Fifty
or sixty years ago, cities were polluted and dangerous. The air was
full of coal smoke and industrial pollution, and the the rivers were
vile (when I was a kid, I remember visiting New York harbor and seeing
turds floating in the water...). In those days, it made sense to move
out of the city, especially if you were raising a family.
Things have changed since then. Heavy industry has mostly moved out of
the cities (and out of the country, in most cases), and the pollution
sources that remain have been forced to clean up their act by the
(evil, coercive) government. You can kayak in urban rivers (the turds
are gone, and the rivers don't burn any more), and a lot of people who
grew up in the suburbs see cities as reasonable places to live, and
even to raise children.
But government subsidies of automobiles, and other policies that favor
suburbs over cities, tend to push people into the suburbs, whether they
want to be there or not.
From: "Eric Westhagen"
<[email protected]>
To: "BikiesSubmissions"
<[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, September 3, 2010 4:53:16 PM
Subject: Re: [Bikies] Saving civilization]
To: Hans,
But haven't you answered your own questions? So many of us came from
city life with a 30ft lot just off the "car line" (light rail
streetcars) or an apartment --but then chose to live "out of the
city." We also chose to move our factories and sweat shops from those
"city neighborhoods" you wax long for--out to industrial parks or
industrial suburbs.-------IT WAS CHOICE--not coercion. Only CHOICE
will bring about a reverse or maybe at least "islands" of what you
envision as your ideal. And even some manufacturers were enlightened
to build delightful employee cities--with the likes of Port Sunlight
and in our State--Kohler. But what resulted--rejection by choice--and
in the case of Kohler, what did the Company get for their employee
concern?-----One of the longest labor strikes in history!
Eric Westhagen
Hans Noeldner wrote:
We will never salvage the project of
civilization so long as
we insist on saving face. If we continue to deny our mistakes (our
addiction
to Happy Motoring is a prime example), surely all will be lost.
Yet consider how wrenching it can be.
If the automobile is our primary means of
access
(i.e. we
drive virtually everywhere and then park), how do we admit that OUR
lifestyle poisons
our community against ways of life based on walking and bicycling,
rolling wheelchairs
and using canes, pushing baby strollers and pulling children in Radio
Fliers?
And if we drive everywhere because everything
is
“too
far away” to use any other mode, how do we digest the fact that
choosing
to live where we did was not only a bad idea, but a lousy investment?
It takes courage to say, “Damn, I made a big
mistake.”
It takes even more to advise, “If I put my
house
on
the market, don’t buy it! Not unless you plan to actually LIVE here
rather than driving somewhere else all the time.”
This is the kind of thing we must grapple
with.
Is
there a “nice” way to bring it up? Earth to Amerka: avoidance
isn’t getting us anywhere!
Hans Noeldner
www.entropicjournal.blogspot.com
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