Stories from CNU 23: The Insulating Effect of Cars and the Forces Behind Gentrification

The Sonoma Marin Fairgrounds update I had hoped to deliver today hasn’t yet come to pass.  Instead, I’ll continue reporting about ideas that caught my attention at the recently completed 23rd annual meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism.   This will be my third summary, with previous posts here and here, of moments from CNU 23 that educated, inspired, or challenged me.  As before, I’ll add my own elucidation and comment.

So that I don’t raise expectations too high, the Fairgrounds update won’t be major news, but will be a step in the right direction.  And it will hopefully open the door for participation by readers.

Cars as Psychological Separators: I’ve often written about the corrosive effects of automobiles on urban settings, how they facilitate a hopscotch pattern of development that undermines walkability.

But Andres Duany opened my eyes to another aspect of the damage that cars can do.  In his words, “Cars permit psychological separation.”

He’s right.  Imagine a troubled neighborhood between your home and the places you work and/or shop.  If you walk, bike, or even ride a bus through the distressed neighborhood, you’re interacting with the businesses and people there and you’re likely to become invested.  You begin caring that it becomes a better place, perhaps becoming willing to participate in efforts to make changes.

But if you travel through the neighborhood in a car, you roll up the windows, lock the doors, shake your head, and wonder why someone else doesn’t do something.

Cars can be wonderful things, granting freedoms that were unknown a century ago.  But when they psychologically separate us from our neighbors and our communities, they begin to destroy us.

The Design of Convenience Stores: In another quote from Duany, “A 7-Eleven has the real estate value of a small nuclear power plant.”

Once again, he’s right.  Most of us would love to live a few doors from a cute neighborhood grocery store with a selection of fresh produce and needed sundries.  But we’d recoil at the thought of living a few doors from a 7-Eleven.  We wouldn’t be alone in those responses, so the real estate values would reflect our responses.

But walkability requires those small stores and other neighborhood assets.  Therefore, design matters.  I’m not suggesting that Southland Corp. can’t own neighborhood stores, but only that it’s essential to have design standards that prevent cookie-cutter 7-Elevens from destroying neighborhood values in the name of walkability.

For walkability to work, we need our walkable places to feel like “our” places, not the places that major corporations choose to impose on us.

Gentrification as Pent-Up Demand for Walkable Places: Chris Leinberger was part of a team that was a last-minute replacement for scheduled plenary speaker Jan Gehl.  I was disappointed not to hear Gehl, a long-time leading edge thinker about returning the human scale to urban settings, but Leinberger of Smart Growth American and other urbanist groups was a more than acceptable replacement.

Indeed, Leinberger may have offered the single comment that most affected my urbanist thinking.

Gentrification is a troublesome subject for urbanists.  On one hand, increased investment in urban places is a good thing.  On the other hand, gentrification often results in current residents being forced to relocate.  “Gentrification without displacement” has become a growing mantra, but it’s a difficult goal in many settings.

Leinberger cut through the haze by noting that gentrification represents nothing more than a desire of more folks for walkable locations, including the reclaiming of walkable locations that were abandoned a generation earlier.  And that the sharp increases in property values that usually accompany gentrification, and that often result in displacement, are an indication of the pent-up demand for walkability.

Thus, gentrification and the resulting displacement are signs of a free market pushing back against ill-conceived policies that have for too long encouraged sprawl and discouraged walkable urbanism.

So if you’re someone who has opposed gentrification because of the impacts on current residents, may I suggest that you instead focus your efforts on advocating for more walkable places?  It’s likely that you’ll do more to help those about whom you’re concerned while also making your community a stronger place.  Plus, it’s better for your mental health to be for something than against something.

A note about the photo.  It’s an architectural detail from the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, a grand, old, and reportedly haunted hotel in the heart of downtown that served as the headquarters for CNU 23.

I hope that the next post can be the Fairgrounds update.  Failing that, I’ll offer another few CNU 23 snippets.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Driving Downtown in My Toaster Oven

I took ownership of my brand-new Prius during the third week of April 2005, so its ten-year anniversary is nigh.  It’s been a remarkably good car, probably the best car buying decision of my life, although spending several years behind the wheel of a 1965 Mustang gets honorable mention.

The Prius has needed few repairs and none that were catastrophic.  Only once did it fail to start and a single dead battery in a decade is barely worth mentioning.

When I’d had the car about two years, I conveyed a group of friends to a ballgame.  During the drive, I mentioned my intention to drive the Prius for fifteen years, perhaps leaving myself only one car away from the end of my driving days.  The others scoffed, arguing that no one keeps a car for fifteen years.  But, with the ten-year anniversary nearly upon us and the Prius running as dependably as the day I first took possession, I’m guessing the scoffing has ceased.

All of which led me to be offended when Leah Garchik, a Herb Caen-lite columnist in the San Francisco Chronicle, reported a comment overhead by one of her correspondents in an Oakland parking garage, “Owning a Prius isn’t like owning a real car.  It’s more like owning an appliance.”

What?!  How could someone demean my dependable Prius that way?  How dare they compare my car to a mere household appliance?

But then I fell to thinking.  Isn’t it right for an urbanist to think of a car as a convenience?  The goal of a meaningful daily life shouldn’t be to style one’s way between Point A and Point B.  It should be to get to Point B in the most reasonable and appropriate manner, whether on foot, by bicycle, in a car, or on a city bus, so that the friends, good food, or other adventures at Point B can be enjoyed.  A car shouldn’t be life, but an effective tool to take pleasure in life.  Or, in other words, an appliance.

And indeed, my Prius has been a remarkably good appliance, outlasting a couple of toasters and a least a dozen vacuum cleaners.  (Three large dogs who continually shed aren’t good for vacuum cleaners.)

None of this is meant to demean my friends who adore their cars.  I remember one friend in particular who built a separate garage to house his collection of Rolls Royces, Bentleys, and Corvettes.  But I enjoyed their friendship because I liked them as people, not because of their vehicles.  And never once did I think that my life wouldn’t be complete until I owned a Rolls Royce.

Instead, I’ll happily drive on in my Prius, the best darned appliance I’ve ever owned.

With a regular three-times-a-week publishing schedule, it’s inevitable that my blog post days occasionally fall on holidays.  Or on my birthday.  This year, for the first time since 2013, it’ll be the latter, with the day of my next post falling on my 62nd birthday.  Two years ago, as I reached the milestone of 60 years, I offered my thoughts about who I was and how my identity fit into this blog.  In my next post, I’ll look back to that post and offer a couple of updates.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)