>How superior we all are to those loathsome suburbanites!
>They cower in their picket-fence redoubts, festering with race prejudice.
>We are at ease in the inner city, they dread being 'mugged'.
>They consume vast resources with their SUVs and one-car commuting.
>We step nimbly from urban pad to office, or cycle.
>They are mired in a myth of frontiersman independence.
>We celebrate New Deal cities, along with Jane Jacobs.
>
>But, honestly, this is just so much anti-working class snobbery:
>urbane mandarins masquerading as the underdogs.
>Most Americans, like most Britons, live in the suburbs.
>Hate the suburbanites - hate the majority of the country.
>You think that the suburbanites are living out a redundant fantasy?
>One could just as easily say that it is the urban centres that are
>cleaving to a 19C. model of social organistion.
>
>You are surprised that suburbanites are ill at ease in the City.
>But how much more ill at ease are you in the suburbs?
>You think it is race prejudice that drives people away from the cities.
>I think it is a prejudice against the mass that leads urban snobs to dump
>on the suburbs.
>Leftists who should know better find themselves alienated from their
>fellow men and women.
>Instead of asking what is wrong with the left's outlook that sees itself
>so isolated,
>they ask what's wrong with the people that they don't like us.
>And here's a ready-made answer: they are the 'white flight', suburban
>enemies of the environment.
>
>And don't cities consume resources?
>Richard Rogers, head of the UK Urban Task Force says cities are
>'the major destroyer of the ecosystem and the greatest threat to mankind's
>survival on the planet' and
>'Cities are producing disastrous social instability that is further
>driving environmental decline'
>The imminent exhaustion of natural resources is an article of faith for
>the critics.
>But the growth of the suburbs is a pointed demonstration that on the
>contrary, natural resources are readily available.
>Land, gasoline, building materials all dedicated to enhancing people's
>environment.
>Once that would have been something that the left would have supported.
>Now they prefer to cast themselves as latter-day Tsar's refusing Bread and
>Land to the masses.
>
> James Heartfield
This is all well and good but it does nothing to further our understanding of "the problem" as concerns the environment and sustainability. If some people wish for a dismantling of the suburbs for the reasons you say it is not something progressives should embrace. The issue of the sustainability of the suburbs is completely ignored here. You do not believe this hypothesis and that is your choice but that does not give you the right to place the motives of those scientists and others who believe climate change under the umbrella of classist snobbery. I have lived in both the suburbs and the city and have my likes and dislikes with both. The issue of whether it is desirable to align our society the way it currently is has more subtext than "urbane mandarins" with prejudices against working class people. The suburbs are occupied by non-working class people too and cities are filled with blue-collar workers. Race in all likelihood plays a bigger part than class. If you have evidence to support your claim I, and probably others, would be interested in reading it. Let us be clear that all suburbs are not created equal. Some are more efficient than others. Sprawl that consumes farmland while populations continue to grow cannot be considered good planning by anyone. Only extreme free-marketeers would embrace the pace and direction most growth in living space now takes in the US. I am not familiar enough with the UK's sprawl issues to comment on it. Perhaps James can let us know his feelings concerning the pace and direction of sprawl there? The land you speak of as "retired" from farm use is overwhelmingly done so because of unrealistic real estate prices forcing it out not any real need reduction in farmland. You state in response to Dwayne that what matters is what people want in their living arrangements, I am paraphrasing, correct me if I have done so poorly. What matters more is whether what can want can be provided to all who want it and if not how to distribute what is available to everyone fairly. You think that a two car garage filled with SUV might attached to a house in the 'burbs is going to be available to everyone who wants it and should be just because they want it. It isn't possible in all probability and rushing headlong to try to make it happen is a mistake. On that note a point previously made by me apparently needs clarification. I did not say or imply that there were barriers to China attaining the lifestyle of the US only that there are barriers to maintaining it. This is just as true for maintaining it anywhere though. There is nothing xenophobic about such a comment which should be obvious. Your understanding that the IPCC's models's predictions had proven wide of the mark is in error. Please forward any information that you may have read to the contrary. ALL criticisms of the IPCC's modeling that I have seen have been adequately refuted but it is highly unlikely that I have read them all. You made the comment in another post that preventing growth increases the probability for negative outcomes and I agree up to a point. We certainly have room for continued growth just not of the unplanned and wasteful variety that has so far characterized the late 20th century overwhelmingly in the US. The auto isn't bad but rather how wastefully we build and use it that needs serious reconsideration. I too believe that technology has enhanced out lives and is necessary for further growth. That is not the same thing as a blind acceptance of the "fact" that whatever humankind can do to our environment our ingenuity can repair. That level of faith in technology is not much different than a religion. A point that has been debated here in the past and is well covered ground. I have also not asked for your sympathy nor have a said anything about how difficult or easy my life is in the US. Reread what I wrote and see how childish that snide comment is. Not at all called for or in the spirit of this list. The argument that ones persons brand of suffering should and can be compared to anothers is a foolish game I will not participate in. What I said was that since I reside in the country with the greatest access to natural resources and technology and that place has not even seen fit to provide health care for it's own citizens or any safety net worth commenting on at all it is part of what leads me to a pessimistic outlook. If the wealthiest country with the technology to do so cannot direct it's growth in a more positive manner what hope is there for another country with less resources and less time to make the transition? You have quite selectively cited and seriously misrepresented poor Richard Rogers of the Urban Task Force. In "The Architectural Review" he is quoted as saying the Urban Task Force's report on urban regeneration calls for an increase in living densities from 200 dwellings per hectare to 400. It calls for regeneration led by design (he is an architect after all) but that it must be accompanied by increased investment in health, education and social services. He also calls for a reduction in land-take (sprawl) and derides the lack of structure in green-field development. All pretty standard stuff and most will be ignored in all probability but he is not the anti-city champion of suburb sprawl that you seem to be trying to make him. His complaint of cities is their bad use of space and neglect of human elements but he is, in his own words, "primarily about increasing density in urban areas". So far the only person who has said anything about the "imminent exhaustion of natural resources" is you above. Everyone else on this list seems to put it at least 60 years down the road. The fact that we have the resources to build suburbs is not proof that we will continue to as you also contend above. None of these are real arguments. They are just articles of faith that what we have now and had 20 years ago we will continue to have for as long as we wish. Contrary to your position everyone who believes that something needs to be done to change the pace and wastefulness of current growth and consumption patters does not believe the sky is falling and that humankind is doomed. I will admit to a pessimistic outlook but I do not believe that we have passed some threshold that dooms humankind. I do however know that humans are slow to change and feel that this slowness to change structurally will be harmful in the long run with concerns for environmental matters. If we do not begin planning and implementing for that change in the near future I fear the inertia of the current society will be a barrier to change that may cause some serious challenges to us. Since it is almost always the poor and powerless who suffer disproportionately I would think progressives would wish to avoid that. Some refuse to believe and by their refusal to do so will help create the conditions they aspire to overcome.
John Thornton P.S. I have a faster car than Dwayne!