NOTE: This post — HERE — has been entirely submerged by the Huffington post. You will not find it on its main page under new posts. The only way it could remain there is if they chose to feature it. You will not find it where I designated it, on the Politics page. Same story. All this within an hour of posting it.
For now if we mean to get out of this crisis.
For later in the manner of Carter’s remorseful “malaise” speech if we do not do these things now.
THE BAD NEWS
1. Say that we cannot build an economy that will work by creating and selling more and more private vehicles. Effective now our policy will be to replace private vehicles by public transportation and other steps noted below.
2. Say that we cannot build an economy by spreading sprawling single dwellings that declined in value because they never were worth what people paid for them. We will be moving toward new human settlements that bode a new and more integral society.
THE GOOD NEWS
By these two decisions we have the basis for the new economy. We will design new human settlements and make them a model for the world that will exist when we have moved beyond the car and sprawl.
To begin to develop the positive talking points, set your speechwriters to reading the following:
Please read Our Crisis Is Not Economic as a starting point.
ALL MY PATTERN LANGUAGE POSTS THUS FAR
It has been said that the President puts little stock in blogs so I am not holding my breath. He is in good company. Huffington Post typically sinks my pattern language posts in record time. And even people I try to explain this to scratch their head. So why do I keep on? Because I know that the economy will not come back on the strengths of a private car and single homes economy. I know that the new economy will take place when we change to a society based on livable, car-free human settlements where the features of urban life are within reach of everyone. Read the links above and think about it.
Oh, and what caused the crisis? A gluttonous economy based on an unfounded belief in growth based on selling more cars and more houses.
You have just read what no administration voice has said thus far and until the President says it we will tank more and more.
Unfortunately few people venture to consider the alternative I propose. It is all there in the links in the article. A human settlement is a community — in my definition one that we would create as a successor to suburbia and urban sprawl. What I have in mind for public transit is far removed brom your description of it. Best, S
1. older people, like me, cannot endure the public transportation route, the walking to the stop, the waiting, the standing, the pushing, the shoving. I did it when i was young, and it can be a fun way to travel, but not for those over 60.
2. I don’t know what you mean by “human settlements,” but you will never rid people of the idea of having their own place, that nobody can kick you out of, that you can fix up and live in as you wish, and that you can pass on to your children, to give them a leg up. “Human settlements” sound like the mixed housing concept or Sun City, God forbid.