{"id":298,"date":"2011-07-20T15:55:15","date_gmt":"2011-07-20T21:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=298"},"modified":"2013-01-28T07:37:03","modified_gmt":"2013-01-28T14:37:03","slug":"coming-contractions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=298","title":{"rendered":"Coming Contractions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>James Kunstler\u2019s essay<\/a> in the new issue of Orion Magazine <\/em>speculates about\u00a0the future of cities by playing off of \u201ccity-of-the-future\u201d tropes that have long been a staple of American popular culture. Kunstler is well-known for a brand of dystopian futurism that uses the touchstones of peak oil, climate change, ecological catastrophe, and overpopulation to argue that truly monumental life-altering changes and challenges lie ahead.\u00a0 His\u00a0Orion<\/em> essay echoes Richard Florida<\/a> in claiming that we’re heading into a major \u201creset\u201d of daily life, a phase that Kunstler has described as The Long Emergency.<\/p>\n

Kunstler forecasts and promotes a return to traditional ways of occupying the landscape. We might term this The Great Contraction<\/em>\u00a0(with apologies to Milton Friedman<\/a>). \u00a0He notes that smaller cities are inherently better scaled for the emerging energy realities. \u00a0Thus, giant cities will need to shrink and densify around their old centers. \u00a0Smaller cities that have been emptied by decades of neglect will have to be re-populated and re-activated. \u00a0Some suburbs will be retrofitted into towns (a process that is already in place), while others will become squats, salvage yards, and ruins.<\/p>\n

Walkability will be key for successful cities. \u00a0They will also have some relationship with water power, water transport, a passenger rail network, and food that\u2019s produced outside of town<\/a>. Others will find themselves either seriously disadvantaged or SOL. Phoenix will collapse or become little more than a remote desert outpost.\u00a0 Ditto Las Vegas.\u00a0 Denver\u2019s future depends on the pace of climate change in the greater Southwest.\u00a0\u00a0 Its success as an aerotropolis<\/a> is not guaranteed given peak oil’s debilitating effect on commercial aviation.<\/p>\n

Kunstler’s\u00a0Orion<\/em> piece also serves as a provocative and useful counterpoint to the ideas of some other big thinkers about the city, like Edward Glaeser and Witold Rybczynski<\/a>. Apropos Glaeser, Kunstler argues that the skyscraper is not a solution to the problem of urban sustainability, mostly because we will come up short on the financial resources and fabricated materials that would allow us to maintain them.\u00a0 He similarly skewers the proposal for skyscraper-based \u201cvertical farming\u201d as beset with a variety of practical problems that haven\u2019t been adequately thought through.\u00a0 Indeed, he characterizes vertical farming as a particularly good example of how extreme our infatuation with \u201ctechnograndiosity\u201d has become.\u00a0 Apropos Rybczynski\u2014who cites waterfront development as one of the few successes of recent efforts to renew inner cities\u2014Kunstler argues that we\u2019re destined to have a \u00a0\u201cWhoops!\u201d moment when we realize that we\u2019ll need to restore infrastructure for waterborne trade as a consequence of the global oil predicament.\u00a0 Landings, warehouses, dry docks, and even the \u201csleazy accommodations for sailors\u201d that were previously demolished will need to be re-established.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Vertical Farms<\/p><\/div>\n

As for urban architecture, Kunstler argues that we’ll need to build to human scale.\u00a0 We don\u2019t need any more \u201carchitectural fashion statements\u201d (e.g., Landscape Urbanism<\/a>) or “art stunts” that privilege spectacle over sustainability.\u00a0 Waxing romantic, Kunstler argues that we\u2019ll need buildings and places that people will care about; ones having \u201cartistry\u201d and \u201ctexture\u201d and \u201cmagic\u201d and the \u201cpower to enchant the human spirit.\u201d Kunstler suggests that New Urbanism<\/a> is, by default, the best guide for creating this kind of built environment. Indeed, he intimates that it\u2019s the only<\/em> kind of urbanism that\u2019s really open to us at this point.<\/p>\n

This is a terrific piece, Kunstler’s proclivities for hyperbole notwithstanding. It covers many important dimensions of the urban challenge. \u00a0But it seems to me that much of what Kunstler prescribes is perfectly at home in Old Urbanism<\/a>.\u00a0 And if we see human diversity as something that cities must also accommodate as we go forward–a position which recognizes that “human spirit” has always been enchanted in different ways, depending on cultural context–then we should be open to an urbanism that some are calling Intercultural<\/a>. \u00a0That’s a subject for another post…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Kunstler\u2019s essay in the new issue of Orion Magazine speculates about\u00a0the future of cities by playing off of \u201ccity-of-the-future\u201d tropes that have long been a staple of American popular culture. Kunstler is well-known for a brand of dystopian futurism […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[8,10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-sustainability","category-urban-studies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-4O","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2489,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions\/2489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}