Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Highways are Rivers

man-made river
The current oil crisis has cities all over the country thinking about mass transit. But some of our basic transportation problems won't be solved by quick solutions. Not that streetcars are cheap, but they're a lot cheaper than solving the underlying problem: our transportation infrastructure is built around cars. And highways are rivers: they can't be crossed, except by expensive bridges.

Urban transportation projects, starting in the fifties, focused on the automobile above all other forms of transit. Specifically, on how to quickly and efficiently move cars from the suburbs into city centers.

Poor neighborhoods tended to get in the way. David Hilfiker points out in his book Urban Injustice: How Ghettos HappenBook Cover: Urban Injustice by David Hilfiker:

As a network of superhighways meant to link the country together was blasted through cities, poor black areas were, not surprisingly, the first choices for disruption. Either an area would be razed and its former inhabitants removed, or a highway would be placed so as to create a physical boundary between the black ghetto and other areas of the city, further isolating its inhabitants (p. 8).


If we're really going to break our addiction to oil (as President Bush calls it), we're going to need to redesign our urban infrastructure, a multi-decade project.


Sorry, Al Gore, while your plan for energy independence is grand, energy independence can only be achieved by efficient consumption (not just generation), which in turn requires a fundamental rethinking of urban planning. We're in this for the long haul, no pun intended.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Reverse White Flight?


I'm going to be chewing on this article from the Wall Street Journal for a few days. "The End of White Flight" reports on the return of middle-class whites to the urban centers of America, after a half-century of flight to the suburbs.

What interests me most, of course, were the cultural conflicts reported in the story, such as white parent demands the PTA stop selling ice cream (for diabetes). More importantly, the churches:

Old inner-city white churches are reviving after years of decline, while black churches are following their parishioners out to the burbs. One black church in Washington D.C. is looking to hire a white intern to reach the new neighbors.

Obviously this is anecdotal. But I must point out: 99% of interracial outreach by the American church is done by black churches. That's how, 11 years ago, I became a member of my (majority-black) church.

There's another element here: As African Americans flee the cities, the poorest of the poor African Americans are left behind, and what was a race matter becomes a class matter.

Elsewehere I've seen predictions of exurbs becoming the ghettos of the future, as gas prices make living way out of town decreasingly desireable.


[Photo Credit: Flickr User Boyznberry]

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Who's Your (Caveman) Daddy?


Nothing quite like loving your hometown. DNA testing has connected two rural German men to a 3,000 year old caveman, whose bones were dug up on the hill outside the village.

In other words, in 3,000 years (i.e. 500 years before Buddha or Socrates), these people haven't moved beyond the village. Puts a whole new meaning to the concept of roots.

It also brings to mind the verse from ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu (who, incidentally, was several centuries younger than that lineage in Germany):

Let [people] be content with their own homes, and delight in the customs that they cherish.

Although the next country is close enough that they can hear their roosters crowing and dogs barking, they are content never to visit each other all of the days of their lives.


photo credit: Flickr user Andrea Pi

Friday, July 11, 2008

Spirit Dance

Here's an album I've been listening to not quite constantly this week: Bill Miller's Spirit Dance. (iTunes has song previews)

I've been a Bill Miller fan for several years. He's a folk singer from Wisconsin (currently Nashville, of course) who has blended his Native American musical skills with the mainstream American singer-songwriter folk style.

His songs are at once heartbreakingly real and powerfully hopeful, as he manages to look hard and long at the poverty and hardships of reservation life through the lens of Christian hope at its concrete best.

More importantly, he consistently manages to create a meaningful sense of place in his music. The songs are never wishy-washy, even as they're often fictional. They're in "paper mill towns" and along "reservation roads", on "sacred ground".

Monday, July 07, 2008

Nobody's Hands Are Unbloodied

The Blood of Peasants, or more masochistic European navel-gazing?
The German arts media have been in a tizzy this year (summary, in English) over European architects' "collaboration" with non-democratic regimes--especially China, and especially around next month's Olympic Games.

The main question is of the political meaning of art: does building for a totalitarian regime lend legitimacy to said regime? The jury is out on the matter, at least in part because of China's non-pariah status in the business world--and architecture belongs as much to business as to art.

A bigger problem, in my eyes, is the question of ambiguous guilt. We all sense that our hands are bloodied by virtue of being in this world, yet we can't discern why, or a way out.

The resultant Puritanism of the secular left is the main reason why America by and large hasn't joined the progressive movement: there's more guilt there than you can shake a stick at, and no hope for salvation (see obsessive carbon-counting).

Europe (European cultural leaders at least) is much more sold on ambiguous guilt, which is why Architecture finds itself in this debate.

I don't have an opinion about the answer: where is the boundary between engagement with a totalitarian regime and endorsement of it? I don't know. But my sense is that the answer doesn't lie anywhere on that axis.

Photo Credit Flickr User Theo W L Jones

Saturday, July 05, 2008

Window on Our Ongoing Segregation



I was at first surprised, and had to rewind. It came during a podcast I enjoy—which will remain unnamed—targeted at young leaders in the evangelical church. The moderator asked the audience to email in responses to this question:

“How many of your evangelical friends are truly considering, or have already stated, ‘I'm going to vote for [Obama]’ --versus McCain? How many of your evangelical, Christ-follower friends are saying, ‘I’m not going to vote at all’?”

The fact that this question is asked makes one thing obvious: The black church is not on the radar screen here.

Nine out of ten African Americans are planning on voting for Obama. Since far more than 10% of African Americans would consider themselves “Christ-followers”, it's safe to say that a runaway majority of the black church is voting for him.

But the question tells us that we still live in different worlds. And since a large chunk of my life straddles this divide, it makes me sad—and makes me feel a little homeless.

Please note: I’m not calling these people racist. I’m merely noting that if we—as a church—were in real communion with each other, we wouldn’t wonder if “Christ followers” were voting for Obama. We’d just understand that the church has not made up its mind about the presidential vote.

Photo Credit: Flickr User PhotoMuse!

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Revolutionary Roadkill



chow down to start the revolution!


Leave it to the counterculture to glamorize scavenging.

The Revolution Will Not Be MicrowavedI've just finished a most engrossing book, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America's Underground Food Movements. It was a lot of fun, reading about unpasteurized cheese, organic farming, and the slow food movement.

Then the chapter on "Feral Foraging". Author Sandor Ellix Katz profiles some former vegans who've taken to eating roadkill--not as an act of desperation, but as counterculture. One he quotes as redefining roadkill:


"Transforming dishonored victims of the petroleum age into food which nourishes, and clothing which warms."

Victims of the petroleum age! And you thought you were a progressive. These guys are way ahead. If they don't die first.

Photo Credit: marta rattlesnacks, from Flickr