A challenging
comment was made in response to the post I wrote about Petaluma Urban Chat looking at the Sonoma Marin Fairgrounds. Although his tone was somewhat aggressive, the
commenter raised a thoughtful question.
The comment
was made on one of the several sites on which I co-publish and the comment is
now several weeks old. Rather than
responding under a post that is retreating in the rearview mirror of time, I
copied the comment below so the concern and my response can reach a wider
audience.
(I’ve edited
the comment slightly to remove extraneous material, while preserving the commenter`s
key issue.)
“I love to bellyache about your blog and the
beginning of this one capsulizes it perfectly.
Your urbanist group acts like a book club in which members select
different urbanist books to read?! How
limiting. How zealous. How closed. I have an idea. Let's all study only our own religious texts
of choice and then try to have a discussion about the nature of God and the
universe with everybody else. Are you so
tied to the concept of urbanism that you have no need to consider anything
else? . . . Or worse, that you ignore or discount its ill effects? Religious
zealotry!”
Obviously, I
disagree with him. More importantly, I
believe that he’s working under several fundamental misunderstandings. However, I can understand how he and I have failed
to communicate. I also suspect that how
I’ve written this blog may have been complicit in his misunderstandings.
I’ll expand
below, but the key points of my response will be that urbanism as a topic of
study is far broader than the commenter understands, that there is no credible alternative
side to the discussion, and that those on cutting edge are often described as
zealots.
To begin, this
blog has often used two definitions of “urbanism”. Both definitions below are from my head, not from
a dictionary or other reference source, but I believe that most students of
land-use would accept both.
The first
definition of urbanism is “(1) the study of the land-use patterns of human
civilization, considering the social, economic, and environmental impacts of
the alternatives”.
The second is
“(2) the advocacy of the insights and conclusions that result from (1).”
This blog
moves between the two definitions, sometimes studying our current land-use
paradigm, along with the implications of possible alternatives, and sometimes
arguing for actions that are identified by that study. I believe
my use of both definitions is an effective, perhaps essential, form of
communication, but appreciate how some readers might not understand the different
but related topics of analysis and advocacy.
The
commenter, if I correctly interpret his perspective, fails to understand the
all-encompassing nature of (1). He assumes
that any study is restricted to a limited number of sources and that advocacy
of (2) thereby becomes faith-based advocacy based on those limited texts.
But he’s wrong. Under the first definition, urbanism is the
study of the totality of human land-use, from the city layout of Babylonia to
the configuration of the cities of the Roman Empire to the grid of Mexico City
under the Aztecs to the city, suburbs, and rural towns of today. I can’t claim exhaustive expertise in any of
those eras, but have bumped against all of them during my urbanist reading and
am proud to be part of a group whose vision is so all-encompassing.
The
commenter also seems to believe that there are alternative resources that offer
equally persuasive arguments and conclusions that run counter to the solutions
usually advocated under the second definition.
I concur
with him to the extent that we should be open to multiple perspectives on any
issue. On my reading table right now are
books that take very different views on climate change. I consider it the obligation of a citizen to research
alternative perspectives before
engaging in public discussion.
But when I
turn to land-use, there is an astounding paucity of credible material that
defends suburbia as currently configured in most places.
That isn’t
to say that there is no material at all that supports suburbia. Indeed, there are a great many documents, but
none of them reach the analytical standards of good urbanist study. Instead, I’d put the suburbia documents into
three classes.
There are paeans
to suburbia extolling the freedom of the motorist and the family fun of the
expansive backyard among other supposed suburban virtues.
There are how-to
manuals on inducing folks to visit the latest strip mall or to buy a home in a new
low-density subdivision.
And there
are the financial analyses that argue, against seventy years of
counter-examples, that one more big-box retailer or one more sprawling
subdivision will assure prosperity. (StrongTowns
is particularly astute at exploding the flawed and often laughable assumptions
of these analyses.)
But when it
comes to serious analysis of the long-term sustainability and resilience of
land-use, the defenders of suburbia all retreat to the sidelines, leaving the
field to the proponents of walkable urbanism and similar solutions.
Indeed, the
field of urbanism is filled with folks who began their study with
considerations of how to make suburbia work better, only to realize that much
of suburbia is a dead-end. Author Leigh
Gallagher, who began to write a book about how quickly the suburbs would
rebound from the economic slump and ended up writing “The End of the Suburbs”,
is only one recent example.
Readers of a
logical bent may raise an objection here, suggesting that I’m engaging in circular
logic. If I reject as insufficiently
rigorous every argument that defends suburbia and then reject suburbia because
there are no good defenses of it, I might seem to be chasing my logical tail.
Unfortunately,
in this short space, I can’t make an effective rebuttal to that argument. I can only suggest that anyone who wishes to
effectively engage in land-use discussions devote themselves to a dedicated
program of open-minded reading and pondering.
Read Jane Jacobs, suburban general plans, StrongTowns, municipal budgets,
James Howard Kunstler, the financial justifications put forth by mail
developers, and Jeff Speck. At the end
of six months, you will not only understand that my argument isn’t circular,
you’ll also be an urbanist.
(Nor should
it be assumed that the analyses done under urbanist study result in
groupthink. Diligent students of
land-use may identify different answers and advocate for their own solutions, although
most answers would contain some elements of walkable urbanism. All of these students would be engaged in
urbanism and would capable of having meaningful conversations about their alternative
conclusions. Indeed, Petaluma Urban Chat
often consists of exactly that type of exchange.)
Which brings
us back to the question of zealotry.
Allow me to offer a parallel. Someone
who lived in England in the middle of the 17th century may well have had a
lingering belief in alchemy. Some people
today believe that Isaac Newton dabbled with alchemical experiments between his
scientific discoveries. And if Newton
retained an interest in alchemy, it’s likely that much of the population felt
the same.
Against that
background, the Royal Society, in their decision to focus on scientific work to
the exclusion of alchemy, might well have been accused of zealotry. And from the perspective of a contemporary non-scientific
layperson, the charge may have seemed reasonable. The scientific revolution and the lingering
faith in turning lead into gold may have seemed alternative hypotheses, equally
worthy of consideration.
It was only
from the rigorous perspective of the Royal Society that the falsehoods of
alchemy were evident. And posterity has
judged their perspective valid. I
suggest that posterity will similarly judge the false contest that some may
propose between urbanism and the alchemy of drivable suburbia.
(I’m not
suggesting that I belong anywhere near Sir Newton or even the Royal Society. I may occasionally hang out in the same room
with folks who might reasonably be called the Royal Society of land use,
but I remain a lowly, back-row acolyte.)
Lest anyone
think that I’m calling much of the population alchemists, I should
clarify. Instead, most of the population
believes in suburbia mostly because it is the land-use paradigm with which they
grew up and remain most comfortable. That
doesn’t make them alchemists.
But there
are alchemists among us. They are the
developers, economists, and economic development directors who have spent
enough time in their field that the flaws of suburbia should be fully evident
and yet they continue to push their failed philosophy in order to keep the
paychecks rolling.
I’m confident
that the truths now being expounded by urbanists will form the basis of
land-use planning a century from now, much as the 17th century efforts of
Newton, Halley, Hook, and Leibnitz formed the basis of much of the science that
was to come. Perhaps there will be missteps,
but the general direction will be proven valid.
And if I
must be occasionally accused of zealotry to order to point the way toward a
more informed future, so be it.
(P.S. As a footnote of irony, it’s yet remains
conceivable that contemporary suburbia has a sustainable and resilient
future. That future may well include
deliveries by drones as suggested by Amazon, driverless cars as pioneered by
Google, and improved tax structures so that suburbia doesn’t rely on subsidies
from the general population, downtown residents, or future generations. And that new configuration of suburbia, if it
is to exist, will likely be found by those building on the urbanist studies of
today, which is yet more proof that my first definition of “urbanism” is
all-encompassing.)
(P.P.S.
Also, diligent urbanists may be wondering where Ebenezer Howard, the urbanist
who laid a key step in the path to suburbia, fits within the discussion. Coincidentally, Howard was a frequent topic
of conversation at CNU 22. I’ll be
writing about him in the near future.)
As always,
your questions or comments will be appreciated.
Please comment below or email me.
And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)
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