A nice post contemplating the city/country balance/bias.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Noahpinion: Federal income tax is the enemy of urbanism
David Wann and the New Normal
I was delighted to find that David Wann, author of one of my favorite books Affluenza, has also authored a book on communities.
I first encountered the New Normal while preparing presentations for Susan Wachter. The concept nicely summarizes the immediacies of the environmental and financial crises that have become more and more apparent. Wann includes an explanation of the New Normal in his Amazon.com biography:
FROM "THE NEW NORMAL:"
The 12 New Normal Paradigm Principles
1. The challenges we face are not just technical - they are social, biological, political, and even spiritual challenges. For example, green technologies won't be sufficient if our current value system keeps pumping out too much stuff, and settling for sloppy services. Even green over-consumption is over-consumption, which results in more transactions and "throughput" than the planet's living systems can handle without collapse.
2. Technology is no longer the limiting factor of productivity - resources are. Deeper wells can't pump water that's no longer there; larger boats and nets can't harvest more fish when fish populations have been wiped out.
3. Major historical shifts occur when a majority of the population understands that is is easier to adopt a new way of life than prop up the broken one. Therefore, the "bad news" we've heard over the past three decades is not really negative, but rather useful evidence that systemic change is necessary.
4. In our search for a new way of life and the products that will help achieve it, we are exploring whole new ways of thinking and designing. We are choosing not just hybrid cars, but hybrid systems that provide food; mobility, wellness, shelter; energy and employment synergistically. The overall goal is not arbitrary, anything-goes growth - often burdened with dysfunction, illness, and waste- but growth/improvements that meet essential needs fully.
5. New systems of accounting will track productivity in terms of quality, not just quantity. For example, exemplary companies now track tons of cement or sheets of paper produced per unit of energy (not just per dollar invested). Similarly, to evaluate the overall productivity of farming, the new metrics will track the nutritional value of the food and the health of the farms it came from, not simply bushels of grain or pounds of beef.
6. Decisions will be made and priorities set using far wider criteria than price, profit, and prestige. For example, living capital - life itself - should unquestionably have a higher priority in decision-making than transitory material capital.
7. We can't change the realities of resource scarcity and population increase, so we need to change our way of life instead. For example, we are a social species that uses status to organize the group, but there are many other ways of awarding status besides material acquisition, such as trustworthiness, knowledge, kindness, and integrity. The new normal reminds us that a leaner way of life is healthier.
8. Designers can't assume that energy will be abundant, or that discretionary time will continue to be scarce. In the future, we will use more human time and energy and less fossil fuel energy. We will once again participate in activities such as walking rather than driving; operating window covers to maintain desired temperatures in homes and offices. "Totally automatic" may be a desirable goal for robots, but not humans.
9. A sustainable economy maximizes the productivity of resources in addition to people. Writes Paul Hawken, "When you maximize the productivity of people, you use fewer people, but we have more people than there are jobs. Basically we are using less and less of what we have more of, and with natural capital, using more and more of what we have less of." That kind of economy doesn't make sense. Why not move toward full employment of a part-time workforce, giving us enough income as well as more time for living? To fund public services and infrastructure, why not tax fossil fuels and pollution, not work?
10. Some products and resources - such as food, water and gasoline - need to be priced higher to ensure both full cost accounting and minimal waste. For example, gasoline should rightfully cost much more because its environmental and health effects are not currently accounted for.
11. Saving a civilization is not effortless and convenient; it takes focus, strategy, and engagement. Our generation's mission should be to create and maintain an economy based on fully satisfying finite needs rather than chasing insatiable, market-driven wants. Let's slow down and meet needs directly, delivering more value per lifetime.
12. Democracy may be our greatest social invention to date, but it can't work unless citizens are informed and have both political access and sufficient time to exercise their shared power.
FROM "SIMPLE PROSPERITY:"
Beginning when I was about four and continuing for several decades beyond that, a lumbering grizzly bear invaded my dreams whenever my life felt out of control -- at least a few times a year. The bear was a thousand pounds of snarling, razor-clawed mammal, blundering up the dark stairway toward my bedroom. I told my parents about the bear but they assured me he wasn't real. (Why then, I wondered, did he have so much power?)
Thankfully, somewhere in my late twenties, I began to get a grip. One very significant night, I leaped onto the stage of my own nightmare - a lucid dream they call it - and decided to try tickling the bear, of all things. Miraculously, it worked; the bear chuckled like a huge, shy, department store teddy bear! My unconscious mind had staged a coup, asserting my right and power to come out of the shadows and live fearlessly in the light -- never mind the horror of rejection slips or credit card interest rates that jump fivefold if you miss a payment by two and a half hours. The confused and defused bear plodded, mumbling, out of my life forever.
Tickling the bear became a life strategy (and I believe it can be a cultural strategy too, for taking back our power). It seemed like the bear's ghostly mission was to terrorize we humans who inhabit a harried, self-destructive Dream of too many choices, too many competitors, and too much to know. I wondered, even then, why didn't we just start out content and let that be more than enough? Why didn't we unplug from the fear, the shame, and the fantasy-based expectations, rather than chasing a Dream all our lives? Many remember how the Bomb hung over our lives in those days, but I suspect it really was the chasing that was making the country so nervous.
I look back at that night with a certain degree of pride. I had symbolically taken charge of my own life, exorcising a fear capable of immobilizing me in moments of insecurity. Since then, I've had the guts to speak up to corporate polluters; close-minded supervisors and would-be kings; spoiled scramblers for the money; control freaks and neighborhood bullies of my boyhood. By tickling the bear, I've played a role in defusing the nuclear bomb, flipping the switch on machines that steal our jobs and contaminate our food.Yes, the risks and threats of global climate change, genetic engineering, child abuse, deceit, corruption, and perverted power are staggering, but we are capable of finessing them. Ultimately, the bear becomes Gentle Ben when he's tickled because he finally understands that despite the dramatic, grizzled costume he finds himself in, he's really one of us.
I look back at that night with a certain degree of pride. I had symbolically taken charge of my own life, exorcising a fear capable of immobilizing me in moments of insecurity. Since then, I've had the guts to speak up to corporate polluters; close-minded supervisors and would-be kings; spoiled scramblers for the money; control freaks and neighborhood bullies of my boyhood. By tickling the bear, I've played a role in defusing the nuclear bomb, flipping the switch on machines that steal our jobs and contaminate our food.Yes, the risks and threats of global climate change, genetic engineering, child abuse, deceit, corruption, and perverted power are staggering, but we are capable of finessing them. Ultimately, the bear becomes Gentle Ben when he's tickled because he finally understands that despite the dramatic, grizzled costume he finds himself in, he's really one of us.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Re-envisioning Slums and the new Commons
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/stewart_brand_on_squatter_cities.html
Stewart Brand predicts that squatter cities will diffuse the population bomb that has been ticking for the past 150 years world wide.
It sounds ridiculous, but I have been thinking the same thing. One-sixth of the world lives in squatter settlements according to Mr. Brand.
These folks are leaving the countryside while bringing the ingenuity of country living. A country shack is charming at the density of 1 per acre. Once you have 50 to 200 per acre, you have a "slum".
Slums are what Chicago and NYC were before the great depression and the first zoning laws.
However, city dwellers are recognized for democratizing gender roles, and increasing education.
What does this mean for "country values"?
I propose that this will rely upon how individual cities resolve their commons, their public realm.
Rises energy prices will force less reluctant cities to open up the commons to provide for more residents at once.
The crux is to create a commons that pluralistically includes country and traditional values alongside the ambitious cosmopolitan culture and habits.
Nothing is easy. But this is what we must create as the inheritors of the most explosive human legacy in recorded history.
(Part of this will look like both more centralized transportation, and the disconnection of many suburbs from their parent cities).
Stewart Brand predicts that squatter cities will diffuse the population bomb that has been ticking for the past 150 years world wide.
It sounds ridiculous, but I have been thinking the same thing. One-sixth of the world lives in squatter settlements according to Mr. Brand.
These folks are leaving the countryside while bringing the ingenuity of country living. A country shack is charming at the density of 1 per acre. Once you have 50 to 200 per acre, you have a "slum".
Slums are what Chicago and NYC were before the great depression and the first zoning laws.
However, city dwellers are recognized for democratizing gender roles, and increasing education.
What does this mean for "country values"?
I propose that this will rely upon how individual cities resolve their commons, their public realm.
Rises energy prices will force less reluctant cities to open up the commons to provide for more residents at once.
The crux is to create a commons that pluralistically includes country and traditional values alongside the ambitious cosmopolitan culture and habits.
Nothing is easy. But this is what we must create as the inheritors of the most explosive human legacy in recorded history.
(Part of this will look like both more centralized transportation, and the disconnection of many suburbs from their parent cities).
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Netherlands Researchers Test the "Broken Windows" Theory
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov/21/science/sci-graffiti21
Netherlands researchers test the "Broken Windows" theory. (Thank you guest speaker Charlie Branas of the Epidemiology Department for bringing this up).
The researchers methodologically added graffiti and trash to select locations in select neighborhoods.
It resulted that the inverse of the Broken Windows Theory held true. Graffit and Trash accumulated exponentially in accordance with the amount of trash and graffiti added by the researchers.
A wonderful study in behavior science and city planning.
I love this kind of study because it bolsters the idea of psychogeography introduced to me by the Situationist movement. It also suggests that human behavior can be significantly sculpted and influenced by sculpting the built environment.
The eternal question: how do we sculpt the built environment to encourage humane, respectful, and longterm ecological behavior?
Netherlands researchers test the "Broken Windows" theory. (Thank you guest speaker Charlie Branas of the Epidemiology Department for bringing this up).
The researchers methodologically added graffiti and trash to select locations in select neighborhoods.
It resulted that the inverse of the Broken Windows Theory held true. Graffit and Trash accumulated exponentially in accordance with the amount of trash and graffiti added by the researchers.
A wonderful study in behavior science and city planning.
I love this kind of study because it bolsters the idea of psychogeography introduced to me by the Situationist movement. It also suggests that human behavior can be significantly sculpted and influenced by sculpting the built environment.
The eternal question: how do we sculpt the built environment to encourage humane, respectful, and longterm ecological behavior?
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Robustness (& Audio Fragility)
Nassim Taleb spoke at my university last week. Despite skipping the end of class to get a good seat, there was only space in an overflow room where, as it turned out, the audio would be faulty, and only after 3/5's of the audience had left could we hear a little bit of Taleb's lecture.
Taleb has held my fascination for the few months since hearing of him. He combines my interests in finance and risk with a sense of humour and an appreciation for nuance, all the while looking at events over the long term.
Nicholas Taleb is on the ramparts assuming an activist role in urging us "to move voluntarily into
Capitalism 2.0 by...shutting down the 'Nobel' in economics, banning leveraged buyouts, putting bankers
where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here, and teaching people to navigate a
world with fewer certainties."
"Then we will see an economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller companies, richer
ecology, no leverage. A world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks and companies are born
and die every day without making the news."
The themes Taleb develops in this manifesto are an outgrowth of his 2008 Edge original essay "The
Fourth Quadrant: A Map of the Limits of Statistics". (Aslo, see The Black Swan Technical Appendix.)
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb09/taleb09_index.html
Although I have a sneaking suspicion that this is all quiteover my head, I believe that this is a mythology worth disecting.
Taleb's words at the talk it is worth figuring out how to fashion a system that grows stronger, more robust, after experiences stress and shocks rather than succumbing to fragility.
My thoughts went immediately to the human skeletal and muscular systems. A nursing friend suggested that archeologists are able to presuppose the professions of the once living skeletons they unearth by studying the stress and growth of their bones. As I think many of us know on some level, human bones reshape themselves in accordance to their use and their stress, as do muscles.
This seems to follow Taleb's suggestion quite well. However, friends of mine have found a strong fault to this logic: this adaptive biological structure prepares the body primarily to receive the stresses that it is accustomed to receiving. A Black Swan type event should prove a little more unlikely.
Thoughts?
(his other chief theme was the comparison of convexity and concavity, Alan, could you explain this?)
to be continued
thomas
Taleb has held my fascination for the few months since hearing of him. He combines my interests in finance and risk with a sense of humour and an appreciation for nuance, all the while looking at events over the long term.
Nicholas Taleb is on the ramparts assuming an activist role in urging us "to move voluntarily into
Capitalism 2.0 by...shutting down the 'Nobel' in economics, banning leveraged buyouts, putting bankers
where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here, and teaching people to navigate a
world with fewer certainties."
"Then we will see an economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller companies, richer
ecology, no leverage. A world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks and companies are born
and die every day without making the news."
The themes Taleb develops in this manifesto are an outgrowth of his 2008 Edge original essay "The
Fourth Quadrant: A Map of the Limits of Statistics". (Aslo, see The Black Swan Technical Appendix.)
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb09/taleb09_index.html
Although I have a sneaking suspicion that this is all quiteover my head, I believe that this is a mythology worth disecting.
Taleb's words at the talk it is worth figuring out how to fashion a system that grows stronger, more robust, after experiences stress and shocks rather than succumbing to fragility.
My thoughts went immediately to the human skeletal and muscular systems. A nursing friend suggested that archeologists are able to presuppose the professions of the once living skeletons they unearth by studying the stress and growth of their bones. As I think many of us know on some level, human bones reshape themselves in accordance to their use and their stress, as do muscles.
This seems to follow Taleb's suggestion quite well. However, friends of mine have found a strong fault to this logic: this adaptive biological structure prepares the body primarily to receive the stresses that it is accustomed to receiving. A Black Swan type event should prove a little more unlikely.
Thoughts?
(his other chief theme was the comparison of convexity and concavity, Alan, could you explain this?)
to be continued
thomas
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Prince's Foundation for the Built Enviornment
Hey yall,
This wasn't my expected first post, but it kicked something loose. In sifting through the digital flotsam on my bookmark lists, I rediscovered the work of the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment in England. Particularly, the response to the publication of the standing government's Localism Bill was interesting.
I am amazed at the lack of institutional attention that the challenge of building/retrofitting an appropriate built environment for ecological cities has gotten thus far. Its there, but its in the experimenting at the margins stage in the US, it seems.
As I say this, I am reminded that I should preface my comments with this. I'm an industrial ecologist by training. This means I know the science of many dire things. The science about impending materials and energy constraints is not a part of the built environment debate at all. As a consequence, the needs of the built environment to adapt and become a bulwark of resilience against ecological and social shocks is not yet happening. The known and circulating science of ecological change is a part of the debate. The social value of better/more cost effective housing has been a part of the debate for a long time. But without the other constraints as a part of the conversation, the true social import of transforming our built environment isn't quite materialized as yet. So, when I say we aren't really dealing with this yet, I mean we don't yet really grasp what our building are going to have to deal with in the next 30 years.
Also, I don't usually find diagrams of the balance required of sustainability either particularly balanced, or rich enough in breadth of understanding to be useful. I kinda like this one.
Their joural of urbanism might be somewhere that might writings find publishability. I doubt it'll be in APA Journal, that's for sure.
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