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A Beautiful Priority

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For years I’ve taken students on trips abroad and there has been one recurring problem, long before the advent of the smartphone, which frustrated me: they would be so worried about recording their trip that often they weren’t truly experiencing where they were. With the smartphone we see it even at everyday events and in everyday life: parties, at the dinner table, at work, at school. It’s a preoccupation, in some ways, about the next person, the next event, the next social circumstance and the prioritization of those ephemeral future circumstances over the here and now.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised at these priorities when where we place our emphasis as a society in our infrastructure is in the movement from place to place and not in making those places particularly precious. Andrés Duany says that if you want to see why so many of the schools, libraries, and courthouses we’ve built in the last 75 years are such garbage just look at the effort, energy, and expense we’ve placed in our horizontal infrastructure. Add to that what we spend on the vehicles to propel us through that never ending web of asphalt and concrete and there isn’t much left for granite, marble, bas reliefs, quoins, and porticos. 

I was looking at my street, Maple Street, in Springfield, Massachusetts. It’s not a very long street. It has four major intersections. As streets in America go it would easily fall in the top 1% in terms of the man-made architectural legacy it offers regardless of era. (With the literally millions of miles of road in the United States, that would include thousands of miles) That being the case, has the street received any special treatment from the city regarding its aesthetics? Of course not. The primary function of Maple Street, as with most streets, is to act as a traffic sewer; not to BE a place to be, but rather to exist as a place to pass through as quickly and with as little friction as possible. 

Now if such streets as mine generally receive this treatment imagine how much thought is given to beauty on most other, less well endowed streets.

Conversely, imagine if when the time came to renew Maple Street, the city, within whatever contemporary budget constraints, prioritized beauty over traffic flow. If without ignoring the need for the street to act as a conduit, that took second place to making it a wonderful place to be. Yes, there would be disagreements about whose aesthetic to follow, but there are ways to come to consensus on such things, but I do not think that the result would be this:

It might be this:

Or this:


Now imagine an entire city, an entire state, even an entire nation of streets re-engineered over time to be pleasing to the people who actually live on them. It might well be a nation of places which take a good deal more time to pass through, but then again passing through might be an experience in that case which people won’t mind prolonging.

LuLu-lations

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(My step daughter LuLu has long wanted a presence on my blog. She has requested some space here to write about her view of growing up in Springfield. Here are her ideas, only lightly edited by me, the evil overlord of Rational Urbanism)


Urban Blues

​So I live in the city of Springfield, MA. Yes, I have a garden; yes I can go to the park but sometimes that isn’t enough for me to really get in touch with nature. In the summer of 2017 my family suggested that I go to Camp Bonnie Brae.

​My stepsisters went to Camp Bonnie Brae when they were about my age. Camp Bonnie Brae isn’t any normal camp. It’s a retreat from civilization of any kind and flushing toilets. I was nervous to go to CBB at first. I had never been away from my parents and now I was being sent away to a Girl Scout sleep away camp for a whole week.

​Well my camp experience was AWESOME! The only things I didn’t like were being homesick, mosquito bites and mean girls. Being homesick was the worst. Mean girls and mosquito bites not so much. My counselors Oops, Fluffy and Marshmallow were kind, funny and fun to hang out with! In my group it was just me and two other girls. At camp some of the things I did were: swimming, boating, sewing, cooking and A LOT of arts and crafts! I loved camp so much that I went back 2 weeks later.

​So, how does my going to camp have anything to do with urbanism? Well, a lot of people that live in cities don’t get to experience nature that much, let alone spend 2 weeks in the woods. Camp has changed the way I look at nature and has made me much more interested in the world around me. Also, I can’t wait to go back to camp!

(Coming soon, her own space on this site to express her views on being raised “in the city”.)

The Stormcrow

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“You have ever been a herald of woe. Troubles follow you like crows, and ever the oftener the worse. I will not deceive you: when I heard that Shadowfax had come back riderless, I rejoiced at the return of the horse, but still more at the lack of the rider; and when Eomer brought the tidings that you had gone at last to your long home, I did not mourn. But news from afar is seldom sooth. Here you come again! And with you come evils worse than before, as might be expected. Why should I welcome you, Gandalf Stormcrow?”

(Theoden to Gandalf-The Lord of the Rings-J.R.R. Tolkien)

From the moment I heard Chuck Marohn speak I knew that his message was one that not only needed to be heard, but which could also be translated into action. If Jim Kunstler was John the Baptist raling against the American Automobile Slum, Chuck’s message appeared softer and less judgmental, less that is until he commanded your fig tree to wither and die.

Knowing that there was a Curbside Chat program that was ready to be presented to the public in communities just like Springfield I set about to get him here. Post tornado Springfield had developed a plan for recovery and had empowered a local non-profit development organization to spearhead the efforts; it seemed to me that DevelopSpringfield could use the “chat” to give people a broader framework for understanding what was happening, what had happened, and what was potentially going to happen in Springfield. 

I was sincere about what I viewed as the importance of the message, but I also had a selfish desire not so much to meet Chuck, but for Chuck to meet Springfield. The further east he ventured from Minnesota the more he gushed on his blog and in interviews about the “good bones” for building Strong Towns that existed here; in Pennsylvania, even in North Adams, Massachusetts. I knew that I might finally meet someone who would see the beauty which I had always seen here. 

Jay Minkarah, the president and CEO of DevelopSpringfield, took Chuck and his incredibly insightful sidekick Jim Kumon on a walking tour of the neighborhood and I was hearing what I knew I would hear: Chuck and Jim were impressed with Outing Park, a subsidized housing complex that looked more like a million dollar enclave in Manhattan; Jim made the whole group pause to appreciate the architectural detail of the façades of two buildings facing each other in an alleyway; later we bought grinders at Frigo’s and Chuck famously bought some pastries at La Fiorentina and went back to my house to talk about schools, cars, making America function again, and how it was that so much good food could cost so little money!

The chat went well. I was a little too passionate in my intro to Chuck but the rest of the program along with its Q and A were exactly what we had hoped for. Chuck had changed the bit about “believing that growth could solve all your problems” at my behest: No one in Springfield is infected with that mindset. Our problem is that we don’t see how our stagnation over the last 40 years has left us with a lot of neighborhoods and streets which, with a little TLC, could be transformed into truly prosperous places. The major take away from the chat and the follow up discussion on the next day was that the North End was a perfect place for the city to focus attention. It constituted a real small town Main Street on its own, but the beat up sidewalks, declining street trees, along with its isolation were leaving its potential untapped. 

On the way out the next day I gave Jim and Chuck a quick auto tour of State Street. Jim laughed at our New England version of a stroad. We didn’t make it as far as the changeover from State Street to Boston Road where our Yankee stroadiness is as crappy as anyplace in the good ole U.S. of A. because I wanted them to tour the North End. They could see the potential we had discussed earlier. I told them that Holyoke was like the North End on a much larger scale. As an aside: In my opinion there is no better community in the Northeast in terms of its long term future potential than Holyoke, Massachusetts; I cannot believe that no one in Holyoke has thought to bring in Chuck.

But now we get to the sad reality of the aftermath of the Curbside Chat in my hometown, of the unforeseen consequences of that amazing visit by Chuck and Jim: Springfield has become a hiss and a byword. (Here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) One of the worst things imaginable for any neighborhood took place in my neighborhood on the evening Chuck was presenting the Curbside Chat, perhaps even while he was asking all of us what our priorities were regarding traffic engineering and design: 


A little girl was killed, and her mother and her cousin seriously injured in a crash on State Street. 


As fate would have it the crash occurred in the exact spot my own daughter had made a video about pedestrian safety in conflict with street design which I had sent to Strong Towns to be part of their “See It Differently” YouTube channel. I had sent it because another video had appeared on their channel with a much less impressive library on a much less impressive corridor; it was a humblebrag: “When we screw up our pedestrian-traffic interface we do it with City Beautiful architecture on historic avenues!”

Chuck, much to his credit has made not just pedestrian safety in this city, or in this neighborhood, but on that very street at that very spot his cause. He has made our decades long fight his fight without being asked to do so. I want to say “I don’t believe in destiny”, but under the circumstances I must use the more clumsy “I have no belief in the supernatural”. Chuck does. And I do believe that he sees or feels that this confluence of events: publishing the video, being in the neighborhood, crossing that street, giving the chat, and spending the night in a home all in close physical and/or temporal proximity to the death of Destiny González makes him somehow obligated to take up this cause both as symbolic and as an end unto itself in his efforts to protect the American people, and in particular American children, from the scourge of the automobile.

I’ve contributed something to this fight, but what I have “sacrificed” pales when compared to what the González family and thousands like them have sacrificed and what Chuck Marohn, Jason Degray, and countless other members of the Strong Towns movement have given to change everything from the overall zeitgeist of a continent to one small stretch of roadway in an insignificant New England city. From a completely selfish perspective it hurts to know that, in the short term at least, my efforts have redounded to the discredit of the city I love so much, but I also know that to enable and overlook is not to love; helping another to overcome their weaknesses and achieve their potential is love. May we prove worthy of it.

Not Going Out Of Their Way (This Time)

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You might recall the great pains The Republican took to point out that “Springfield’s” #13 ranking in quality of life by US News & World Report was really about THE REGION AS A WHOLE.

Here’s an example of more metro level data expressed with just a little less emphasis on its regional character:


From the article:


Oh. So the 1,800 job losses (“nearly 2000”) were for the region?

No mention of “The Pioneer Valley” here, and no labored description of exactly what “the region” is.

Funny how different the two headlines and the two articles are.

Tug of War

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(Apologies to Johnny at Granola Shotgun)

The struggle for renewal along the region’s oldest stroad is visible. These photos go in order as you cross the Memorial Bridge heading toward The Big E fairgrounds:

Crappy disintegrating asphalt sidewalk until…¡Chipotle!

What’s a “build to line” again?

Someone call Shel Silverstein:

They razed a nice old church for this; I wonder if anything other than the stupid bank which financed it will ever occupy this strip mall? Never be behind the times when you can be *way* behind the times!


“IN LOCO ISTO DABO CVS”


This last one is my favorite: the old “Papa Gino’s”, turned “Debbie Wong” now vacant just before the old “Ponderosa” turned “Outback” now a drug rehab center flanked by tire and lube joints and self storage canyons.

Rochester Americans

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(That’s two AHL inspired headlines this month)


I had the most interesting experience while hanging out at my favorite local farm last weekend. I was in conversation with a father who described how beneficial the experience of being on a farm had been for his “city kids”. As the family seemed clearly to be middle class my interest level ratcheted up quite a few notches. His wife corrected him: “Suburban kids”. As the gathering included friends and family, my family and I being in the former group, I had to ask where they were from; Rochester, New York I was told.

The conversation continued. I was eager to talk to people who so readily accepted a connection to a hard luck northern tier industrial city like Rochester, as those people are few and far between in the suburbs of Springfield. In that vein, and as the conversation continued, I made reference to just how similar Rochester and Springfield are. Not even his reflective sunglasses could hide that the comparison made my discussion partner cringe; I mean he literally, visibly, winced. “In population I suppose.” He then went on to proudly defend Rochester in a very measured but assured way.

With a facility indicative of experience in a classroom setting he asked me about Springfield’s economy referencing jobs in particular. I mentioned that most of the region’s major employers were in the city from Baystate and Mercy medical centers to the second largest corporation headquartered in Massachusetts, MassMutual, along with a handful of colleges, Big Y, and Smith and Wesson: “The problem is that the people who have the best jobs choose to live outside the city. The region is actually very prosperous” I concluded.

When we got home after the party I went right to Wikipedia. I was very surprised at what I saw. Instinctively I think of Rochester, and Syracuse, and Bridgeport, and Scranton and perhaps a dozen or more other cities in the northeast as being, essentially, the same as Springfield. Given the obviously strong visceral response I had seen when I compared Springfield to Rochester I assumed that I was going to find data which confirmed that perhaps my assumption in that regard was a bit hasty and inaccurate. Indeed it was. I’m sure the City of Rochester has a lot going for it, maybe as much or more than Springfield in ways that can’t be measured, but what I was startled to find was that Rochester is in pretty rough shape demographically, even when compared to The City of Homes.

People often perceive Springfield as having a violence problem; I was surprised to see that Rochester had over 3 times the homicide rate of Springfield. Springfield is thought of as poor; Rochester’s per capita, household, and family incomes are anywhere from 10%-20% lower than Springfield’s. In terms of population Rochester has lost roughly 1/3 of its population, losing 120,000 people since its peak; Springfield’s population loss has been around 10%, losing almost exactly 20,000, leveling off, and actually growing slightly over the last 40 years; Rochester has lost nearly 10,000 people per decade just since 1980.

I also found it interesting that Rochester’s 209,000 people are spread out over almost 90 square miles. If Springfield were to annex Chicopee and West Springfield it would still cover 15 fewer square miles but have a population of 238,000.

It sounds like I’m picking on Rochester, but that’s not the purpose of my post. What I want to know is, how does a place in such demonstrably worse shape than my hometown illicit such pride from its suburban inhabitants when I find it a challenge to find anyone, resident or suburbanite, who has a kind word to say about Springfield? It could be that I just met the only well-to-do people outside of Rochester who feel kindly toward it, and I just happen to be acquainted with only naddering nabobs of negativity in Western Mass, but I don’t think so. Is it just so much further from Boston and New York City that expectations are lowered? I’ve often thought one of Springfield’s biggest problems to be its proximity to two of North America’s standout cities and therefore expectations are too high.

In further conversation the family revealed that they live in a community which borders a community which touches Rochester. If we ever see a day when people in Southwick, Hampden, and Belchertown feel about Springfield the way these folks feel about Rochester it will be a marker of tremendous progress. 

The Present, the Future, and That Other Future

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I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. I know what I think is going to happen, and I know the vision I have, as murky and fuzzy as it is, for how we are going to get there but, having been wrong about many things many times before, I have no doubt that my own judgement isn’t to be completely trusted. 

When I make decisions I put them through a mental venn diagram with three circles representing; the present, a “business as usual” future, and my own personal quasi-apocalyptic view of the future. It started as a more formal process, but I’ve done it for so long now that it’s second nature. I look for activities, investments, and opportunities that pay off in all three areas and put my efforts and energies there.

Keeping myself in shape is something I enjoy now, will make wandering down the streets of Prague much easier in retirement, and would help me outrun all the zombies* in a zombie apocalypse. Growing a garden is an enjoyable pastime today, can reduce my grocery bill a bit in retirement, and can give me a set of skills that could be useful if the industrial agricultural system starts to break down. My home is a source of pride today and gives me flexibility when entertaining or taking in family members in need, it has great potential as a revenue source in a business as usual future while still providing me even in my dotage with a small residential space; and in an energy scarce future it is in the most walkable and most transit friendly location in western Massachusetts and is surrounded by all of the primary institutional and infrastructural foundations of the region. Investments in energy efficiency like insulation, storm windows, and passive solar heat give me the opportunity to be smug today, can reduce my monthly outlays in the future, or could be life savers if energy supplies become less reliable.

*(Zombies, in this case, being a need to work much further into old age than a current pensioner my expect.)

In a business as usual future living in a walkable neighborhood will keep me in shape and save me money by eliminating any need for an automobile, in a future where cars and their infrastructure become too expensive for society to maintain I will already be where others want to be, with an asset that can be shared, in a place that will increase in value. My “business as usual” pension being as generous as it promises to be I can afford to put the rest of my financial investments into things like local farms which give me a feeling of satisfaction today. If the future ends up being like today, only more so, and the local food movement is nothing more than a passing fad, I won’t have lost anything I couldn’t afford to lose; if on the other hand my pension and Social Security end up providing me with pennies on the dollar of what they’ve promised I may have access to enough food to get by.

I put my views on local issues through the same framework, but I try to only mention aloud only what I view as today’s benefits of a particular decision along with its utility in a business as usual future; if I make the mistake of expressing my suspicions about the potential for economic collapse, for example, in a public forum I know that I lose the support of many more people than I gain. 

An example might be the addition of a new exit ramp on the Massachusetts Turnpike between Westfield and Lee. My deepest fear about this idea is that many thousands of acres of serviceable agricultural land could be wasted on “a living arrangement that has no future” in a last gasp attempt to sustain the unsustainable through one final mini exurban blowout of homes and auto oriented retail. In a future where communities depend more and more on food grown locally that would be a disaster. My public arguments (both honest) coming from a “presentist” view and a business as usual future, would be that the potential shift in growth to these hill towns could alter the existing culture in ways the current residents clearly were seeking to avoid when they chose their communities, and could stall the tiny uptick in growth and development in the region’s urban core. I would also reference the Strong Towns view regarding horizontal development and its Ponzi Scheme impact on fiscal stability.

Parking garages are my bete noire. To people with a very different aesthetic from my own they represent a very positive current good; they want to drive to get where they want to go and they want to park, preferably for free, when they get there. I argue against their aesthetic, I point out that successful urban places generally are not car friendly, but they can point to many apparently successful car oriented places. In a standard view “tomorrow is the same as today only more so” they see the car as ubiquitous; I see the car, internal combustion or electric, with a human driver or self driven, as disappearing, slowly but surely from the landscape: The materials used to create even self driven electric cars are mined and produced and shipped using fossil fuels; since only a tiny fraction of our electricity comes from solar and wind (and even those industries are very fossil fuel dependent) they are just as polluting as traditional vehicles; the roads they drive on and the sprawl which both demands their existence and their existence promotes are enormous energy sinks which are wasteful and unsustainable. 

In other words I’m a loon.

So that leaves me arguing the idea that “millennials” prefer walkable urban places and car infrastructure is an impediment to developing it, and many successful cities across Europe and North America have accommodated the automobile but have prioritized the pedestrian, even in “the age of the automobile,” so it makes sense that, in the core of the city at least, “we” follow suit; that would be my public argument. They would counter with a list of “successful” growing cities from Houston to Phoenix that are clearly car centered…”and screw Europe!”

They’re not wrong. About the present and the recent past that is. And they’re not idiots to think that the near future is likely to resemble the recent past.

Deep down I believe every parking deck, parking lot, parking garage, viaduct, and stroad we produce now will be nothing but a millstone around our necks for decades to come. Saying so makes me Cassandra, so I use other, hopefully more successful arguments. Of course, on the other hand, I could just be wrong. But I don’t think so.

Syracuse, Crunched

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Read this:


Did you catch it? Read the excerpts of this one now:


There you go. You see? The Quality of Life ranking is for the METRO area, not just the city. People in Syracuse might miss that, despite the brief nod to “metro area” in the story, and walk away feeling good about their municipality. No such fears in Springfield: the headline makes clear the study refers to the entire “Pioneer Valley” and, well, the focus of the entire piece appears to be making sure that no one accidentally believes this has anything to do with Springfield the city.

On the other hand, a quality of life survey which uses “averages” in the Springfield metro will be heavily impacted by the  quality of life in the city of Springfield: quality of “life” generally being divided by the denominator of “lives” of which Springfield is one quarter or more. Educational attainment is measured, and more children go to public school in Springfield than there are people in Northampton. As far as weighting goes, more than twice as many lives are lived in Springfield than in the entirety  of Franklin County. Access to health care? Imagine if Springfield’s hospitals and medical offices were removed from the study.

I’d say this survey actually does say something about life in Springfield, so to the rest of the residents of the Valley I say “you’re welcome” on behalf of the residents of the city. Glad we helped make you look so good.

How Deep Does the Stupid Go?

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As I think about it this could be the blogpost version of the movie “Inception”, but if you enjoy urban design and have a fondness for anachronism it could be worth delving through the layers.

Worcester and Springfield (pronounced “Spring-Field”) are similar cities facing similar problems but all in all Worcester is ahead of Springfield. Worcester never fell as far as Springfield during the bad years, and it has taken advantage of the most recent movement toward urban Renaissance more quickly and more successfully. I think I’d like to explore that in depth in a separate post delving into how the two municipalities got where they are, why, and what their assets and liabilities are moving forward; it might be fun to get some input afterwards from the citizens of Worcester who read Rational Urbanism to get their perspective.

With that relationship between Springfield and Worcester in mind let us continue: Yesterday I was about to head down to Bueno y Sano’s Friday “burrito bar”; Worcester probably has a handful of local burrito places with the menu written out in chalk, clever burrito names, craft brews on tap, all that stuff; we just got one place to agree to opening under a tent for two hours a week at least during the summer! In any case, before leaving I glanced at my phone and, checking Masslive I read the headline of an editorial from The Republican, Springfield’s paper of record:


I’m intrigued, but I assume that the title is a reference to the “slots in a box” casino that Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods are planning to build on the site of an old movie theater to siphon off visitors to MGM’s Springfield casino. I’m sure this does have MGM pretty ticked off, but it was never their revenues that interested me: the movie theaters, the retail, the street improvements, the entertainment, the ice skating, the market rate housing, those are the things that matter to me as a neighbor. But the editorial has nothing to do with that at all.

The editorial is about Worcester. It makes some of the same points that I would about competition between similar cities struggling with similar problems and how Worcester does have some advantages but that Springfield is making enormous headway right now and, if we keep moving forward and don’t rest on our laurels, we can continue to compete. I might have added a few more words about this not necessarily being a zero sum game, but that to should be put aside as we continue down this rabbit hole.

What was the motivation, the concept, the idea, the development which spurred the Editorial Board to write their Knute Rockne speech? Was it news of Worcester’s expanding innovation center, more expansion in the canal district, another local entrepreneur expanding his or her business, yet another market rate housing development coming to the downtown? Nope. I had seen something in banner headlines earlier in the day but couldn’t bring myself to read the article; I’m not a masochist. I can be a bit shallow when it comes to my jealousy; it takes me a while to accept when perceived rivals leap ahead of my community.

Be patient, we’re almost there.

Earlier in the day my wife had asked me about this same Worcester development…it’s called “Sky…something or other” and she had asked me if it was some sort of airwalk or something and I said (remember, I didn’t read the article): “No, it’s some big development, I think it’s a big retail/residential thing. No one is building airwalks anymore. That’s stupid.” But as I read the editorial I clicked on the link and it took me to this:


Yup. It’s an airwalk. An airwalk which, to their credit, the city is only moving forward with because they are being forced to do so because some moron, I assume, promised the developer of a new hotel, obviously another idiot, that the city would do it more than a decade ago. An airwalk. To quote William Whyte: 
 “They have not worked very well. When you take a street away from street level you take away what makes it work. Remove the intricate mixture of people, the pedestrian bustle, the shops, and the traffic, and what you are left with is a corridor. It can be…very bleak…”
This is what the intersection looks like now:


Are these perfectly crafted pedestrian corridors? No, they are not. But way short of $10,000,000 the city could find a way to improve these crossings for pedestrians all the while NOT reverting to the oldestest or worstestest of 60’s and 70’s era gimmicks for revitalizing a downtown.

Here at home we have are own problems. Our local deep thinkers, with all the great things happening in Worcester, find out about the stupidest thing Worcester has done in a generation, and instead of giving us an inspirational exclamation akin to: “They’re  digging in the wrong place!” 


They tell us to keep our heads up because, in spite of this genius move, we can still get to the Well of Souls before our competition! It’s like your best friend sees the chief rival for your promotion shooting heroin in the bathroom and tells you that you still might have a shot at landing the position if you just nail the interview. 

I can’t believe that Worcester only argued that they shouldn’t be made to build the pedestrian bridge because they don’t have the money; they should have gone with the “Your Honor, I know my predecessor said I’d hit myself in the face with a hammer, but…” defense.

There is one last, divinely inspired exclamation point on this whole thing. Somewhere, at the Republican, at Masslive, someone chose a photograph to symbolize Springfield’s readiness to compete in this, the dawning era of the new city! And what photo did they choose? Is it the new Innovation Center? The Maker Space? Silverbrick Lofts? The Park Street Lofts? Some part of the new MGM complex? I know, the newly re-opened Union Station? Well, sort of. They chose this picture:

Yes. It’s a parking garage. Parking. The key to any urban resurgence! Build for the car, prioritize the car, make room for the car: People love it when you do that! I mean, weren’t the 60’s great for cities? What could go wrong?

Read it for the Articles

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Read these two articles (one and two)and peruse this list of car friendly cities. Take a moment or two. Synthesize the information. I start, if I’m being honest, with a tremendous, overwhelming feeling of schadenfreude lightly dusted with some righteous indignation and just a hint of despair. 

Changes in mortality by region due to climate change:


In the depths of the last recession people were obligated by circumstances to stay where they were, drive less, and live in cities. As the worst days of the last economic downturn recede in the collective memory people have resumed the behavior of business as usual. It’s not quite hypocritical of me to chide these people for their preferences, but I should acknowledge that my ability to live as I have lived so inexpensively over the three decades of my adulthood is due to the distaste people have for the environment that I prefer: If people had fled the South and Southwest en masse to live in walkable urban environments in the North and Northeast of the United States then my whole lifestyle model would have gone down the drain.

I’ve read that people feel a rush of endorphins, a kind of pure pleasure, when they reject facts which run contrary to their previously held beliefs; I know I’ve felt it…which of course means I’ve done it. As an evolutionary artifact then, it’s hard not to conclude that it has, paradoxically, some survival value for individuals; perhaps in the same way “faith” in a shaman’s healing ability engaging the placebo effect gave evidence free belief a survival advantage over skepticism in the days before scientific medicine. 

More people move to greater Phoenix in a day than move to Springfield in a year. Phoenix. 119 degree, no water Phoenix. It’s a great place to drive, not that driving is a bad thing…except for that it’s all the bad things: It spreads people out, makes our air unbreathable, it kills us directly and then indirectly, it makes the young, the old, the blind, the poor, many of the disabled, and the mentally impaired prisoners in their environments and even more dependent than they would otherwise be and it does all of this without, in the end, adding to our quality of life. And people not only want to move to places where driving is easier, they are willing to destroy the places they already live in order to make them more amenable to the automobile.


The analogy of cigarette smoking comes to mind. People get some kind of immediate gratification from doing it, but it costs them enormous sums of money, they know that it shortens their lives and makes what lives they do have worse. People move to the south where it’s hot and getting hotter to engage in a lifestyle that makes all the bad things worse instead of staying put, living in places where the costly behaviors of others can potentially improve your quality and length of life, live in ways that lessen your negative impact on the environment, and take advantage of the current potential undervaluation of those places in the short run as cheap to get into and in the long run as places with increasing relative value.

I’m not surprised by any of this. I’m convinced that we’ll change our behaviors precisely at the moment when we have no other choice but to change. When Phoenix and the Deep South literally become unlivable, people will stop living there, but not before. When people are forced to walk instead of drive they’ll choose to walk and not drive. My dad stopped smoking when he died; he was one of those guys who puffed on cigarettes with the oxygen tube wrapped around his head: “I smoked over Germany on a B-24 with an oxygen mask on”. To his credit, he never set fire to himself!

I enjoy walking, not having air conditioning, setting my thermostat to 60 in the winter, growing my own food, harvesting my own rain water…and feeling smug about it. If those things were destroying society and at the same time driving me to live in a place with a bleak climatological future I’m pretty sure I’d still do them and live “there”. How hard is it to not read The Atlantic and not believe in climate change?