|
"I believe
that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal,
before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and
returning him safely to Earth."
–President
Kennedy, May 25, 1961, before a joint session of Congress
Today's pundits
would have you believe that President Kennedy's challenge
to the American public was grandstanding rhetoric to get us
to heat up the Cold War, but to me–an eager young Marine
aviator sitting in the ready room–the gauntlet our Commander-in-Chief
tossed down fairly sizzled in its brilliance. What a sensational
concept–not that I for a moment believed it was possible.
Maybe two decades, I thought, but in 1961, when the best we
could toss into orbit could fit in a suitcase, this was right
off the charts.
Now, I believe,
is the time for us to do something equally mind-boggling:
build cities that really work and that you and I and our
kids can afford and enjoy living, working, and playing in.
Questioning
a System Run Amok
Maybe you just
like living in your truck or car for umpteen hours a week,
windows rolled up and doors locked to keep all the advantages
of urban life at bay. If you're typical of residents
in the LA Basin, Atlanta, DC, Kansas City, Seattle, or 100
other population centers in the US, you are destined to spend
upward of 600 hours cursing the traffic with breath whose
saving grace is that it's probably purer than the air
from which it came, at the same time fighting off dehydration
with water that costs more than the gas you're burning
because you're afraid to drink the stuff from the tap.
While we've
been humping our tails off to be able to enjoy "the good
life," doesn't it seem that the goal has moved farther
and farther to the right–almost to where we have to ask
whether it's even possible to get there from here? While
it's not an acceptable situation, it's one we live
with however much it begs the question, "What do we do
about it?"
I don't pretend
to know the answer–partly because I'm not bright
enough, but also because there is no single answer. Instead,
let me take a different tack and suggest that we need to ask
questions–lots of them–about why we chose to live
the way we do and how this stacks up against our expectations.
For example, why
do people live in Simi Valley, CA, and drive 45 mi.–75
minutes minimum each way in the daily commute–to a job
near the Los Angeles Airport? Or what could possibly possess
a person to take a job in downtown Seattle, knowing full well
that he can't afford a house for his family within an
hour's commute? Or how do you run a successful business
in Atlanta when the people you'd most like to hire don't
feel safe living in the neighborhood? The questions are endless,
but even before you've gone too far, you're struck
by recurring issues: safety, congestion, health, convenience,
opportunity, and so on. So why don't we do something
about them?
Let me offer a
couple of thoughts here. First, urbanization and the spectacular
growth of our cities is a rather recent phenomenon for which
there were few, if any, guideposts to mark the way. Second,
to the extent we've done urban planning, it takes the
form of exclusionary zoning practices more apt to consider
land values than long-range utility. Third (but by no means
last), the diversification of our society along racial, ethnic,
and cultural lines became a major driver in the continued
press toward suburbanization and its resultant–you're
not going to like this–ghettoization.
The point I want
to make here is that the forces we've allowed to shape
the growth and development of our cities have little to do
with their utility or inhabitability. Worse still, these factors
have, in many instances, mutated or migrated over the years,
leaving behind a legacy of legal and territorial entanglements
that are no longer applicable and certainly not fiscally sustainable.
Changing the
Experiment
It's time
to go back and challenge the assumptions on which the myriad
planning decisions and zoning ordinances in our cities are
based. Then we've got to weigh their validity in terms
of what it will take to attract private investment back into
areas blighted not merely by age and neglect, but faulty,
politically motivated, and all too often fraudulently initiated
public programs. If there's a major city in the country
that isn't in crisis with crumbling infrastructure, social
unrest, and inadequate service delivery, please inform my
ignorance, but the time is fast approaching when limited government
budgets will be unable to respond to these deteriorating situations.
The longer we wait to remove the politically enacted impediments
to private investment in our inner cities, the worse the situation
will become. Our cities need rebuilding, so let's set
for ourselves that goal. It's time to convince our elected
representative to get out of the political agenda business
and let the market economy do its job.
Send
John an Email
|
