Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

The Town That Neil Young Built

This comes via Strange Maps:

332 - The Town That Neil Young Built:

Each year around November 12th, whenever their schedules allow for a collective weekend off, a dozen not-so-young urban professionals leave the comfort of their city homes to sample the rugged charm of a remote log cabin. In the backwoods, the men (it is an all-male fellowship) don flannel shirts of the type favoured by Neil Young, and play his music non-stop. Thus, they celebrate Young’s birthday — and also by drinking a lot of beer, and by behaving like the uncouth backwoodsmen that any group of men eventually revert to when collectively removed from their womenfolk.

Christof Rutten is one of those men, recently returned from the latest of those outings. He sends in this map, culled from the latter part of Young’s weird, erratic oeuvre. Young has produced some of rock ‘n roll’s most emblematic anthems and ballads, but has also ventured down experimental avenues never explored before, or since, and all the better for it. Young tried his hand at rockabilly after its heyday, and electronic music before it was fashionable. He also penned a rock opera (or “concept album”, to use an even more suspect term).

Greendale, released in 2003 by the transplanted Canadian (Young lives in LA) is about life in a fictitious Californian coastal town as seen through the prism of the Green family. The songs on Greendale deal with some of Young’s favourite themes — war (and anti-war protest in general), environmentalism, social ostracism, violent crime and all of their social consequences. Greendale focuses on an ageing patriarch (also a pioneer and hippie) his son Earl (an artist and Vietnam vet), granddaughter Sun (environmental activist), and the spiel kickstarts when ne’er-do-well Jed kills a policeman.

The story, amplified by a dvd and a very extended booklet included in the packaging, echoes the energetic political activism of the Sixties — or tries to, and possibly fails (depending on how big a fan you are). The album cover for Greendale is a map of the fictional town, showing how its centre hugs the Californian coast (the outskirts continue on the back of the album). On the album’s very own website, you can scroll over the map to enlarge certain details relevant to the songs (*):

• Captain John Green’s boat (left of the left hand pier);
• Jed’s seafish apartment (to the right of the boat);
• Scene of the crime (on the far left, where the road that dissects Greendale enters the map);
• Carmichael’s house (between the road and the ocean, near the centre of the map);
• John Lee’s bar, Greendale Mortuary (scene of Carmichael’s service), Sun’s room at rooming house (scene of FBI raid), Greendale High School, Motel (all near the ocean, between the pier and the far right of the map);
• Double ‘E’ Ranch (in the bottom left corner of the map);
• Jail, grandma and grandpa’s house, gallery (all below the main road, near the center of town).

In keeping with Young’s  abrasive, anti-commercial image, the map does not link to a place where you can buy the album. It merely states: This town is now available.

Many thanks to Mr Rutten for sending in this map; does anybody have it in a higher resolution? Also, any extra information on the map’s (and the album’s) back story is more than welcome.

*: this album cover spans only the western end of town; the website covers double as much ground. 

Modern street "design": Trapping the elderly, pre-teens and differently-abled in their homes

If we keep building illogical roads and creating "single purpose pods" the way we currently so here in Franklin, pray each night that you never get too old and/or infirm to drive a vehicle.

Sidewalks are a luxury?

Curved roads built for unimpeded speed in residential neighborhoods? 

Complaints that demonstrably speed-reducing, safety-increasing roundabouts are "confusing" (i.e. "impede my speed")?

Lack of pedestrian connectivity between something so basic as a high school and the neighborhoods it serves?

Wonderful recreational trails - - that lead nowhere and require a parking lot?

A well-used library with nothing commercially useful within walking distance?

Over-burdened arterial streets that create a near-insurmountable barrier to even the most hardy of walkers and bicyclists - -  not to mention children and adolescents who desire a bit of non-vehicular freedom - - that the city seeks to widen further?

A "city civic center district" that allowed a strip mall and enormous parking lot to virtually eliminate non-vehicular access and any sense of useful civic public space?

I don't see people - or businesses - tripping over themselves to move to a community that is so short-sighted. It's time for a change.

Modern American street systems create insurmountable problems for some of the nation's elderly. Daniel M. Cary tells of an episode that took place in Stuart, Florida. His wife was standing in line at a supermarket checkout when she noticed that the elderly woman in front of her seemed upset. The elderly woman fumbled with her purse and dropped her keys. When Mrs. Cary offered to help, it was as if an emotional dam broke loose. The elderly woman let out that she was nervous because tomorrow she had to take a test to have her driver's license renewed. "If I fail, I don't know what I'm going to do," the woman said. "I won't even be able to drive to the grocery store. My husband died several years ago. I've been living in the same house for twenty years. I don't want to move." The woman's independence and ability to remain in familiar surroundings were in jeopardy.

- A Better Place to Live: Reshaping the American Suburb, by Philip Langdon

WAR and OIL: Now the truth is bubbling up

Part THREE of today's OIL trifecta.

Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al-Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire and ashes. And now the bottom line turns out to be ... the bottom line. It is about oil.

Bill Moyers

If you've read Greg Palast's brilliant ARMED MADHOUSE (handy ordering box below), none of what Bill Moyers lays out in this video is a surprise to you. The good news is, the truth is bubbling up to the mainstream; Bill Moyers is generally the pathfinder for the Katie Courics of the media world. 

Greg Palast could find no voice in the American mainstream press; "journalism" is not widely spoken here. He had to get his support and funding from the BBC. And Palast got it right. I have yet to meet the movement conservative who can confront any of the issues raised by Palast in his book and Moyers in his commentary below. The most I can get is, "You just hate George Bush."

When they eventually prosecute Cheney and Bush, can we hope that the vanguard of the right wing echo chamber (Limbaugh, Hannity, et.al.) is brought up on charges as co-conspirators? 

Watch the little local wanna-bes (you know who you are) scurry when that happens. They would rather go to war than invest - - - and I mean invest heavily - - in transportation, infrastructure, and energy alternatives that would make such a war unnecessary. 

Spend about nine minutes with Bill Moyers and the hard truth. (Transcription)

 

Personal Happiness

Personal Happiness:

"The personal happiness of many Americans has been undermined by poorly designed housing and public space, yet few of us employ the language of real estate development, architecture, or urban planning to trace the contours of loneliness, boredom, weariness, discrimination, or financial worry in our lives."

Source: Dolores Hayden, Redesigning The American Dream, The Future of Housing, Work and Family Life.

(Via Slow Home.)

"I'm not saying that sprawl is good," said author Robert Bruegmann. "All I'm saying is that it is not necessarily bad."

That's no way to sell books! Excellent commentary of a forum in New York entitled "Can Sprawl Be Beneficial", courtesy of StreetsBlog. Once again, it appears as though so-called "pro-sprawl" pundits have a real apples-and-oranges view of what sprawl is when they seek to demonstrate historical examples. Bruegmann ought to come see the so-called "city center" here in Franklin, Wisconsin before he decides he knows what sprawl can be (hint - it ain't Leicester Square):

Folks who went to yesterday's Municipal Art Society forum "Can Sprawl Be Beneficial" heard what must be the best possible defense for suburban sprawl from one of its recently arrived boosters: "I'm not saying that sprawl is good," said author Robert Bruegmann. "All I'm saying is that it is not necessarily bad."

In other, tepid, words: Sprawl is not good. In fact, it might be bad. But it's not necessarily bad.

Rather than struggle to fill a room in an office park at the interesection of I-287 & I-78 out in Jersey, Bruegmann, who is promoting his new book providing intellectual cover for sprawl, bravely ventured into Midtown Manhattan to tell an evidently skeptical crowd that skyscrapers use a lot of energy, cities have more pavement than suburbs, and sprawl, if you define it the right way, isn't the huge problem that people make it out to be.

Bruegmann says that the desire to flee the city is the natural order of human existence from Herculaneum to today, that it is the natural choice people make when it is given to them. And that we ought to embrace it for that. Casting himself as one who is overturning conventional wisdom, Bruegmann waters down the definition of sprawl as it is commonly understood, rendering the rest of his pro-sprawl assertions more or less meaningless. In doing so, he confuses growth of the city with sprawl. Here is the image of Leicester Square in 1750 that he used in his slideshow to define early sprawl.

London's Leicester Square in 1750: If this is sprawl, let's have some more.

Link: StreetsBlog � Can Sprawl Be Beneficial?.

 

Sprawl-based planning is EXPENSIVE in Franklin, WI

From the book SUBURBAN NATION:

One such municipality, the city of Franklin, a Milwaukee suburb of 25,000, conducted a careful cost analysis in 1992. it found that a new single family home pays less than $5000 in property taxes but costs more than $10,000 to service.

Thus, the inefficiency of unchecked sprawling development was covered by a tax hike for all, including those who live in older, better planned neighborhoods. New subdivisions continue to be built all over the place without regard to any manner of street grid or master plan; the lesson did not sink in. The estimated population of Franklin in 2004 was 32,405.

This is not to say that the planning commission in Franklin is inept or evil in some way. They are having to cope with a variety of pressures and input from residents - - most times very self-involved input - - while attempting to please as many people as possible.

A couple hundred yards away from my house, a developer was allowed to build a dead-end street with houses. It contains no connection to my neighborhood, the nearby school, or the senior housing complex 100 yards to its north. The street has no chance of continuing west to 27th street, so it can only exit east onto a collector street; the west end of the street ends in an actual bulb-like turnaround, a physical admission that this collection of houses was built for pure profit with minimal input from the Franklin city planners. It's simply a 200 yard-or-so road with ten houses and a run-off pond built on it. As of now, they haven't even bothered to plant trees.