Don't blame us for living 40 miles from Minneapolis, blame the 'city clowncils' of America that have outlawed law enforcement and private property while importing non-Christians that want nothing to do with the fundamentals of this country. Oh, and don't forget our beloved federal gummint for printing trillions of dollars and shutting production down causing housing prices, especially in cities, to explode.
Government is always the problem and now so much fraud, especially around elections, has to be cleaned up and I don't think it can be.
Exactly! People vote with their feet, and some cities are emptying out because they simply became unpleasant to live in. The ones that are nicer to live in become crazy expensive. You can't win!
The USA, and elsewhere, was an agrarian society with towns and cities being supply depots for the farms until WW1. Towns existed to supply the surrounding farms with supplies and money. There were banks everywhere to fund the farmers with loans to plant and repositories for their money in the winters. There were markets where farmers sold their crops. Cities were on the coasts or in areas where waterways made large scale trade possible. That was small town America.
Then WW1 happened, the farmers became wealthy making food for the troops. Then WW1 stopped and kaboom, the market dropped like a rock. Supply and demand created new farmers during the war that were no longer needed. Unemployment hit number one happened. Where did the farming losers go? The cities to find work. The work was not there.
Then, a miracle occurred, or a catastrophe to the economy at the time. The internal combustion engine was made usable by the general population. All of a sudden, farmers could farm hundreds of acres instead of the tens up until then. The need for farmers plummeted and going into the 1930s, participated in the causes for the Great Depression. Where did all those sharecroppers and losing farmers go? Yup, to the cities to find work. It is one example of the negative side of technology to compresses the job market.
WW2 helped to undo the damage, increasing the demand for farmer products and killing some of the male surplus from the cities. Then the boys came home.
The cities have been swelling since WW1. Part of the cities became receptacles for the poverty class. Some of the cities became centers for crime as people hungry for cash fed on the others. As the problems deepened, folks looked for an escape. In 1955, Eisenhower, impressed by Germany’s Autoban, started the Interstate system and over the next couple of decades, the floodgates opened to the suburbs. The rest of the century moved large populations from the undesirable city centers to the suburbs with all that happened.
Then something weird happened, the decrepit cities could be plowed over and reconstructed as gentrified areas for the more wealthy. This happened starting in the 70s, and rapidly expanded in the following years. Could this be the reason the new urbanism was created, was there any real need for the new urbanism?
The social conflict increased as the cities continued to absorb the “losers” of the capitalistic economy. The mixing of the wealthy PTB and the poverty class has never worked well. Imagine living in a hovel, looking over the fence at a McMansion.
Then 2008, because of the surpluses of the suburban housing becoming self-limited as the less wealthy folks tried the leap and failed, happened along with the aforementioned-mentioned Obama revolution occurred driving the USA into an job market contraction which we still have not recovered from. The rust belt losers moved into center city, again. They met the effects of gentrification making housing expensive. The disorder increased again. Then Mayorkas allowed 30 million or so poverty class people in to the country, where did they go? Into the cities, where there are very little opportunities for them outside of landscaping or crime. Is it any wonder that drug dealing is largely ignored? Or that fraud is rampant using federal and state monies?
So on it goes, removal of legitimate industries and the conversion of the cities into cesspools. The suburbs were an escape from all this, but they are full up. As you pass between the two today, you cannot tell much difference any more.
In the SW, the water situation is making changes in the layout of the areas. Agriculture uses 7X the water that the cities do, so water rights are being sold into the cities. Urban sprawl is the result as people continue to want out of the cities even when the inflow is much higher.
Now we have AI which may have more impact than any of the tech “improvements” of the past. What will this do to the balance between the cities and the suburbs. IMO, it will be catastrophic driving the US into a city vs. suburb civil war.
Now, think of today’s representation of all this as Blue vs. Red. The Fourth Turning aspects of all this is scary as we are approaching the major change forecast.
"Then WW1 stopped and kaboom, the market dropped like a rock." Yes it did, but there was no intervention. The market 'righted itself' quick enough. Not many, in my opinion, pay attention to this short period of time
That is the agricultural market. The impact on the farmers threw many of them off the land, then the tractor hit and “The Grapes of Wrath” hit. Add on the dust storms due to lousy husbandry. No wonder the cities exploded.
The market - the law of the jungle in human form - is the Hand of God. Those who fall and die deserve to do so. Spring will always come again (Chauncy Gardner) but many will not live through the winter. They are the grasshoppers, the locusts! To hell with them.
But it was still primarily agrarian, you are right, the cities were growing, much due to immigration and industrialization. But manual methods of agriculture made much of the population raising food. Until WW1.
"The ones that are nicer to live in become crazy expensive."
This is not universal. I live in a bustling leafy-green neighborhood in Queens, apparently quite healthy economically, safe, where rent is currently about half the price of Manhattan. The weekly (mostly organic) farmers market generally costs less than a supermarket (in *or* out of the city), I can walk to a car rental when needed from any of half-dozen competing firms thus saving bigly on occasional car usage. I know and get along most of my neighbors in my *quiet* building. And that's before one gets to the (actual, known) advantages of NYC. etc., etc. About the only major thing I give up is a lot of space to store a crap collection.
Be careful before you ruin it for everyone! There are many, many wonderful places to live in America. Some of them are even suburbs, though I prefer the places that are a little bit further away from major population centers. ZIRP has levered everything up absurdly, so once a nice spot is recognized, it's over.
Your essay comes across as naive and simplistic. The best defense of suburbia in that it gives people options to choose from. “Greenbelt” cities, “new towns”, municipal neighborhoods, and 15 minute-cities are all good concepts and reflect the natural development of human communities, but they are all analytical constructs, pre-dated by the reality of suburbs. Cities, towns and villages formed around ports and crossroads - but all of these were shaped by politics, rules that allowed certain people and groups to thrive, often at the expense / exploitation of other people. Modern suburbs, while often imperfect (by prevailing standards) allowed middle class people who worked hard and could afford automobiles to have a greatly expanded choice as to where and how to live - and that’s a good thing; backyards can be great, and good for dogs.
My own experience as a kid in a 1st ring suburb of St. Paul in the 70's... I used to drive with my mom to work in St. Paul every day and were were asphyxiating ourselves on car exhaust and that problem didn't exist 5 miles away. St. Paul back then was mostly a dump with crime while our suburb was clean without crime.
In the 90's both Minneapolis and St. Paul re-developed into two very nice cities all the way up to the Covid Scamdemic.
If the government enforces laws rather than stripping inalienable rights things can work very nicely.
Rampant money printing by the Federal gubmit to fund its illegal wars are exactly why housing prices are as high as they are and nobody says a damned thing about it. An ounce of gold is is over $4000 now. I bought a gold coin 10 years ago for $1300. Has gold changed? Not a bit. Has the dollar? Thank you, elected "representatives."
The problem was with the federal reserve in 1913 which began to slowly replace exchangeable gold with unbacked paper. Nixon was caught between a rock and a hard place, although he should have openly devalued the dollar, instead of it happening through inflation and gradual devaluation against other currencies.
The Federal Reserve Act of the 1920's took us off the gold standard and allowed banks to create money out of nothing. I assume Nixon's act was just a recognition of what was already the case.
I agree , and the failure almost always emerges after a period of having been wildly succesfull .But the solution isn't to flatline/ steady state our economics any more than the solution to mood swings is SSRI's that supposedly flatline those mood swings , I don't think there is a solution , I don't even think there is any point in talking about it as if its a problem we can solve . its called the human experience and it is what it is , sure some of us can think ahead for leaner tougher times and not get all spun out with irrational exuberance like there is no limit to our progress ,its called wisdom , but as for the main body of the herd , fugettaboutit., So why sit around and whine about it like Lugh, ,Geez ( he;s just virtue signaling is all it is)? .
And yet failure is a constant throughout history 250 year cycles. Morality is a symptom, humanity is the root cause...hence, do not moralize...Spengler describes how morals decay.
We fled suburbia. The place we lived in back in New Jersey was fairly rural for its location. But we saw the crazy creeping out Route 22 towards us, so we left for a more remote section of Pennsylvania. The way I put it, the crazy wouldn't stay away from us, so we got away from the crazy. Now we sit on top of a hill on three plus acres of land, surrounded by Amish and Mennonites, who swoop in with cash the moment an open piece of land comes up for sale.
The topography of the land where we live makes building water and sewer infrastructure prohibitively expensive. We have well water and septic. Ain't nobody going to build no ghetto down the street from us. There is also a distinct lack of employment opportunities for H1Bs in the local vicinity, another plus when it comes to neighbors.
Up here, I feel like I'm living in the 1970s again, and I like it.
Yes! As Ford (bless him O Lord) said, the business of America is business. We must be ruled by men like Ford, not gubmint. See Brave New World for the deets.
Suburban sprawl and white flight had everything to do with parents not wanting to send their kids to schools where black or hispanics were a majority.
Mandatory school busing drove it - if not for school busing, half of every city would still have decent schools, and the whites wouldn't have fled.
Now, if you look at any city that only has one public school district, and then you look at the schools in that school district, you know you had better not live in the city proper, if they don't have universal school vouchers.
You are insane. The invention of the car was the greatest thing ever to have happened - it gave people the ability to make independent decisions about where and when to travel and the freedom to pick up and move. The anti-car movement is a regressive leftist front of collectivism.
As a long time reader and lurker around here, I agree with you 100%.
The automobile is one of the greatest inventions of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. It has enabled incredible freedoms unimaginable to any prior generation of humans on the planet.
It's also important to remember that the "communities" of the past were ALL suburban along with the cookie cutter homes of the day.
Of course, there are a few people who yearn for the life of a one gas station town in the middle of nowhere. However, those type of places still exist.
The loss of community in the 21st Century is MUCH more related to the rise of the "smartphone" than anything else. At this point, teenagers sitting in the same classroom would rather text each other across the room than actually speak to one another in a hallway.
That's the difference between "yesteryear" and today. And it's getting worse. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with the "ugly" suburban sprawl.
Not just teenagers. Millennials too. I go to church and try to strike up conversations with younger strangers. I pepper them with questions hoping to have some return questions to spart some interest. The return questions never come. They answer my questions with one word answers and then comes the long awkward pause as I wait and hope for a follow up question that may spark a conversation that may result in a new friendship. It doesn't come. So I give up and we sit in silence 6 inches from each other and then part ways never to speak again.
That's what the smart phone has done to us. We can no longer connect as people. Children can't talk to their parents. Parents feel alone and alienated from their children because their children don't know how to have a communication that doesn't involve fast moving thumbs.
I often lose my smart phone. On purpose. When I get home from work I put it down and I forget about it. On Monday morning I have to have my wife help me find it. Here's the kicker......I DON'T MISS IT WHEN I LOSE IT.
LOL! Talk about some strange looks! It's to the point now that with young females I actively avoid them for fear of getting "me too'd" over some innocuous remark or look.
I have no problem talking to millennials or children for that matter. They talk to me all the time. They have no time for black and white thinking. They are tired of being squished in apartments with 3 roommates and making minimum wage trying to get through school. They are tired of not being able to get married and have kids because they are too poor. They would be happy with a small townhouse or condo.
Modern tech and lifestyles have some features that are quite enjoyable - I love long cross-country drives and motorcycle rides. BUT, I think JHK has some great points when it comes to the sustainability and poor choices made because of how automobiles were integrated into our culture. Much of the development occurred at the cost of mass transportation and poor planning of communities. It's not easy to find a place to live outside of bigger cities that essentially don't require a car. Some towns now offer limited bus service for grocery shopping and doctor visits, but time comes out of your pocket. And forget about bringing home ice cream bars in the summer.
European countries have a much more sensible approach to how much of the growth has been controlled - partly because cheap cars and fuel have never been as prevalent as here in the States.
Now the bills need to be paid for infrastructure, supply chains, housing, etc when cheap cars and cheap fuel are off the table. The transition will be painful at best, disastrous at worse. The end result is that only the extremely wealthy and corrupt .gov officials will have access to personal vehicles.
Well horses were awesome. It was neat being able to ride your horse into town to pick up the 10 seasonal items the local shop keeper was able to procure. Of course, when the train didn't come through, the shop only had 3 items.
This whole thread and post can be summed up as:
"Modern life is a burden because I have too many good things."
Suburban American life is actually the best life that can be found.... ever... on planet Earth throughout all of human history.
Anyone saying differently is an idiot.
Having written that, of course, life and living conditions can always be improved upon.
It would be great if I could simply have all my favorite out of season fruits and vegetables beamed into my sparkling modern kitchen which is in my 2800 sqft home in the middle of a nice partially hilly estate which is perfectly manicured by someone else.... and not need to actually go anywhere via an automobile that I **gasp!** need to drive myself.
Oh dear me oh my! Woe is me!
Personal transportation via internal combustion engine automobile is what most people actual want. And most people actually do want to live in the suburbs. That's why they are "sprawling."
Also, all those "well planned" cities in the Western United States have the worst traffic.... because... well... Centrally Planned stuff almost never works well.
Helps a lot that Europe is tiny in comparison to the US. Plus, it's much older so that many cities were built pre-car, meaning mass transportation is plentiful bc it's baked in the cake. The US is huge and cars are vital. As are airplanes and trains and buses & subways.
correct, cars were massively overused. They hit bridges and trees in my neighborhood, boomers and gen x think hiding behind a big fence is cool. Nobody wants to look at a blank wall. These parking lots are what is making housing unaffordable. Look at all that wasted space! The city is broke and it cannot print money. It cannot afford to service these areas. My son lives in a rented townhouse and he has a good job. He wishes he could just have a small townhouse or a condo. meanwhile boomers are sitting in their SUV unable to see a pedestrian crossing the street. one 60 year old person in a 3,000 square foot mansion while the younger people are squished in apartments with 3 kids. I see them on Halloween. I live next to a trailer park and we have lots of kids here. Boomerland is completely devoid of children.
Dude, do you need a hearing check or do the voices in your head tell you that’s what he said? I’m not sure if you should find an audiologist or a psychiatrist.
Having a car can sometimes be a pain in the ass, but not having one is worse. On balance the automobile is a blessing.
I've lived without a car several times in my life when I was very poor. I depended on slow, crowded buses and trolleys to get to work. Their schedules were theoretical, and they were usually late or didn't show up at all. That meant I often arrived at work late. My colleagues and bosses, who drove to the office, didn't ask why I was late or understand if I tried to explain. They assumed I was lazy and had overslept.
I was limited to shopping at stores, good or bad, in walking distance. To reach anywhere else in town again meant public transportation -- which could be unsafe because of crime. Sometimes I had to turn down invitations because getting to and from their locations was too much of a hassle.
As for getting out of town for a breath of fresh air and a change of environment, being carless was an even greater handicap.
After each period of lacking a car, when I acquired one -- even an old banger -- it was like being admitted to heaven.
I agree with James, the New Urbanist movement had excellent ideas and apparently some actual successes in creating bonsai cities on a human scale. Maybe genuine community could thrive there. But few if any had a solid economic base, so they were practical mainly for well-off retirees.
Many suburbs, with their cookie-cutter housing, chain stores and chain restaurants, are painfully depressing. But they could be much better conceived and designed. Developers usually have free rein to build with no amenities other than community centers including swimming pools, movie night auditoriums and playgrounds. Nothing wrong with those, but they are basically just places to park the kids, not converse with neighbors front-porch style, beyond trivia and really get to know them. And there's not much chance at reform as long as oversight is largely limited to technical issues by review boards where real estate developers dominate.
cars are disappearing. I cannot wait. I am tired of the ego. Waymo has no ego. It follows the rules and everyone will have to sit there and be patient and their ego doesn't matter. 40,000 people a year die in cars. My friend's son got hit by a semi last week. A careless driver in a big metal box, tank hit the semi tractor trailer and pushed it into him. A 26 year old man dead. 40,000 people a year dead is not acceptable. So far in Denver, the human driver has lost to the computer every single time. The computer can see in the dark, it doesn't care that poeple want to win. The insurance companies are going to END human driving. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MAGA. Math works in magaland too. There isn't the money to fund all this anymore.
And anyway, widespread LLM use is coming to all industries whether you like it or not.
Of course, the Amish will continue to do fine without all of this, if the crazy control freak Communists will leave them alone. However, it's useful to understand that.... just like the Shakers and their nice beautiful enclaves of yore... the Amish depend on the ability to sell their wares to those "Evil Capitalists" on the other side of their fence.
Just saw a YouTube video Tube report documenting the withdrawal of the Amish from Lancaster County, PA due to increasing land values pressure from Philly.
It also said that the Amish population is growing due to more of their kids staying put.
I suggest you read Ivan Illich's essay on cars. We have become prisoners of the thing that gave us the freedom to pick up and move. In suburbia, where I live, except for in the neighborhood, one can't walk anywhere. The roads are not safe for walking or biking. One cannot walk to the community center 2 miles away or the church 1/2 mile away or the BP "convenience" store 3/4 of a mile away.
I was an early proponent of New Urbanism. The problem is, New Urban communities are way too expensive. Why? Because they are awesome.
Are there no sidewalks? For a few years my town did not require sidewalks in new developments. Horrible idea. They smartened up and now they are required on one side of street. In my older 'hood we have them on both sides. Shoveling snow sucks. Granted bicycles are not supposed to be on them but the kids all use them. What i don't like are the speedsters on there electric bikes.They should stay off the sidewalks. They are banned from the bike trails but it is unenforced.
Common courtesy should be the rule. Enforced with a whiffle Bat?
I find people walking improperly restrained dogs to be a more common danger. You might be in different milieu though. Please don't hit me! I'm only the piano player! Dinging my bell and respectfully passing on your left😝
All neighborhoods are connected by busy roads, none of which have sidewalks. Most suburban communities, like mine, are bisected by 4 lane “routes” separated by median strips, no sidewalks.
I rode my bike as a kid—elementary school through high school—on all those connecting roads, including the routes that were two lanes back in the day. As the population grew and people moved out of the cities, the suburbs grew willy nilly just as JHK described as new neighborhoods popped up in every valley and hillside.
We are now a low trust society with lousy drivers, especially since Covid. People hardly slow down for stop signs any longer. To walk the quarter mile to church is a risk not worth taking. I would also pass at least one dead deer on my way.
We have a poverty of sidewalks/bike paths in Alaska. It is primarily economically driven. I do miss small town life for my kids, where the density allows for additional infrastructure.
I live in the suburbs. There are aspects of it that I don't like. There are aspects of it that I do like. I don't think it is the hell scape that our host has made it out to be. My community is quiet, friendly clean and has all the services I need to sustain myself. My commute is 12 minutes (9 miles) long and is relatively traffic jam free. I think there are goods and bads associated with all cities, towns and suburbs, no doubt.
The problem with America is that real estate, housing specifically, changed from being an essential need to satisfy every persons need for safe housing and became an investment. Once homes became an investment opportunity to get rich the investors came and started constructing cookie cutter homes and prices started increasing. "Property values" they all shouted as they celebrated their investment results! "Property taxes are tied to property values" I tried to shout back. "We don't want property values to increase because that mean few people can buy our property and we pay more taxes on that property!" Nobody listens. Nobody cares.
Housing needs to go back to being and essential need and no longer an investment. Until we figure this out the sprawl will continue and housing costs will continue to sky rocket.
"Property taxes are tired to property values" It would be tied, but certainly many home-owners, who are really renting from the government after they finish paying back the montage and the huge mount of interest to the banks, are more than tired of never truly owning their home because of the property taxes.
It's another scam. While people are generally seeking to peacefully live their lives, there is the 'sector' (a cabal) constantly reaching into their collective pockets to extract whatever can be extracted. Thus those people never really reach the point of peaceful lives enjoying the fruits of their labor because so much is taken by the government and its programs. Small government and low taxes (no property taxes) would be so much better.
Welcome to the "property taxes are evil" campaign, WKENN.
I always laugh to myself when Americans pat themselves on the back because they are free or when they thank the troops for protecting our "freedoms." Sure, we can drive to the store, go to church and cross state lines without gubmit approval. But in America today nobody can own property free and clear from government intrusion. In my state, Utah, if I don't pay my property taxes the County will put a lien on the property and if the taxes and accrued fines aren't paid the property will either go on tax sale or they will sell the lien to a private investor who can then foreclose on my property.
Ain't freedom grand? Our founders went to war over a tea tax and a stamp act. We idiots subject ourselves to property taxes, property that had sales taxes already paid on it with income that is already taxed every year. It is stunning to me that Americans submit to this blatant theft by their government overlords but then turn around and claim themselves to be "FREE." They wouldn't know freedom if it was growing on their asses and talking to them while they sat on the shitter.
Is that not grounds for a revolution? Digging some graves and scattering their ashes? Check out Mitch Vexler on his Mockingbird Properties website as he now has a case before the Supreme Court.
Trump agrees with them, not you. The value of your home means nothing since you can't sell it if you have only one. His mindset is one of the super-rich.
In the 1980s the Olympics were coming to Atlanta (we lived in the suburbs at that time). Redevelopment started to happen downtown with the growth of condominiums. A lot of empty nesters thought it would be cool and hip to live in town only to find that the streets weren’t safe after dark and they basically became prisoners in their high-rise boxes rising above the downtown expressway with its constant noise and odor. We’re now in a suburban neighborhood on the side of a 6 lane highway in North Texas where the sprawl is extending to the border of Oklahoma. Fortunately, we finally got a traffic light that lets us out of the neighborhood. A good mixed use development makes a lot of sense, but as one of the comments mentioned there is a cost that puts them out of reach for the average person.
I lived that era in Atlanta, 1972 - 2005. We finally moved north of the metro area in 1993 to the boonies of Lake Lanier. The '96 Olympics changed the place forever. Sprawl began to move north on GA hwy 400 almost to Dahlonega.
A lovely paradise was lost;
the once genteel zeitgeist of a truly southern city.
The " black influx" ? They were always a presence, especially in local politics. The sprawl was a result of in migration, particularly from the northeastern states.
nope. it was a huge mistake. If you cannot see that the roads don't work anymore. I can. I was a math major and I understand exponents. If you cannot afford it, you cannot do it. There is no money to make any more roads. You cannot pile on anymore cars. Insurance is going to figure out soon, if not already, that it is far cheaper to insure waymo, which will only go to certain places. Auto makers are buying old train stations. Denver right now is redeveloping. THey got rid of parking minimums. The parking lots are going away. Try driving without a parking lot. People are in denial and buying bigger and bigger and bigger cars with no where to park them. They also make big giant privacy fences which won't help either. Within 10 to 15 years there won't be ANY human drivers anymore. The kids don't want the suburban hellscape. They cannot afford to play with yards all weekend, they cannot afford insurance and cars.
As in all things moderation is the key. Urban planners need to design cities that cater various housing scenarios to all types of people. Some people may not want to own an automobile and prefer instead of live near transit stations. So, more transit oriented development needs to occur. Others, who can afford it, may prefer to have the yard to play with and prefer to drive their cars.
Humans have an inability to moderate themselves. We always go full bore in one direction without considering that not everyone wants to go in that direction. The automobile will never go away but I think it will be very healthy to have a society where people can thrive and succeed without having to rely on a car.
Sadly I think you are right about most of this. Just not about the cars getting bigger and bigger. It really is logical though because with two income families the concept of a home has gone by the wayside and humans are just housed now.
Think about a new revolution going on, the RV crowd where people are choosing the road to suburban life.
There is an interesting offshoot to this, old RVs are becoming homes for the homeless. California beaches are lined with older RVs. RV parks have reacted to this by restricting older RVs.
As the population keeps increasing, the megalopolises keep expanding, now the exurbs are in the news and the suburbs are in decline.
One more, people cannot afford in-city single family housing any more, hence the rise of the USSR style apartment society in the cities. Just a way to densify the area.
The only upside to no human drivers in 10 years is it takes away a fraud avenue for the Dems to manufacture votes. Other than that, a world with no human drivers is a dystopian’s wet dream.
MAGA no longer exists. It imploded when Trump went establishment. MAGA was a the closest thing to a mainstream refuge that has ever existed for those in the political middle, who have political opinions developed through reasoning the weighing and measuring of evidence.
What calls itself MAGA now are just Boomer Neocons, with minimal exceptions.
Like everything, autos have a good side and an evil side. Is the good side better than the evil side. I would guess that would depend on which side of the city-suburb divide you are on.
Think for a moment, what would have happened if the car had not been invented? Is today’s world better than 1915? One of JHKs predictions is a return to an agrarian society due to the decline in the availability of energy to support a motorized society. The GenZ folks may find out if an agrarian society is recoverable without major impact. So far, it does not look good and AI is about the accelerate the decline.
Today's world would be much smaller, for one. And that would likely be a good thing in and of itself. An agrarian society can't possibly return now unless we're ready to sacrifice several billion people. Thing is, we'll probably be jettisoning them either way. But politically it's only feasible if we "stumble into it," rather than stating it as a goal up front and actively implementing it.
I don’t think JHK’s agrarian society prediction has a chance. It was what Thomas Jefferson wanted for America, but thank God Alexander Hamilton had a much better solution. Hamilton’s American System is what made America the economic powerhouse of the world that built a high trust society and created opportunities for all up until the 1830s (except for the slaves and poor whites in the south), and again in the late 19th century under Republican presidents, especially McKinley.
Trump is resurrecting the American system, which is why the guardians of decay want him dead, as they killed other proponents of the system including Hamilton, Harrison, Taylor, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and probably FDR.
TLE states that we have lost the skills required to sustain ourselves when the SHTF. People will not even realize the end is coming until it smacks the. Upside the head. MOST will die. I am one of those. But I am almost 79.
The conspiracy theorists on the blog love to declare the PTB will make populations die to 500 million. That is possible, but not because of the PTB. It is our own arrogance regarding resources. JHK points out energy, but if you are listening, it will be water first. Most of the end times folks will die also.
Agreed. I came to the same conclusion after years of railing against it. Not that tPTB don't know full well what's coming and are likely opportunistically fanning the flames at the margins too, but they know that that's the hard way down from the peak and is not really necessary. I'm closing in on 70 now too and age definitely does have a calming effect on the psyche.
SW update on water. Just saw a YounTube talking about Lake Havasu. Look for it on a map. Very significant as both the Arizona and LA canals arise from this lake. It is important to realize that the water has to be lifted hundreds of feet to enter the canal systems on both sides. It is accomplished with huge pumping systems. I never thought about it before but the same cavitation problems exist here as in the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams. If the pressure head from the rivers and lake depth falls below a certain depth, the pumps start to cavitate and tear themselves apart. That also applies to the pumps in Lake Havasu. A very difficult decision happens, either let them run and hope they do not deteriorate before deeper water occurs, or shut them off. Both are losing propositions.
The Phoenix Tucson side means that we are back to only having groundwater to get water from, ie pre-CAP days. Groundwater is already running dry in areas, stopping farming and new suburban development.
Going onto groundwater means drilling wells deeper costing billions and eventual drying up. I am waiting for any reasonable solutions and have been 100% disappointed so far. Could it be we have no solutions. Too much hope is being put on whether we will get more snow year to year.
I am really watching what is happening trying to gauge what to do, even at my age. Real estate is already reacting as houses, trying to maintain equities are just not selling.
BTW, Lake Havasu City is 50000 people on the lake, dependent totally on the London Bridge and the lake level for water and the tourist trade there. Not good.
I agree that the invention of the car was one of the greatest things to have happened. That said, urban and suburban design was and is too car-centric.
Much of what makes life nice in old European cities is the way they enable choices, and of course the fact that they were created in times when people cared about beauty and place. I live in Europe but am American, so I have seen a lot of different countries.
Suburbs here in Germany are not much different than those in the US, but they do offer public transportation in many areas, and they have lots of spaces where the car is not the focus. The car is still the primary mode of transportation, however.
A very stupid comparison. The European cities were built in the medieval era when transportation was by foot or horseback. Most people never traveled more than 20 miles from where they lived.
Lugh, if I told you, you’d be offended. Your blatant bigotry towards anyone that doesn’t look or think like you is a start. So we’ll leave it right there.
Were the city's emptied out because of cars, or because of Lyndon Johnson's welfare programs, and are obsessive regulations on businesses that drove them out of the cities, (then out of the country)? After 1964, single parent families moved into the cities in droves, and government made it worse by housing projects. This displaced millions of City dwelling stable families, and brought massive crime and dysfunction. I think most reasonable people would have escaped that hell somehow, interstate highways and suburbia or not.
It’s the junkies ranting and screaming at the non entities in their meth induced psychosis. Who can stand the thought of their loved one’s navigating the encampments, the sidewalk feces, and the dangers of the ever present threat of violence. Particularly for their children and spouses. Fixing that one problem would help a lot.
No, the blacks came northward in the hopes to improving their lives and their hopes for improving their lives. Instead they found public assistance, substandard housing and no more future than what they left in the south , all because of Democrat politicians promising them a better life when all they wanted was more residents to increase the size of their districts.
Yeah they're all staunch libertarians. Always have been. And that's all any of the tens of millions of refugees want. Who are we to stand in their way? Borders are anti-business!
I live in Montana - more than 500 miles to the nearest US city of 1 million or more. Cities are Communist/Jihadist garbage dumps where you have no rights.
Detroit is now 77% Black and 8% Arab. If I wanted to live in Africa I would go to Kenya or Ethiopia.
NYC, LA, Chicago and Seattle are "run" by Marxist morons.
You may dislike suburbs and exurbs but give me one good reason to visit let alone live in a Blue City?
Going off on a tangent here: anyone ponder the HUGE amount of hatred embedded in the term "MAGAt"?
Our "friend" here has made this extra explicit by spelling "maggot". They think of conservatives as nasty invertebrates that are creepy and who can be killed without thinking twice.
We conservatives often use the term "libtard", which at least credits liberals with being human and capable of giving and receiving love.
The irony, that the same people who put "hate has no home here" signs in their yards routinely call the political opposition a name that could prime people to kill.
The KKK was a Democart Party terrorist group, you idiot.
Having a Masters degree from Haravrd allows me to recognize a moron like you instantly although a 3rd grade education in your case would be enough as you were home schooled by your pet iguana it appears.
Always a joy to read JHK on urbanism/architecture/development! Nobody else is as vivid, smart and informed as he is, and that’s by a long shot.
Something that he points out here is something that really baffled and bewildered me. I had followed the New Urbanism from its start, full of hope and admiration for it. It was in part a reaction against not just suburban sprawl but also against preening Modernism, and it was viewed as reactionary — even (get this) fascist — by the endlessly progressive, “avant-garde” (ha!) architecture establishment.
I then got swamped by family emergencies for a decade and when I was able to return to my interests discovered that the NU was no longer what it had been. It had become something quite the opposite, in fact. It had been a respectful-of-real-people, mostly-bottom-up, market-respectin’ movement, and had somehow morphed into something extremely NPR and Woke. And then the 15 Minute City thing, which stole some ideas from the NU, came along, making things seem even worse, and giving sensible people (such as most Trumpies) an even bigger target to hate.
The fight became the populist/guns-pickups-and-Sydney-Sweeney crowd vs the topdown globalist controlfreak team, real American suburban sprawl vs Euroweenie and utopian, and in the midst of the fight actual and important quality of life questions were lost track of entirely. GRRR.
I root hard for Trump, admire much of what he and his team have managed to do, and despise the globalist/Ivy crowd with all my heart. But I’d be a much happier chappie if my current team showed a lot more concern for the built environment than they do.
Well said. To them, only freedom matters - not what you do with it. There are no good or bad choices, only freedumb. It's the ideology of an adolescent.
I live on a little farm in the middle of nowhere because of the very ideas you've presented. There are only 30,000 people in the whole county. Never could I be a part of suburbia.
I've given it up, too. First off, the advantages of having your own well. No annoying neighbors. And virtually no crime - although you have to be watchful. I've surprised several men who showed up in my yard (ultimately legitimate reasons) by answering the door with a gun in hand. (Well, I live alone and don't LOOK lethal. Just saying.) You make do with fewer perks - restaurants, grocers, shops, etc. Neighbors in grand houses on manicured lawns and chickens (HUGE eggs $3/doz), hogs, cattle, goats, horses, donkeys. Someone has an emu! Go figure! I couldn't live in a city again.
Wells aren't open holes in the ground with water in the bottom. Wells are drilled like oil is drilled until you hit an aquifer or underground stream, etc. About an 8 inch pipe down the drill hole, and a pump is lowered into the pipe to pump up the water to a holding tank. It's completely enclosed. What can get in the water table are toxins from spraying crops for bugs, parasites, ROUNDUP!, fertilizers, etc. Fortunately, I live miles from cropland. My well is 200 feet deep, but most wells are not that deep. So pure, the water is almost blue.
That's never happened all the years I've been here. We have a cinder block well house, so not sure how they'd get in. But I bet our well guy could take care of it.
Another has posted that he may be from a country where wells are exactly holes in the ground with water at the bottom. In much of that world, DRILLING for water is unheard of.
He's thinking wells are open holes in the ground with water in the bottom. Wells aren't like that and haven't been for a long time. Wells are drilled, much the same as oil.
I used to be like that. Then Austin closed in. Property values skyrocketed as did property taxes and now a lot of people can't afford to live here anymore. If you see any sign of "progress" near you fight it tooth and nail because once it gets a toe hold there is no stopping it.
The thing about suburbia is that it reflects a more Anglo-American way of life with SPACE. New urbanism speaks to Euro-centered city dwellers who want a pretty city, walkable, without the downside. Out of those hated suburbs came the most extraordinary inventions and achievements in culture of the boomers and GenXers. It was the wonderful boredom that created it. Not having people in your face all the time. Clean. Crime free. Choose community or not, you are free to do so. The independence of the car. Suburbs will never die. They are the dream of 6 billion people trapped in mega-slums all over the world. The weak like to be jammed together. The strong do not. Plus natural evolution. I grew up outside a village established in 1850 that grew with time, not platted out by a dreamer out of the UN planning shops. We had both, a village center, and the CHOICE to live where we wanted. Plus all the houses looking alike with tiny variations. Feels like an upscale prison frankly.
We live in an equestrian community, which is quite small. 7 years ago, it was well off the beaten path. Now it is becoming the beaten path. I am deluged with texts and written offers for my 12 acres. None of these prospective buyers have the least interest in horse keeping or farming. It is simply a land grab scheme.
San Diego was a very nice, large city with a small-town feel until Democrats started winning everything.
Now it's filthy and the roads are crumbling, but hey, they are putting in bike lanes everywhere, with traffic patterns that are nearly impossible to navigate safely on bikes, motorcycles, or cars.
Forget walking; crossing the street in crosswalks is death-defying.
I just read Geography of Nowhere. One of the best books I ever read. Suburbs with cars wizzing by are no places for kids. Kids can’t do anything unless they get a ride. Sixty years ago in my small city I went wherever I wanted to go on foot or on bicycle.
Today I can't find a thing on which to agree with you. Cities are hell. Suburbs are quiet and peaceful. You need a new tiny home community or something. I'll keep my peaceful sub-urban "sprawl" (though I live in a large airy tidy one). Happy Monday?
I currently have everything I need within a 10-minute drive, thanks to suburbia. I have never lived anyplace that wasn't suburbia, and I have ZERO interest in living in 'the city.' I do not consider suburbia as a blight on the landscape. From my own experience, what has helped immensely to feel grounded and part of the community is to have lived in the same neighborhood and house for the past 20+ years. Economic mobility is great, but the flip side can be communities where people do not know their next-door neighbors. It's a real tragedy.
Cities might become more attractive again if there weren't "teen takeovers" on the streets or firefights in malls and parks every weekend and at every public celebration. No bail, no jail doesn't work and people tend to not want to be around places with these policies.
I'd argue that the insanity started full throttle when Muh gubmint said that buildings could fall straight down in 11 secs from jet fuel fire ...even ones not struck by a plane...the willful ignorance to accept a lie that flies in the face of physics is a cue to when the collective stupidity turned up to 10. The sheer retardation of over half the electorate to posit a cogent thought that is based in reality is a reminder everyday of how far Humanity has fallen from the founding of "self- governed" free people. Bureaucracy is the Devil.
I contend that "the insanity did not START full throttle" when we accepted the official version that contradicted common sense, and the laws of physics.
We must have already been collectively insane to go along with the lie.
Given the lust for profit as the only thing, the rise of socialism was inevitable as a balancing force. All viable societies have both individualism and communalism. People who don't get that are adolescent at best.
With every World Made By Hand book I read (Harrows, recently) I can't help but wonder where YOU live, Mr. JHK. I imagine horses and infused honey, ample ammo and collectable firearms, sunny afternoons on the Peekskill, friendly neighbors and hootenannies, etc, etc. I follow Andrea Fasulo on substack and see rampant solar fiascos in upstate NY so the ruination creeps in no matter the locale. The U.S. was formerly (40's-90's, a good run) a nation of TOWNS that functioned properly because people knew their neighbors. That really was taken from us, the villains were many and hard to pin down: corporate offshoring, dwindling resources (not really, but in effect), ambition for a better (more $) lifestyle. Like many, I was forced from 'the city' by extortion-level property taxes/insurance and the oppressive assault on my consciousness by loud-mouth / loud-car mongrels intent on a gangsta empire. "White Flight" has always been vilified as "racist" until Scott Adams came out and spoke the unspeakable. When forced to choose between peace/order and chaos many of us simply chose the former and got the hell out. Best move I ever made, no regrets. In any modern city (NYC, Paris, etc) only the most wealthy have the option of living in the metro heart. The rest of us just live where we can actually live. I'd love to be in a N.U. village. That didn't happen for us. Still, no regrets.
And the ones remaining in the cities have four locks on their doors and do not go out at night and even continuously look over their shoulders in daytime. Fear runs their lives.
Mamdani has it figured out, drive out the property owners, let the properties decline, and give everyone cheap food. What me worry?
My next door neighbor recently moved in from Salt Lake City. She mildly amuses me with her door cam and warning signs out in the yard informing everyone that they're under surveillance. I'm trying my best to condition her to small town life and the fact that you just don't need that shit here.
There is never a supply issue when it comes to opinionated people wanting to tell everyone else how and where to live their lives. Demand is another thing.
If I had a dollar for every time I have been earnestly advised as to which lifestyle I should adopt to live the utopian dream, I could indeed live my version of that dream.
I kinda get what you’re saying, especially when it comes to some places, like in much of Southwest FL, where you’ll drive on endlesss highways past strip mall after strip mall, while all the “neighborhoods” are hidden away, behind walled gates and out of human visibility.
Inside those gates are cookie cutter houses, almost indistinguishable from one one another. They may be festooned with the obligatory pond or water accent, but they can seem almost soulless in their highly structured uniformity.
However, in places like New England, (which does also contain many of these cookie cutter neighborhoods maybe sans the gates), you can see town after town brimming with the age old charm and historical heritage preserved.
It’s in that sense I can agree with you, that the things that should have been more highly valued and preserved have given way to convenience, cost, speed, and “modernity” at the expense of beauty and culture and heritage. These are the things we can’t lose sight of at the expense of all the rest.
In one historic neighborhood in Spokane, developers were touting the historic aspect to attract people, even as they destroyed it to build cookie cutter homes to house those people.
Don't blame us for living 40 miles from Minneapolis, blame the 'city clowncils' of America that have outlawed law enforcement and private property while importing non-Christians that want nothing to do with the fundamentals of this country. Oh, and don't forget our beloved federal gummint for printing trillions of dollars and shutting production down causing housing prices, especially in cities, to explode.
Government is always the problem and now so much fraud, especially around elections, has to be cleaned up and I don't think it can be.
Exactly! People vote with their feet, and some cities are emptying out because they simply became unpleasant to live in. The ones that are nicer to live in become crazy expensive. You can't win!
Yes.
The USA, and elsewhere, was an agrarian society with towns and cities being supply depots for the farms until WW1. Towns existed to supply the surrounding farms with supplies and money. There were banks everywhere to fund the farmers with loans to plant and repositories for their money in the winters. There were markets where farmers sold their crops. Cities were on the coasts or in areas where waterways made large scale trade possible. That was small town America.
Then WW1 happened, the farmers became wealthy making food for the troops. Then WW1 stopped and kaboom, the market dropped like a rock. Supply and demand created new farmers during the war that were no longer needed. Unemployment hit number one happened. Where did the farming losers go? The cities to find work. The work was not there.
Then, a miracle occurred, or a catastrophe to the economy at the time. The internal combustion engine was made usable by the general population. All of a sudden, farmers could farm hundreds of acres instead of the tens up until then. The need for farmers plummeted and going into the 1930s, participated in the causes for the Great Depression. Where did all those sharecroppers and losing farmers go? Yup, to the cities to find work. It is one example of the negative side of technology to compresses the job market.
WW2 helped to undo the damage, increasing the demand for farmer products and killing some of the male surplus from the cities. Then the boys came home.
The cities have been swelling since WW1. Part of the cities became receptacles for the poverty class. Some of the cities became centers for crime as people hungry for cash fed on the others. As the problems deepened, folks looked for an escape. In 1955, Eisenhower, impressed by Germany’s Autoban, started the Interstate system and over the next couple of decades, the floodgates opened to the suburbs. The rest of the century moved large populations from the undesirable city centers to the suburbs with all that happened.
Then something weird happened, the decrepit cities could be plowed over and reconstructed as gentrified areas for the more wealthy. This happened starting in the 70s, and rapidly expanded in the following years. Could this be the reason the new urbanism was created, was there any real need for the new urbanism?
The social conflict increased as the cities continued to absorb the “losers” of the capitalistic economy. The mixing of the wealthy PTB and the poverty class has never worked well. Imagine living in a hovel, looking over the fence at a McMansion.
Then 2008, because of the surpluses of the suburban housing becoming self-limited as the less wealthy folks tried the leap and failed, happened along with the aforementioned-mentioned Obama revolution occurred driving the USA into an job market contraction which we still have not recovered from. The rust belt losers moved into center city, again. They met the effects of gentrification making housing expensive. The disorder increased again. Then Mayorkas allowed 30 million or so poverty class people in to the country, where did they go? Into the cities, where there are very little opportunities for them outside of landscaping or crime. Is it any wonder that drug dealing is largely ignored? Or that fraud is rampant using federal and state monies?
So on it goes, removal of legitimate industries and the conversion of the cities into cesspools. The suburbs were an escape from all this, but they are full up. As you pass between the two today, you cannot tell much difference any more.
In the SW, the water situation is making changes in the layout of the areas. Agriculture uses 7X the water that the cities do, so water rights are being sold into the cities. Urban sprawl is the result as people continue to want out of the cities even when the inflow is much higher.
Now we have AI which may have more impact than any of the tech “improvements” of the past. What will this do to the balance between the cities and the suburbs. IMO, it will be catastrophic driving the US into a city vs. suburb civil war.
Now, think of today’s representation of all this as Blue vs. Red. The Fourth Turning aspects of all this is scary as we are approaching the major change forecast.
"Then WW1 stopped and kaboom, the market dropped like a rock." Yes it did, but there was no intervention. The market 'righted itself' quick enough. Not many, in my opinion, pay attention to this short period of time
That is the agricultural market. The impact on the farmers threw many of them off the land, then the tractor hit and “The Grapes of Wrath” hit. Add on the dust storms due to lousy husbandry. No wonder the cities exploded.
The market - the law of the jungle in human form - is the Hand of God. Those who fall and die deserve to do so. Spring will always come again (Chauncy Gardner) but many will not live through the winter. They are the grasshoppers, the locusts! To hell with them.
> The USA,and elsewhere, was an agrarian society with towns and cities being supply depots for the farms until WW1.
This is not correct.
Cities were growing very fast in the late 1800s. This was because of the massive growth of industry within those cities.
https://www.biggestuscities.com/1890
https://open.baypath.edu/his115/chapter/the-rise-of-industrial-america/
But it was still primarily agrarian, you are right, the cities were growing, much due to immigration and industrialization. But manual methods of agriculture made much of the population raising food. Until WW1.
You're recollection of history is distorted. Too many falsehoods to even begin to respond.
Okay, Don’t. I’ll stand with my statements then. You do not take 60% of a population and turn it into 5%, the farmers, without huge problems.
"The ones that are nicer to live in become crazy expensive."
This is not universal. I live in a bustling leafy-green neighborhood in Queens, apparently quite healthy economically, safe, where rent is currently about half the price of Manhattan. The weekly (mostly organic) farmers market generally costs less than a supermarket (in *or* out of the city), I can walk to a car rental when needed from any of half-dozen competing firms thus saving bigly on occasional car usage. I know and get along most of my neighbors in my *quiet* building. And that's before one gets to the (actual, known) advantages of NYC. etc., etc. About the only major thing I give up is a lot of space to store a crap collection.
The trick? It's not hip. Shhhhh.....
Half the rent of Manhattan? That's still going to be crazy expensive by the standards of most of us.
Fair enough. "The average American renter [in 2026] pays $1,326 a month."
Half-of-Manhattan ($2500) does apply to the average for the neighboring NJ/NY/New England region, however.
See: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/average-rent-by-state
Be careful before you ruin it for everyone! There are many, many wonderful places to live in America. Some of them are even suburbs, though I prefer the places that are a little bit further away from major population centers. ZIRP has levered everything up absurdly, so once a nice spot is recognized, it's over.
Your essay comes across as naive and simplistic. The best defense of suburbia in that it gives people options to choose from. “Greenbelt” cities, “new towns”, municipal neighborhoods, and 15 minute-cities are all good concepts and reflect the natural development of human communities, but they are all analytical constructs, pre-dated by the reality of suburbs. Cities, towns and villages formed around ports and crossroads - but all of these were shaped by politics, rules that allowed certain people and groups to thrive, often at the expense / exploitation of other people. Modern suburbs, while often imperfect (by prevailing standards) allowed middle class people who worked hard and could afford automobiles to have a greatly expanded choice as to where and how to live - and that’s a good thing; backyards can be great, and good for dogs.
My own experience as a kid in a 1st ring suburb of St. Paul in the 70's... I used to drive with my mom to work in St. Paul every day and were were asphyxiating ourselves on car exhaust and that problem didn't exist 5 miles away. St. Paul back then was mostly a dump with crime while our suburb was clean without crime.
In the 90's both Minneapolis and St. Paul re-developed into two very nice cities all the way up to the Covid Scamdemic.
If the government enforces laws rather than stripping inalienable rights things can work very nicely.
I've been to almost every major city in the USA (and all before the Covids). Minneapolis was Shithole #1. Not even close.
Rampant money printing by the Federal gubmit to fund its illegal wars are exactly why housing prices are as high as they are and nobody says a damned thing about it. An ounce of gold is is over $4000 now. I bought a gold coin 10 years ago for $1300. Has gold changed? Not a bit. Has the dollar? Thank you, elected "representatives."
Richard Nixon started the problem when he took us off the gold standard.
The problem was with the federal reserve in 1913 which began to slowly replace exchangeable gold with unbacked paper. Nixon was caught between a rock and a hard place, although he should have openly devalued the dollar, instead of it happening through inflation and gradual devaluation against other currencies.
Don't worry - Nixon severing the US$ being "as good as gold" was only "temporary."
The Federal Reserve Act of the 1920's took us off the gold standard and allowed banks to create money out of nothing. I assume Nixon's act was just a recognition of what was already the case.
No. The US$ was still "as good as gold" until Nixon severed the tethers on Aug. 15, 1971.
Do you think he was given a choice?
Read Spengler.
The Government is not the problem, but rather the symptom. Failure is baked into the human condition.
Agree although government has the force.
I agree , and the failure almost always emerges after a period of having been wildly succesfull .But the solution isn't to flatline/ steady state our economics any more than the solution to mood swings is SSRI's that supposedly flatline those mood swings , I don't think there is a solution , I don't even think there is any point in talking about it as if its a problem we can solve . its called the human experience and it is what it is , sure some of us can think ahead for leaner tougher times and not get all spun out with irrational exuberance like there is no limit to our progress ,its called wisdom , but as for the main body of the herd , fugettaboutit., So why sit around and whine about it like Lugh, ,Geez ( he;s just virtue signaling is all it is)? .
Read Francis Schaeffer.
Failure is always moral.
Andrew,
And yet failure is a constant throughout history 250 year cycles. Morality is a symptom, humanity is the root cause...hence, do not moralize...Spengler describes how morals decay.
I agree that humanity is the root cause; we call that sin. Judges mapped this cycle long before Spengler.
We fled suburbia. The place we lived in back in New Jersey was fairly rural for its location. But we saw the crazy creeping out Route 22 towards us, so we left for a more remote section of Pennsylvania. The way I put it, the crazy wouldn't stay away from us, so we got away from the crazy. Now we sit on top of a hill on three plus acres of land, surrounded by Amish and Mennonites, who swoop in with cash the moment an open piece of land comes up for sale.
The topography of the land where we live makes building water and sewer infrastructure prohibitively expensive. We have well water and septic. Ain't nobody going to build no ghetto down the street from us. There is also a distinct lack of employment opportunities for H1Bs in the local vicinity, another plus when it comes to neighbors.
Up here, I feel like I'm living in the 1970s again, and I like it.
Yep, we are 40 miles from the Twin Shitties, well water and farms
Love “clowncils”. Government is losing power beyond the comfort zone. They are victims of stupidification.
Yes! As Ford (bless him O Lord) said, the business of America is business. We must be ruled by men like Ford, not gubmint. See Brave New World for the deets.
It was President Calvin Coolidge, not Ford, who famously said: "The chief business of the American people is business."
Mr we could use a man like Calvin Coolidge again.
You mean the book by Huxley?
What else?
:-D Haven't read it yet.
Suburban sprawl and white flight had everything to do with parents not wanting to send their kids to schools where black or hispanics were a majority.
Mandatory school busing drove it - if not for school busing, half of every city would still have decent schools, and the whites wouldn't have fled.
Now, if you look at any city that only has one public school district, and then you look at the schools in that school district, you know you had better not live in the city proper, if they don't have universal school vouchers.
It can be.....it won't be pretty.
You are insane. The invention of the car was the greatest thing ever to have happened - it gave people the ability to make independent decisions about where and when to travel and the freedom to pick up and move. The anti-car movement is a regressive leftist front of collectivism.
As a long time reader and lurker around here, I agree with you 100%.
The automobile is one of the greatest inventions of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. It has enabled incredible freedoms unimaginable to any prior generation of humans on the planet.
It's also important to remember that the "communities" of the past were ALL suburban along with the cookie cutter homes of the day.
Of course, there are a few people who yearn for the life of a one gas station town in the middle of nowhere. However, those type of places still exist.
The loss of community in the 21st Century is MUCH more related to the rise of the "smartphone" than anything else. At this point, teenagers sitting in the same classroom would rather text each other across the room than actually speak to one another in a hallway.
That's the difference between "yesteryear" and today. And it's getting worse. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with the "ugly" suburban sprawl.
Not just teenagers. Millennials too. I go to church and try to strike up conversations with younger strangers. I pepper them with questions hoping to have some return questions to spart some interest. The return questions never come. They answer my questions with one word answers and then comes the long awkward pause as I wait and hope for a follow up question that may spark a conversation that may result in a new friendship. It doesn't come. So I give up and we sit in silence 6 inches from each other and then part ways never to speak again.
That's what the smart phone has done to us. We can no longer connect as people. Children can't talk to their parents. Parents feel alone and alienated from their children because their children don't know how to have a communication that doesn't involve fast moving thumbs.
I often lose my smart phone. On purpose. When I get home from work I put it down and I forget about it. On Monday morning I have to have my wife help me find it. Here's the kicker......I DON'T MISS IT WHEN I LOSE IT.
I wish more people would do the same.
"Not just teenagers. Millennials too. I go to church and try to strike up conversations with younger strangers"
CP,
Sounds like a plan! I draw a lot of attention when I do that in the Mall....
LOL! Talk about some strange looks! It's to the point now that with young females I actively avoid them for fear of getting "me too'd" over some innocuous remark or look.
I have no problem talking to millennials or children for that matter. They talk to me all the time. They have no time for black and white thinking. They are tired of being squished in apartments with 3 roommates and making minimum wage trying to get through school. They are tired of not being able to get married and have kids because they are too poor. They would be happy with a small townhouse or condo.
Modern tech and lifestyles have some features that are quite enjoyable - I love long cross-country drives and motorcycle rides. BUT, I think JHK has some great points when it comes to the sustainability and poor choices made because of how automobiles were integrated into our culture. Much of the development occurred at the cost of mass transportation and poor planning of communities. It's not easy to find a place to live outside of bigger cities that essentially don't require a car. Some towns now offer limited bus service for grocery shopping and doctor visits, but time comes out of your pocket. And forget about bringing home ice cream bars in the summer.
European countries have a much more sensible approach to how much of the growth has been controlled - partly because cheap cars and fuel have never been as prevalent as here in the States.
Now the bills need to be paid for infrastructure, supply chains, housing, etc when cheap cars and cheap fuel are off the table. The transition will be painful at best, disastrous at worse. The end result is that only the extremely wealthy and corrupt .gov officials will have access to personal vehicles.
Hmm....
Well horses were awesome. It was neat being able to ride your horse into town to pick up the 10 seasonal items the local shop keeper was able to procure. Of course, when the train didn't come through, the shop only had 3 items.
This whole thread and post can be summed up as:
"Modern life is a burden because I have too many good things."
Suburban American life is actually the best life that can be found.... ever... on planet Earth throughout all of human history.
Anyone saying differently is an idiot.
Having written that, of course, life and living conditions can always be improved upon.
It would be great if I could simply have all my favorite out of season fruits and vegetables beamed into my sparkling modern kitchen which is in my 2800 sqft home in the middle of a nice partially hilly estate which is perfectly manicured by someone else.... and not need to actually go anywhere via an automobile that I **gasp!** need to drive myself.
Oh dear me oh my! Woe is me!
Personal transportation via internal combustion engine automobile is what most people actual want. And most people actually do want to live in the suburbs. That's why they are "sprawling."
Also, all those "well planned" cities in the Western United States have the worst traffic.... because... well... Centrally Planned stuff almost never works well.
Helps a lot that Europe is tiny in comparison to the US. Plus, it's much older so that many cities were built pre-car, meaning mass transportation is plentiful bc it's baked in the cake. The US is huge and cars are vital. As are airplanes and trains and buses & subways.
correct, cars were massively overused. They hit bridges and trees in my neighborhood, boomers and gen x think hiding behind a big fence is cool. Nobody wants to look at a blank wall. These parking lots are what is making housing unaffordable. Look at all that wasted space! The city is broke and it cannot print money. It cannot afford to service these areas. My son lives in a rented townhouse and he has a good job. He wishes he could just have a small townhouse or a condo. meanwhile boomers are sitting in their SUV unable to see a pedestrian crossing the street. one 60 year old person in a 3,000 square foot mansion while the younger people are squished in apartments with 3 kids. I see them on Halloween. I live next to a trailer park and we have lots of kids here. Boomerland is completely devoid of children.
Do you shout Sabbath Sholom like Charlie did (according to Erica) as you lose it?
Dude, do you need a hearing check or do the voices in your head tell you that’s what he said? I’m not sure if you should find an audiologist or a psychiatrist.
Having a car can sometimes be a pain in the ass, but not having one is worse. On balance the automobile is a blessing.
I've lived without a car several times in my life when I was very poor. I depended on slow, crowded buses and trolleys to get to work. Their schedules were theoretical, and they were usually late or didn't show up at all. That meant I often arrived at work late. My colleagues and bosses, who drove to the office, didn't ask why I was late or understand if I tried to explain. They assumed I was lazy and had overslept.
I was limited to shopping at stores, good or bad, in walking distance. To reach anywhere else in town again meant public transportation -- which could be unsafe because of crime. Sometimes I had to turn down invitations because getting to and from their locations was too much of a hassle.
As for getting out of town for a breath of fresh air and a change of environment, being carless was an even greater handicap.
After each period of lacking a car, when I acquired one -- even an old banger -- it was like being admitted to heaven.
I agree with James, the New Urbanist movement had excellent ideas and apparently some actual successes in creating bonsai cities on a human scale. Maybe genuine community could thrive there. But few if any had a solid economic base, so they were practical mainly for well-off retirees.
Many suburbs, with their cookie-cutter housing, chain stores and chain restaurants, are painfully depressing. But they could be much better conceived and designed. Developers usually have free rein to build with no amenities other than community centers including swimming pools, movie night auditoriums and playgrounds. Nothing wrong with those, but they are basically just places to park the kids, not converse with neighbors front-porch style, beyond trivia and really get to know them. And there's not much chance at reform as long as oversight is largely limited to technical issues by review boards where real estate developers dominate.
cars are disappearing. I cannot wait. I am tired of the ego. Waymo has no ego. It follows the rules and everyone will have to sit there and be patient and their ego doesn't matter. 40,000 people a year die in cars. My friend's son got hit by a semi last week. A careless driver in a big metal box, tank hit the semi tractor trailer and pushed it into him. A 26 year old man dead. 40,000 people a year dead is not acceptable. So far in Denver, the human driver has lost to the computer every single time. The computer can see in the dark, it doesn't care that poeple want to win. The insurance companies are going to END human driving. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MAGA. Math works in magaland too. There isn't the money to fund all this anymore.
Waymo sounds right for you, slave.
Insurance rules the world. all they have to do is stop insuring you. https://www.engadget.com/transportation/waymos-driverless-cars-are-apparently-an-insurance-companys-dream-220746643.html
Sprawl is a result of technological “advancement”. AI will be a disaster.
Again, I disagree.
And anyway, widespread LLM use is coming to all industries whether you like it or not.
Of course, the Amish will continue to do fine without all of this, if the crazy control freak Communists will leave them alone. However, it's useful to understand that.... just like the Shakers and their nice beautiful enclaves of yore... the Amish depend on the ability to sell their wares to those "Evil Capitalists" on the other side of their fence.
Just saw a YouTube video Tube report documenting the withdrawal of the Amish from Lancaster County, PA due to increasing land values pressure from Philly.
It also said that the Amish population is growing due to more of their kids staying put.
I suggest you read Ivan Illich's essay on cars. We have become prisoners of the thing that gave us the freedom to pick up and move. In suburbia, where I live, except for in the neighborhood, one can't walk anywhere. The roads are not safe for walking or biking. One cannot walk to the community center 2 miles away or the church 1/2 mile away or the BP "convenience" store 3/4 of a mile away.
I was an early proponent of New Urbanism. The problem is, New Urban communities are way too expensive. Why? Because they are awesome.
"one can't walk anywhere."
Are there no sidewalks? For a few years my town did not require sidewalks in new developments. Horrible idea. They smartened up and now they are required on one side of street. In my older 'hood we have them on both sides. Shoveling snow sucks. Granted bicycles are not supposed to be on them but the kids all use them. What i don't like are the speedsters on there electric bikes.They should stay off the sidewalks. They are banned from the bike trails but it is unenforced.
Electric bikes should not exist on a sidewalk anywhere!
I disagree but it requires common sense when using one.
Pedestrians have right of way.
One can speed along at 20+ miles an hour on a good ten speed.
Common courtesy should be the rule. Enforced with a whiffle Bat?
I find people walking improperly restrained dogs to be a more common danger. You might be in different milieu though. Please don't hit me! I'm only the piano player! Dinging my bell and respectfully passing on your left😝
All neighborhoods are connected by busy roads, none of which have sidewalks. Most suburban communities, like mine, are bisected by 4 lane “routes” separated by median strips, no sidewalks.
I rode my bike as a kid—elementary school through high school—on all those connecting roads, including the routes that were two lanes back in the day. As the population grew and people moved out of the cities, the suburbs grew willy nilly just as JHK described as new neighborhoods popped up in every valley and hillside.
We are now a low trust society with lousy drivers, especially since Covid. People hardly slow down for stop signs any longer. To walk the quarter mile to church is a risk not worth taking. I would also pass at least one dead deer on my way.
I think we will see many more restrictions on Electric Bikes in the near future.
We have a poverty of sidewalks/bike paths in Alaska. It is primarily economically driven. I do miss small town life for my kids, where the density allows for additional infrastructure.
Was riding a bike along some path outside of Anchorage and peddle right n up to a moose before she noticed me and I noticed her.
Worse I was between her and her calf with nothing but a skinny little pine tree between us.
What do we always hear about moose?
They are one of the most dangerous animals in Alaska.
Looking at this animal that was as tall as me at the shoulder and its rear end covered in crap, I though great, I am going to get stomped to death.
Naw, she snorted; the baby ran over, and they wandered off.
Made the bear encounter far less scary later on in the trip.
Alaska is something else.
And the state bird is the mosquito; they are enormous up there.
"New Urban" communities are expensive because NIMBY prevails.
Read an oldie but goodie, "The Time Machine" to peek into the future of "New Urban" communities.
NIMBY is there to keep the negative aspects of the cities from moving in.
Gentrification has happened, Putin them out of reach.
Putting
I live in the suburbs. There are aspects of it that I don't like. There are aspects of it that I do like. I don't think it is the hell scape that our host has made it out to be. My community is quiet, friendly clean and has all the services I need to sustain myself. My commute is 12 minutes (9 miles) long and is relatively traffic jam free. I think there are goods and bads associated with all cities, towns and suburbs, no doubt.
The problem with America is that real estate, housing specifically, changed from being an essential need to satisfy every persons need for safe housing and became an investment. Once homes became an investment opportunity to get rich the investors came and started constructing cookie cutter homes and prices started increasing. "Property values" they all shouted as they celebrated their investment results! "Property taxes are tied to property values" I tried to shout back. "We don't want property values to increase because that mean few people can buy our property and we pay more taxes on that property!" Nobody listens. Nobody cares.
Housing needs to go back to being and essential need and no longer an investment. Until we figure this out the sprawl will continue and housing costs will continue to sky rocket.
"Property taxes are tired to property values" It would be tied, but certainly many home-owners, who are really renting from the government after they finish paying back the montage and the huge mount of interest to the banks, are more than tired of never truly owning their home because of the property taxes.
It's another scam. While people are generally seeking to peacefully live their lives, there is the 'sector' (a cabal) constantly reaching into their collective pockets to extract whatever can be extracted. Thus those people never really reach the point of peaceful lives enjoying the fruits of their labor because so much is taken by the government and its programs. Small government and low taxes (no property taxes) would be so much better.
Welcome to the "property taxes are evil" campaign, WKENN.
I always laugh to myself when Americans pat themselves on the back because they are free or when they thank the troops for protecting our "freedoms." Sure, we can drive to the store, go to church and cross state lines without gubmit approval. But in America today nobody can own property free and clear from government intrusion. In my state, Utah, if I don't pay my property taxes the County will put a lien on the property and if the taxes and accrued fines aren't paid the property will either go on tax sale or they will sell the lien to a private investor who can then foreclose on my property.
Ain't freedom grand? Our founders went to war over a tea tax and a stamp act. We idiots subject ourselves to property taxes, property that had sales taxes already paid on it with income that is already taxed every year. It is stunning to me that Americans submit to this blatant theft by their government overlords but then turn around and claim themselves to be "FREE." They wouldn't know freedom if it was growing on their asses and talking to them while they sat on the shitter.
Is that not grounds for a revolution? Digging some graves and scattering their ashes? Check out Mitch Vexler on his Mockingbird Properties website as he now has a case before the Supreme Court.
The largest portion of our tax
bill is for the school tax. What a scam.
Generally this is the case. The reasons are numerous. It could be done a different way.
Trump agrees with them, not you. The value of your home means nothing since you can't sell it if you have only one. His mindset is one of the super-rich.
You can read Trump’s mind? OK.👌
It is not necessary. Trump has, counter to what he claimed he'd do, stacked his admin. with technocrats whose aim is to ensure you "own nothing."
He's selling you up the river, just as Biden did to the lefties.
Divide and conquer is the oldest strategy in the book.
Indeed, he projects much onto other people, which is just not so.
Black is white with you it seems. By their fruits do we know them.
In the 1980s the Olympics were coming to Atlanta (we lived in the suburbs at that time). Redevelopment started to happen downtown with the growth of condominiums. A lot of empty nesters thought it would be cool and hip to live in town only to find that the streets weren’t safe after dark and they basically became prisoners in their high-rise boxes rising above the downtown expressway with its constant noise and odor. We’re now in a suburban neighborhood on the side of a 6 lane highway in North Texas where the sprawl is extending to the border of Oklahoma. Fortunately, we finally got a traffic light that lets us out of the neighborhood. A good mixed use development makes a lot of sense, but as one of the comments mentioned there is a cost that puts them out of reach for the average person.
I lived that era in Atlanta, 1972 - 2005. We finally moved north of the metro area in 1993 to the boonies of Lake Lanier. The '96 Olympics changed the place forever. Sprawl began to move north on GA hwy 400 almost to Dahlonega.
A lovely paradise was lost;
the once genteel zeitgeist of a truly southern city.
And the Black influx had no influence on your decision. It was the Olympics (good schools).
The " black influx" ? They were always a presence, especially in local politics. The sprawl was a result of in migration, particularly from the northeastern states.
And I say that as a PA / NJ native.
nope. it was a huge mistake. If you cannot see that the roads don't work anymore. I can. I was a math major and I understand exponents. If you cannot afford it, you cannot do it. There is no money to make any more roads. You cannot pile on anymore cars. Insurance is going to figure out soon, if not already, that it is far cheaper to insure waymo, which will only go to certain places. Auto makers are buying old train stations. Denver right now is redeveloping. THey got rid of parking minimums. The parking lots are going away. Try driving without a parking lot. People are in denial and buying bigger and bigger and bigger cars with no where to park them. They also make big giant privacy fences which won't help either. Within 10 to 15 years there won't be ANY human drivers anymore. The kids don't want the suburban hellscape. They cannot afford to play with yards all weekend, they cannot afford insurance and cars.
As in all things moderation is the key. Urban planners need to design cities that cater various housing scenarios to all types of people. Some people may not want to own an automobile and prefer instead of live near transit stations. So, more transit oriented development needs to occur. Others, who can afford it, may prefer to have the yard to play with and prefer to drive their cars.
Humans have an inability to moderate themselves. We always go full bore in one direction without considering that not everyone wants to go in that direction. The automobile will never go away but I think it will be very healthy to have a society where people can thrive and succeed without having to rely on a car.
Well said. The Elite will have cars. The rest of use will live in 15 minute, "Freedom Cities" (Trump polishing a turd).
Sadly I think you are right about most of this. Just not about the cars getting bigger and bigger. It really is logical though because with two income families the concept of a home has gone by the wayside and humans are just housed now.
Think about a new revolution going on, the RV crowd where people are choosing the road to suburban life.
There is an interesting offshoot to this, old RVs are becoming homes for the homeless. California beaches are lined with older RVs. RV parks have reacted to this by restricting older RVs.
As the population keeps increasing, the megalopolises keep expanding, now the exurbs are in the news and the suburbs are in decline.
One more, people cannot afford in-city single family housing any more, hence the rise of the USSR style apartment society in the cities. Just a way to densify the area.
Boats too. There are now communities of boat dwellers.
The only upside to no human drivers in 10 years is it takes away a fraud avenue for the Dems to manufacture votes. Other than that, a world with no human drivers is a dystopian’s wet dream.
I was wondering if and when the old Kunstler would make his re-appearance, and make MAGAt heads explode in the process.
MAGA no longer exists. It imploded when Trump went establishment. MAGA was a the closest thing to a mainstream refuge that has ever existed for those in the political middle, who have political opinions developed through reasoning the weighing and measuring of evidence.
What calls itself MAGA now are just Boomer Neocons, with minimal exceptions.
Unlike you, most of us can handle differing opinions; we don't get all hung up on one idea.
Orangeman bad, and then triple down constantly on any negative we hear, no matter how obviously untrue it is.
Like everything, autos have a good side and an evil side. Is the good side better than the evil side. I would guess that would depend on which side of the city-suburb divide you are on.
Think for a moment, what would have happened if the car had not been invented? Is today’s world better than 1915? One of JHKs predictions is a return to an agrarian society due to the decline in the availability of energy to support a motorized society. The GenZ folks may find out if an agrarian society is recoverable without major impact. So far, it does not look good and AI is about the accelerate the decline.
Today's world would be much smaller, for one. And that would likely be a good thing in and of itself. An agrarian society can't possibly return now unless we're ready to sacrifice several billion people. Thing is, we'll probably be jettisoning them either way. But politically it's only feasible if we "stumble into it," rather than stating it as a goal up front and actively implementing it.
I don’t think JHK’s agrarian society prediction has a chance. It was what Thomas Jefferson wanted for America, but thank God Alexander Hamilton had a much better solution. Hamilton’s American System is what made America the economic powerhouse of the world that built a high trust society and created opportunities for all up until the 1830s (except for the slaves and poor whites in the south), and again in the late 19th century under Republican presidents, especially McKinley.
Trump is resurrecting the American system, which is why the guardians of decay want him dead, as they killed other proponents of the system including Hamilton, Harrison, Taylor, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and probably FDR.
So you're a died-in-the-wool federalist then, I take it? How's that "economic powerhouse" doing these days?
TLE states that we have lost the skills required to sustain ourselves when the SHTF. People will not even realize the end is coming until it smacks the. Upside the head. MOST will die. I am one of those. But I am almost 79.
The conspiracy theorists on the blog love to declare the PTB will make populations die to 500 million. That is possible, but not because of the PTB. It is our own arrogance regarding resources. JHK points out energy, but if you are listening, it will be water first. Most of the end times folks will die also.
Agreed. I came to the same conclusion after years of railing against it. Not that tPTB don't know full well what's coming and are likely opportunistically fanning the flames at the margins too, but they know that that's the hard way down from the peak and is not really necessary. I'm closing in on 70 now too and age definitely does have a calming effect on the psyche.
SW update on water. Just saw a YounTube talking about Lake Havasu. Look for it on a map. Very significant as both the Arizona and LA canals arise from this lake. It is important to realize that the water has to be lifted hundreds of feet to enter the canal systems on both sides. It is accomplished with huge pumping systems. I never thought about it before but the same cavitation problems exist here as in the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams. If the pressure head from the rivers and lake depth falls below a certain depth, the pumps start to cavitate and tear themselves apart. That also applies to the pumps in Lake Havasu. A very difficult decision happens, either let them run and hope they do not deteriorate before deeper water occurs, or shut them off. Both are losing propositions.
The Phoenix Tucson side means that we are back to only having groundwater to get water from, ie pre-CAP days. Groundwater is already running dry in areas, stopping farming and new suburban development.
Going onto groundwater means drilling wells deeper costing billions and eventual drying up. I am waiting for any reasonable solutions and have been 100% disappointed so far. Could it be we have no solutions. Too much hope is being put on whether we will get more snow year to year.
I am really watching what is happening trying to gauge what to do, even at my age. Real estate is already reacting as houses, trying to maintain equities are just not selling.
BTW, Lake Havasu City is 50000 people on the lake, dependent totally on the London Bridge and the lake level for water and the tourist trade there. Not good.
It's got its pluses and minuses.
I agree that the invention of the car was one of the greatest things to have happened. That said, urban and suburban design was and is too car-centric.
Much of what makes life nice in old European cities is the way they enable choices, and of course the fact that they were created in times when people cared about beauty and place. I live in Europe but am American, so I have seen a lot of different countries.
Suburbs here in Germany are not much different than those in the US, but they do offer public transportation in many areas, and they have lots of spaces where the car is not the focus. The car is still the primary mode of transportation, however.
A very stupid comparison. The European cities were built in the medieval era when transportation was by foot or horseback. Most people never traveled more than 20 miles from where they lived.
Re-read the comment, dim.
Lugh, if I told you, you’d be offended. Your blatant bigotry towards anyone that doesn’t look or think like you is a start. So we’ll leave it right there.
Hugh, we all have bigotry; it is a human condition.
It's how we deal with it that is different.
Were the city's emptied out because of cars, or because of Lyndon Johnson's welfare programs, and are obsessive regulations on businesses that drove them out of the cities, (then out of the country)? After 1964, single parent families moved into the cities in droves, and government made it worse by housing projects. This displaced millions of City dwelling stable families, and brought massive crime and dysfunction. I think most reasonable people would have escaped that hell somehow, interstate highways and suburbia or not.
It’s the junkies ranting and screaming at the non entities in their meth induced psychosis. Who can stand the thought of their loved one’s navigating the encampments, the sidewalk feces, and the dangers of the ever present threat of violence. Particularly for their children and spouses. Fixing that one problem would help a lot.
The Blacks came north destroying everything in their path.
No, the blacks came northward in the hopes to improving their lives and their hopes for improving their lives. Instead they found public assistance, substandard housing and no more future than what they left in the south , all because of Democrat politicians promising them a better life when all they wanted was more residents to increase the size of their districts.
Yeah they're all staunch libertarians. Always have been. And that's all any of the tens of millions of refugees want. Who are we to stand in their way? Borders are anti-business!
I live in Montana - more than 500 miles to the nearest US city of 1 million or more. Cities are Communist/Jihadist garbage dumps where you have no rights.
Detroit is now 77% Black and 8% Arab. If I wanted to live in Africa I would go to Kenya or Ethiopia.
NYC, LA, Chicago and Seattle are "run" by Marxist morons.
You may dislike suburbs and exurbs but give me one good reason to visit let alone live in a Blue City?
I'm waiting...................
How's the SoCal invasion going up there these days? Should have peaked by now.
We have imported 100,000 hard working Independents and Republicans from CA - Thanks California!!!!
I personally know dozens of retired law enforcement and Military vets from other states. Thank you - Thank you Blue States.
Oh so a bunch of inbreds immigrated to Montana huh?
Time to organize some hunting parties and take the pedophiles out of my home state.
I am a Montana native and I cannot believe how stupid these old red neck inbreds have become in my home state.
I can't wait for them and their stupid racist attitudes TO DIE so we can eradicate the lunacy from this state.
Going off on a tangent here: anyone ponder the HUGE amount of hatred embedded in the term "MAGAt"?
Our "friend" here has made this extra explicit by spelling "maggot". They think of conservatives as nasty invertebrates that are creepy and who can be killed without thinking twice.
We conservatives often use the term "libtard", which at least credits liberals with being human and capable of giving and receiving love.
The irony, that the same people who put "hate has no home here" signs in their yards routinely call the political opposition a name that could prime people to kill.
The KKK was a Democart Party terrorist group, you idiot.
Having a Masters degree from Haravrd allows me to recognize a moron like you instantly although a 3rd grade education in your case would be enough as you were home schooled by your pet iguana it appears.
And this folks is insanity on display not to mention a heaping dose of genralization and libel.
It also seems to be the rabid voice of experience.
Olivia, what state do you live in? (Besides a state of delusion.) I ask so I can be sure to stay away from it.
Olivia,
The KKK provided for excesses, but also a certain order. Would a black mother rather live in fear, or have her child shot to death in the street?
I don't have a Graduate Degree from Harvard, but I stayed in a Holiday Inn once....
I'll be praying for you.
Always a joy to read JHK on urbanism/architecture/development! Nobody else is as vivid, smart and informed as he is, and that’s by a long shot.
Something that he points out here is something that really baffled and bewildered me. I had followed the New Urbanism from its start, full of hope and admiration for it. It was in part a reaction against not just suburban sprawl but also against preening Modernism, and it was viewed as reactionary — even (get this) fascist — by the endlessly progressive, “avant-garde” (ha!) architecture establishment.
I then got swamped by family emergencies for a decade and when I was able to return to my interests discovered that the NU was no longer what it had been. It had become something quite the opposite, in fact. It had been a respectful-of-real-people, mostly-bottom-up, market-respectin’ movement, and had somehow morphed into something extremely NPR and Woke. And then the 15 Minute City thing, which stole some ideas from the NU, came along, making things seem even worse, and giving sensible people (such as most Trumpies) an even bigger target to hate.
The fight became the populist/guns-pickups-and-Sydney-Sweeney crowd vs the topdown globalist controlfreak team, real American suburban sprawl vs Euroweenie and utopian, and in the midst of the fight actual and important quality of life questions were lost track of entirely. GRRR.
I root hard for Trump, admire much of what he and his team have managed to do, and despise the globalist/Ivy crowd with all my heart. But I’d be a much happier chappie if my current team showed a lot more concern for the built environment than they do.
MAHA — but for architecture and development!
Well said. To them, only freedom matters - not what you do with it. There are no good or bad choices, only freedumb. It's the ideology of an adolescent.
Yes. We need more conservatives and fewer carservatives.
I live on a little farm in the middle of nowhere because of the very ideas you've presented. There are only 30,000 people in the whole county. Never could I be a part of suburbia.
I've given it up, too. First off, the advantages of having your own well. No annoying neighbors. And virtually no crime - although you have to be watchful. I've surprised several men who showed up in my yard (ultimately legitimate reasons) by answering the door with a gun in hand. (Well, I live alone and don't LOOK lethal. Just saying.) You make do with fewer perks - restaurants, grocers, shops, etc. Neighbors in grand houses on manicured lawns and chickens (HUGE eggs $3/doz), hogs, cattle, goats, horses, donkeys. Someone has an emu! Go figure! I couldn't live in a city again.
My Great Pyrenees is Chief of Security.
What if a rat gets in the well? What then?
Wells aren't open holes in the ground with water in the bottom. Wells are drilled like oil is drilled until you hit an aquifer or underground stream, etc. About an 8 inch pipe down the drill hole, and a pump is lowered into the pipe to pump up the water to a holding tank. It's completely enclosed. What can get in the water table are toxins from spraying crops for bugs, parasites, ROUNDUP!, fertilizers, etc. Fortunately, I live miles from cropland. My well is 200 feet deep, but most wells are not that deep. So pure, the water is almost blue.
Did you check for arsenic?
That's never happened all the years I've been here. We have a cinder block well house, so not sure how they'd get in. But I bet our well guy could take care of it.
Another has posted that he may be from a country where wells are exactly holes in the ground with water at the bottom. In much of that world, DRILLING for water is unheard of.
He's thinking wells are open holes in the ground with water in the bottom. Wells aren't like that and haven't been for a long time. Wells are drilled, much the same as oil.
I used to be like that. Then Austin closed in. Property values skyrocketed as did property taxes and now a lot of people can't afford to live here anymore. If you see any sign of "progress" near you fight it tooth and nail because once it gets a toe hold there is no stopping it.
The closest towns are about 10 miles away with populations of about 500.
And what do you do for a living?
Country living is nice if you don't need the money made at a job in a city.
The thing about suburbia is that it reflects a more Anglo-American way of life with SPACE. New urbanism speaks to Euro-centered city dwellers who want a pretty city, walkable, without the downside. Out of those hated suburbs came the most extraordinary inventions and achievements in culture of the boomers and GenXers. It was the wonderful boredom that created it. Not having people in your face all the time. Clean. Crime free. Choose community or not, you are free to do so. The independence of the car. Suburbs will never die. They are the dream of 6 billion people trapped in mega-slums all over the world. The weak like to be jammed together. The strong do not. Plus natural evolution. I grew up outside a village established in 1850 that grew with time, not platted out by a dreamer out of the UN planning shops. We had both, a village center, and the CHOICE to live where we wanted. Plus all the houses looking alike with tiny variations. Feels like an upscale prison frankly.
We live in an equestrian community, which is quite small. 7 years ago, it was well off the beaten path. Now it is becoming the beaten path. I am deluged with texts and written offers for my 12 acres. None of these prospective buyers have the least interest in horse keeping or farming. It is simply a land grab scheme.
So was it good to begin with and only became bad? Or was it always an upscale prison?
You said, "...left most of those cities ruined."
I say...left most of those cities BECAUSE they were ruined.
Chicken and egg, unless:
Crowded rat cages just cannot be made nice.
San Diego was a very nice, large city with a small-town feel until Democrats started winning everything.
Now it's filthy and the roads are crumbling, but hey, they are putting in bike lanes everywhere, with traffic patterns that are nearly impossible to navigate safely on bikes, motorcycles, or cars.
Forget walking; crossing the street in crosswalks is death-defying.
Fucking DEMOCRATS!
My best friend lives there, on Brant St. She loves it and walks to Balboa Park.
Thirty years ago was much nicer.
Balboa Park is nice to wander around downtown, and there are areas that look like war zones.
I just read Geography of Nowhere. One of the best books I ever read. Suburbs with cars wizzing by are no places for kids. Kids can’t do anything unless they get a ride. Sixty years ago in my small city I went wherever I wanted to go on foot or on bicycle.
YES, SIXTY YEARS AGO.
IT WAS SAFE TO WALK AND BIKE.
40 YEARS AGO PARENTS WERE ESCORTING THEIR CHILDREN ON AND OFF THE SCHOOL BUS SO THEY DIDN'T DISAPPEAR.
Yes. And it was (gasp!) suburban.
Today I can't find a thing on which to agree with you. Cities are hell. Suburbs are quiet and peaceful. You need a new tiny home community or something. I'll keep my peaceful sub-urban "sprawl" (though I live in a large airy tidy one). Happy Monday?
I currently have everything I need within a 10-minute drive, thanks to suburbia. I have never lived anyplace that wasn't suburbia, and I have ZERO interest in living in 'the city.' I do not consider suburbia as a blight on the landscape. From my own experience, what has helped immensely to feel grounded and part of the community is to have lived in the same neighborhood and house for the past 20+ years. Economic mobility is great, but the flip side can be communities where people do not know their next-door neighbors. It's a real tragedy.
Cities might become more attractive again if there weren't "teen takeovers" on the streets or firefights in malls and parks every weekend and at every public celebration. No bail, no jail doesn't work and people tend to not want to be around places with these policies.
I'd argue that the insanity started full throttle when Muh gubmint said that buildings could fall straight down in 11 secs from jet fuel fire ...even ones not struck by a plane...the willful ignorance to accept a lie that flies in the face of physics is a cue to when the collective stupidity turned up to 10. The sheer retardation of over half the electorate to posit a cogent thought that is based in reality is a reminder everyday of how far Humanity has fallen from the founding of "self- governed" free people. Bureaucracy is the Devil.
Disagree with your verb tense, Mike.
I contend that "the insanity did not START full throttle" when we accepted the official version that contradicted common sense, and the laws of physics.
We must have already been collectively insane to go along with the lie.
You do make a good point, we could argue it may have started when collectively our grandparents went along with the "magic bullet" - Doh
Agree. Three significant phenomena / dates:
1: The political rise of socialism - late 1800's.
2: The ascendancy of the "civil rights" movement - 1960's
3: The triumph of feminism - 1980's.
And to think all of that begat "artificial intelligence " - this should work out swimmingly.
Given the lust for profit as the only thing, the rise of socialism was inevitable as a balancing force. All viable societies have both individualism and communalism. People who don't get that are adolescent at best.
Stuck in traffic this weekend James? 😉
🤣
With every World Made By Hand book I read (Harrows, recently) I can't help but wonder where YOU live, Mr. JHK. I imagine horses and infused honey, ample ammo and collectable firearms, sunny afternoons on the Peekskill, friendly neighbors and hootenannies, etc, etc. I follow Andrea Fasulo on substack and see rampant solar fiascos in upstate NY so the ruination creeps in no matter the locale. The U.S. was formerly (40's-90's, a good run) a nation of TOWNS that functioned properly because people knew their neighbors. That really was taken from us, the villains were many and hard to pin down: corporate offshoring, dwindling resources (not really, but in effect), ambition for a better (more $) lifestyle. Like many, I was forced from 'the city' by extortion-level property taxes/insurance and the oppressive assault on my consciousness by loud-mouth / loud-car mongrels intent on a gangsta empire. "White Flight" has always been vilified as "racist" until Scott Adams came out and spoke the unspeakable. When forced to choose between peace/order and chaos many of us simply chose the former and got the hell out. Best move I ever made, no regrets. In any modern city (NYC, Paris, etc) only the most wealthy have the option of living in the metro heart. The rest of us just live where we can actually live. I'd love to be in a N.U. village. That didn't happen for us. Still, no regrets.
And the ones remaining in the cities have four locks on their doors and do not go out at night and even continuously look over their shoulders in daytime. Fear runs their lives.
Mamdani has it figured out, drive out the property owners, let the properties decline, and give everyone cheap food. What me worry?
My next door neighbor recently moved in from Salt Lake City. She mildly amuses me with her door cam and warning signs out in the yard informing everyone that they're under surveillance. I'm trying my best to condition her to small town life and the fact that you just don't need that shit here.
Yup.
The Old South was right.
There is never a supply issue when it comes to opinionated people wanting to tell everyone else how and where to live their lives. Demand is another thing.
If I had a dollar for every time I have been earnestly advised as to which lifestyle I should adopt to live the utopian dream, I could indeed live my version of that dream.
Unfortunately....
underappreciated comment.
I kinda get what you’re saying, especially when it comes to some places, like in much of Southwest FL, where you’ll drive on endlesss highways past strip mall after strip mall, while all the “neighborhoods” are hidden away, behind walled gates and out of human visibility.
Inside those gates are cookie cutter houses, almost indistinguishable from one one another. They may be festooned with the obligatory pond or water accent, but they can seem almost soulless in their highly structured uniformity.
However, in places like New England, (which does also contain many of these cookie cutter neighborhoods maybe sans the gates), you can see town after town brimming with the age old charm and historical heritage preserved.
It’s in that sense I can agree with you, that the things that should have been more highly valued and preserved have given way to convenience, cost, speed, and “modernity” at the expense of beauty and culture and heritage. These are the things we can’t lose sight of at the expense of all the rest.
"in places like New England, you can see town after town brimming with the age old charm and historical heritage preserved."
Typical New England suburban town
https://datausa.io/api/profile/geo/beverly-ma/splash
In one historic neighborhood in Spokane, developers were touting the historic aspect to attract people, even as they destroyed it to build cookie cutter homes to house those people.