Jerome's at it
again trying to scare the shit out of us oil addict Americans. Of course Jerome is right, if not subtle. We all are serious oill addicts. Like crackheads, so long as there's a supply we're buying. That's what you call inelastic demand, which is one of the reasons that a gas tax while no impacting demand, would result in a stable income stream for the taxing jurisdiction. It's the same reason we tax alcohol and cigarettes, so long as their is supply there will be demand.
And for the most part they debate about oil has focused on hybrids rather than transit or the blantanly anti-American thoght that communities should be built to encourage people to get off their asses and walk. That the "freedom" granted by the personal automobile and the infrastructure that supports it creates social exclusion for those who lack a car (kids, elderly, and the poor. Ever see a job ad that actually says reliable transportation required? I have.)
As Chris Kulczycki pointed at a
while back here on Kos, cars encourage people to be anti-social pricks by insulating them in an automotive bubble from the dangers of the real world. Peak oil is going to pop that bubble sooner or later. And we'll be better for it.
Consider this, NYC, San Francisco, Philly, all traditional urban areas, all Democratic.
When you live in the urban environment, and are removed from the automotive bubble you can't pretend that povery and pollution don't exist because you have to deal with reality. The suburbs allow for upper middle class folks to pretend that their poor relations in the city core (and don't forget the rural communities stripped of opportunity by the magnet of the metropoltian suburb. And the victims, city dwellers and rural communities, pay the price for suburban excess.) don't exist. Economist dismiss facts that fly in the face of neoliberal policies (cut-taxes-and-spend, privatization, deregulation, and giving the moster that is the market untamed freedom to prey up those less fortunate.)
All this depends on cheap oil, and cheap oil will cease to flow in due time. I get pissed off when people put the focus on hybrids, because it ignores the greater problem. Urban planning designed to accomodate automobiles and not people is unsustainable in the long run.
It's like the scene in Dr. Strangelove, where instead of trying to stop nuclear armageddeon, the Doctor, the General, and the President descend into an argument about the mine shaft gap.
We've got to seriously rethink our addiction to the automobile, and realize that this isn't just about oil, it's about a 50 year building frenzy that assumed cheap oil would always be available. As American cities have grown onto what was previously farmland, the old urban core has been left to decay. And as the suburbs have grown farther an farther from the city core the old post war suburbs increasingly find themselves the victims of urban abandonement as well. But there is another option.
We don't have to be a suburban nation.
New Urbanism, also known as traditional neighborhood design, is centered on 13 principle that together make it possible to kick that car habit.
The heart of new urbanism is in the design of neighborhoods, which can be defined by 13 elements, according to town planners Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, two of the founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism. An authentic neighborhood contains most of these elements:
1. The neighborhood has a discernible center. This is often a square or a green and sometimes a busy or memorable street corner. A transit stop would be located at this center.
2. Most of the dwellings are within a five-minute walk of the center, an average of roughly 2,000 feet.
3. There are a variety of dwelling types--usually houses, rowhouses and apartments--so that younger and older people, singles and families, the poor and the wealthy may find places to live.
4. At the edge of the neighborhood, there are shops and offices of sufficiently varied types to supply the weekly needs of a household.
5. A small ancillary building or garage apartment is permitted within the backyard of each house. It may be used as a rental unit or place to work (for example, office or craft workshop).
6. An elementary school is close enough so that most children can walk from their home.
7. There are small playgrounds accessible to every dwelling--not more than a tenth of a mile away.
8. Streets within the neighborhood form a connected network, which disperses traffic by providing a variety of pedestrian and vehicular routes to any destination.
9. The streets are relatively narrow and shaded by rows of trees. This slows traffic, creating an environment suitable for pedestrians and bicycles.
10. Buildings in the neighborhood center are placed close to the street, creating a well-defined outdoor room.
11. Parking lots and garage doors rarely front the street. Parking is relegated to the rear of buildings, usually accessed by alleys.
12. Certain prominent sites at the termination of street vistas or in the neighborhood center are reserved for civic buildings. These provide sites for community meetings, education, and religious or cultural activities.
13. The neighborhood is organized to be self-governing. A formal association debates and decides matters of maintenance, security, and physical change. Taxation is the responsibility of the larger community.
There are three principal types of development that the New Urbanism promotes.
.... infill development, usually in inner cities and city centers; greyfield development, defined as redevelopment of sites like old strip shopping centers and malls; and greenfield development, which involves undeveloped land. Within those categories, proponents of New Urbanism say the possibilities are virtually endless.
For cities and counties, infill and greyfield development create the greatest impact. "Infill redevelopment is the most ideal utilization of land," says Clifford Schulman, an attorney and land use planning specialist with Greenberg Traurig, a Miami law firm. Infill projects, like those in West Palm Beach, Fla., and Baton Rouge, La., are helping cities revitalize dormant downtowns. (Brownfield projects do exist, but they are much less common.)
I want to focus in on greyfield development, because I see huge potential here. The basic idea is that malls and other retail areas that have long passed their prime can be redeveloped into town centers, where people can live, work, and shop all within walking distance. I'm sure almost all of us here can think of old malls or shopping centers that are either empty or near empty, surrounded by parking lots that attract juvenile deliquents and worse like moth to flame. The Congress for a New Urbanism commissioned a study that detailed the potential to reclaim dead mall monstrosities, and make them living community centers.
In order to be successful, any attempt to recreate traditional neighborhoods in America needs to incorporate work, living spaces, and places to shop and just walk and talk to your neighbors. There's this idea that this a fundamentally European mindset, but 50 years ago, America had an active street life. And we weren't nearly the anti-social bastards we've become. NPR's Ray Suarez chronicled the death of urban America in his book The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-1999. This with Suburban Nation should be must reads for progressives.
Since the late 1990's the urban renewal of downtowns has become accepted, and largely priced newcomers out of these markets. By using greyfield development and the principle of the New Urbanism to reconstruct the inner suburbs we can work towards create integrated communities where Americans of all classes and colors can work and live together. And we can combat the dreadful anti-social politics of the Right that are comorbid with sprawl and auto centered development.
We can seed our cities with new cores from which the American city can be saved, and our addiction to oil can be weaned. We can recreate the Street, the political space that brought America the union movement and supported the New Deal. With increased densities, and a return to normal urban living, we can make transit options like street cars viable, and make it possible to go by train from city center to city center without worrying about renting a car at the destination city. We can free children and the elderly from the prision that exclusion from the automotive world has created. We can remake America into a better, more humble and hospitable place.