The New Urbanism
Run or the city will eat you. By this I mean that statistically, it’s only a matter of time before a city swallows you up. Whether you jump headlong into the maw or stay put and get engulfed by sprawl is up to you, but chances are you’re going to be in the thick of urban life at some point in the next 80 years or so. According to the UNPF’s bank of inexhaustible statistics, by the end of 2008, at least half of the world’s population will be urban-dwelling; and by 2030 the urban populations in Africa and Asia will have doubled. That’s a lot of people getting nom nom nom’d by cities. Although over 50% of present and future urban environments are comprised of modest sub-500,000 settlements and not mega-cities (10 million or more), the bottom line is obvious: you’re going to have a lot of neighbors. Soon. Brace.
Before I continue, let me offer the following disclaimers. Firstly, neither I nor the aforementioned BIE is saying that complete urbanization is inevitable. There will always be rolling green hills somewhere; complete with a tiny shack filled with unfriendly dogs and some old grump who wants you off his/her property. The takeaway from the BIE is that statistically, life will be more urban than not, and soon. Secondly, as you read on the urge to label me some sort of pinko liberal socialist may be somewhat overwhelming, so perhaps some personal back story is in order, to frame my manifesto in a context that will hopefully make it look more humanist than socialist.
I grew up in the middle of one of America’s best-forgotten sub-500,000 cities (ever seen The Wire?), I spent about half of my life between 7 and 13 living in various European cities and almost a year (cumulatively) living in the mega-cities of Japan as an undergraduate and then graduate student. On the home front, I spent the majority of the last decade living in the rural northeast and have settled in Brooklyn for the last four and a half years. So despite some Russian heritage and what you’re about to read, I’m no pinko. I’m a card-carrying democracy-loving citizen, patriot, capitalist and happy taxpayer. While I typically have virtually no issues with whatever people believe about anything, given my experiences in crowded areas I do take forceful exception to any one person or faction steamrolling their beliefs/desires/wants right across the face of another. So along these lines, this article is a plea and a call to arms for people to get their compassion on and their heads out of the asses. Current and future city-dwellers in cities of all sizes and stages of development, it’s time to reboot how we deal with each other; and this is not optional – it’s the only way this global urbanization trend is going to work.
If you live in a city, you already know what some of the more obvious social problems are - there’s a good chance they nudge (or shove) you one step closer to losing your cool every single day. You’re waiting patiently in traffic and some jackass goes screaming down the breakdown line to cut onto the onramp, causing an accident or traffic snarl. Your train pulls into the station and not only do you have to shove your way past the guy leaning on the door to get out, but you also get body-slammed head-on by some lady who honestly thinks fighting a torrent of exiting commuters is better than waiting for them to step out first. These misconceptions about acceptable use of shared space pale in significance compared to how we regard individual rights, race and class – not to mention how consumers and citizens are treated by companies and elected political bodies. All selfish behavior, from the dickhead on the train who won’t step out of the door to let people on, to the Governor who f--ks hookers, has no place in the hyper-urban future, and if we permit ourselves to operate in such a mode, we’ll be doomed to a pretty bleak and unpleasant day-to-day life for the rest of our existence.
The simple truth is this: the future is cooperative. It has to be. Insular, compartmentalized micro-cliques only exaggerate differences and increase tensions until they boil over, the results of which are often bloody and unpleasant and would be exacerbated by the inevitable overcrowding of future cities. We may differ wildly by race, culture, creed, language, favorite sports team, economic class, and on and on, but humanity as a collective will need to take a step back and just get over it. A new approach to community living and interpersonal relations is required, both to oil the urban machine into a fluid and dynamic mode of operation – and then to future-proof it.
Some would probably call what I’m writing about a variant of modern humanism, and it is similar in places, with a few key differences. First, we are talking about a strictly human agenda here – some humanists would severely limit our interactions with animal species, claiming that our utilitarian treatment of fauna amounts to speciesism. I find such thinking absurd; in every ecosystem lacking humans all organisms use/rely/consume each other, and we are well within our biological rights to do the same, though we must exercise considerable restraint with respect to consumption (more on this later). Additionally, the laidback, optimistic attitude typical of humanists is a luxury that works great for stoned rural hippies but to be frank, we urbanites need fire under our asses. So it’s time to get scared shitless – your water supply is dwindling, there are more and more people competing for your food and your seat on the subway and the population shows no signs of decreasing. This is realistic impetus for radical transformation, because I don’t know about you but it’s fear of worsening the status quo that drives me. There are real goals to be met here; it ain’t quite humanism, but rather a humanistic approach to living in the future home of the majority of the world’s population. Let’s call it New Urbanism.
There are three facets of city life (be it micro, median, or mega-urban) that require radical re-envisioning for our urban future: social structure, underlying economic infrastructure and environmental impact. Ready for some unrealistic-sounding ideas? Good. Again, a disclaimer: I am not a hippie, I’m a lifelong city kid, so these come from a lifetime of observation and frustration with the state of urban affairs. It’s also a good time to briefly mention Thomas Malthus, an economist who greatly influenced Darwin’s thinking; he made the point that unchecked urban population growth would eventually lead to a depletion of resources, and a subsequent struggle for existence, with vice (murder, suicide, general nastiness) being a potential major factor in limiting excessive population growth. He’s been correct thus far, so to prevent our struggle from becoming even more perilous, it’s clear that we need to radically reassign ourselves new identities as urbanites.
Social structure
The social dogma of Urbanism is pretty simple: worry about how everyone around you is doing, and you get taken care of in return. This takes on a new level of importance in an über-crowded and diverse environment. The trickiest part of this whole pitch: how do you talk a lifelong asshole into becoming a compassionate member of his community? Similarly, how do you get a devout follower of a religion that emphasizes a line between “us” and “them,” to realize the inherent hypocrisy (i.e. looking down on / trying to convert others while demanding that their Constitutional rights to space, freedom and tax benefits be respected by the same “them” group)? How do you get people in the subway to NOT stop dead in their tracks at the top of the escalator? How do you convince a homophobe to stop hating with their words / fists /sharpie? It’ll take a lot of smart people, a lot of community leaders and a shitload of role models. But it must start with the widespread realization that when you’re living on top of hundreds of thousands of people, starting beef with any one of them is not an option. Here’s why: it hurts you individually. This may happen immediately (you get nasty on someone that gets knifey on you in return), it may be less direct (you get nasty on someone from some other group, which then gets nasty on someone close to you), or it could even be seemingly permanent (Gaza, anyone?). The point is that taking any action in a social context with where your own interests come at the expense of another, will always create negative feedback .
You can still get exactly what you want with very little compromise, but here’s the rub: don’t think about yourself. Let the needs of those around you dictate the actions you take to achieve your goals. I know it sounds like hippy bullshit, but it’s how I make my living (thank you very much), and the rewards come paid back in full. Behave on the subway in the morning and you create a more pleasant experience for everyone around you, which makes your commute more pleasurable. Stop arbitrarily hating a particular group of people and over time they’ll stop hating you back. Note the things that piss you off and go out of your way to avoid doing them. Stupidly simplistic but effective. And how do you get this across to people who are stubborn, self-engaged and enjoying being belligerent? I offer two ideas to get things started: be a role model yourself and leave the more complicated stuff up to smarter people.
Economic infrastructure
The economics of New Urbanism are also straightforward, but unlike the social component, a little easier to implement: keep it simple, keep it cheap, keep it local. Resources (in the ecological sense, i.e. any factor necessary for day-to-day life) are limited in urban settings. Consuming any resource (buying goods, using electricity, running the tap) kicks off a chain reaction of subsequent fiscal cost (hauling more trash, consuming more fuel, etc). Reducing consumption up front will make everyone happy at all steps in the chain. There’s much money to be saved by instituting self-enforced consumer minimalism. Don’t buy what you don’t need (this is hard – people like things), reuse what you already have (no more plastic bags or paper napkins, people!) and find a home for your trash (don’t just throw away your old non-HD TV, someone would love to use it – so find them!). The amount of waste an individual can generate in a city from simple daily business, is phenomenal, since superfluous packaging, fliers, pointless free crap and other urban detritus find their way to our hands with amazing efficiency. Avoid accumulation and you’ll create less of a mess for others to clean up, haul away, and dump somewhere, all at a substantial cost. Furthermore, the more we refuse unneeded crap, the more local businesses will cut back on obtaining it in the first place, saving them money too. Sure, Unneededcrap Co. will take a hit on share prices but that’s what they get for building their business model on making superfluous junk.
But, you say, people in cities love to shop, love to eat, love to splurge, so how is this feasible? These habits can be left mostly intact - the issue is sourcing quality goods and services while minimizing the collateral damage they inflict. Inner cities are viable and lucrative manufacturing/industrial centers; keeping economies local as cities grow in size will benefit the whole community in the same fashion as the aforementioned pay-it-forward social conduct model. Buy local for an extra buck, give a local driver, manufacturer, retailer and city/state government an economic boost, providing more funds for your city’s schools, parks, streets, cops, etc. Food co-ops, manufacturing co-ops, small business networks – there is a baffling void in urban economies that ought be filled by a local and interwoven framework of economic relationships which minimize fiscal waste, reward good consumer habits and rely on local industries wherever possible. Employ more locals, locals have more to spend, locals will be willing to buy local for a little more if the benefits are palpable and ongoing.
Environmental impact
The final but most pressing issue of New Urbanism would be its requirement that we address the environmental impact of city life. In short, it’s currently catastrophic, though more favorable than living in sparsely populated rural areas. Millions of humans living and crapping and working and consuming in a densely-populated area has an incredible and markedly negative impact on local ecology. I’m not talking about global warming or carbon emissions here, I’m talking about waste in all other forms. If the aforementioned urbanization of the developing world and continued urban expansion of the western world is to continue, we absolutely cannot continue consuming materials at our current rate. There are two and a half reasons for this: material, energetic and economic (the half reason, not explored below since it just had its own bit above).
Material is straightforward. Seen the price of copper lately? We’re running out. Too bad we need it to make anything that runs on electricity. Energetic waste isn’t a bad thing in and of itself (leaving the lights on while you’re out doesn’t kill any bunnies). However, the collateral damage is considerable (surprise (!) your energy comes from burning coal, which pollutes the air, kills miners during harvesting and requires mountains to be leveled. So leaving the light on did kill a bunny after all!). The economics of this situation lead to material and energetic conservation, since what I’m about to propose would require industry, innovation, investment, and all those other capital-generating feel good words that stock brokers love to hear.
First off, New Urbanism’s war song must be written to include an entire verse (and maybe part of the chorus too) about needless waste. Stupid packaging (plastic bagged item inside blister pack inside shrink-wrapped cardboard box?), pointless trash generation (soda from the bodega always includes a straw, a fistful of napkins and a plastic bag… WHY?) and recycling of most materials are both costly energy sucks that need to be stopped. Recycling isn’t the answer. Long-term reuse is a big step in the right direction. There is an individual requirement to scale waaaay back on everything around what you’re buying, and just get what you paid for – then to take care of what you paid for, use it to death and dispose of it appropriately. Similarly, city governments need to take appropriate and realistic measures to minimize waste: ban plastic bags, legislate to reduce difficult to recycle or dispose of materials, offer incentives to reuse or donate old functional items, regulate what sorts of materials are used for packaging and other instant disposables (remember refundable glass milk bottles?) and recycle only limited resources efficiently. Ensuring that the flow of manufactured materials ends up largely in our hands and takes its sweet time getting to our landfills (if ever), will make urban environments not only more sustainable over the long run but possible in the first place.
While reducing material waste requires retrofitting our habits, energetic waste requires us to undergo a complete, costly and unavoidable retrofit of our entire infrastructure. But cost shouldn’t be prohibitive here, as it can be recouped on future savings more rapidly than you’d think. Our current buildings piss away energy (and therefore money) with ancient and inefficient oil heating that could run on a fraction of the fuel with an update. Not only does this create a potent source of greenhouse gases (an estimated ~50% of US carbon emissions comes from buildings), but inefficient, kilowatt-sucking appliances and infrastructure also take a toll (remember the woeful tale of the bunny and the coal-fired power plant). Thermal energy is also a waste: cities are hot by their own design, generating heat which isn’t dissipated, causing us to all crank our AC units even higher. Green roofs (building-top vegetation) can dramatically alter a city’s thermal profile and urban solar micro-grids are a long-overdue must. So the formula is the same: less used, less produced, maximum recaptured, for both our material and energetic needs.
The future will be urban - and I’m fully aware of how ambitious the aims laid out here are but I don’t care – I consider them non-optional. I will personally buy each and every one of the estimated 4.5 billion city dwellers of the future a beer if everything I’ve mentioned that seems like pie-in-the-sky futuristic bullshit, doesn’t get implemented at some point over the next 100 years (Muslims and Mormons are welcome to choose a non-alcoholic alternative, perhaps a Slurm?). But screw 100 years – I won’t be around that long. We need to get cracking yesterday, since energy prices, heating oil prices, rent prices and food prices are already way up, inter-faction tensions are already at an apex, global supply-chained tomatoes are giving us Salmonella and there’s too much trash (we made a new landmass the size of Texas in the middle of the ocean, ya heard?). Our neighborhoods, our cities, our cultures and our world have never been as connected as they are today - so when we all shape up and do right by each other through social, economic and environmental practices, becoming vigilant stewards of our shared and beloved cities, the future can be a bright one indeed.
Okay, that last line was definitely some sunny hippie bullshit, but I wanted to go out on a positive note. These cities are our homes and our future, people. It’s time to do it right.
