> I d not know about your planet, but here in Baltimore the "light rail"
> is
> called by suburbanites the "dark rail" - a stupid racist joke on the
> fact
> that public transit in this area is used almost exclusively by Black
> folk
> (and a few white crackpots like myself).
That would be rather unusual among U.S. cities. Public transit in Philly is used by people of all skin colors (some of which might be hard to classify by the standard categories :-) ). As it is, by my experience, in New York, Boston, and Chicago.
> The main reason why suburbanization took over the US but not Europe is
> population density - the US has population density 31 persons per
> square
> kilometer, the UK has eight (sic!) times that much (246 persons per sq
> km),
> France - 110/sq km, Germany - 231 sq/km (see:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Population_density#List_of_countries_and_their_
> population_densities). So unless the UK is already shipping its
> subjects to
> the moon or its fox hunters to Russia (pop. density 8.5 persons per
> sq. km)
> - I am not holding my breath to see it becoming like the US in this
> respect
> any time soon.
There are parts of the U.S. that would be hard to develop public transit in, for sure. As someone used to East-Coast densities, my experience when I first drove cross-country and got to the West was breath-taking -- I could travel all day and hardly come across anyone. But I think that the reasons why individuals chose to live in various parts of the country with various population densities, cultural flavors, etc., are rather complex, and can't be easily summarized.
I think a lot of Europeans and other non-Americans who have never been to the U.S., or if they have, came only for short junkets, greatly underestimate the differences between the various parts of the country. Yes, they can see McDonald's and other chains everywhere, but that is a rather superficial level of the nation's culture. Anyone who stays for any length of time and gets to know the country well (not to mention those of us who have lived here all our lives) soon finds that there are many varieties of Americans, from those who would never live anywhere but Manhattan, to those similarly attached to Montana, or to Florida (who refuse to go anywhere else although they are repeatedly wiped out by hurricanes). Each of these varieties thinks the others are completely crazy, and simple economic and other material factors usually don't explain their preferences.
> There is a certain tendency, particularly visible on the Left, to
> explain
> every aspect of human behavior in determinist terms, full of larger
> than-life forces tossing helpless human monads around.
Right.
> A more accurate picture is the sheepish
> following trends - they do what everyone else does and avoid what
> everyone
> else avoids not because there is any intrinsic benefit to them, but
> because
> they want to be just like everyone, popular and loved.
If you are not part of one of these groups -- city lovers, suburb lovers, wide open sky lovers, even -- Lordy help us -- Florida lovers,* you will assume that the groups you don't belong to are motivated by something like sheep-like conformism. Whereas *your* group, of course, is only exercising its common sense.
*(Happened to be watching a late-night movie last night and had to laugh out loud: one of the commercials was for Florida real estate, with an extremely loud used-car-salesman type as the main character, accompanied by smiling folks who had already bought his pitch, allegedly, and were gushing about what a great time they were having. A rather strange time to be showing that commercial, I thought, with the fourth hurricane in a month traipsing up the state at that very moment. But then, I'm not a member of the "Florida is the greatest place on earth" tribe. I prefer to live in an area where the worst climatological problems are occasional flooded streets, occasional big snowfalls one has to dig out of, and muggy summers.)
> There are no public places in the burbs when people can get together,
> no viable
> communities, nobody knows anyobody or for that matter gives a shit
> what's
> going on the other side of his property line. The very architecture
> of a
> typical suburban home whose most salient feature is the garage door
> tells
> everyone to stay off.
Well, if you don't hang around the VFW halls and churches, you don't have anywhere to get together, no. And, OTOH, city people generally hardly know anyone else in their apartment building or on their block either, in my experience.
> Loneliness and a frantic desire to be loved and popular permeate the
> suburban life in the US, and prompt people to engage in various
> bandwagon
> jumping and herd following activities - from organized religion, to
> assorted
> cretinous associations and "lodges," to to slavish following of fashion
> trends, and to endless popularity contests. Americans may think of
> themselves as the nation of "individualist" - but that "individualism"
> is
> really a window-dressing for loneliness and alienation and a cover up
> for
> group think and herd following behavior.
Yes, but don't human beings in general form groups they feel closely attached to? I don't know that Americans do that more than anyone else.
> That partly explains the homogenous, pulp-like character of American
> culture. The US is perhaps the only country on earth where you can get
> on a
> plane, fly for six hours, get off and face the same fodder of pulped
> culture, fashion, life styles, habits and tastes.
As I argued above, American culture only appears that way to outsiders. Foreigners also say that a lot about the Japanese, for example. "Ha! What mindless conformists!" But if you get to know the culture reasonably well, you can see that there is plenty of diversity there.
For some reason, many Europeans tend to think that American culture is more transparent and easier for them to penetrate at a glance than an Asian culture, such as the Japanese culture, which seems "exotic" and "mysterious." Probably, these Europeans are deceived by the fact that so many Americans' families migrated originally from European countries, giving them a superficial similarity to the folks from the Old Countries. And of course Europeans are much more familiar with English than with "exotic" Asian languages. In reality, American culture is about as "exotic" to Europeans as is Japanese or Chinese or Korean culture, but they are just not as aware of it. (Witness, for example, the constant surprise that Europeans express at the prominence of religion in U.S. culture, which always baffles them, though Americans understand it perfectly well -- even if they themselves might be atheists and detest it.)
> What does it have to do with suburbanization and public transit? The
> suburbs and cars seemed to be the ideal solution for "big city
> alienation" -
> offering an illusion of a small town togetherness, the car offering the
> illusion of freedom, connectedness (mobility), and safety.
I doubt this theory rather strongly. The reason suburbanites drive so much is simply that public transit is completely impractical where they live -- and they just prefer to live there, for (as I said above) a number of complex reasons.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt