Ten Best Recent Tweets — 15 December 2009 Annotated

December 15, 2009 at 9:02 am (pattern language, politics, theology)

See all tweets at http://twitter.com/stephencrose

http://bit.ly/7EwE0X Nate Silver on Nuking The Filibuster (intelligent analysis)

Al Qaeda #2 blasts Obama — where is #1? http://bit.ly/4wHu0H (No one knows if he’s dead or alive. How much do we need an enemy to know we are alive?)

Most economic clarity on Jon Stewart — same risks exist as sunk us. (VIDEO:  Stewart’s own curiosity is what drives this show, making out anchors and commentators look like dolts much of the time.)

Talent and Character — How They Relate on The Spectrum of Consciousness http://bit.ly/8Gesll (This is a simple statement that everyone who is a parent or is in an iffy relationship ought to read and understand.)

Vietnam Author on Why Obama May Get Things Right http://bit.ly/83rJao (AfPak:  Barack read his book and he may have read Barack’s mind.)

Statements of Jesus ranked as authentic by Jesus Seminar online with Verses noted http://bit.ly/8N1YSC (In a fast-secularizing world where fundamentalist extremes are the tail wagging the dog,  it makes sense to know what Jesus most probably had in mind.)

Loaning Govt. $$ to car designers is like subsidizing horse feed in 1890. http://bit.ly/67tdEm (I keep reminding myself that we will have more oil crises and say more mea culpas and really do little to actually solve our energy crisis. Why? Because we still buy into the oil economy which requires energy-wasting metrosprawl and endless private automobiles.)

Khartoum’s Impunity Has Neither Shame Nor End http://bit.ly/6Z8l70 (Sudan’s government will be the death of us all until we realize that impunity is its second name.)

Rethinking secularism: The power of religion in the public sphere http://bit.ly/7AKMBr

Digby on wingnuts phony ACORN campaign http://bit.ly/6h0fxh

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Components of New Settlements — One: Parameters 1

November 25, 2009 at 10:02 am (pattern language, politics)
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A parameter is not a component, but this is the first post in an effort to use words to describe what I have clearly in my mind relating to the creation of new settlements.  Here I simply want to begin noting parameters of such settlements.

1. They will contain within their bounds most if not all the elements of ecological  sustainability. Their own recycling capacity for all or most waste. Collection and distribution and recycling of water. It is important to understand that we are talking about creating duplicable elements that could be used in many settlements.

2. They will have no private automobiles and trucks within their borders. Most transportation will be pedestrian with all mechanized transportation limited to public and service vehicles. Communities will be designed to make access to private vehicles possible only outside of their boundaries. Important that this not be seen as a complete rejection of private vehicles. They will have a place, but they will not dictate design as they now do.

More parameters will be discussed in future posts, setting the stage for a discussion of actual components.. In essence, the parameters will be suggestive of the components.

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Christopher Alexander Is Making More Sense Every Day

October 10, 2009 at 9:20 am (pattern language, politics)
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I used to think that Christopher Alexander’s first pattern, the one that underlies all, was the height of idealism, impractical, dispensable.

But it is looking smarter day by day.

Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language I Independent Regions

What I find persuasive is the idea that we cannot really have a sustainable global economy unless our communities or human settlements are themselves sustainable. This means that they must be large enough and concentrated enough to have viable economies.

The problem with metrosprawl is that everything that relates to viable economy is miles away and requires multiple automobiles. This wastes resources, depletes wallets and defeats sustainability.

But a mixed usage settlement that is techno-savvy and green at the same time has the capacity to have its own cultural base, its own shopping, its pedestrian accesses.

Where I would differ from Alexander would be on coordinating the sizes. It seems to me an ideal size for a sustainable settlement shades toward 10,000 with nodes that would be larger. Any sort of representation would need to be calibrated to populations I feel. Otherwise we would end up with the Olympia Snowe problem. Disproportionate power to representatives of low pop areas.

We may never move beyond nations, though there are arguments for doing do. But we can at least begin to recalibrate settlements with attention to simple principles of economy that see the deleterious consequences of our phony abundance society whole.

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Christopher Alexander Has The Right Approach to The Car

August 26, 2009 at 6:10 am (pattern language, politics)
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Texting To Death http://ow.ly/ln2R

At present, 36 states do not ban texting while driving; 14 states do, including California, Alaska, Louisiana and New Jersey. New York lawmakers have sent a bill to Governor Paterson.

COMMENT

Having been an opponent of the car for fifty years or so, I am sensitive to the fact that the car is not going away. Oil is not going away. But rather than feel defeated, I want to center down on ways that the car is a positive threat to each of us. And to rev up my advocacy for car-free living areas where work, play and recreation in every sense are all integrated. I do not think we have begun to think this through.

Christopher Alexander Has The Right Approach to The Car

Pattern Language Posts on Automobiles

More on Pattern Language:

See the brief at Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language

Summaries of Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language with reference to the Obama Agenda

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four,, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen, Part Fourteen

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Why Most Transportation Should Be Public and How That Could Help Private Enterprise

July 29, 2009 at 4:35 pm (pattern language, politics)
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Written in 2008. Still relevant. Updated.

We need to clear up confusion between public and private when it comes to transportation and creating new human settlements.

We presently allow OUR public rights of way to be filled with private automobiles. This leads to a pollution-congestion problem which is not merely inhuman but also deadly to the planet. This pattern is being emulated globally. Public rights of way should belong to the public.

Similarly we talk green and assume it can happen by retrofitting innumerable private and separated dwellings, owned by individuals, What is needed is a scale of housing no individual could afford, but which would makes real green economically viable. The whole kahuna: power, recycling, modular capacities.

The solution to the transportation problem:

Advertiser-supported, shared public transportation. Free to user and gradually replacing private cars for commuting and inter-city transit.

Create a new generation of vehicles of all sizes. Create tons of jobs for the persons who build, operate and maintain such vehicles.

Give them preference in terms of access to rights of way. On city boulevards, make them double-wide or double decker, or both. Power them green, hybrid. Batteries could be easily renewed by maintaining stations at regular intervals. Roads could enable their movement via technologies yet to be created,

WE own the roads after all.

Privately-owned and operated vehicles are at odds with a rational transportation solution. We need to reconsider the way we use our rights of way.

A similar understanding could be applied to the creation of viable, sustainable, green communities.

Lack of “consumer confidence” in the future is understandable. We haven’t drilled down to the changes we need.

The era of the private automobile and the resulting design of our settlements as strip city highway culture splayed over the land, is unsustainable. It should be happily over anon.

We need an era of good news:

To create a prosperous economy, we need to go beyond even Al Gore and his hybrid car proposals to the creation of a world where human settlements are built on a scale that can support green economically. And where the private automobile has an increasingly minor role.

Automobile glutted freeways are a form of hell we should not wish to perpetuate.

So what do we do?

1. Start building a new generation of vehicles and highways that will provide free transportation on major roads supported by advertising.

Ride courtesy of … name your advertiser. Starbucks, your local insurance company, a restaurant. If we plough ad revenues into transportation we are creating a win-win for consumers. Reducing our costs of getting around and stimulating free enterprise and competition within a rational framework.

New vehicles could be green and comfortable. Have a contest among advertisers to produce the very best.

2. Give major tax breaks to companies that build green human settlements with early education, preventive health, entertainment and access to retail products within walking distance. Car free, pedestrian communities, replacing metrosprawl.

Here’s Christopher Alexander’s notion of a self-contained town.

Preserve country towns where they exist; and encourage the growth of new self contained towns, with populations between 500 and 10,000, entirely surrounded by open countryside and at least 10 miles from neighbouring towns. Make it the regions collective concern to give each town the wherewithal it needs to build a base of local industry, so that these towns are not dormitories for people who work in other places, but real towns- able to sustain the whole of life. SOURCE

The Essential Site for Understanding Alexander

3. The technologies needed to help the rest of the world escape the trap of highway-culture will develop naturally. The entire world is going to literal hell because we have not thought beyond individual, private vehicles.

More on Pattern Language:

See the brief at http://stephencrose.wordpress.com/pattern-language/ and then read in sequence:

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four,, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen, Part Fourteen

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The Problem with The GM Gamble

June 2, 2009 at 10:01 am (pattern language, politics)
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The problem with the GM Gamble is not that the government is involved. There is every indication that government involvement is not that bad. Medicare and the notion of public guarantees of medical care are not noxious. And the President has, in the case of GM, said he will leave the nuts and bolts up to those who know about business.

I know that is a weak assurance but it shows that in the Obama world, government involvement is not going to be the problem.

The problem is the car.

There are times when I think Obama is playing a game which is utterly necessary, given the obtuseness of our media and the knee-jerk capacity of the populace to take umbrage if an idol comes close to toppling.

The game is not the change Obama will bring. It is the change that is coming willy nilly that no one wants to see.

Take the current “recession” which is really a readjustment and a signal to the market, What few want to see is that the readjustment is in the direction of the public over the private, the reclamation of public space over private space, the creation of public options over private ones.

We are being thrown together whether we like it or not.

What Obama cannot say, though he has in fact talked all around it, is that we will no longer be a privatized commuter society where driving a private car and living in a detached house is the norm.

What Obama cannot say, though it is implicit, is that the design of our schools, of our hospitals, of our human settlements is a problem, because it is all predicated on the car and cars are going to be less and less the norm.

What will become the norm is seamless transit within communities and new modes of transit between them.

Michael Moore has a good piece from which I will draw the salient statements with which I profoundly agree:

3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades — and we don’t even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven’t used it, is criminal. Let’s hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.

4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.

5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.

6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we’re going to have automobiles, let’s have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories — that simply isn’t true).

7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.

8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.


READ THE WHOLE MICHAEL MOORE GM PIECE

The car was and remains the central chip in the game. Cheney and Company cannot see beyond a world where Oil and The Car are objects of worship and cause for war. The American people are not ready yet to be told that the private car is the idol that needs to be chattered. Obama is left with the need to temporize. And I suppose the real question is whether he sees the new road beyond the spaghetti bowl world of today.

I believe the answer has to be yes, because it remains true that we are at the beginning of a new stage where the world is creating a new option for living. The nation that understands that will prosper. The nation that believes the answer lies in selling enough private cars to turn a profit is whistling in the wind.

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Are We In A Permanent Recession?

May 31, 2009 at 8:24 am (pattern language, politics)
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Are We In A Permanent Recession?

Matthew Yglesias writes:

… if the recession ends, then it seems likely that we’ll slip right back into a new recession. I wish that weren’t the case, and that everyone would just react to an oil price spike by biking to work, but realistically we don’t seem to have made nearly the scale of adjustments that would be necessary to let the country shrug off a return to oil that costs over $4 a gallon. SOURCE

In essence he is saying what we should have known when Frank Lloyd Wright wrote, wrongly, that we would all plant vegetable gardens in our suburban lots. Mother earth incarnate. No takers.

My impression is that Yglesias is all for some incremental moves that would signal some acknowledgment of the need to move beyond slavery to an oil economy. But he also knows that incremental moves will not achieve the change that is called for by the current crisis.

The perfect storm in the world is created by the collision between finite oil and continued slavery to the notion of private automobiles. Both these forces create a dysfunctional society that eats away at the possibility of a humanity that is not itself profoundly dysfunctional.

At the center of what is dysfunctional is the suburb which is entirely subservient to the requirements of the car. The combined costs of the car, the detached house and the costs created by reliance on the automobile is indeed the origin of a permanent recession. This is why there has been no bounce-back in valuation of either cars or detached houses. In essence, these are becoming less and less marketable.

The solution to this conundrum would be simple enough if our vaunted designers and architects and planners could do what Wright failed to do — stop being naive about human nature and stop building the car into everything. In fact, eliminate the car from the areas where people live. And reintegrate into living areas all the institutions and services needed to create well-rounded lives.

The thought of Christopher Alexander and the constellation of ideas we associate with the phrase pattern language is the answer to the economic crisis which is at bottom not economic but evolutionary.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO EXPLORE THE BACKGROUND AND HEART OF THIS ARGUMENT

Seen differently. we are not in a permanent recession but in the throes of a move in the market away from what hurts us to what helps us. It is that simple. What helps us is not something we can buy with money but what we can earn by the application of common sense and some smarts to the problems we face.

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Pattern Language

April 25, 2009 at 11:32 am (Uncategorized)

Pattern Language is Christopher Alexander’s concept of a world that works for all people because architecture, design, planning and building are based on what people are drawn to naturally, and public spaces are made stimulating and accessible by foot.

Getting people to understand this alternative to metrosprawl is a Promethean task. Getting the Obama administration to understand why this widely ignored and buried thinking is the essential missing link in all the talk of “economic” recovery is utterly necessary if we are to have change that will actually work for everyone.

Here is the online site I find to be the most useful presentation of pattern language. SOURCE

Here is an annotated WordPress link to many if not all the pattern language posts on this blog and a few on other blogs. SOURCE

Note that each of these Pattern Language Primers was posted at Huffington Post, but that with few exceptions these posts have been buried, the process by which Huffington Post decides not to feature a post but rather to let it fall off the page after a few hours.

Here are pattern language posts which relate to human settlements. SOURCE

Here are pattern language posts relating to automobiles. SOURCE

More on Pattern Language:

See the brief at http://stephencrose.wordpress.com/pattern-language/ and then read in sequence:

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four,, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen, Part Fourteen

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