We have just had time to read a Sunday Op Ed from WaPo: “Not so Wonderful Now: Looking for someone to blame in the worsening crisis? Let’s go back to Bedford Falls.”
Ross Douthat, coauthor of “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream” spins a fine tale playing off of Frank Capra’s movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
It is worth a read. Douthat nails the reality of evolving, ever more dysfunctional human settlement patterns from 1946 (when the movie appeared) until 2008. Douthat is on target, that is, up until the last three paragraphs. Then he falls into the abyss of Geographic Illiteracy and Spacial Obliviousness.
You have to read to op ed to understand the details but Douthat demonstrates he does not have a grasp of functional human settlement patterns. Every one of the benefits he claims to value can be achieved – and can only be achieved – by patterns and densities he seems to think can be avoided in the future.
For social (and from his other work one would suspect political) reasons Douthat suggests that after a period of crisis recovery, citizens will benefit from a reversion to settlement patterns dominated by Single Household Detached Dwellings and somewhat smaller but still Large, Private Vehicles to access them.
This is a perfect example of political foolishness. Functional settlement patterns are not a partisan issue, they are not a sectarian issue. They are a condition determined by science. One might as well say “vote for the Elephant / Donkey Clan candidate and he will suspend gravity.
EMR