I've been neglecting to post this and during that time the Daily Kos picked up the article.
The original article can be found here. Definately worth a read if you are interested in how the economic crash will reshape the economic geography of the United States.
I will post some thoughts from Rob L in the comments.
Monday, March 2, 2009
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That article is indeed awesome! Thank you for posting it, as it definitely sent my thoughts spinning.
ReplyDeleteSome thoughts:
The suburban landscape certainly is unsustainable. J. H. Kunstler aside, I firmly believe that housing parks in particular are horribly detrimental to the development of competent and psychically healthy youth. I've known and observed so many people who have grown up in these sheltered divisions and the best word I can find to describe them is "autistic." The segregation of their lifestyle imparts in them an inability to cope with the inevitable connections with other living human beings as equals, to bridge the self to the other. These skills are not only essential to health and happiness, they are essential in the new information economy.
Of course, this problem is not isolated to housing parks and condos alone, they are just the extreme manifestation of the isolated society we have constructed around suburbia. I challenge you all to go through the people you have known in your lives and separate them into confident, socially capable people, self starters who command respect. then take those who don't quite manage the public realm, who lack luster in the crowd. How many of those people grew up in an urban sphere of influence? How many, from whatever way of life, were raised amidst deep connections to other people and diverse cultures? How many are self interested and judgmental? Take all this and consider where they were taught and taught themselves how to be peop le. Why is it that being a "democrat" is assumed in an urban region while republicanism is the standard in rural settings? Aren't these things correlated?
I've been thinking a lot about the early history of the industrial revolution, you know, when most women were partially employed in their homes as spinners, when folks made their own furniture, etc. That moment of transition has always fascinated me. As you all know, at this time the earliest manufactories first sprouted in the rural areas because of the dominance of the urban trade guilds. They simply sidestepped the realities and limitations of the deteriorating aristocratic, mercantilist economy. (There's some interesting notes on this in Orlando Figus's "A People's Tragedy" with reference to workers in pre revolutionary Russia, btw.) I've thought a lot about this and the transition to urbanized heavy industry.
Then history and society took another turn during the oil boom, creating the preconditions and pressures coinciding in the last half of the latest century as "urban decay." It seems that these circumstantial and unsustainably transitory circumstances allowed capital to flow artificially from urban centers to return to the outskirts.
But that was a step backwards, wasn't it? Industry returned to the antiquated refuge of lawless proto-industrial "rural" areas outside the influence of regulations, oversight, and political influence. After all, when a factory employing 5,000 workers shows up in a town of 2,000, who ends up owning the town? That same f actory in Detroit is a drop in a much larger political pond. Still, we know that suburban industry and housing is grossly inefficient, based solely on cheap fossil fuel networks and bloated highways.
Very little has been said about the influence of last years exorbitant fuel prices and this economic crisis. 6 months ago, Foreign Affairs ran an article anticipating the reversal of global supply chains, citing struggling rail networks operating at capacity to avoid trucking costs and oceanic megafreighters steaming as much as one day slower in order to conserve fuel. They implied that empires like Walmart and "just in time" factories were beginning to look into local solutions, returning to the regional model of complex manufacture. It seems obvious that the recent abrupt depression in oil prices was forced under pressure of international trade. This reduction however must be artificial and deceptively temporary. Heck, oil is once again back on a slow rise. How long will it be before we see $3 or $4 gas again? Under this assumption, I prophesi a slight boon to domestic manufacturing in coming years.
This article set me thinking on the relations between early industrial expansion and the current plight of sprawled development. The new economy found its nascence in "rural" areas, but must converge on urban centers if it is to replace the old economy. The financial bubble, the internet bubble, and the housing bubble are all catalysts for a re-urbanization of the world.
But what about the pattern=2 0of flight by young educated people away from high cost urban areas? We all know several people who left Jersey to find their way in cheaper states. What odds do you give them amidst this crisis? In the light of our changing economy, should we encourage ourselves to rather move inward to the cities? There we can be connected, we can be integral parts of the rebuilding process and infuse rev dem practice into our workplaces and communities. Could you imagine trying to effectively manage campaigns like EON attempts in a suburb? We stand well positioned to hitch a ride on the upswing of the wheel of fortune.
Forgive me for my ramblings on such simple conclusions.
Rob L.