Two helpful lectures

Neither of these are brand new, but they're new to me.

Ezra Klein calls attention to a TED talk given by Ellen Dunham-Jones on retrofitting the suburbs with urbanism:



And Doug Farr speaks to Case Western University more generally about sustainable urbanism. This is a full-length lecture, not as polished in production as the TED ones, but still a very good introduction to Farr's work as a green architect and writer.

Kunstler is not really the face of smart growth

Kunstler and O'Toole meet for the first time. Source: Brown PTP

I just watched a debate held last week at Brown University between James Howard Kunstler and Randal O'Toole entitled "Building America: who should control urban growth?" Halfway through, I began to wonder whether the debate organizers had taken two separate presentations and spliced them together with Adobe Premiere. They were not only not actually disagreeing (which is helpful in a debate), but they weren't even starting with the same questions.

Kunstler, with his characteristically vivid language ("Phoenix is going to dry up and blow away. We're done with that"), spells out the inevitable collapse of the entire American energy and financial system, while O'Toole compares charts of data for federal subsidies of various modes of transportation. The closest Kunstler gets to addressing O'Toole's (rather flamboyant) charts was simply to point out how easy it is to lie with statistics. That, and the fact that it's all coming to a crashing end. Case closed, I guess.

I have no interest in throwing Kunstler under the bus, but I want to stress that he has to be considered in the right context. He's a writer and provocateur. He's not at all a policy wonk nor a strategist. He's not even particularly interested in solutions. I like the way Eric Jacobsen characterized him a few years ago, as prophet, straight out of the Old Testament, proclaiming "repent for the kingdom of god is near." I would no more expect a detailed economic forecast from Kunstler than I would from the ancient itinerant Ezekial in sackcloth and ashes. A different mode of communication altogether.

Highway proponents like Randal O'Toole recognize Kunstler's eccentricities and are happy to characterize him as the face of smart growth. The fact that Kunstler is intensely critical of government planning and dismissive of larger cities doesn't seem to matter. In a recent blog post, O'Toole told his critics to "get their noses out of Kunstler’s biased diatribes," as if the writer himself were issuing marching orders to the hordes of planners and activists from his command post up in Saratoga Springs.

Suburban proponents have a lot to gain from casting Kunstler in this mastermind role, which helps explain why John Stossel keeps trying to get him to appear on his Fox Business show. A message of impending doom, whether true or not, is not particularly winsome to most Americans. Keep in mind that Kunstler's primary argument these days is not so much that compact, walkable neighborhoods are more desirable than sprawl, but that sprawl will be unavailable to us whether we prefer it or not. Telling an American they cannot have something makes us want it more, which is not necessarily a bad trait if it's coupled with hard work and ingenuity. This deep-rooted optimism does not work in Kunstler's favor.

Secondly, his writings are a veritable gold mine of quotable nuggets for anyone seeking to cast the central smart growth argument as aesthetic in nature, something opponents do all the time. Jarrett, from Human Transit, explains this tactic well,

"The standard move in these works is to treat environmental concerns as though they were aesthetic ones, and then take a long view in which these aesthetic arguments look narrow and culturally contingent, as aeshetic arguments always do.  This move -- ridiculing environmental judgments as though they were aesthetic ones -- is sadly common these days."

Find a quote calling all suburbanites clowns, or something equally unfair and derisive, and then earnestly defend these Americans' right to have their own housing preferences. Nevermind public health, social equity, environmental constraints, fiscal feasibility or any other reasoned arguments. The other side is only right-brained impressions and personal preferences, as O'Toole recently summarized the debate.

Finally, Kunstler's bluster, which is part of the show, doesn't always play well when it comes to actual policy debates. Calling his opponent a "rogue in the services of evil enterprises," as he did in a podcast prior to the debate, may get a laugh out of many of us but it also blurs the lines between entertainment and serious problem-solving. This comment also dives head first into the genetic fallacy. Even if O'Toole receives funding from highway interests, his arguments really need to be evaluated on their own merits. I know I'd be cool if someone wanted to pay me to say something I already believed.

For a truly fruitful critique of O'Toole, I would direct you to two places. Austin Bramwell, writing in the American Conservative, fires some posts back and forth with O'Toole. Bramwell's basic point is that the number of regulations and subsidies that mandate sprawl and motoring far outweigh those that encourage compact development and walking. He questions O'Toole's highly selective market approach. Or check out Matthew Yglesias's similar take. Although a progressive, he's fully willing to put on the libertarian shoes for the sake of debate. These are the kinds of responses that O'Toole's followers, at least those who are at liberty to have their own opinions, are likely to find more persuasive.

I still think Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere are classic polemics. Kunstler can turn a phrase wonderfully and boil down the essence of an observation into a pithy and humorous line. He's just as witty in his weekly podcast with Duncan Crary. He's a showman, who once wrote that "an audience doesn't hunger for the truth so much as authenticity. They know the truth can be slippery."

In the spirit of niceness, I'd like to end with a great passage from Home from Nowhere,

"I feel an obligation to paint the landscape of my time, so I often paint the highways with cars on them and even roadside monstrosities like McDonald's and Kmart. I especially like the contrast between the artificial light of the electric signs and the natural twilight in the background. The result on canvas is oddly beautiful, but of course what's left out is the roaring traffic and smell of exhaust fumes. A few years ago, I was painting a McDonald's with my easel set in the bark mulch bed of a Burger King parking lot across the highway. I was well underway when the manager bustled out and barked, "that ain't allowed here!" I dared him to call the police. I would have loved nothing better than to be arrested for painting."

But this is not my bible. I don't think it was intended to be.

The paradox of smart growth

Kaid Benfield's blog for NRDC has probably been the most consistently insightful of all of my regular reads. I still recall the first post I read back in the summer of 2008, on the carbon emission benefits of density. Prior to getting hooked on his blog, I was mostly interested in the the urban form for its benefits to community - think Robert Putnam - or for purely aesthetic reasons. The environment was always a part of it, but Kaid's persuasive and passionate reasoning helped shift the focus of my priorities on this blog. I'm sure I've stolen an idea or two over the last two years.

Images of Rockville's Twinbrook Station from NRDC Switchboard blog

I bring all of this up now, because his two recent posts are an excellent introduction to his blog.  I'd encourage anyone who has not stopped by to head over there now. No reason to finish reading this post.

The first post presents the paradox of smart growth among environmentalists, something he undoubtedly encounters on a regular basis.

"Environmental impacts will occur with development; to limit them, we must concentrate them, and this can mean increasing them in some places.  This is what I call the environmental paradox of smart growth.  Only if we understand the paradox can we address it.  Only if we address it can we really create better places in which to live, work, and play – and surely that, not just lowering pollution numbers, must be our real goal."

 (why are you still reading here? It's all just quotes and paraphrases at this point)

What is needed is density, diversity, and design. Approaching smart growth from an overly analytical perspective misses those intangible qualities and details that make a place truly livable. Kaid is always mindful of the fact that people have to want to live in the places that are built. The whole game is off if nobody actually lives in the whatever fully sustainable development we've imagined.

The second post seeks to address this design question. Rather than spelling out the "top 10 principles of good urban design" or something, Kaid simply provides some examples of recent compact developments that have also been beautiful. It's a refreshingly optimistic take on smart growth.

Why Tolkien sold his car

Many people recognize the mid-20th century Oxford university professor J.R.R. Tolkien for his fantasy world of Middle Earth, revealed through the Lord of Rings trilogy and other novels. A little fact that most people do not know is that he sold his car shortly after World War II ended and carried on most of his life by bicycle.

According to a biographer:

"Tolkien became a familiar figure cycling along the Banbury Road, travelling between home and Pembroke College on his extraordinarily high-seated bicycle while wearing cap and voluminous gown."

By itself this may be a curious piece of trivia, but a closer evaluation of Tolkien's belief system begs us (or at least me) to speculate over why he made this choice. The decision to go car free was clearly deliberate. Tolkien bought his first family car in 1931, and in a letter he recalls his first trip into Oxford by automobile in 1911. As a devout Roman Catholic and life-long political Tory, he doesn't exactly fit the contemporary stereotype of the cyclist. What inspired this?

When the editor of the New Republic wrote to ask Tolkien whether Lord of the Rings contained allegories of contemporary England, he declined to draw any precise connections. But he did hint that, as an author, he could not help but write through the lens of his own experience living in Oxford. At one point he responds,

"Though, the spirit of ‘Isengard’, if not of Mordor, is of course always cropping up. The present design of destroying Oxford in order to accommodate motor-cars is a case."

Quick translation: Modor = pure evil; Isengard = corrupted. In his books, Isengard began as a pristine place, but Sarumon (the villain) camped his armies there, cut down all of the trees and soiled the land. Like the ruin of Isengard, the partial destruction of Oxford left him distrustful of modern town planning efforts in general.

(By the way, if you're a Lord of the Rings fan please cut my simplification some slack. I think this is right.)

The idea of disrupting nature for the personal automobile arises in another letter to his son in 1944.

“It is full Maytime by the trees and grass now. But the heavens are full of roar and riot. You cannot even hold a shouting conversation in the garden now, save about 1 a.m. and 7 p.m. – unless the day is too foul to be out. How I wish the 'infernal combustion' engine had never been invented. Or (more difficult still since humanity and engineers in special are both nitwitted and malicious as a rule) that it could have been put to rational uses — if any.”

It may be tempting to dismiss Tolkien's antagonism toward modernity as a romantic appeal to the pastoral England of his childhood. Yes, he may have been a bit of a Luddite (He didn't like general household appliances much either). Yet from another perspective, his view of human nature as easily corrupted by power can provide a healthy skepticism in the right doses. Not many in the 40's and 50's were questioning the absolute sovereignty of technological progress to solve all the problems of humanity, and most people would agree now with Tolkien that the often utopian promises have fallen far short. There is certainly a place for cautious, if sometimes grumpy, conservatives like Tolkien.

Hiking through Arlington County

Last weekend I hiked along the Appalachian Trail in the Shenandoah National Park, and this weekend I hiked the Arlington corridor, outside of Washington D.C., from Ballston to Rosslyn. These are both beautiful places in very different ways.

It seems like everyone in the country is watching Ken Burn’s series on the National Parks. It really is a remarkable homage to some of the most spectacular pieces of natural landscape our country has and the ideas that have developed to conserve them. I’ve lived for two summers in a national park, and I don’t take for granted the fact that these places have been preserved. Yet there is also something a little sad about locating our culture’s primary experiences of transcendence so far away from where most of us live our regular lives. Attributing to wild nature god-like qualities, means that god is always “out there,” only reachable by getting in the car and driving away on vacation.

John Muir was a great naturalist, but 300 million people cannot, by definition, live the John Muir lifestyle. It’s a self-defeating ethic when pushed to universal proportions. Many people have pointed to an urban aesthetic as well as the natural, one that celebrates not the absence but the presence of other people and their artifacts. This why we need Jane Jacobs, the Muir of cities, to give description to this other form of beauty:

“The order of the city is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance – not a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations.”

I picked up a brochure in Arlington County for "walkabouts," short, self-guided tours that allow residents and visitors to explore streets and neighborhoods. Any national park visitors' center would supply trail maps, why not Arlington County?

Planetizen readers' top urban thinkers

I'm a sucker for top whatever lists, so I immediately gravitated toward Planetizen's recently unveiled "Top 100 Urban Thinkers." Beyond being an interesting parlor game, I do think it's a worthwhile exercise to evaluate the canon every once in a while to see what kinds of ideas and personalities may be taken as examples for the future. Enough objectivity, let the griping begin ...

Jane Jacobs is, of course, number one. She deserves it. Her legacy has been in the spotlight lately, since Anthony Flint released a book about her epic battles with Robert Moses (#23). Edward Glaeser, himself deservedly ranked #51, wrote in the New Republic that a hybrid between Moses' get-er-done attitude and Jacobs' insight into human nature would be the ideal. Ryan Avent, Glaeser's critic-in-chief, sought to push the balance back in Jacobs' favor. Jane Holtz Kay, who maybe should have made the list herself, wrote a nice panegyric to her last week: "I believe we can now call Jane Jacobs a heroine of history."

Bringing up Robert Moses raises an interesting question about the list. Does "top" refer to sheer influence or does it imply that the influence was good. One can certainly admire Moses' ability to cut through red tape, but surely New York would be better off today if he were a little less capable of a power broker. Le Corbusier (#26) may have been quite avant garde and visionary, but did his visions lead to good places for humans to inhabit? The same can be said for mall developer James Rouse (#38) [I didn't realize he did some cool developments later in life] or residential developer William Levitt (#92). To clarify, these aren't necessarily evil people. It's just hard to see how their legacy has had a positive impact on cities. Thomas Jefferson somehow made the list (#48) even though he saw cities only as a source of corruption, pestilence, and immorality. And I love Wendell Berry (#63) but ...

Then there are some real travesties. Raymond Unwin is ranked #76 when he really should be in the top ten. Not only was he the one to actually design some of Howard's Garden Cities, his Town Planning is Practice provided much of the original substance behind the Traditional Neighborhood Design we know today. There's always a bias toward the contemporary in these lists, but that's a little too far. On that note, Alberti and Palladio from the Italian Renaissance probably deserve a mention.

Peter Hall is a historian who rightfully made the list at #37, but where is Kenneth Jackson or Witold Rybczynski? Then there were those who contributed to the "decade of participation" in the 1960's, which changed urban planning from something that was, for the most part, done to the public, especially the poor, to something that the public could guide themselves. Paul Davidoff is a measly #75 and Sherry Arnstein didn't make the cut. More recently, John Powell and David Rusk deserve more credit for their work on disparities between suburbs and central cities.

As far as architects go, there are some interesting antagonisms here: Leon Krier (#8) and Rem Koolhaus (#65); Prince Charles (#71) and Richard Rogers (#81). Fred Kent (#46) made it but Frank Gehry didn't. Without personally wandering in to the ceaseless debate between modernists and traditionalists, I'll just note that the traditionalists are the clear favorite of Planetizen readers (then again, the modernists have always known the masses lacked a developed sense of taste). Andres Duany is notably in the #2 spot.

There are lots of people on this list I've never heard of and some particularly arcane philosophers I had to read in college whom I may as well have never heard of. So I can't comment on everything, but all in all, this is a pretty good list. I'm surprised I don't have more to complain about.

The Beatles teach pedestrian safety

1. When in a group, proceed one at a time. While common social mores may lead certain groups to walk side-by-side in order to converse more effectively, this is actually the most dangerous formation possible. Instead one person ought to cross, with each following member of the group staggering the crossing time by roughly 5 seconds. An evenly distributed line dramatically increased pedestrian visibility.
   
   
2. Group leader must wear reflective clothing. John Lennon’s double-piece white suit maximizes nighttime visibility. The white shoes are the critical piece of the ensemble, as they draw attention to the oscillating walking movements of his feet. George Harrison, being the fourth to cross, is free to dress casually in as much denim as he wishes.
   
   
3. Do not panic, but stay completely calm. The Beatles know in their back of their minds that their lives are one drunken driver away from ending, yet they have mentally trained themselves to keep their fears at bay. A panicking pedestrian is susceptible to erratic behavior, but Paul McCartney shows that you can be so calm as to have a cigarette dangling from your fingers.
   
   
4. Walk in precisely the center of the zebra stripes. Studies have shown that for every 6 inches away from the median of the crosswalk, a pedestrian increases his chances of being hit by 7%. The Beatles, on the other hand, have leveraged symmetry to their advantage. By using peripheral vision, they have perfected their positioning without at all being distracted by looking down.
   
   
5. With proper training being a pedestrian can be fun. Paul McCartney shows off a little by leaving his shoes by the side of the road. While this is not certainly recommended for novices, it demonstrates that with enough practice and razor-sharp reflexes pedestrians can feel free to express themselves in a unique way.

Update: Alright, excuse the silliness on this one. I've got so many projects and presentations in the real world to prepare for, I didn't have it in me to come up with a serious post. But at least I've already got two hits from a "Paul McCartney" google search. Score! Welcome, Beatles fans.

Where are the academic planning blogs?

I've been looking for a while, and as far as I can tell the number of Urban Planning university faculty with regularly updated blogs is very slim.

Randall Crane from UCLA operates a good Urban Planning Research blog, but there has not been any activity there for the last few months. The Transportationist, a blog by David Levinson of University of Minnesota, has some overlap with planning but it's primarily a transportation engineering blog. Michael Lewyn of Florida Coastal School of Law is an occasional contributor to the Planetizen Interchange blog. Ann Forsyth of Cornell, also a Planetizen contributor, and Martin Krieger of University of Southern California blog mostly about administrative academic matters (graduate admissions, the tenure system, etc.).

If I've missed anyone, please let me know in the comments.

Other disciplines have several high-profile scholars who have taken on the role of the public intellectual. Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, Law professor Eugene Volokh, and the group philosophy blog Crooked Timber come immediately to mind. And there are many, many more from across the academic spectrum. Why is there so little online public conversation happening within academic planning circles? (Or maybe it's happening and I'm not privy to it).

I find this particularly surprising, given the intrinsic nature of planning. Public engagement and the everyday shifting reality of the built environment are central to planning theory. From the beginning, planning theorist have had an activist bent. They have reached beyond the internal circles of research and applied their ideas to make a tangible difference in the world. I can understand why quantum physics may not lend itself to being hashed out online (although it is), but urban planning was made for it. Blogs are certainly not the only way to make this happen, but they are one important avenue of communication.

Back in the early days of blogging, there was an understandable hesitation to descend into the cacophony of the masses. Online discussion was considered less a marketplace of ideas and more of a sounding room for half-baked opinions from the most shrill, extreme voices. Blogs contributed to the celebrated information glut of contemporary society, which led to more distraction and less clarity of focus. There were supposedly millions of individuals blogging about their cat, in their pajamas nonetheless. Self-respecting academics would do better to remain in the structured world of peer-reviewed journals.

English Professor Alan Jacobs provided many of these reasons in 2006 for why he was giving up on blogging, but I notice that within a year he was up and running again at the collaborative blog American Scene. Something must have given him cause for reconsideration.

A shift happened that many observers did not expect: the chaos started to be ordered. Blogs did not stay radically egalitarian and irreducibly complex. New institutions emerged as gatekeepers, and the vast wilderness of information began to organize itself into meaningful categories along the basis of selective criteria. These new hierarchies did not subvert older accreditation schemes, but instead they subsumed them into the selection criteria. Having a PhD does not automatically mean people will pay attention, but it certainly gives a huge advantage in the darwinian struggle for readership.

Sure, guys are still blogging about their cats and extremists are ranting louder than ever, but there are mechanisms that allow us to sift through content we have no use for. Academics have found plenty of room for productive dialogue online, and they are genuinely respected for their hard-earned expertise in their particular discipline. The field of planning would greatly benefit from a few more talented scholars who take the risk of sharing their ideas publicly.

Walking and Thinking

"I can only meditate when I'm walking. When I stop, my mind ceases to think; my mind only works with my legs."

-Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I came across this quote in Jay Walljasper's The Great Neighborhood Book, and it provoked the realization that there is actually a long-standing connection between walking and thinking in the lineage of Western philosophy.

1. Aristotle, according to legend, would walk around the Lycium Gymnasium in Athens as he espoused his ideas to the followers that had gathered. This group of followers were eventually labeled the Peripatetic school, derived from the Greek Pateo, to walk.


2. Augustine of Hippo was anxiously walking through his garden, wrestling with the tensions between his own life and his neo-platonic ideals, when he famously overheard the children's song, "take up and read." His response was to pick up the Apostle Paul's epistle to the Romans, an act that he would later attribute to his conversion to Christianity.


3. Immanuel Kant, in true Enlightenment fashion, structured his life around a precise routine. Every day, he would wake up early in the morning and go for a walk along a path to a nearby river. His neighbors were said to have set their clocks by the time he strolled by their house.

And these are just the famous stories I can recall off-hand. There seems to be something about walking that hits the perfect balance between peace of mind and energy of movement. Somehow I doubt that the survival instincts generated by a rush-hour drive to the regional SuperStore discount outlet and a lap around the parking lot inspires the same level of contemplation.

Paul Weyrich

Paul Weyrich, one of the key figures in modern Conservatism, passed away earlier today. He's known for such things as co-founding the Heritage Foundation, coining the term "moral majority," and helping Reagan into office. But what some people may not know is that he was a tireless advocate for mass transit throughout his entire life.

A year-end reflection he wrote, published today actually, contains this line,

"It is the worst of times because the Bush Administration has turned down 70 some cities which want light rail or streetcars. It is the best of times because Amtrak has set records in number of passengers carried. It is the worst of times because the airlines carry more people on one day than Amtrak does in a year."

Last month, he appeared on the Conservative Townhall site to tout election day transit victories. The 15 comments are nearly unanimously against him, which only underscores how much of a voice in the wilderness he has been in his own movement on this subject. He has made no pretense in hiding his opposition to the Bush administration, and he even abstained from supporting John McCain in the past election on account of his views on rail. From time to time, he has sharply criticised certain strains of Conservatism,

"Grassroots conservatives have told us that they, too, are disgusted by a conservatism that is defined as nothing more than "I've got mine."

Transit for Weyrich was not some idiosyncrasy, prehaps retained from a boyhood fondness for locomotives. It has always been integral to his worldview. He speaks with a reverance for traditional practices of all kinds, including streetcars, thriving cities, and productive farmland. Like Russell Kirk before him, Weyrich worried about a dispersed human habitat dominated by automobile travel. From a 2001 paper,

"In fact, we got to where we are through social engineering, massive amounts of it. In no other society in history have places to live, places to work and places to shop been separated from one another, separated so widely that you need a car to get from one to another. Why did it happen here? Because after World War II, social engineers rewrote the building codes to mandate it. In most places, if a developer now wants to build a traditional town, a place where you can walk from home to work or shopping, he can't. The codes won't let him."

Those who knew him attest to his unwaivering consistency of belief through many years.