Now that Bacon’s Rebellion Blog has resolved the ‘Collapse of Agencies (aka, governments going broke’ problem) and solved the liberal vs conservative conundrum (as reflected in the off-year elections) let us return to the REAL determinant of the economic, social and physical future of civilization – functional and dysfunctional human settlement patterns.
THERE IS A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL!
But first notes on some back issues:
EMR apologies that he did not have time to post on the Maryland Land use law (WaPo 2 November 2009 “Study call MD. Smart growth a flop.” This resulted in some off – topic posts in the “Could American Go Broke” post by Jim Bacon. More on that below.
EMR also did not post responses to the comments on “THE EXACT COST OF DYSFUNCTION.”
It takes time to sort out:
A: Observations with which EMR agrees and for which there is not reason to respond,
B: Broadsides, smokescreens and diversions that have already been covered, and
C: The babbling of the 12.5 Percenters.
We will cover those later but first:
ABOUT THAT LIGHT:
The following are the first few pages of a draft book review:
READ IT NOW!!
David Owen’s new book Green Metropolis: Why living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability is an important book.
It opens doors to information and understandings that citizens must embraces if they are to evolve functional and sustainable human settlement patterns.
Not since Jane Jacobs published The Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961 has there been a more important, powerful and accessible new source of information and understanding concerning functional human settlement patterns. Given the enormous impact of Jacob’s work – a recent poll of planning and development professionals found Jacobs the number one ALL TIME urban thinker – those are big shoes to fill. See End Note One
There is no question of the importance of Owen’s work. Phil Langdon calls the book “riveting and fiercely intelligent. At the same time, Jonathan Yardley says the book is “cool, understated and witty” – in other words, NOT an EMR tome.
Owens overarching thesis is that human settlement patterns control the future course of civilization because per capita energy and goods consumption is directly related the pattern and density of land use at the Alpha Community and SubRegional scales. As you might guess Owen does not use those words but that is what he means. More on that later.
Owens examines both embedded energy and Embodied Efficiency, he documents the impact of fossil fuel consumption and the over dependence on Autonomobiles – as the book’s subtitle suggests. In the course of just 324 pages Owen touches on most of the topics that EMR covers in nearly 3,400 in The Shape of the Future and TRILO-G.
EMR agrees with almost all of Owen’s observations but EMR is not sure all of them can be supported as stated. Owen’s main thesis concerning per capital consumption was first published in the New Yorker five years ago much of his other work has appeared there as well. In that context his world SHOULD have been well fact checked. Only time will tell with a book as important as this. See End Note Two
What is most impressive is that Owen NAILS many misconceptions and stupidities that underlie Myths and conventional wisdom. These misconceptions and Myths are relied on by citizens when they make the decisions in the voting booth and in the marketplace. These decisions drive dysfunctional human settlement pattern. These are the Myths that perpetuate the Helter Skelter Crisis and result in an unsustainable trajectory of contemporary civilization by any rational measure.
The book documents clearly that it is not just ‘freeways,’ ByPasses, ‘free’ parking, strip centers, Big Boxes, subdivision monocultures, greedy speculators, inept or corrupt governance practitioners, monopoly Enterprises and subservient Enterprise owned MainStream Media that drive settlement pattern dysfunction. It is also not just the genetic proclivities underlying the human obsessions with physical separation and short grass that generate dysfunctional human settlement patterns.
Owen demonstrates that AS CURRENTLY DESIGNED AND IMPLEMENTED the drivers of dysfunction also include:
• Fuel efficient vehicles,
• Simple living and recycling,
• Green buildings in bad locations (especially those with LEED certifications)
• Many conservation initiatives such as conservation easements, agricultural and forestall districts and green infrastructure.
• Roadway improvements and congestion mitigation,
• Commuter rail, light rail, trolley and bus rapid transit systems (including even the BRT in Curitiba),
• Radial extensions of heavy rail such as METRO, and
• New Urbanist projects in dysfunctional locations
Owen is not saying these drivers of dysfunctional are inherently bad but that as currently implemented, these ‘solutions’ CREATE AND SUPPORT dysfunctional human settlement patterns that are unsustainable. He documents why these activities are bad for ‘the environment’ and why they stand in the way of achieving a sustainable trajectory for civilization.
In his review of Supercapitalism, EMR predicted the book would not be a runaway best seller and that the author, Robert Reich, would not be popular with most economists and governance practitioners. That prediction has clearly come to pass. The same fate is in store for Owen and Green Metropolis with those who have been plowing the fields that are explored in the book.
For example, Owen will not be popular with MainStream Environmental Institutions nor with the Green Washers who advertise in MainStream Media. He cooly dismantles common green myths and puts a bright light on Green Greed. For this reason citizens appreciation of the content of Owens book is even more important.
STOP
Stop yapping about not having time to read another book. Stop pounding the key board about why you disagree with this or that point in a review of the book. Do not bother to bop around the Internet looking for quotes that will turn out to be irrelevant. Just READ the BOOK.
But first readers need to be aware of the fact that between 40 and 60 percent of the citizens who have expressed concern with the impact of dysfunctional human settlement patterns will NOT agree with Owen on first reading. And of course, the 12.5 Percenters will be apoplectic. The same thing happened with Jane Jacobs. EMR knows this, he was there. See End Note 3
Many readers will be turned off by one or more of the four tragic flaws that cloud the book. That does not mean Owen is not right. Most WILL come to agree with Owen (as they now do with Jacobs) but only after they take the time to understood the book – its strengths and its limitations.
The question is: Will citizens understand the importance of the message and take action in the voting booth and in the marketplace before it is too late?
It is popular to publish rapid fire second editions – The Earth is Flat and The Earth is Flat Updated and Expanded, Freakonomics and SuperFrekonomics, etc. – and this book cries out for a second edition soon.
To guide and inform that second edition, Green Metropolis deserves immediate in-depth discussion and debate. It will be counterproductive to launch Blogesque broadsides such as: “Owen does not understand X” or “This is just another attack on Y.” Comments will be most productive if they are in a format such as: “On page X, Owen says Y, I believe he is wrong (or more constructively, it would be more productive to state this differently) because of Z.”
What are the four tragic flaws?
1. Inconsistent use of commonly misunderstood words (Vocabulary)
2. Lack of an overarching Conceptual Framework that leads to a failure to quantify or precisely describe impacts in term of recognizable and consistently defined components of human settlement
3. Failure to understand the power of a rational and fair allocation of location-variable costs – this in spite of Owen identifying and articulating many of those costs
4. Silence concerning alternative settlement patterns with which the majority of citizens – specifically, those who are not attracted to the Zentra of large New Urban Regions – would feel comfortable. There are building forms and settlement patterns that would achieve most of the benefits Owen outlines without scaring citizens with the “Manhattan” image. This is especially true for small urban enclaves in the Countryside and well as for nearly 95 percent of the land within the Clear Edges around the Cores of New Urban Regions.
Before further exploring Owens book, is useful to explore these tragic flaws:
To be continued…
BACK TO THOSE CLEAN-UP NOTES:
Thoughts on “THE EXACT COST OF DYSFUNCTION.”
At 3:03 PM on 39 Oct Larry Gross said:
“Well I thought the last sentence in the WaPo article was the $64 that I’m not sure that EMR answered.”
” The question is how do you accommodate that growth in a way that doesn’t exacerbate the problems created by the way we’ve grown until now?”
Come on Larry, you know that is EXACTLY the ‘question’ EMR has been addressing for four decades. If you would just try to understand instead of trying to defend your own past location decisions. No one is not going to single you out and make you pay for your misunderstandings retroactively just because you admit them now. You will see how easy it is to understand the truth once you see that light at the end of the tunnel.
Let us turn the “$64 question” into the $64 Trillion answer:
“The answer is that citizens can accommodate all the rationally sustainable future urban growth in every New Urban Region by evolving functional patterns and densities AND reducing the total area of urban land uses.”
In the 2003 Shaping the Future Seminar it was demonstrated that most citizens would have better quality places to live and work on half the currently urbanized area in the National Capital Subregion by creating the patterns and densities of land use that the market documents are most desirable.
The REAL question is how do you keep speculation and excess profits from driving up the cost of shelter (aka, workforce housing), goods and services for those at the bottom of the Ziggurat who are needed to created a Balance and a Critical Mass of the organic components of human settlement both inside and outside the Clear Edge.
At 9:14 AM on 31 October 2009 Larry G said:
“on the wider scope… goods will continue to be made in far away places.. and moved by huge container ship to the US and stocked at giant distribution centers which will supply just-in-time inventory replenishment not only at Wal*Mart SuperStores but even smaller scale almost mom-pop stores – any store that uses a point-of-sale scanner tied to a computer network that in turn talks to that giant distribution center.”
EMR chuckled when he read this after having just seen the latest half a million pound E-coli recall of hamburger from ‘Fairbank Farms’ (nee, Industrial MegaFood). Community labs, Larry. Rational allocation of energy and location-variable costs will mean fewer huge container ships, fewer giant distribution centers and very little of it by truck. The future will not be an extrapolation of the past.
It is really easy to make fun of people if you misquote them. Like shooting fish in a rain barrel.
At 10:36 PM Groveton posted a comment which is annotated below:
“Dr. Risse’s writings have a great deal of environmental, urban planning and macro architectural content.”
[Is ‘macro architecture’ a Grovetonism and does it mean the same thing as the commonly used term ‘urban design.’ If ‘macro architecture’ means ‘urban design’ EMR pleads guilty.]
“However, they are generally light on economics and political reality.”
[That depends on ones definition of economic and political “reality.” Most rational folk’s view will change when they see the light at the end of the tunnel.]
“The concept of small self-contained hamlets where people walk to work, live and shop is not realistic in the United States over the next 50 years.”
[If this was a comment addressed to Claude Lewenz, it would have some validity because of the parameters that Claude insists on in his Alternative Villages.” ‘Small self-contained hamlets’ does not describe something EMR advocates although there are already some that exist in special circumstances.]
“However, better development patterns in the suburbs with extensive mass transit between the suburbs and the urban center is realistic.”
[Use of the Core Confusing Word ‘suburbs’ makes this statement unintelligible.]
Now we turn to that story on Maryland’s smart growth (no caps deserved here) story noted above. This is a great case of “EMR told you so.” Back in the 70s when the outlines of the controls that were adopted in the 90s were first discussed, EMR, then a member of the Board of the Maryland Environmental Trust (similar function to Virginia’s Outdoors Foundation) said it would not work.
EMR is often quoted as having pointed out for 20 years that from 50,000 feet there is not a whit of real difference between the human settlement patterns in Maryland, vs in Virginia (or West Virginia) or North Carolina or Pennsylvania, or…
Larry G. reinforces this point with his reference to house seekers driving until they get past the jurisdictions that require smart growth.
In the “Could America Go Broke?” post Accurate tries to tie EMR’s work to Halle Neustadt. That is even more foolish that Groveton’s silly pigeonhole paragraph.
First, Accurate needs to stop believing everything Randal O’Tool tells him. The next thing he knows Randal will tell him that he will be free of oppressive government if he just walks out in front of that next light rail train … It might be called Randal Koolade.
The book on Halle Neustadt that Accurate cited ( “The Ideal Communist City”) was written in 1968. At the time the general configuration of this Planned New Community was not that different from similar projects in Sweden and Great Britain.
EMR has not been to Halle Neustadt but he has stayed several nights in similar places behind the Iron Curtain and they were dreadful. But lets keep Halle Neustadt in perspective. The Halle Neustadt design process was started in 1958. Check out some projects, large and small that were started then in the US of A in that timeframe – some have been cleared, some are still driving dysfunction. See “Interstate Crime” and “Timberfence Truth or Consequences.”
Thanks to the Internet anyone can take a virtual tour of Halle Neustadt – you can also send a package from the FedEx / Kinkos store. The photo tour suggests that last week Halle Neustadt is a lot better place than, not just the places like housing developments and expressways that have been torn down in the US of A, but Halle Neustadt is a lot better place than where tens of thousands live and work in Detroit.
When designed, Halle Neustadt was a lot like many post WW II Planned New Communities in Sweden and Great Britain. It might have become something like Nordvest Zentrum in Frankfort AM but for the fact it was in East Germany, not West Germany. It would not have been perfect, but not an unmitigated disaster either. Had Halle Neustadt not been in East Germany it might have evolves so fewer would want to leave when they had the opportunity.
However, good or bad, EMR was not involved in the design or construction of Halle Neustadt and does not hold it out as a model.
Accurate is right about one thing: The reason there is a lot of dumb growth is that many citizens ‘prefer it’ – so long as they do not have to pay the full cost, there is cheap energy, etc.
Green Metropolis is place to start to learn what it would mean to pay the full cost.
Read the book.
More later.
EMR