I really like watching his presentations…they make so much sense. Here is another one in Detroit I really like. He is really Bullish on Detroit.
He seems to have split from the New Urbanist people a bit…sort of like a fork in an open source software project. You’ll enjoy how he says people like himself have now made Miami Beach “uncool”. I also like that his presentations can be “off the cuff” at times
Thanks for the link. I’ll check it out.
I never get tired of his talks…he has a way of keeping it interesting (if you find this kind of stuff interesting…and I do)
The group-thinkyness occurs no matter what. I hate some suburbs for their pre-planned sameness. Its an aethetic thing that doesn’t have much if anything to do with liberal or conservative politics in my mind. YMMV.
Daughter Carole Anne stares vacantly into the static of the family television set,
which is always tuned to FoxNews.
Wonder if there are FoxFollowers who still think StephenColbert as a 'right’eous guy?
Part of the article’s thrust appears to be a common one: modern ‘conservatives’ are nothing of the sort, merely pandering authoritarians co-opting the brand in opposition to liberals and progressives.
[quote=“cgd, post:13, topic:23491, full:true”]
Some suburbs may or may not be “soulless”, but the whole idea of “souls” is religious nonsense to begin with.[/quote]
Not in this context. In this context, it’s shorthand for ‘unique essence’ - what sets one community apart from another? Chicago, as a city, is a massive conglomeration of concrete and steel on the water’s edge, an aggregation of wealth and economic might, just like New York City. But the two are vastly different in hundreds of small ways. Some of those are pure location - the air smells different, especially along the waterfront, because NY is a saltwater port, Chicago a freshwater port. Some of them are structural - Chicago’s light rail is mostly (entirely?) above-ground. NYC’s subways are, well, subways. And others are cultural. Look at the difference in ‘pizza’ in the two cities, or the subtle differences in people going about their day. In NYC, when you’re on the train, or walking on the street surrounded by millions of other people, you’re aware of them. They’re aware of you. You’re studiously not absorbing what the other guy’s saying, but you’re watching him to make sure he’s not gonna knife you, and he’s watching you. And everyone knows it, nobody hides it, and everyone’s fine w/it. Whenever I’ve been in Chicago, walking among the people, they’re always pleasant and project a veneer of being relaxed - but it rings false, hollow, because you can see they’re doing the exact same thing we do, they’re just in denial about it. Those differences, physical, structural, cultural… those combine to form the ‘soul’, the ‘essence’ of a place.
Suburbs, by their very nature, are built to be bland. They’re purpose-built to not really stand out. The food’s all the same, especially early on - big box supermarkets and national franchise chains setting up shop. Wendy’s! Papa John’s (did you know he learned to make pizza from a real Italian when he was 18?? Jesu Kristos, whadda ridiculous man), Taco Bell!
Pablum. Pasteurized, homogenized, pre-chewed and regurgitated pablum.
[quote]
When conservatives start showing concern for the ridiculously low wages people are forced to work for by modern corporations, then it may be time at least to notice their bellyaching about suburbs.[/quote]
But they’re not. The voices the author cites here are the original guiding lights of American Conservativism, the actual thinkers, poets, and philosophers, as it were, who saw the accelerating pace of change as uprooting traditional communities and altering them forever as a bad thing. T.S. Eliot was complaining about the suburbs while living in pre-WWII London. Modern ‘conservatives’ (ie: authoritarian religious reactionaries) love the 'burbs because they’re where you find the upper crust of the hoi polloi - the very creme of the crop of the small-minded, easily-influenced idiots who fear ‘the darkies’ mostly because they almost never deal with ‘those people’.
The very qualities those early conservatives would have found abhorrent in the suburbs are the ones modern fox-servatives adore: simultaneously disconnected from their immediate neighbors, but encouraging homogenization with the mass-media ‘dominant culture’ - which is still synonymous with ‘white culture’ to them. People of color are either supporting cast, or segregated into shows where almost the entire cast is minorities*. So they love them some suburbs. Suburbs are often enough like Iowa, only with a ‘Your wallet must be this fat to ride’ entry bar.
(* - There are, of course, rare exceptions, but even those (LL Cool J and Ice-T come to mind) are individuals who’ve been judged ‘safe’, both by long exposure and by subverting the very anti-establishment messages that brought them to prominence - people who were a threat, but now represent the virtues of The Establishment. Both now play good, honest, moral, and dedicated (if a little hot-headed sometimes) cops, w/LL a military cop, just to double-dip on the ‘establishment is good’.)
I watch hgtv and it seems that on every couples wish list is to be far away from any neighbors. One of the first thing that is critiqued is “we can see the neighbors”. We now want to far away from ppl. I find that interesting.