that they could close on their house by noon that day, I'd be able to take a vacation in Cancun on the savings. But I don't. Not that I wasn't offered all manner of return favors, and plied with everything from lottery tickets to free lunches to write that letter.
FEMA is not the bad guy. But you government-reform assholes have certaily ensured it is pretty much unable to do the job it was formed to do: Protect property values, water quality, and habitat. You idiots whittled away at government regulation until it is no more than a dancing puppet, unable to do anything but be an ineffective shadow tracing the lines of its original purpose. Don't whine to me, Argentina. You made your bed by insisting we allow you to develop that property to its "highest and best use," god DAMN that term, so now you get to lie down in it, and splash around with the ducks.
The only thing FEMA actually does anyway is approve your ability to purchase government-subsidized flood insurance should you be stupid enough to purchase property in a mapped flood-prone area. FEMA cannot prevent you from building there... they shove that responsibility off to the states, who in turn shove it off onto the localities, who blithely ignore it. It's actually illegal under federal law for participants in the National Flood Insurance program to issue building permits in certain flood-prone areas, for all kinds of excellent reasons that ensure property rights in the long run are preserved. But the administrative wherewithall for ensuring that gets enforced is placed with individuals who have a vested interest in seeing that it is NOT enforced: Tax Assessors and County Administrators, whose directive from the people who hired them (politicians) is: INCREASE THE TAX BASE AND TO HELL WITH GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS.
Who in their right mind thinks about the long run? People are human. The long run means nothing, except when it becomes the short run.
So no, I really, really don't even care about all the millions of dollars worth of property damage out there. You get the government you deserve; your karma, baby. As a geographer, I find it unbelievable that people can't see that water coming years before it gets there. As a person raised under the ideals of common sense, I still can't believe it.
You don't have to be a geographer to understand that when you cover the ground with buildings, pavement, and roads - the water can't seep into the ground. It collects in the low places. And the more you cover the ground, the fewer places it has to collect. It fills the low places, and then creeps up to less low places. Soon, what used to not be designated "flood zone," eventually qualifies, baby. It gets Wet. THIS IS COMMON SENSE.
Or, you could look at it this way: God is Punishing You for Your Ignorant Stupidity. The End is Near. The Apocalypse is Imminent.
I love how these people are always the same mouths who yammered for me to approve their goddamned flood-prone building lots. As if Christianity itself depended upon their getting that return on their investment.
Heh.
Either way you look at it - apocalypse or science, Shit Happens. We can't go on deranging drainage systems and drying up habitat and paving over flood plain and think God Won't Get Pissed Off Eventually. Or the earth will eventually take back what is hers.
Here's some bottom-line advice: Don't Build There. Buy a park bench and sit on it and enjoy the sunset. Bring your fishing rod, and a cooler of beers. Pitch a goddamned tent. But DON'T BUILD A HOUSE. A few localities that participate in the National Flood Insurance Program do actually refuse building permits for structures that meet certain criteria in mapped flood-prone areas. The reason I say "a few" is because out of the multiplicity of localities and regional governments that I personally have experience working for and/or with across the southern US, most administrators 1) do not understand the requirements for participation and 2) do not give a flying flip about them. Tax assessors routinely push to have building permits issued wherever and whenever they are requested, in order to increase the value of property, in order that taxes may be collected.
I really, really look forward to this day. Except a part of me doesn't actually believe it will happen. Soothsayers Rule #1: The future will be like nothing you have imagined, but when you get there, you will realize it is exactly what you expected.
Prometheans hate spelling things out. But apparently, you asked for it. And I have no doubt, will continue ignoring it. And humanity will survive, in spite of our angst.
Or not.
Blithe Cassandra, that would be me. I've done my duty in warning you, now I'll go back to what I prefer to do with my free time, which is sitting up here in my 18th century house high above the flood plain, writing porn about Jensen Ackles.
La,
S
i can hear: The Black Crowes, Wiser Time
it's my party & i'm: in your face
lost or found: down by the river
stats: sunny & breezy with a touch of headache
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Earth Day 2008
Image source unknown
Do what you can. Live as you must. Be the Beacon.
"The Star Thrower," A Sermon, The Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, National Cathedral, Spotlight on Global Warming 2006
Here are a few links to peeps on my sidebar who are doin' it right, or at least doing their best:
Resources:
Awakening Earth: Voluntary Simplicity
Blackle: A Black Google
Chick in the Country
Eat Wild! Your source for Local Grass-fed Foods
James Howard Kunstler
Leonardo di Caprio's Eco Site
Osha Gray Davidson
The Sustainable Communities Network
Treehugger
Urban Agrarian
Passions, Causes, Crusades:
Compassion in World Farming
Congaree Land Trust
Measure your ecological impact at www.conservation.org/ecofootprint!
Earthjustice
Earthskills
Environmental Defense
Environmental Law Institute
International Conservation Caucus Foundation
The Land Institute's Prairie Writer's Circle
Local Harvest
Southern Environmental Law Center
STOP Factory Farming
The Trust for Public Land
Valley Conservation Council
Blogs of Note:
Fragments from Floyd
Method: People Against Dirty
Mossback Meadow
Nature: The Wildlife Blog
Near Sea Naturals Blog
No Impact Man
Working for Change: Working Assets blog
Friday, March 23, 2007
things of note
best i can do today is pass on for your edification & perusal some things i am totally embroiled in & consumed by at the moment... too much so to really comment right now. so much to learn, so little time!
the first time i voted for al gore was when he was running against clinton for the democratic presidential nomination. i was devastated when he dropped out. and i read & actually admit to owning a copy of "earth in the balance." but that's old history.
Emotional Return to Congress for Al Gore
Here's another spin on same:
The Goracle
Go get 'em, Al.
Jim Kunstler has condescended to go round & round with me on some things (notably his yankee ethnocentrism on inhabitants of the southern united states), but when writing on the end of oil, he's right on target. His recent Orion article demonstrates:
Making Other Arrangements
Project Laundry List - National Hanging Out Day is April 19th!
No Impact Man - "A guilty liberal finally snaps, swears off plastic, goes organic, becomes a bicycle nazi, turns off his power, composts his poop and, while living in NYC, generally turns into a tree-hugging lunatic who tries to save the polar bears and the rest of the planet from environmental catastrophe while dragging his baby daughter and Prada-wearing, four seasons-loving wife along for the ride..." You gotta love a guy who jumps in with both feet. Experiential (also called experimental) archaeology at its best.
and alongside that:
The Compact - just click thru and read... and read... and read...
The Forest Stewardship Council's FSC Certified Paper program: or, how to use paper and save the forest at the same time. still trying to figure out how this works.
and last but certainly not least:
carbon offsets - only the latest in the "if i pay enough i can make my conscience cleaner" anti-logic that brought us PDR's, TDR's, and Wetland Mitigation Banks:
Another Inconvenient Truth
the first time i voted for al gore was when he was running against clinton for the democratic presidential nomination. i was devastated when he dropped out. and i read & actually admit to owning a copy of "earth in the balance." but that's old history.
Emotional Return to Congress for Al Gore
Here's another spin on same:
The Goracle
Go get 'em, Al.
Jim Kunstler has condescended to go round & round with me on some things (notably his yankee ethnocentrism on inhabitants of the southern united states), but when writing on the end of oil, he's right on target. His recent Orion article demonstrates:
Making Other Arrangements
Project Laundry List - National Hanging Out Day is April 19th!
No Impact Man - "A guilty liberal finally snaps, swears off plastic, goes organic, becomes a bicycle nazi, turns off his power, composts his poop and, while living in NYC, generally turns into a tree-hugging lunatic who tries to save the polar bears and the rest of the planet from environmental catastrophe while dragging his baby daughter and Prada-wearing, four seasons-loving wife along for the ride..." You gotta love a guy who jumps in with both feet. Experiential (also called experimental) archaeology at its best.
and alongside that:
The Compact - just click thru and read... and read... and read...
The Forest Stewardship Council's FSC Certified Paper program: or, how to use paper and save the forest at the same time. still trying to figure out how this works.
and last but certainly not least:
carbon offsets - only the latest in the "if i pay enough i can make my conscience cleaner" anti-logic that brought us PDR's, TDR's, and Wetland Mitigation Banks:
Another Inconvenient Truth
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Your southern adventure
(An open letter to James Howard Kunstler, in response to a recent entry on his blog - to read, check archives here,) and scroll down to October 30, 2006).
Dear Mr. Kunstler:
Am trying to clear the calendar in order to make your visit to eastern NC on Nov. 6th. Your writings are always good for at least a giggle --if a somewhat exasperated belly laugh fails me. I appreciate your cutting insight and you do often hit the nail on the head regarding the glaring stupidity of many public policies & land use decisions.
As a land use planner by education & experience, and a native of the Commonwealth, and by that I mean Virginia-the-mother-of-all-states, I have always been somewhat mystified by the actions and tastes of our neighboring states. To be exact, I am from "southside Virginia," and not a native of that OTHER state, namely NOVA or Northern Virginia --which is actually a northern state and is not recognized as part of the Commonwealth by the rest of us. I began my planning career in the mid-80s in the most extreme southeast corner of Alabama, then worked my way thru rural Georgia to the Golden Isles, then up to the sprawling pock-marked metropolis that is Charlotte. Ugh. This city is certainly the apogee of Yankee-fed money-lust.
Although I share many of your opinions and some of your conclusions about southern culture, you really don't know what the bleep you are talking about. The myths and the reality are one here... Centuries of poverty gave us time to develop a deep and abiding love of the only thing we had: our inner and outer landscape. Most of us, you see, were very used to hard work. The smallest minority of us ever owned slaves or have ever been able to afford to pay someone to do our work for us. If we didn't work, we didn't eat. And believe it or not, many of us see the link between air conditioning and the influx of foreign culture --and in defiance we raise our cardboard paper fans with biblical sayings printed on the back and wave them silently in total bliss from the porch swing. The softness of a southern summer evening where the breeze is only a whisper is something too fine and ephemeral for most of you to ever even recognize, much less appreciate. What that does to one inside is akin to the deepening of the soul's ability to negotiate between money-based comfort and the control of one's own destiny. Whether you are talking about a shrimper out of Darien, GA or a tobacco farmer in Brown Summit, NC, you are talking about a culture that is steeped in tradition, a deep love of the satisfaction based in the fruits of labor, and an extreme distrust of outside influences. And you forget how much this was upended in the mid-19th century, and how you Yankees still tend to prove us right time after time. We see you, compared to us, as short-sighted, blighted individuals absolutely unconcerned for what you see around you. You cannot appreciate our scars and wounds and are too quick to point out our faults and foibles without a shred of concern or understanding as to what those scars and wounds stand for. If any of you would simply live anonymously among us for a time, you might come to see the subtler, substantial beauty that is the South. You might come to appreciate our deep concern and respect for our neighbors, that is entirely different from yours. Concern and respect do not even mean the same thing here as they apparently do "up Nawth." And so, again, I would offer that you just have to live here, silently, and observe. The south of William Faulker, Flannery O'Connor, Pat Conroy, Eudora Welty, and Lee Smith is not a vast, ugly, bank-supported empire. It is a natural landscape teeming with life and culture --and that is something you Yankees cannot change, not with all your money and your influence and your offers of "knowledge and assistance." I have gotten to where I would far rather see an honest 1970s era mobile home or concrete block farmhouse community out in the country than the cobbled-together false community of the subdivisions around Charlotte. God damn subdivisions after all --thank you so very much, Mr. Yankee. What a lovely idea those were!
Oh --and also, if you ate at any Mom & Pop diner out on the four-lane, you missed the point completely. Southerners do not reveal their secrets and their best selves to just anyone, even less to any Yankee with attitude who happens to drive into town. What makes you think you experienced anything in particular at that dive? Unless the town you visited is vastly different from most, no local eats there unless half-starved and against a wall, I assure you. First reason --they are too expensive and second, the food tastes terrible!! Those restaurants are for TRAVELERS, and they developed in the fifties by people like my great-grandparents who realized that hungry people from out-of-town on a long car trip to the beach or Florida will eat just about anything and pay lots of money for it. REAL home-cooked food is nearly always served waaaaaay out on on a dirt road in an old tumble-down shack or big Victorian whose last paint job was before the Depression, and is not accessible to anyone but the locals. Fact is, you got what you expected --and they got your money. That is the point. The cheap plastic icons of which you speak were put there after the advent of the automobile, but the south you saw was not the real South. You have to live here to know that.
One reason you see so many poor land use decisions here in the South, is that we still have lots and lots of land to waste --unfortunately for us planners. This isn't going to change for the foreseeable future --and yet, here in the South we have no city as ugly as Waterford, Connecticut --where my appalled southern eyes finally saw the truth of what rampant capitalism does to a landscape. God, what an ugly town --miles of concrete and dirty black asphalt --and not a tree or green blade of grass in sight. I high-tailed it back here as quick as I could fly, and have tried my best to warn my fellow southerners about what living conditions the Yankees are used to. They don't believe me. Here we still have trouble visualizing what our cities can and actually are turning into --where you can literally reach out your kitchen window and turn on the faucet in your neighbor's kitchen. Most southerners do not believe for an instant that these tract-home developments will abide for long. And correctly, many predict they will be "filled with 5 Mexican families each," before the next decade ends. Still, my frustrations are similar to yours --the love affair with quick fixes, the dirty old boys (and now women, too) in the smoky civic backroom making deals with developers so that Uncle Andy can retire in peace to the beach. While we may not be able to understand the cultural difference that you Yankees bring down here, namely, your absolute unawareness of how CROWDED you are --this, we sincerely believe, will be the downfall of the Yankee in the south. Eventually the market for living on top of one another will just dry up! Living so closely squashed together is anathema to our very culture --the Southern psyche must have room to breathe and shoot the neighbor's pigs to keep them from running rampant thru the garden --oh, and instead of going to therapists, we blow away the errant beer can or two on the fence with a .357 magnum. It is ultimately why TNDs and "urban planning" fail here. Having attended public hearing after town meeting after community information session for my past 18 years of public life, I see it over and over again. The locals see too many changes happening way too quickly and they rise up and say "No." No culture can assimilate the rapid changes that have taken place on the local level in even the past 5 years. I have seen that the locals do eventually realize what outsiders want to change --which is their very IDENTITY, and they do take back their towns and prevent any more change for a period of several years, until the locals have a chance to catch up. And then they do it on their own terms. They set up baseball diamonds, rejuvenate the canopies over the sidewalk on Main Street, plant trees and polish up the Confederate Memorial in front of the courthouse. In other words, we do get it. We just don't necessarily always do it the way you Yankees do. We like where we live, and in the end we'd rather remain an honest Third World Nation than subscribe to the soul's selling out offered by Yankee industrialists. While a few decision-makers at the top often can be bought, by and large the southern people themselves remain true to their culture. "Bloom where you are planted," pretty accurately describes our mindset. Not "Get thee to Dothan," or any other frame of mind involving leaving the place of your birth and going elsewhere to try to change what you really can't address in your neck of the woods. Because all in all, if you really liked it, you'd stay there.
No personal offense intended --and thank you for letting me get that off my chest. Looking forward to your next column, and perhaps I'll see you next Monday.
Best regards,
Susannah B. Smith, AICP
Principal Planner
Adair Fox Planning, Research, Advocacy & Design
www.adairfox.com
"We are only the trustees for those who come after us." --William Morris
Dear Mr. Kunstler:
Am trying to clear the calendar in order to make your visit to eastern NC on Nov. 6th. Your writings are always good for at least a giggle --if a somewhat exasperated belly laugh fails me. I appreciate your cutting insight and you do often hit the nail on the head regarding the glaring stupidity of many public policies & land use decisions.
As a land use planner by education & experience, and a native of the Commonwealth, and by that I mean Virginia-the-mother-of-all-states, I have always been somewhat mystified by the actions and tastes of our neighboring states. To be exact, I am from "southside Virginia," and not a native of that OTHER state, namely NOVA or Northern Virginia --which is actually a northern state and is not recognized as part of the Commonwealth by the rest of us. I began my planning career in the mid-80s in the most extreme southeast corner of Alabama, then worked my way thru rural Georgia to the Golden Isles, then up to the sprawling pock-marked metropolis that is Charlotte. Ugh. This city is certainly the apogee of Yankee-fed money-lust.
Although I share many of your opinions and some of your conclusions about southern culture, you really don't know what the bleep you are talking about. The myths and the reality are one here... Centuries of poverty gave us time to develop a deep and abiding love of the only thing we had: our inner and outer landscape. Most of us, you see, were very used to hard work. The smallest minority of us ever owned slaves or have ever been able to afford to pay someone to do our work for us. If we didn't work, we didn't eat. And believe it or not, many of us see the link between air conditioning and the influx of foreign culture --and in defiance we raise our cardboard paper fans with biblical sayings printed on the back and wave them silently in total bliss from the porch swing. The softness of a southern summer evening where the breeze is only a whisper is something too fine and ephemeral for most of you to ever even recognize, much less appreciate. What that does to one inside is akin to the deepening of the soul's ability to negotiate between money-based comfort and the control of one's own destiny. Whether you are talking about a shrimper out of Darien, GA or a tobacco farmer in Brown Summit, NC, you are talking about a culture that is steeped in tradition, a deep love of the satisfaction based in the fruits of labor, and an extreme distrust of outside influences. And you forget how much this was upended in the mid-19th century, and how you Yankees still tend to prove us right time after time. We see you, compared to us, as short-sighted, blighted individuals absolutely unconcerned for what you see around you. You cannot appreciate our scars and wounds and are too quick to point out our faults and foibles without a shred of concern or understanding as to what those scars and wounds stand for. If any of you would simply live anonymously among us for a time, you might come to see the subtler, substantial beauty that is the South. You might come to appreciate our deep concern and respect for our neighbors, that is entirely different from yours. Concern and respect do not even mean the same thing here as they apparently do "up Nawth." And so, again, I would offer that you just have to live here, silently, and observe. The south of William Faulker, Flannery O'Connor, Pat Conroy, Eudora Welty, and Lee Smith is not a vast, ugly, bank-supported empire. It is a natural landscape teeming with life and culture --and that is something you Yankees cannot change, not with all your money and your influence and your offers of "knowledge and assistance." I have gotten to where I would far rather see an honest 1970s era mobile home or concrete block farmhouse community out in the country than the cobbled-together false community of the subdivisions around Charlotte. God damn subdivisions after all --thank you so very much, Mr. Yankee. What a lovely idea those were!
Oh --and also, if you ate at any Mom & Pop diner out on the four-lane, you missed the point completely. Southerners do not reveal their secrets and their best selves to just anyone, even less to any Yankee with attitude who happens to drive into town. What makes you think you experienced anything in particular at that dive? Unless the town you visited is vastly different from most, no local eats there unless half-starved and against a wall, I assure you. First reason --they are too expensive and second, the food tastes terrible!! Those restaurants are for TRAVELERS, and they developed in the fifties by people like my great-grandparents who realized that hungry people from out-of-town on a long car trip to the beach or Florida will eat just about anything and pay lots of money for it. REAL home-cooked food is nearly always served waaaaaay out on on a dirt road in an old tumble-down shack or big Victorian whose last paint job was before the Depression, and is not accessible to anyone but the locals. Fact is, you got what you expected --and they got your money. That is the point. The cheap plastic icons of which you speak were put there after the advent of the automobile, but the south you saw was not the real South. You have to live here to know that.
One reason you see so many poor land use decisions here in the South, is that we still have lots and lots of land to waste --unfortunately for us planners. This isn't going to change for the foreseeable future --and yet, here in the South we have no city as ugly as Waterford, Connecticut --where my appalled southern eyes finally saw the truth of what rampant capitalism does to a landscape. God, what an ugly town --miles of concrete and dirty black asphalt --and not a tree or green blade of grass in sight. I high-tailed it back here as quick as I could fly, and have tried my best to warn my fellow southerners about what living conditions the Yankees are used to. They don't believe me. Here we still have trouble visualizing what our cities can and actually are turning into --where you can literally reach out your kitchen window and turn on the faucet in your neighbor's kitchen. Most southerners do not believe for an instant that these tract-home developments will abide for long. And correctly, many predict they will be "filled with 5 Mexican families each," before the next decade ends. Still, my frustrations are similar to yours --the love affair with quick fixes, the dirty old boys (and now women, too) in the smoky civic backroom making deals with developers so that Uncle Andy can retire in peace to the beach. While we may not be able to understand the cultural difference that you Yankees bring down here, namely, your absolute unawareness of how CROWDED you are --this, we sincerely believe, will be the downfall of the Yankee in the south. Eventually the market for living on top of one another will just dry up! Living so closely squashed together is anathema to our very culture --the Southern psyche must have room to breathe and shoot the neighbor's pigs to keep them from running rampant thru the garden --oh, and instead of going to therapists, we blow away the errant beer can or two on the fence with a .357 magnum. It is ultimately why TNDs and "urban planning" fail here. Having attended public hearing after town meeting after community information session for my past 18 years of public life, I see it over and over again. The locals see too many changes happening way too quickly and they rise up and say "No." No culture can assimilate the rapid changes that have taken place on the local level in even the past 5 years. I have seen that the locals do eventually realize what outsiders want to change --which is their very IDENTITY, and they do take back their towns and prevent any more change for a period of several years, until the locals have a chance to catch up. And then they do it on their own terms. They set up baseball diamonds, rejuvenate the canopies over the sidewalk on Main Street, plant trees and polish up the Confederate Memorial in front of the courthouse. In other words, we do get it. We just don't necessarily always do it the way you Yankees do. We like where we live, and in the end we'd rather remain an honest Third World Nation than subscribe to the soul's selling out offered by Yankee industrialists. While a few decision-makers at the top often can be bought, by and large the southern people themselves remain true to their culture. "Bloom where you are planted," pretty accurately describes our mindset. Not "Get thee to Dothan," or any other frame of mind involving leaving the place of your birth and going elsewhere to try to change what you really can't address in your neck of the woods. Because all in all, if you really liked it, you'd stay there.
No personal offense intended --and thank you for letting me get that off my chest. Looking forward to your next column, and perhaps I'll see you next Monday.
Best regards,
Susannah B. Smith, AICP
Principal Planner
Adair Fox Planning, Research, Advocacy & Design
www.adairfox.com
"We are only the trustees for those who come after us." --William Morris
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
when cities become villages
Two articles this week showcase examples of rapid changes both in thinking and in on-the-ground dynamics of suburban development. I cannot but hope that we are learning the lessons described by Jane Jacobs --the hard way, of course, for what other way is there for humans to learn?
The 'Smart Sprawl' Strategy
Suburbanites Under House Arrest Without Wheels
Cities must be able to provide for their own needs and not be totally dependent upon outside commerce to fill the basic primary and secondary requirements for living: food, shelter, clothing; goods and services, education, medical facilities, transportation. An extremely effective and economically viable way to do that is by allowing people to develop businesses in conjunction with their living spaces, within neighborhoods, and eschew the kind of thinking that these very unfortunately typical homeowners embrace; radical, separatist believers all:
Affluent Neighborhood Doesn't Want Bus Service
I used to see and hear this all the time. At my planners' desk, it was not uncommon for people to phone me and complain about "cutting through" neighborhoods. Roadway connections to adjacent neighborhoods was seen as equivalent to speeding and crime, not a way to save gas and cut traffic buildups on local roads. People would also speak loudly against greenways and bike paths going through their neighborhoods, and call sidewalks "a waste of money." They would complain about the dust, noise, and smells when they moved to a new housing development that had been unintellegently planted in the middle of working farms, and the farmers would counter with stories of how these folks' kids would trample crops with their off-road vehicles, scare and even kill the livestock, steal produce and supplies from barns and outbuildings. These people had bought into a lifestyle that could only be supported by dependence upon foreign oil, and was obtainable by only the very upper reaches of society. It showed an extreme separation from people who didn't drive everywhere, but walked, used public transportation, or bicycled. These people didn't want to belong to the world, they wanted to escape from it. Such a self-centered, unrealistic viewpoint is not only extravagant in the extreme (these are public roads, after all) but contribute to the insular dependency we face now: insular in that we shut ourselves off in our houses, hooked up to our individual television sets, and turn our backs on the world outside, yet in order to do so, we are totally dependent upon resources that we have sold our ability to provide.
If cities do in truth become a series of interconnected, interdependent boroughs and villages, as they were before the advent of the automobile that contributed to the insular dependent mindset of the typical suburbanite, I do predict that this will be the natural outcome of our dependency on foreign oil. But the mighty will fall with a bang, and they usually make very loud noises when that happens. Rich and powerful people do not take failure in stride. Those who have benefitted the most by this inequity of resources will do all they can to see that it doesn't happen. Better that they pray for faith, and grace to see it through, to hold out their hands to join their neighborhoods together and see them develop into wholly functional, healthy societies that cross racial, economic, and social barriers, than to continue to fight to hold on to their ultimately destructive living standards.
i am looking for a bike i can use to visit one of my two neighborhood grocery & shopping areas, both of which are within a mile or two of my home. i want a sturdy bicycle with a big basket on the front or rear, one of those old-fashioned ones from the days when Detroit made big cars that looked more like tanks than passenger vehicles. i can smell the sweet timothy-scented breezes on my face, feel those buff calves getting a workout already...
Last night the corn field behind my home bustled with reapers and mowers late into the evening. I am sure the neighborhood cats will be dining on displaced rodents and I'll have to wipe the dust from the windows. But the morning sunrise was lovely over the golden-green stubble, and hearkened to crisper days and frost-rimmed mornings to come, all too soon. Summer is over, autumn beckons. How wonderful to have that forced upon me when waking. How wealthy am I, not to be insulated from my world, to be aware of the activity of my neighbors who are different from me.
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