This post elaborates on the link I posted two days ago to a CNN.com story titled Is America’s suburban dream collapsing into a nightmare? I’m going to look in particular at how the article relates to little Siloam Springs.

Change is knocking down the door and it’s for the best. According to Brookings Institution fellow Christopher Leinberger, “35% of the nation’s wealth has been invested in constructing this drivable suburban landscape.” I’d like to know how and where he gets this information (I’m always very skeptical about statistics), but it’s easy for me to believe.

The article goes on to cite “recent market research” that indicates 40% of households in metropolitan areas want to live in walkable places. Real estate in such areas is 40-200% higher than traditional suburban neighborhoods.

In my mind these trends come back to — whether this is collectively conscious or subconscious — two things. One relates to the unsustainability of the suburban landscape in its present form, the other to lack of community between the two environments.

Suburbia was created around the idea of the personal automobile. As I’ve said already this year, cars aren’t in and of themselves a bad thing; over-reliance on them is. Building cities to accommodate cars instead of people is a bad thing. Our car-culture contributes to laziness and health problems that previous generations weren’t familiar with. An auto-slash-petroleum based suburbia just isn’t sustainable.

Nor is it desirable. It’s just too easy to pull into your attached garage after a long, mostly sedentary day at the bureaucracy, pick up the battery operated hand and finger exercise machine (aka “remote”) and hunker down like a recluse. And even if we do go outside, we hide behind our privacy fences. I know this is an oversimplification, but it’s partly true. This isolation is a bad thing.

Siloam Springs isn’t exactly the stereotypical vision of American suburbia. There are some newer subdivisions on the outskirts of the community that look like typical suburban neighborhoods, but most of the 14,000 people live near enough to the center of town, to historical areas, that it’s hard to think of it in such terms.

The problem is that the center of town doesn’t function like the center of town anymore. I live in a very central location, but basic services are just a little outside of walking distance. To the south. The center is east of my house. The post office and two grocers (to the south) are just beyond a ten minute stroll, but they themselves are another ten minutes apart. They should be next to each other. And for anyone who lives farther north in Siloam Springs than I do — which is a lot of people — walking to any grocery store or the post office could end up taking a quarter of a day. Most of the city’s services are located, in typical suburban fashion, along the highway which runs through town.

I’m not certain of how many years Siloam has officially employed a city planner. Right now they have two. I’m guessing the city planning commission is an older institution in the community, which is made up of interested citizens, none of whom (as far as I know) possess any education in how to guide a city in its growth (or shrinkage). Regardless, the past officeholders would have done best to plan into the future, setting aside certain spaces for commercial and retail use to be surrounded by residential areas — and parks. For a ville like Siloam Springs, of 14,000 people at current density levels, I’m guessing three such nodes would suffice.

That’s if the planning commission had wooed development into a well-structured pattern. It’s much more difficult and expensive to change a city’s landscape after it’s been built, but what would it look like if Siloam Springs wanted to redesign itself, turn itself into a walkable, less car-dependent and more beautiful, therefore, community?

Making Siloam’s residential population more compact is probably not a realistic option at this point. An easier idea, it seems to me, would be moving existing businesses into newly designed nodes. Under present circumstances, four or five such commercial/retail spaces should suffice, each located in a different sector of town. Each such district should include a number of basic services. Were I to, off-hand, follow this line of thinking, I might center three nodes around existing grocers: Wal-Mart on the east side, IGA in the middle and Price Cutter on the west side. This still leaves a large part of the population on the north side unserviced, however. A decent place for a new hub on this side of town might be at Hico and Cheri Whitlock.

All of this wrangling over nodes and hubs is useless, though, if there aren’t sidewalks and trails leading to them. Siloam Springs has dropped the ball in the sidewalk department. I have friends within three blocks of the IGA who are scared to walk over there with their young children in tow because there are no sidewalks, and the roads are narrow besides. What an insane waste to drive three blocks when you don’t have to!

Even if ideas like the one I’ve just proposed are easier than complete upheaval in a community (i.e. residential rearrangement), they are still complicated, drawn out and expensive. People in town become very defensive when these kinds of proposals start flying around. I’m convinced, though, that changes like the ones I’ve brainstormed here will only improve the community.

Siloam Springs just released their 2030 plan in March. I haven’t looked over it yet, and even though I have faith in our long-term planner, Ben Rhodes, I’m not sure I’ll like what I see in the plan. A lot of planning is taking into account what those pesky residents suggest, or deter. Ben and I might want something very different from a lot of people in town. And a lot of the more powerful people in town are more likely to be “established,” and “established” citizens are stereotypically against change of most any kind.

And then there are the politics of such things.

The dream of white picket fences is turning into a suburban nightmare as a result of the sub-prime mortgage scandal. McMansions may soon morph into apartment buildings. The face of suburbia is changing, as is the American dream. Younger generations, this CNN story reminds us, are opting for New Urbanism. I’ll elaborate on this in a later post. Via the Wolfeden.

Green Inventions Central explores the idea of meals and liturgy. She looks at two books in her post, Margaret Peterson’s Keeping House and Mark Galli’s Beyond Smells and Bells: The wonder and power of Christian liturgy. From Peterson’s book:

In the modern American culture, in which ‘busyness’ can seem simultaneously like the badge of a good life and like a curse that is impossible to escape, finding time to eat or to feed others can become a challenge. People eat on the run; they feed their children in the car; they skip breakfast, eat lunch at their desks, and panic when it is dinnertime.

She contrasts this with Galli’s classification of Sunday morning services — “gathering, word, sacrament, dismissal” — and seeks to apply Sunday liturgy to the evening dinner table.

Bob Barker is at odds with Iraqi culture. Neutering dogs is a foreign idea to people in Baghdad, where veterinarians are more like matchmakers than caretakers.

Hypermilers miss the point. Some do it for environmental reasons, others to protect the pocketbook. Regardless, if they are really worried about either of these things they will seriously consider — and if at all possible apply — lifestyle changes. That is, they will move closer to work, walk, bike or even buy a scooter. They don’t have to get rid of their cars altogether, but the extremes they are going to, some of them, merely dance around the issues.

The Vatican is looking for new artists. The Roman Catholic church is trying to recruit new artists “In an attempt to ‘lead by example.’” Their Council for Culture is setting up a committee “to find ‘world-famous’ contemporary artists it can commission to produce new religious and spiritual works.” Via Iconia.

Save yourself from MySpace. A new Firefox add-on warns you if you’re about to navigate onto a MySpace page. Too funny. Via TechCrunch.

Carfree Tokyo linked back to me and reminded me of this James Kunstler podcast, The Tragedy of Suburbia, which I mentioned in March. I re-watched it today and thought this quote was worth sharing:

This [slide] happens to be the asteroid belt of architectural garbage two miles north of my town, and remember, to create a place of character and quality, you have to be able to define space. So how is that being accomplished here? If you stand on the apron of the Wal-Mart over here, and try to look at the Target store over here, you can’t see it because of the curvature of the Earth. That’s nature’s way of telling you that you’re doing a poor job of defining space.

Emphasis mine. I laughed out loud at the asteroid and Earth curvature commentary. Kunstler lives in Saratoga Springs, New York.

The price of gas seems to have become reasonable filler for news reports. The following are a few observations from these reports.

* Ridership on public transit is going up, up, up.
* Sales of scooters are on the rise.
* A California man decided to bike 42 miles one way to work for a month — partly because he’d always wanted to, but in the process he’s saving about $400.
* One investigative story found that the price of fuel is artificially high. Yes, there is more demand than ever worldwide, but what Americans are paying now is more a function of other bureaucratic and speculative nuances than simple supply and demand.
* GM is closing four manufacturing facilities, all ones that produce large vehicles. And, heaven forbid, they may also discontinue the conspicuous Hummer.

In April I asked “Will the financial strain actually change the way we live?” So it seems the painful price of petrol is forcing people to make adjustments, positive adjustments. My next question is, then, will this change be long-lasting? If the price of gas returns to the low *cough* neighborhood of $2.00/gallon, will Americans stick with the changes they made when costs were high? Will those who moved closer to work move back to the burbs? Will trains and buses have empty seats again? Will General Motors bring back the big cars?

The prices don’t effect my wife and I quite as much as some. I already bike to work whenever I can — because I like to — and the drive from home to office is barely a mile as it is. This whole ordeal interests me, instead, because of its relationship to how we live and design/build our communities in the United States. I would love to see a cultural shift take place. If the cost of gas is the impetus for this change, great. I’m convinced that a pedestrian/transit oriented culture is better for community and also better for the visual environment. I don’t expect cars to go away; they are a useful technology. But they are also overused in our culture, so much so that they have, in essence, taken over.

A few past posts on petrol pain from The Aesthetic Elevator:

Will costs really force a change?
Gas prices cause Dallasite to move
Ethanol a Symptom: Get to the root cause

The price of gas is higher than it’s ever been.

The cost of rice went up 141% last year.

The cost of wheat went up 77% last year.

The ABC World News spot that prompted this post, not the first of its kind on this blog, played interview footage of a Texas man who is now using the bus. He used to put gas in his automobile seven or eight times a month — which is unimaginable for myself — and is now down to three fill-ups. I try and bike to the office as much as I can, although I’m not forced into this mode of transportation as much as I have been in the past. In truth I prefer to bike; the car is just too convenient.

My wife tagged along to Wal-Mart with me last night and couldn’t believe the tiny amount of food we got for $70. I usually do the shopping in our household. Most all of what we bought fit in the child seat of the cart. $20 of the bill went towards meat and cheese from the deli, and I don’t buy the most inexpensive of the turkey. Further, local sales tax — yes, we pay sales tax on food — is quite high. Our checkbook is feeling the pain.

Will the financial strain actually change the way we live? Will we be, if I can put it this way, a more reasonable culture? Will we forgo the debt and consumerism that enslave so many of us? Will we adopt a more sustainable way of life all around?

Adding: A couple snippets from a book review by David Taylor:

The enemy to this vision is Suburban Sprawl. Call it the Anti-Urban Experience. Bess reckons it a manifestation of fallen modernity: a functionally secular, therapeutic, individualist, technologically enamored vision driven by an oppressive demand for novelty and the “bottom line.”

Suburban sprawl, Bess contends, dissociates daily communal life from physical place. It is environmentally unsustainable and unjust; it makes people slaves to their cars. Usually it is also ugly; useful and mostly durable, yes, but architecturally unbearably dull.

I might contest the “usually durable” comment, but that depends on the exact part of automobile-slash-suburban culture we’re talking about.

Some lighthearted fair for this April first from the Cyburbia forums:

Stained Glass Urbanism, an article about how the church can or should engage New Urbanism (I’ve yet to read this in it’s entirety).

Brewing Culture has a nice little website and a vision to foster “A creative renaissance that illumines the good, the true, and the beautiful through excellence and artistry for the glory of the Master Artist, the service of neighbor, and the renewal of culture.” To my chagrin, none the six artists involved at this point are tactile artists.

From a CNN article on rising gas prices:

“Travis Grim, of Dallas, Texas, said he moved so that he could be closer to work. “Now I’m in walking distance. I’m sure towns and businesses will see a surge as people leave the suburbs for relief,” he wrote. Other readers said they changed jobs, or sold their homes so they could have a shorter commute.”

Finally. I think this is the first time I’ve heard in the media of someone realizing that this is such a good idea.

“Corbusier” wrote an interesting post over at Architecture + Morality “in defense of car-based urbanism.” It’s a long blog entry I found worthy of excerpting and responding too.

” . . . I believe people will never willingly leave their cars en masse to walk exclusively. Despite all the added problems imposed by car use and the strains on the massive amount of required infrastructure, the enhancements cars have made [on] average people’s daily life have been dramatic as the fast-growing rate of car ownership throughout the world can attest.”

I wonder, though, if part of the reason for the rest of the world adopting the automobile isn’t related to its affiliation with wealthier culture. It seems like it’s the “in thing” for cultures looking up to Westernized locales and their economic success.

I’m not convinced (at all) that my own life is better because of the automobile — at least not at this point in my life. I’m glad for the invention of the technology in the past, but I often lament the beasts as necessary evils, particularly in smaller communities where there are no public transit options and city planners can’t seem to facilitate better community development. I’m convinced that my own quality of life suffers because of our vehicular vice; the felt need to own a car strains my finances, makes me lazy and generally uglyfies the built environment (even though it doesn’t necessarily need to be this way).

My second cousin in Denmark has never owned a car; in fact, she’s never driven, never had a driver’s license. She walks, bikes and uses public transit to get around. A few years back she injured her heel, and her first concern was that she wouldn’t be able to get around without a car in the future. Money that she uses for vacations throughout the year would need to be diverted to pay for a motor vehicle. To my knowledge, her heel healed and she has not had to throw her money into the rapidly depreciating money pit that is an automobile.

According to the blogger, author William Bogart suggests that

” . . . the monocentric view no longer applies to the reality imposed by the automobile, and suggests that rather than to urge a strict return to the traditional monocentric city, we should try to better understand and improve the dynamic nature of our contemporary polycentric cities.”

This is an important point, but not necessarily just in relationship to how cars impact culture. There is always a limit to the size of a city that is focused around a singular central node. You can only build up so far, and the natural progression of a large metropolitan area would seem to dictate the birth of new city centers as parts of the city are developed beyond a certain serviceable point.

“To many, auto-centric urban development has yielded dismal changes that have prompted a call for a return to pedestrian-centric development, with little interest to more skillfully integrate parking infrasture as part of a desired solution. They do not intend to improve the experience or the practicality of parking, they wish rather to eliminate it entirely.”

Personally, I think the best solution would be to strive for both. Cars are probably here to stay in some form or another. As I’ve already mentioned, I believe there is a genuine quality of life concern herein, something I’m expressing from personal experience at this point more than academic understanding. My advocating for better-designed, more pedestrian/transit centric communities isn’t in the slightest related to some kind of sentimental desire to return to “the good old days.” It is instead a hopeful response to observations of our present caraholic culture.

Let’s not forget the social implications of the car either. People are more easily isolated and independent — the freedom or independence the automobile offers is largely the thesis of Corbusier’s post, though I’d counter by suggesting the resulting isolation is detrimental — , vehicular aesthetics are often questionable at best and patience seems to be in more limited supply (in my mind) in a culture where the automobile has helped foster a mindset of instant gratification.

I’ve been thinking recently on how a successful shift in our culture would look, a shift that sees what I perceive to be a more balanced community where cars are viewed as tools and not as necessities. Of course, for this to happen a radical rearrangement of our personal and community priorities would need to take place, as I suggested in this post last week. I don’t have any answers yet, but it’s fun to ponder — actually, it’s important to ponder.