The word "car" was mentioned four times in President Barack Obama's speech to Congress last night.

He said...

• The ability to get a loan is how you finance the purchase of everything from a home to a car to a college education; how stores stock their shelves, farms buy equipment, and businesses make payroll.
  
  
• When there is no lending, families can't afford to buy homes or cars.
  
  
• And then those workers will have money to spend, and if they can get a loan too, maybe they'll finally buy that car, or open their own business.
  
  
• And to support that innovation, we will invest $15 bn dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.
  

But the most unnerving words came when he used the word "automobile."

As for our auto industry, everyone recognises that years of bad decision-making and a global recession have pushed our automakers to the brink. We should not, and will not, protect them from their own bad practices. But we are committed to the goal of a re-tooled, re-imagined auto industry that can compete and win. Millions of jobs depend on it. Scores of communities depend on it. And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.

I'm not going to be too hard on the president for not knowing that America didn't invent the automobile, I'd venture that if the answers to the multiple choice question "Who invented the automobile?" contained Henry Ford's name, most respondents would choose that answer.

I'm also not going to criticize the efforts to protect jobs.

I think the phrase "communities depend on it" probably also refers to jobs rather than the fact that scores of communities are dependent on the car because they aren't designed for transit. Nor am I going to be critical if what the President meant was that communities depend on the car for their livelihood.

I do want to challenge that final segment of that final sentence, however, that America can't walk away from the automobile.

Mr. President, had you said "America can't just walk away from the automobile," I'd tend to agree. For the better part of a century, most of our communities have been built around the automobile, and we can't change that over night. Yet we have to (and are) moving away from our complete and unchallenged reliance on the automobile.

We have to.

Even the cleanest car will require concrete highways and encourage strip mall-type paving of the earth. I also don't expect cars to ever be as fuel-efficient (or as safe) as trains and pulbic transit. Life in the suburbs, where people are divided by parking lots, windshields and miles, will never be as efficient as being together in traditional communities. As demographics and consumer preferences change, as we pass Hubbards Peak and move down the oil production slope, as the effects of global warming accelerate, the car will become less central to the American Life.

Mr. President, we can walk away from the car and we must. For our lives, our pocketbooks and our planet.

Eric Miller on 02.25.09 @ 02:19 PM PST [link]  

With the shopping mall culture fading, I wonder what future generations will have to remember it by. Sure, there will be corporate photos, and a few advertisements (although ads don’t often depict the monotonous buildings), but the reality of the age is likely to die with the memories of those who knew them.

I have little, if any, nostalgia for shopping malls. The notion of the mall memory demise came to me while viewing an exhibit of postcards collected by Walker Evans, now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Many of the photos are of busy shopping streets in towns across the U.S. Evans was a photographer, and writer, who collected the cards before he took his first photograph, and would photograph many of the scenes depicted in the cards.

The scenes in the cards might look like the way things were, but as in our memories, it’s not. People have been added, airplanes are flying in between skyscrapers and the colorization not only makes everyday sunny, but makes day night and because they were often colored in Germany, can make limestone red.

In an article on display with the postcards, Evans says “The postcard is a folk document. Studying them, it is better to renounce the sentimentality and nostalgia, that blurred vision that actually destroys the reality of the past.

“Downtown,” he says, “was a beautiful mess.”

More about the exhibition

Eric Miller on 02.18.09 @ 03:14 PM PST [link]  

me: did you read the Times article Saturday about Ft Myers, Florida?
Florida gun dealers say they can't keep bullets in stock
read that today...
Jim: Yuck. No, I'd not heard this.
sounds like California
it is so FRIGGING violent here it turns my stomach
me:really?
Jim: a judge has ordered 58,000 inmates be released from state prisons because of overcrowding
me: in Stockton?
Jim: I'm beginning to feel like 'meltdown' in the US
Yes, Stockton is one of the most violent towns in the US
a thug mindset here
me: didn't know that
Jim: and gangs.....
I'd never been around gangs like this
being downtown is like being in an armed camp.

The chat above is one illustration of at least the perception of rising urban crime. In visiting the web page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a read a lead story that reported the crime rate had gone up significantly in the region with 2008 ranked as the second worst-ever year in terms of homicides.

I think many of us who think about urban issues and the impact on them from influencers such as the price (and availability) of oil, global warming and changing demographics may have to add increasing crime rate to that list.

In a New York Times article this morning titled Economists’ Forecast: Chance of Change 100% John Tepper Marlin Former Chief Economist New York City Comptroller’s Office said the current downturn could, in its full affect, be worse than the Great depression and added “I’m concerned about people being so desperate that they lose the fear of losing their own lives and they become so desperate that they’re willing to endanger other people’s lives.”

If the bad economic times continue to spiral downward, and crime continues an upward trend, the impact on urban renewal and general trend toward urban revival could hit a bump or two. Safety is Maslow’s second in our hierarchy of needs. Sure, crimes happen in the suburbs too, but I live in Brooklyn and know the perception of urban areas as unsafe continues to persist.

Any increase in the crime rate may play out differently in different cities. The most recent analysis I could find shows a national decline in homicide rates of 2.7 percent with that decrease coming from major cities like New York (down 20 percent) and Los Angeles (down 19 percent). Among cities with populations more than 1 million, murder rates dropped 9.8 percent. That is a stark contrast to medium-size cities. Those with populations of 100,000 to 249,999 saw a 1.9 percent rise in murder rates. For cities with 50,000 to 99,999 residents, the increase was even greater: 3.7 percent.

It also appears crime is actually on a downward trend in other east coast cities including Philadelphia, Newark and Baltimore. The same article has the murder rate in New York up in 2008, but over-all crime down.

Increasing crime isn’t a good thing anywhere, but what if increased crime, or even an increased perception of crime creeps into factors that determine the future of cities? It will take more thought and analysis to come up with an answer, but on the surface, here are some thoughts.

If the trend upward is short-lived, recent suburban transplants will not move, but rather resort to using the car more often. In many cases the car is still an option for new arrivals and is often in an indoor space. If increased crime becomes a trend, some may seek to move. Even in those cases, I think demographics and a rising cost of oil will put them into some sort of a “new-urban” environment such as a transit village rather than back to suburbia. As the move continues, suburbia will acquire its own set of problems with crime and blight, and some of that is occurring now. In many cases, with declining property values, the choice to return to the suburbs won’t be attractive and won’t make economic sense.

Eric Miller on 02.16.09 @ 02:20 PM PST [link]  

This weekend marks the fifth birthday of Vox Civitatis, the New Colonist's blog, and this summer will see the tenth anniversary of the New Colonist itself.

In that time, we have seen Global Warming finally recognized by all but a few fringe groups as real, and as a real threat to our culture, our species, and the planet itself. We have seen the US population devote itself to revivifying its cities, its countryside, and its transit systems, despite monolithic opposition from a delusional Federal government for eight years, and we have seen the first unpologetic urbanite elected president to replace the cavemen.

We have seen an economy premised on unsustainable concepts of eternal growth and infinite debt come crashing down, bringing with it some (but by no means all) of the most formidable terrorists the world has seen, men (mostly men) who are willing to hold an entire world hostage to their personal desire for wealth and lord-like power over the rest of us.

Now we face the necessity of building a new, gentler, and more equitable economy, one that allows the Earth to breathe, and every man and woman to earn a living according to the worth of their work, and not the subtlety of their manipulations; one in which satisfaction derives from creative labor and the love of our fellows, and not from mindless display, compulsive acquisition, and the crude bullying of those we have deemed "below" us.

Cities--the generators of wealth in every living culture--bring us together where we can meet, if we wish, with others both alike and unlike ourselves, where we can explore new avenues of expression and invention, where we have the resources ever at hand to make a business or a family or a life among friends, and where we can live efficiently, without burdening the strength of the Earth that nurtures us nor our own limited hours on that Earth. In cities, we find places where transit and proximity free us, and our planet, from enslavement to the car, and where the square, the coffeehouse, the corner bar, and even the seat on the tram present us with opportunities for heart and hand every day.

It is the City we hail, and the People who make it up that we serve, here at The New Colonist.

Onward!

Richard Risemberg on 02.15.09 @ 05:18 AM PST [link]  

Amtrak and High-speed and inner-city rail (and thus rail travelers and the environment) ended up winners in the final stimulus bill. High-Speed rail went from $300 million in House bill to $2.25 billion in Senate to $8 billion in final version. Amtrak had $500 million added from both House and Senate versions for a total of $1.3 billion. The bill stipulates that no more than 60 percent can go to the Northeast Corridor. There also is a $6.9 billion provision for public transit. State rail grants appear to have been eliminated.SEE ANALYSIS

Eric Miller on 02.14.09 @ 03:32 AM PST [link]  

If you live anywhere in central or western Los Angeles, try to attend one of the meetings mentioned in the link below:

Metro is seeking input on various aspects of the Line's final shape. Meetings will occur on February 18^th, 23^rd, and 25^th, and you can also submit comments online.

There are solid rumors that Metro is cutting out the bike path slated to be built along the ROW to save money; it won't save much, and the bike path would be extremely useful to the central area communities, so keep that in mind as you read and prepare your comments.

Richard Risemberg on 02.13.09 @ 09:54 AM PST [link]  

It's obvious now that shoveling money at bankers is doing little, if anything, to "stimulate" the economy. And after all, we're trusting the same folks who got us into this mess through their shortsighted venality, to get us out of it by sacrificing their pride and comfort and becoming different kinds of people from what they have been for twenty, thirty, forty years and more. It's not likely to happen, though Mr. Obama seems to be wishing that it would.

Then there's the odd idea that you resolve a crisis brought about by too much debt by enticing people to take on yet more debt--while still keeping wages and employment low enough to satisfy the corporate cabal....

So I have written a little song to Mr. Obama, letting him know how we here on the street feel about bank bailouts as they are now.

Sing it to the tune of the old Irish favorite "Danny Boy." If you don't know the tune, click the little music player below:
And here's the words, courtesy of yer editor, Rick Risemberg:

Barack Hussein, the banks, the banks are lying to you
From coast to coast, across this shattered land.
They took the bailout cash and hid it out of view,
And now they plead they're poor and need another hand.

Barack Hussein, don't let them cheat us any more,
Don't let them fool you with their filthy lies.
They see the US citizenry as their whore;
They're naught but pinstriped pirates drooling on their ties!

Barack Hussein, the time has come to take command;
It's time to show those bastards who's the boss.
The cash they've stashed away belongs to all the land;
It's not the working stiff who ought to bear the loss.

Grab a guitar, sing it in a bar, sing it on the corner, sing it everywhere!

They've given us sprawl, debt, low wages, unemployment, and a collapsing ecosystem...perhaps we ought not to be paying them to keep it up?

Richard Risemberg on 02.11.09 @ 09:47 AM PST [link]  

There's a great deal of discussion in the news these days about the "closed shop" versus the "open shop," and the supposedly onerous requirement of all workers in a company being compelled to join a union if the majority votes to join--or signs up by card check, which is easier for unions to arrange than elections. (Both are permitted by the NLRB.). Management, of course, thinks this is bad.

Some of us suspect it leads to democracy and prosperity. Let's think about it a little bit....

READ MORE

Eric Miller on 02.07.09 @ 01:52 AM PST [link]  

After writing about the lost tram tracks below the asphalt at Heliotrope and Rosewood, I looked up an old out-of-print pamphlet a friend of mine had found and given to me for my birthday a few years ago: a history of the Los Angeles Railway!

This included a map, which I've taken the liberty of scanning and saving as a PDF file; click on the image at left to see a map of both tram and bus routes in Los Angeles in 1932, before its ultimate expansions of later decades and well before its assisted suicide in the 1950s.

It confirms that there was indeed tram service past that insignificant crossing in East Hollywood--and many other places as well. Indeed, the map appears not to show the entire extent of the system. Perhaps the version in the pamphlet (which came out in the '70s, written by S. E. Easlon) was itself copied from an incomplete remnant.

An incomplete remnant of a transit system is what we have now, smothered under the chaos of Carmageddon. Well, a few more decades, a few more billion, and we'll have caught up to our advances of three-quarters of a century past, and then can start moving forward again.

It's not what we lost that's galling, but what we threw away!

Richard Risemberg on 02.06.09 @ 07:05 AM PST [link]  

Do you use facebook? Be sure to become a fan of The New Colonist. Just click on this link

Eric Miller on 02.04.09 @ 10:33 AM PST [link]  

All over Los Angeles, you can see this scene: old tram tracks exposed during road work, or simply from deterioration of the asphalt on our over-trafficked streets. Sometimes, as in this case, in unlikely places...I photographed these at the corner of Heliotrope and Rosewood in East Hollywood, a residential corner of little houses and older apartment buildings, only a block away from Vermont to the east and Beverly to the south, both streets that would have had tram service back when Angelenos had more freedom of choice in how to travel.

These would most likely have belonged to the Los Angeles Street Railway, which ran green PCC cars all over town, not to the much more famous Red Cars of the Pacific Electric, which was more of an interurban service. I rode on the green cars a couple of times as a child; never on the Red. Now we are slowly rebuilding both systems at many thousands of times the cost that simply keeping and modernizing them would have entailed. They were extensive systems: I pass by old PE structures (often just foundations) all the time, and tram tracks are always peeking up through broken asphalt. Inches away, much of the system still exists; smothered but still shiny rails still tying Los Angeles together.

How much better our city would be if we could still ride those rails, still be free not to take a car when a car is not the best choice...which is usually.

Instead, we're condemned to metalclad ennui for a little while longer--those of us who aren't fortunate to live near good transit junctions, and who haven't yet discovered bicycles. But it's coming, as it must, if LA is to survive as anything other than an elegant slum: the Red Line extensions are back in active planning, the Expo Line is under construction, the Gold Line's growing at both ends. We need more, though. We need what we threw away half a century ago: an efficient, fast, and comprehensive electric rail transit system. We had it; we lost it. Our bad.

Richard Risemberg on 02.02.09 @ 05:03 AM PST [link]  

To those familiar with the rust belt, Youngstown and Flint have had it bad, but Braddock, PA may take the cake in terms of how far it has fallen. A New York Times article reveals how a new mayor is trying to make a difference.

Mr. Fetterman, now 39, is hard to miss, at 6-foot-8 and 325 pounds, with a shaved head and goatee. He has a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard but came to Braddock in 2001 to work for a county youth program. He won the May 2005 Democratic primary by exactly one vote.

Did I mention he has the zip code tatooed on one arm and the dates of killings in the city on the other?

Read more

A related item is this article about the Schwab mansion in North Braddock

Eric Miller on 02.01.09 @ 04:36 AM PST [link]