Category: Built Environment and Infrastructure
Thanksgiving bonus
First Things (also 2nd through 6th)
I’m glad I re-subscribed to First Things. I can’t read it cover-to-cover, but it has some real gems.
Makers, fixers, philosophers
Alan Jacobs’ malfunctioning garage door opener, apparently boogered up by a sensor with “no user serviceable parts,” got him to thinking about planned obsolescence, things designed to be thrown away rather than fixed, and some questions someone* suggested should be asked of any new technology:
Ecological
What are its effects on the health of the planet and of the person?
Does it preserve or destroy biodiversity?
Does it preserve or reduce ecosystem integrity?
What are its effects on the land?
What are its effects on wildlife?
How much, and what kind of waste does it generate?
Does it incorporate the principles of ecological design?
Does it break the bond of renewal between humans and nature?
Does it preserve or reduce cultural diversity?
What is the totality of its effects, its “ecology”?Social
Does it serve community?
Does it empower community members?
How does it affect our perception of our needs?
Is it consistent with the creation of a communal, human economy?
What are its effects on relationships?
Does it undermine conviviality?
Does it undermine traditional forms of community?
How does it affect our way of seeing and experiencing the world?
Does it foster a diversity of forms of knowledge?
Does it build on, or contribute to, the renewal of traditional forms of knowledge?
Does it serve to commodity knowledge or relationships?
To what extent does it redefine reality?
Does it erase a sense of time and history?
What is its potential to become addictive?Practical
What does it make?
Who does it benefit?
What is its purpose?
Where was it produced?
Where is it used?
Where must it go when it’s broken or obsolete?
How expensive is it?
Can it be repaired?
By an ordinary person?Moral
What values does its use foster?
What is gained by its use?
What are its effects beyond its utility to the individual?
What is lost in using it?
What are its effects on the least advantaged in society?Ethical
How complicated is it?
What does it allow us to ignore?
To what extent does it distance agent from effect?
Can we assume personal, or communal responsibility for its effects?
Can its effects be directly apprehended?
What ancillary technologies does it require?
What behavior might it make possible in the future?
What other technologies might it make possible?
Does it alter our sense of time and relationships in ways conducive to nihilism?Vocational
What is its impact on craft?
Does it reduce, deaden, or enhance human creativity?
Is it the least imposing technology available for the task?
Does it replace, or does it aid human hands and human beings?
Can it be responsive to organic circumstance?
Does it depress or enhance the quality of goods?
Does it depress or enhance the meaning of work?Metaphysical
What aspect of the inner self does it reflect?
Does it express love?
Does it express rage?
What aspect of our past does it reflect?
Does it reflect cyclical or linear thinking?Political
Does it concentrate or equalize power?
Does it require, or institute a knowledge elite?
It is totalitarian?
Does it require a bureaucracy for its perpetuation?
What legal empowerments does it require?
Does it undermine traditional moral authority?
Does it require military defense?
Does it enhance, or serve military purposes?
How does it affect warfare?
Is it massifying?
Is it consistent with the creation of a global economy?
Does it empower transnational corporations?
What kind of capital does it require?Aesthetic
Is it ugly?
Does it cause ugliness?
What noise does it make?
What pace does it set?
How does it affect the quality of life (as distinct from the standard of living)?
I’m too old to memorize them, but certainly wanted to further memorialize them.
(* I share Jacobs’ skepticism that “someone” was Jacques Ellul. The language it too contemporary, some allusions too pointedly contemporary as well.)
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
James Howard Kunstler at NYCNU
Pro Tip: Read from the bottom up. Continue reading “James Howard Kunstler at NYCNU”
Seven for Saturday
Potpourri
Sunday of the Last Judgment
Property tax death march
I’m not going to waste time speculating about motives, except that it’s hard to imagine that nobody was aware of engaging in sophistry when they sold towns on the need for big-box stores. Nathaniel Hood looks at a microcosm of the larger pattern in WalMart vs. Local Pub.
The WalMart in question pays the equivalent of $23,284 per acre in property taxes. Since it’s at the edge of town, it required a lot of new roads and other infrastructure from the city.
Pub 500 pays the equivalent of $82,125 per acre. It sits on a streetcorner that’s been there since at least 1870. A few new pipes were required from the city when it built (I don’t know what happened to the building that was there before).
Many other numbers cut in favor of small business when you look at them. Maybe the only ones that don’t are “does it have in-house sophists to sell itself to local officials desperate enough for renewal of their cities that they’ll drink the Growth KoolAid?”
Unless you’re affiliated with the WCTU and think Pub 500 should pay disproportionately because it’s evil, what justification can you give for what amounts to a whopping subsidy to WalMart?
A pretty strong case can be made that we cannot afford to maintain a lot of the infrastructure we’ve been enticed to build by the growth sophists and the lure of “free” federal money to help. A rude wake-up call is coming.
A number of my sidebar “sustainability” links deal with these issues, as does the Congress for the New Urbanism, from a more professional and less activist angle.
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Bribing Paul with Peter’s money
The NY Times this week ran a fantastic — and I hope ground breaking — series that covered the fallacy and fraud of economic development policy in America. On Day 1 they honed right in on the way cities and states routinely make ridiculous and uninformed decisions for handing out money. On Day 2 they actually focused on Texas — a state with rabid rhetoric for markets and a penchant for cooking the books Enron-style with lots of debt and business subsidies — to make a larger point that ties in absolutely with our entire ponzi scheme narrative. The state by state breakdown was also stunning. Check it out.
I agree that that the series is stunning. It’s too big for me to have digested yet. There’s a third part about poor Michigan – as if GM wasn’t enough – deciding that helping us amuse ourselves to death through movies is the economic wave of the future.
The state-by-state breakdown map helped me drill down to my community, where some of the recipients were surprising.
I acknowledge coming late the the realization that incentivizing companies to locate here rather than there adds nothing to the nation’s wealth:
Soon after Kansas recruited AMC Entertainment with a $36 million award last year, the state cut its education budget by $104 million. AMC was moving only a few miles, across the border from Missouri. Workers saw little change other than in commuting times and office décor. A few months later, Missouri lured Applebee’s headquarters from Kansas.
“I just shake my head every time it happens, it just gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach,” said Sean O’Byrne, the vice president of the Downtown Council of Kansas City. “It sounds like I’m talking myself out of a job, but there ought to be a law against what I’m doing.”
(Day 1)
I’ll say it before anyone else does: the building in which I work and of which I’m part owner likely would not have happened without tax abatements, from which I benefitted. That third of a city block would probably be sitting vacant still. But someone else paid for police, fire, schools and every other state-or-local funded amenity for several years in gratitude to a group of already well-off guys who hoped to make money eventually.
Maybe there’s a principled difference between our project and the ones the New York Times highlights. Maybe not. On balance, I still think our project was a good one – maybe even worthy of tax abatements – because we were local established businesses fixing local blight and building a strong, increasingly walkable (if still less than ideal) city center. I’ll neither glower nor smirk if you disagree. I wasn’t a hypocrite in my involvement, if only because my consciousness hadn’t yet been raised. Today, I’m not so sure. That’s why I’m bringing the subject up.
One diagonal block to our northeast, at the opposite corner of the courthouse square, would be a blighted block were it not for incentives, I suspect (I don’t know the details on that big project, though some of my professional colleague were instrumental in it).
There’s another project proposed for about 4-5 blocks north of us, outside the downtown core, to cure blight (a full block of abandoned Rental Center – you know, floor sanders, big tools you only need once, table service for 100, etc.; it moved out to the periphery) with new townhomes. Private enterprise won’t do it, apparently, without incentives. I think it’s a good project, and will promote human-scaled population density, not automobile-scaled sprawl. I have no financial interest in saying that.
I’ll grant you this, too. Our city center feels a bit overbuilt at the moment. Occupancy is far from 100%. Maybe that’s just the recession. Maybe it will get better with whatever recovery we manage to simulate or stimulate. Or maybe it will get better because we don’t recover, and demand rises for dwellings and businesses near bus routes and within walking distance of locally-owned amenities.
Or maybe downtown revitalization, even without boondoggle convention centers and sports complexes, is a failed experiment from which we need to learn what doesn’t work.
Thoughts?
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Tipsy Teetotaler ن 