Posted on 01/30/2007 9:49:12 PM PST by B-Chan
Martha Stewart was not an accident of history. She came along in the late 20th century as a kind of spirit guide to a society whose bad choices and misinvestments had led to the wholesale destruction of any place in America that people called home. And by this I mean the towns, neighborhoods, and city districts of our land, not just the individual dwellings. By the 1980s, America had been converted, with monstrous efficiency, into what I have called a geography of nowhere, a panorama of identical highway strips, malls, big box warehouses, fried food out-parcels, and free parking wastelands -- all serving the endless new subdivision pods of single family houses. The ultimate result was a landscape full of places no longer worth caring about...
...From the social point-of-view, it turned out that housing pods and highway strips lined with strip malls were a poor substitute for main street towns or walkable neighborhoods. Under the insane dictates of single-use zoning, each individual was trapped in a car for hours each day, often in vexing traffic with other isolated individuals, and also often in the company of little children with a low tolerance to being trapped and vexed. Older children lacking drivers' licenses lost access to other social realms beyond the subdivision of houses...
The case was not much better for the adults. By the 1980s, both parents had to be out of the house generating income to pay the mortgage and especially to pay for the multiple cars needed to service the family headquarters. Mom went to work not because Betty Friedan said that actuarial science was more fun than managing a house, but because wages were stagnant and Dad could no longer make the family's ends meet. Out of this sad and desperate circumstance, Martha Stewart arose...
(Excerpt) Read more at kunstler.com ...
While I do not agree with Mr. Kunstler on many issues, he is correct about the damage created by the way our society has been organized and run over the past century or so. Yes, we are richer in terms of material goods than any human beings have ever been — but at what cost?
Mr. Kunstler doesn not call himself a conservative, but in his writings he defends the things conservatives are supposed to defend: traditional communities, traditional esthetics, and the traditional family structure. We conservatives would do well to remember that real conservatism isn't primarily about free markets or low taxes — it is about protecting and preserving these things.
Thank you. Many is the time I've been castigated on this forum for saying that I treasure the traditions and values of the past in this country and do not favor the hysterical desire to put a Pizza Hut on every street corner while bulldozing historic lands and buildings. Kunstler's analysis of the Martha and shelter magazine phenomenon is accurate.
What B.S.!
No one is forcing people to live in the suburbs. Well, except for the do-gooder urban renewalists of the late '50s and '60s who destroyed city neighborhoods in the name of progress.
And what an elitist 'tude: "subdivision pods of single family houses". So where would he have us live? Overpriced tiny apartments in the city? It's the cities that aren't livable, not the suburbs. People are moving out of the Northeast to the South and the West.
More incorrect factoids: "By the 1980s, both parents had to be out of the house generating income to pay the mortgage and especially to pay for the multiple cars needed to service the family headquarters. Mom went to work not because Betty Friedan said that actuarial science was more fun than managing a house, but because wages were stagnant and Dad could no longer make the family's ends meet. "
Wrong! Both parents were working to pay TAXES, and because too many women actually believed Betty Friedan and her ilk.
This is a really confused conglomeration of Martha Stewart bashing and the-middle-class-really-doesn't-know-what's-good-for-them urban sprawl sermon.
Conservative it ain't.
People took off for the suburbs when the cities were still good places to live. Why? There's still a difference between the suburbs built 100 years ago (generally walkable towns on train or trolley lines), 50 years ago (more dependent on the car but still walkable) and the last 20 years (no commercial center, no real walking, big stores on highways.)
The lure of your own piece of green land is strong. But I think I would be willing to trade the acre I have now for the 1/3 acre I grew up on for a more cohesive community.
My dream city: Portland, OR as Beverly Cleary described it in her Beezus and Ramona books. Children everywhere, with enough green to play on, houses close enough so you knew your neighbors, paper routes for the children, school, store, library, playground, barbershop, all in a short walk. Moms watch out for each other's children. Dads work not too far away. A nine-year old going to a program at the library and leaving her four-year old sister outside to play in the playground, and it's safe! Responsible adults approve. Some one who was there told me, yes the fifties really were like that, and not just in Portland.
And then one day, they decide to drive to the big new supermarket, instead of the local grocery...
The English section of Montreal was like that in physical set-up in the early 70s, but there were hints of danger creeping in, some along racial lines, unfortunately.
***Conservative it ain't.***
I read as far as where he said that he likes Obama and John Edwards for president. Between that and his scare tactics, I'd say he's anti-American.
Agreed. I live in a small, 100-year-old Victorian house in an historic urban neighborhood, so I understand very well the importance of preserving historic architecture and the charm of traditional housing arrangements.
But.
The idea that the suburbs were pushed on the unsuspecting sheeple by Big Builda is preposterous. The reason it's positive to promote home ownership by as many people as possible is that when people own a piece of their neighborhood, they are more apt to protect their investment by keeping the neighborhood nice. And most of the people I know who live in the "big box" suburbs would consider living in the city if it weren't for bad city schools and onerous city taxes.
Kunstler is certainly worth reading. His view of city planning and its energy dependencies need to be taken seriously. Even if his Peak Oil apocalypse proves to be a drastic exaggeration, there is so much at stake in funding the oil barons of the middle east that our car culture has grave ramifications for national security and foreign policy.
BS it is!
We mustn't forget Jimmuh Cahtah screwed up the economy so well in the late 70's that it took both Mom and Pop working to pay the high taxes much less to make ends meet.
Thank God for Ronald Reagan. We could use him again today.
...who really supports "affirmative action" with big money and lots of lawyers.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1775624/posts?page=12#12
And Martha Stewart isn't anywhere near conservative.
You are behind the times. In my area they are knocking down Pizza Huts to put up Starbucks!
For 10 years, I lived across the street from a house I had lived in as a child in the 1950s.
My favorite part of living there was on Election Days, when I would walk a number of blocks to the polling place, which was my former elementary school for part of my life.
I took the same route I had walked in the 4th grade, which was really a fun thing to do. I walked it all the time for exercise, but going to vote was especially gratifying in that kind of atmosphere.
We did something similar. Our house is a 1952 perimeter-wall brick three-bedroom of 1300 square feet including converted garage, second bathroom, and toolroom. It is located less than one mile from the center of our city in an old neighborhood full of oak trees. We have the city public high school, a small convenience store, several restaurants, an ethnic market, a pharmacy, a shopping center, and the best pizza place in town within an easy ten minute walk. A major university of the state system lies one mile to the north, and downtown (city hall, public library, art museum, and stage theater) is about one-half mile beyond that. Our city's large Vietnamese neighborhood lies immediately to our south, with working-class neighborhoods to our east and the country club (and associated neighborhood) to our west. The Catholic parochial school our son will attend is within walking distance as well, and its bells can be heard all over town.
Now if only we had streetcars...
I've never thought twice about living in some godforsaken suburb. We have everything we need and nothing we don't here in the heart of the city -- and at less than a third of the price of one of those slab-foundation Celotex nightmare houses they're slapping up on the edge of town. Houses like mine were built for families, built to to last; my 1950s house still looks great after 65 years. Those new mini-mansions and fake Georgians the developers are throwing together are built to sell, not to last; they will crack and crumble in half that time.
Man is an urban creature. The countryside should be left to plants and animals and those that tend to them.
Cooper St. is bad enough and you want to take the turn lane out and put a trolley in? A-town's plan is to get rid of the center turn lane and put a curbed median in. I am sorry but Arlington is the poster child of big suburb. That may change when all the vacant residential land is developed here in the next year or so. At that point the only way Arlington can grow is upwards. I think the way Fort Worth has done things is the best model.
Not much of a choice.
I moved from the suburban cesspool over 27 years ago to 25 blissful acres in the mountains, no regrets.
But it's not for everybody.
BUMP
I like the idea of having a low maintance place in the city and a chunk of Earth an hour or two out. My plan is to get a condo or townhome for a city home and eventually get 10-40 acres out in Palo Pinto.
Yes, but what people like or consider aesthetically pleasing changes over time. Why do people or towns have to accept one role model? Kunstler likes a certain kind of city or town. Fine. Why do we have accept his determination on what looks good and what doesn't? I'm not even saying that I disagree with Kunstler on what is aesthetically pleasing, but who made him Commissar of Aesthetics? The fact is many libs don't like growth. They'd like everyone to live in tiny boxes in huge cities with no automobiles.
The guy doesn't read anything like conservative to me. Very telling that the real title of his page is Clusterf _ _ _ Nation.
crape myrtle :)
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