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  • Memorialist of Suburbia

    John Updike, the bard of the suburbs, died this week. He was one of the first great American writers to revel in the opportunity, beauty and convenience that the suburbs have long reflected. His voice, first found in the sixties, acted as a reasonable anchor in the tempest of radicalism that swept through the country. He empathized with the American dream rising in the raw suburbs being carved from agricultural land.

    Where ancestors once had wrestled a living from the soil, Updike’s generation found comfort, convenience and a dream. They found plenty where a generation previous only found enough to keep them alive. At a time when academics, avant-garde filmmakers and urban intellectuals scoffed at suburbia, Updike explained it. He understood the obvious reasons – “practical attractions: free parking for my car, public education for my children, a beach to tan my skin on, a church to attend without seeming too strange”. That is still what draws people to the edge of town.

    Updike viewed the miles of identical houses the middle class aspired to as the pinnacle of civilization. He was never condescending. He genuinely loved what the suburbs represented and what they offered the masses moving from the cramped quarters of the ghettos and slums of the pre-war cities. He himself knew firsthand the other source of suburban migrants – the hardscrabble rural environs where life was often both difficult and limited.

    Updike wanted nothing more than the convenience and steady food and work that he could find in the suburbs of Boston. The cold, bleak, boring hell of rural life was not for him. He saw nature as something that his religious sensibilities told him it was: a chaotic force to be tamed for the benefit of man.

    His novels described the lives of characters in the sixties and seventies, caught up in the whirlwind of suppressed and released human desires which challenged these suburban dreamers. His sex scenes were more biological than erotic. They showed the new morality that was being formed in the suburbs, the breaking down of the old structures of the village and the urban neighborhood, which in many essentials were the same thing.

    In Seek My Face he talks of Manhattan by saying that each block represented a village in the old country. That was fine for the first generation, which needed that fabric of support and familiarity but that was not enough of a dream for the next generation. The Dream was the cheap Cape Cods that were being erected by the thousands over the Nassau County line by the Levitt brothers.

    Updike presented the suburbs for what they were to his generation: an escape from the villages and suffocating urban neighborhoods that trapped the previous generation. The freedom they gained was that of the nuclear family structure – the end to the rule of elders, cousins and priests. He celebrated suburbia as it rarely has been – as a peculiarly American miracle. It did not need to be demeaned, but seen as the perfection of thousands of years of evolution, the home to thousands of hoping, dreaming members of the middle class. His description of the car is no less lyrical. It was the convenience but it was more than that. In one short story he describes the purchase of a new car. The rush of excitement associated with the purchase and the affection that forms between a family and a car. He then described the neglect that crept in as the car aged until it lies abandoned in the front yard waiting to be turned in for a newer car.

    The mobility it represented is tempered with the ever present hope for the future that defines so much of what America is. The car is mobility; he describes the manner by which it frees passengers from the landscape just as it frees them from the tyranny of public transit. The car is the cocoon that is an extension of the owner’s personality, a part of who he is. It is a symbol of power and prosperity. It is an object of love.

    Then there was the chance to go to church without feeling like a freak. The multicultural downtowns are filled with houses of worship catering to all classes of people. There are numerous minority churches in Manhattan catering to different races and other houses of worship for the other sundry religions in the immigrant communities, but the middle class churches are being taken over, bought out and torn down in the center. The mainline churches and megachurches that most white middle class Americans call home are on the edge of town. Updike was a master at describing the religious experience of the suburbs. In A Month of Sundays Updike describes the breakdown of a Presbyterian pastor into a nymphomaniac. It is also filled with suburbs, sex and theology. Critics stated that the narrator’s sermons are some of the most eloquent since John Donne and are a wonderful representation of the dichotomy in an America that separates church and state but can never quite get over the fact that the Pilgrim Fathers set up a Theocracy on the banks of the Charles River. The combination of the profane and the divine is apparent on the outskirts of any American city where Wal-Marts abut megachurches; some megachurches were even built in the massive husks of abandoned big box stores.

    He was born in the depth of the depression to parents who dreamed of him being more and he described the quotidian with a lyricism that was an epiphany. The suburbs were a thing of beauty. He was a man who loved America for living in the future tense but constantly looking to the past for guidance. America lost one of its greatest voices in him.

    Kirk Rogers lives in Germany where he teaches languages and American culture at the Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. He has been an avid reader of Updike since his early teens.

  • New Survey: Improving Housing Affordability – But Still a Way to Go

    The 5th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey covers 265 metropolitan markets in six nations (US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand), up from 88 in 4 nations in the first edition (see note below). This year’s edition includes a preface by Dr. Shlomo Angel of Princeton University and New York University, one of the world’s leading urban planning experts. Needless to say, there have been significant developments in housing affordability and house prices over the past year. In some parts of the United States, the landscape has been radically changed by rapidly dropping house prices.

    Our measure of housing affordability is the “Median Multiple,” which is the annual pre-tax median house price divided by the median household income. Over the decades since World War II, this measure has typically been 3.0 or below in all of the surveyed nations and virtually all of their metropolitan areas, until at least the mid-1990s. There were bubbles before that time in some markets, but during the “troughs” most markets returned to the 3.0 or below norm.

    Unfortunately, the most recent bubble was and continues to be the most severe since records have been kept. The Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey rates housing affordability using five categories, indicated in the table below.

    Demographia
    Housing Affordability Ratings

    Rating

    Median Multiple

    Severely Unaffordable

    5.1 & Over

    Seriously Unaffordable

    4.1 to 5.0

    Moderately Unaffordable

    3.1 to 4.0

    Affordable

    3.0 or Less

    Median Multiple: Median House Price divided by Median Household Income

    At the height of the current bubble, some markets saw remarkable declines in housing affordability. In some Median Multiples exceeded three times the historic norm. Among major markets (metropolitan markets with more than 1,000,000 population), Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose and San Diego all reached or exceeded a Median Multiple of 10. Many other markets saw their Median Multiples rise to double the historic norm and beyond, such as New York, Miami, Boston, Seattle, Sacramento and Riverside-San Bernardino. Other major US markets – such as Portland, Orlando, Las Vegas, Providence and Washington, DC – rose to above 5, a figure rarely seen in any market before the currently deflating bubble.

    America has hardly been an exception. Outside the United States, virtually all major markets in Australia were well over 6.0, as well as London and Auckland in New Zealand. Vancouver was the most unaffordable major market, with a Median Multiple of 8.4. Of particular note is barely growing Adelaide, which nonetheless has seen its Median Multiple rise to 7.1.
    But, at least in the US, the unaffordability wave has crested. Generally, the house prices peaked in the United States in mid-2007. Since then the markets with the biggest bubbles took the lead in bursting. By the third quarter of 2008 (the Survey reports on the third quarter each year), the Median Multiple in San Francisco had dropped to 8.0, San Jose to 7.4, Los Angeles to 7.2 and San Diego to 5.9. Of course, even at these levels, housing affordability in these metropolitan areas remained worse than ever before. History would suggest that housing prices in these markets have a long way to go before they hit bottom.

    Other markets have improved affordability more substantially. Inland California markets like Sacramento and Riverside-San Bernardino have gone from the “seriously” to only the “moderately unaffordable” category, with rates now in the mid-3.0s. Data for the fourth quarter is likely to indicate that Sacramento will be the first major housing market in California to return to a Median Multiple of 3.0, a rather large fall from its peak of 6.6 in 2005.

    Outside California, other markets have experienced significant price declines. But some, like Miami still at 5.6, have a long way to go before they reach the historic norm of 3.0. Las Vegas and Phoenix (which nearly reached 5) may be closer, falling to the “moderately unaffordable ” category with Median Multiples of between 3.1 and 4.0. Seattle and Portland have fallen 10 percent or more as of the third quarter but remain severely overpriced, suggesting they, like Miami, have more price declines in the offing.

    Much of the blame for the bubble has been placed at the feet of a mortgage finance industry that passed out money as if it was not its own. Not surprisingly, the ready availability of money had its effect on the market. Demand rose sharply and included many who couldn’t afford to pay.

    But profligate lending practices represent only a relatively minor cause of the bubble. This was missed by all but a few economists, notably Dr. Angel’s Princeton colleague and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugmann. He could see that there was not one “national bubble” but a series of localized ones. The real villain, he noted, lay in land use regulations.

    In reality the bubble missed much of the country – from Atlanta to El Paso to Omaha and Albany. There were house price increases, of course, but they were generally within the Median Multiple ceiling norm of 3.0. There were a few exceptions, but even they did not exceed 3.0 by much.

    Rising demand was not the big problem. Housing affordability remained at virtually the same Median Multiple level in Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, the three fastest growing metropolitan areas of more than 5,000,000 population in the developed world. Many other major markets across the South and Midwest experienced little price increase and maintained their affordability. Indianapolis, which has a Median Multiple of 2.2, continued to gain domestic migration from other areas and has a near Sun Belt growth rate. Kansas City, Louisville and Columbus remain affordable and are attracting people from elsewhere.

    Although there are signs of a correction in parts of California, Nevada and Arizona, some bubbles in high-regulation markets are still in the early stage of deflating. New York, Boston, Portland and Seattle particularly may be in danger; the worst consequences of their bubbles lie ahead.

    The longer-term question remains whether these and other still highly over-valued markets in California, the Pacific Northwest, Florida and the Northeast will return to affordability, at or near a Median Multiple of 3.0. The necessary price drops would be bad news for regional economies because of the losses homeowners and financial institutions would sustain.

    At the same time maintenance of the currently elevated prices would also be bad news. In the past 7 years, 4.5 million people have moved from higher-cost markets to lower-cost markets in the United States. The formerly attractive markets of the California coast alone have seen more than two million people depart for other places since 2000. For these areas, a return to historic levels of housing affordability may be a prime pre-requisite to restoring economic health.

    HOUSING AFFORDABILITY RATINGS UNITED STATES METROPOLITAN MARKETS OVER 1,000,000
    Rank Metropolitan Area Median Multiple
    AFFORDABLE  
    1 Indianapolis 2.2
    2 Cleveland 2.3
    2 Detroit 2.3
    4 Rochester 2.4
    5 Buffalo 2.5
    5 Cincinnati 2.5
    7 Atlanta 2.6
    7 Pittsburgh 2.6
    7 St. Louis 2.6
    10 Columbus 2.7
    10 Dallas-Fort Worth 2.7
    10 Kansas City 2.7
    10 Mem[hios 2.7
    14 Oklahoma City 2.8
    15 Houston 2.9
    15 Louisville 2.9
    15 Nashville 2.9
    MODERATELY UNAFFORDABLE  
    18 Minneapolis-St. Paul 3.1
    18 New Orleans 3.1
    20 Birmingham 3.2
    20 San Antonio 3.2
    22 Austin 3.3
    22 Jacksonville 3.3
    24 Phoenix 3.4
    25 Sacramento 3.5
    26 Tampa-St. Petersburg 3.6
    27 Denver 3.7
    27 Hartford 3.7
    27 Las Vegas 3.7
    27 Raleigh 3.7
    27 Richmond 3.7
    32 Salt Lake City 3.8
    33 Charlotte 3.9
    33 Riverside-San Bernardino 3.9
    33 Washington (DC) 3.9
    36 Milwaukee 4.0
    36 Philadelphia 4.0
    SERIOUSLY UNAFFORDABLE  
    38 Chicago 4.1
    38 Orlando 4.1
    40 Baltimore 4.2
    41 Virginia Beach-Norfolk 4.3
    42 Providence 4.4
    43 Portland (OR) 4.9
    SEVERELY UNAFFORDABLE  
    44 Seattle 5.2
    45 Boston 5.3
    46 Miami-West Palm Beach 5.6
    47 San Diego 5.9
    48 New York 7.0
    49 Los Angeles 7.2
    50 San Jose 7.4
    51 San Francisco 8.0
    2008: 3rd Quarter  
    Median Multiple: Median House Price divided by Median Household Income
    Source: http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf

    Note: The Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey is a joint effort of Wendell Cox of Demographia (United States) and Hugh Pavletich of Performance Urban Planning (New Zealand).

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris. He was born in Los Angeles and was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission by Mayor Tom Bradley. He is the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”

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  • Obama, Fight The Green Agenda

    In his remarkable rise to power, President Barack Obama has overcome some of the country’s most formidable politicians – from the Bushes and the Clintons to John McCain. But he may have more trouble coping with a colleague he professes to admire: former Vice President Al Gore.

    To date, motivations from sweet reason to hard-headed accommodation have defined Obama’s Cabinet choices, most notably in such areas as defense and finance. Oddly enough, though, his choices on the environmental front are almost entirely Gore-ite in nature. Obama’s green team, for example, includes longtime Gore acolyte Carol Browner as climate and energy czar, physicist Steven Chu as energy secretary and, perhaps most alarmingly, John Holdren as science adviser.

    These individuals are not old-style conservationists focused on cleaning up the air and water or protecting and expanding natural areas. They represent a more authoritarian and apocalyptic strain of true believers who see in environmental issues – mainly, global warming – a license to push a radical agenda irrespective of its effects on our economy, our society or even our dependence on foreign energy.

    We should not underestimate the power of these extreme greens. They can count on the media to cover climate and other green issues with all the impartiality of the Soviet-era Pravda. Stories that buttress the notion of man-made global warming – like reports of long-term warming in Antarctica – receive lavish attention in The New York Times and on Yahoo!.

    Meanwhile, other reports, such as new NASA studies indicating cooling sea temperatures since 2003, or the implications of two unusually cool winters, are relegated to the mostly conservative blogosphere.

    I am no scientist. For all I know, both sides are lying or exaggerating. However, we do need to take history into account. Scientists have not been and are not immune to hysteria or groupthink, particularly when taking the “correct” view means a lush supply of cash from foundations and governmental labs. Nor is “consensus,” however constructed, always right.

    In fact, lockstep “official” science is often very wrong – from the pre-Copernican view of the solar system, to the decades spent ridiculing the now undisputed reality that continents drift over time, to eugenics or even, back in the 1970s, concern over “global cooling.”

    The past also suggests we should be particularly leery of purveyors of impending natural apocalypse. Holdren, the new science czar, for example, is a longtime disciple of the largely discredited neo-Malthusian Paul Ehrlich, who in the early ’80s bluntly predicted that global mass starvation was imminent and that critical metals would suffer severe shortages. Neither calamity has occurred – even as both global population and economic activity have surged dramatically.

    Obama may also want to consider the consequences of following the catastrophists. Supporting green causes might have been useful for bludgeoning George Bush and for raising cash over the Internet from affluent urban professionals. But now these environmentalists could obstruct his program for creating broad economic recovery and meeting the nation’s energy challenges – and they could even slow his party’s quest to secure a permanent electoral majority.

    For one thing, the economic crisis has shifted the public’s attention away from environmental issues. Recessions may reduce greenhouse gases and halt development, but they terrify voters and shift their priorities. A recent Pew survey of 20 top priorities for 2009 shows the public places a growing emphasis on strengthening the economy and particularly creating jobs, each cited by over 80% of respondents.

    In contrast, concern over the environment has dropped to 41% – down from 57% in 2007. Global warming ranked dead last; 30% of respondents named it a priority, a figure down from 38% just two years ago.

    Green activists might force the administration to eschew some of the tools that could best restore the economy. For example, they often oppose expenditures that drive industrial and agricultural growth – investments in ports, roads, bridges and even freight rail – which some see as greenhouse gas boosters. With the likes of Browner, Chu and Holdren in charge – no matter what Congress’s intentions are – an emboldened regulatory apparatus could use their power to slow, and even stop, many infrastructure improvements.

    At the same time, greens can be expected to line up with the information-age lobby, whose notion of stimulus focuses largely on universities, health care, arts, culture and media. This “post-industrial strategy,” notes author Michael Lind, may be fine for Manhattan and San Francisco, but it’s not so appealing in Michigan, Ohio, Appalachia or the Great Plains.

    All this green-blessed employment would likely produce precious few well-paying, long-term, private-sector jobs for middle- or working-class Americans. Obama should understand, as much as anyone, that the votes that won him the presidency came largely from suburban voters who are concerned about their economic futures.

    Of course, suburbanites care about the environment too, but they would rather see practical steps to clean up air and water quality and expand public open space. In contrast, the greenocrats are generally hostile to cars and single-family homes – the suburbs themselves. In other words, they largely detest many of the very things middle-class voters cherish.

    Perhaps nowhere will this green agenda create more potential problems than in the energy arena. I have long held that conservation should be encouraged in every reasonable way possible. However, it is clearly fanciful to believe that solar, wind and other renewables can supply the bulk of the new power we need now to, as President Obama put it, “fuel our cars and run our factories” – much less meet the needs of the 100 million or more American who will be online by 2050.

    Just look at the numbers. According to the latest (2007) figures from the Energy Information Agency, renewable energy accounts for less than 7% of U.S. consumption – and almost all of that is derived from burning wood and waste and hydroelectric power. Nuclear generation accounts for over 8%, while fossil fuels meet nearly 85% of America’s energy needs. On the other hand, wind and solar power, which the new president has promised to “harness,” account for just 0.39% of total American energy.

    Even doubling renewables in the next few years – itself an expensive and difficult goal – would do relatively little to meet the nation’s demand for energy. In this light, the incoming energy secretary’s strong antipathy to fossil fuels – particularly coal, which he once described as his “worst nightmare” – coupled with his lack of enthusiasm for nuclear power, which is collectively the source of over 93% of U.S. energy, seems a bit problematic.

    We can only solve America’s energy needs by blending a variety of alternative solutions – renewables, conservation, nuclear – with fossil fuel-based energy. This approach, which would vary by region, would also help revive manufacturing, agriculture and other productive industries. A renewables-only approach, in contrast, would impose very high prices and require massive subsidization, leading to greater dependence on overseas energy and also, perhaps, to a permanently shrunken economy.

    These challenges, along with recent shifts in the public’s priorities, suggest that the president may need to distance himself from his extreme green advisers – or, somehow, get them to toe a more sensible line.

    In his new job, President Obama must confront many dangerous ideologues from organizations like Hamas and al-Qaida. His political future, however, may ultimately hinge on how he handles the dogmatic ideologues he has now lifted to the highest levels of our government.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History and is finishing a book on the American future.

  • Nancy Meyer

  • Height of Power: The Washington Fiefdom Looms Larger Than Ever

    For more than two centuries, it has been a wannabe among the great world capitals. But now, Washington is finally ready for its close-up.

    No longer a jumped-up Canberra or, worse, Sacramento, it seems about to emerge as Pyongyang on the Potomac, the undisputed center of national power and influence. As a new president takes over the White House, the United States’ capacity for centralization has arguably never been greater. But it’s neither Barack Obama’s charm nor his intentions that are driving the centrifocal process that’s concentrating authority in the capital city. It’s the unprecedented collapse of rival centers of power.

    This is most obvious in economic affairs, an area in which the nation’s great regions have previously enjoyed significant autonomy. But already the dukes of Wall Street and Detroit have submitted their papers to Washington for vassalage. Soon many other industries, from high-tech to agriculture and energy, will become subject to a Kremlin full of special czars. Even the most haughty boyar may have to genuflect to official orthodoxy on everything from social equity to sanctioned science.

    At the same time, the notion of decentralized political power – the linchpin of federalism – is unraveling. Today, once proudly independent – even defiant – states, counties and cities sit on the verge of insolvency. New York and California, two megastates, face record deficits. From California to the Carolinas, local potentates with no power to print their own money will be forced to kiss Washington’s ring.

    Americans may still possess what the 19th-century historian Frederick Jackson Turner described as “an antipathy to control,” but lately, they seem willing to submit themselves to an unprecedented dose of it. A financial collapse driven by unrestrained private excess – falling, ironically, on the supposedly anti-Washington Republicans’ watch – seems to have transformed federal government cooking into the new comfort food.

    To foreigners, this concentration of power might seem the quintessence of normalcy. As the sociologist E. Digby Baltzell wrote in 1964, elites have dominated and shaped the world’s great cosmopolitan centers – from Athens to Rome to Baghdad – throughout history. In modern times, capital cities such as London, Paris, Moscow, Berlin and Tokyo have not only ruled their countries but have also largely defined them. In all these countries (with the exception of Germany, which was divided during the Cold War), publishing, media, the arts and corporate and political power are all concentrated in the same place. Paris is the undisputed global face of France just as London is of Great Britain or Tokyo is of Japan.

    Although each had their merchant classes, these cities were strongly hierarchical, governed by those closest by blood or affiliation to the ruling family and populated largely by their servants. In contrast, Baltzell observed, U.S. cities such as New York have been “heterogeneous from top to bottom.” Their power came not from the government or the church but from trade, the production of goods and scientific innovations, as well as the peddling of ideas and culture.

    But Washington has always occupied a unique and somewhat incongruous niche among U.S. cities. It came into being not because of the economic logic of its location, but because it was a convenient compromise between North and South. It never developed into a center of commerce or manufacturing. Nor was it meant to be a fortress. Instead, it was designed for one specific purpose: to house the business of governance.

    Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the French-born classicist and civil engineer who developed the plan for the city, envisioned a majestic capital that would “leave to posterity a grand idea of the patriotic interest,” as he wrote in 1791. Yet for most of its history, Washington failed to measure up to the standards of European or Asian capitals. In January 1815, a South Carolina congressman described the capital to his wife as a “city which so many are willing to come to and all so anxious to leave.”

    This lowly status stemmed, to some extent, from what the historian James Sterling Young has defined as the “anti-power” ethos of early Americans. The revolutionary generation and its successors loathed the confluence of power and wealth that defined 19th-century London or Paris. A muddy outpost in the woods seemed more appropriate to republican ideals.

    Even as other American cities, such as New York and Baltimore, expanded rapidly, Washington grew slowly, at a rate well below the national average. Bold predictions that the city would boast a population of 160,000 by the 1830s fell far short. Instead, it had barely reached 45,000 people, including more than 6,000 slaves. It remained eerily bereft of all the things that make cities vital – thriving commerce, a busy port, decent eateries and distinguished shops. Visiting the city in 1842, Charles Dickens marveled at a city of “spacious avenues that begin in nothing and lead nowhere.”

    To some observers, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Washington’s relative decrepitude reflected one of the glories of the young republic. The fact that the country had “no metropolis” that dominated it from the center struck the young noble, on his visit to America in the early 1830s, as “one of the first causes of the maintenance of Republican institutions.”

    Washington’s status improved only marginally in the next century, even as other brilliant centers of power, culture and commerce emerged on the Eastern Seaboard and then across the Midwest and West. The rapid rise of New York was challenged in quick succession by the even more sudden emergence of Chicago in the industrial Midwest and San Francisco on the Gold Rush coast of California. Washington was surely the nerve center of politics, but commerce, culture and the vast majority of the media chose to concentrate elsewhere.

    It would take enormous misfortune – the Depression – to provide Washington with its first great growth spurt. As the business empires of New York, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland buckled and the New Deal took control of the economy, power shifted decisively to the capital. This expansion of influence continued with the onset of World War II and then during the Cold War.

    The ensuing rise of the military and domestic bureaucracies transformed Washington from a small provincial city into a major metropolitan area. The greater economic shift from a predominantly manufacturing to a high-tech, information-centered economy also played to Washington’s strengths. In his groundbreaking 1973 book The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, the sociologist Daniel Bell predicted that the country’s prevailing “business civilization” would inevitably become dominated by the government bureaucracy. Corporations would eventually look to Washington’s lead for regulatory standards, to sponsor research and make critical science-related decisions.

    In the past half-century, this confluence of technology and bureaucracy has transformed Washington and its surrounding suburbs into the most dynamic large metropolitan economy in the Northeast. Between 1950 and 1996, the region’s population expanded by roughly 150 percent, three or more times faster than other cities along the Boston-Washington corridor.

    By the mid-1970s, Washington and its environs had also emerged as the richest region in the country. Since then, it has remained at or near the top of metropolitan areas in terms of both per capita income and level of education. Despite deplorable concentrations of poverty, particularly in the city proper, the region’s average household incomes remain the highest in the country – nearly 50 percent above the national average. The percentage of adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher, nearly 42 percent, surpasses even such brainy-seeming places as greater Boston, Seattle and Minneapolis.

    The contrast between Washington and most of the United States has gradually become more pronounced. In good times and in bad, lawyers, lobbyists and other government retainers have continued to enrich themselves even as the Midwest industrial-belt cities have cratered and most others struggled to survive. “The vision of generations of liberals,” admitted the New Republic in the mid-1970s, “has created a prosperous and preposterous city whose population is completely isolated from the people they represent and immune from the problems they are supposed to solve.”

    In today’s crisis, the Washington area remains somewhat aloof, with the second-lowest unemployment rate among major metropolitan areas of more than 1 million. (Only Oklahoma City, largely insulated from both the financial and housing bubbles, is doing better, although collapsing energy prices could threaten its prosperity.) The rate of job growth, although slower, is still among the highest in the country, and unemployment is below the national average.

    This disparity will grow in the coming years, as rival regions reel from the recession. Many once-powerful places are already losing their independence and allure. Wall Street, formerly the seat of privatized power, has been reduced to supplicant status. The fate of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “luxury city” will be determined not in deals with London, Dubai or Shanghai but by the U.S. Treasury. Similarly, the vast auto economy of the upper Midwest will take direction from congressional appropriations and whoever is named the new “car czar.”

    This loss of power in the provinces will broaden in scope during the coming months. Even proud Texas has lost its unique political influence. Its energy barons will now be forced to do the bidding of the lawmakers and regulators, instead of carrying them in their hip pockets.

    Even industries that are well plugged in to the new Obama regime – such as venture capital and alternative energy – are facing financial ruin from the downturn in both markets and energy prices. To win new funding and subsidies for their next bubble, they’ll increasingly rely not on their ballyhooed cleverness but on their pull with the White House, Congress and the new science apparat, under the green-oriented Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Obama’s neo-Malthusian pick for White House science adviser, physicist John Holdren.

    All this is bad news for much of America, but it should mean great business for many residents of greater Washington. Sudden interest in District pied-a-terres among investment bankers, venture capitalists, energy potentates and their hired help could do a lot to restore the battered condominium market. Office buildings in the District and surrounding environs can now expect a new rush of tenants, both from the private sector and the soon-to-be expanding federal bureaucracies.

    The transfer of cultural power to Washington will also accelerate. After all, Washington is more than ever where the action is. Media outlets have already been shifting out of New York and other cities – the Atlantic Monthly moved from Boston to Washington in recent years, and USA Today, National Public Radio and XM Radio are headquartered in or near the capital. A city that, according to one 19th-century account, had a cuisine consisting largely of “hog and hominy grits” now boasts world-class restaurants, draws top-line chefs to its food scene and will continue to develop into a serious epicurean center. The area already ranks third in film and television production, largely because of a thriving news and documentary business, as embodied in National Geographic, the Public Broadcasting Service and the Discovery Channel.

    Over time, those of us in the provinces may grow to resent all this, seeing in Washington’s ascendancy something obtrusive, oppressive and contrary to the national ethos. But don’t expect Washingtonians to care much. They’ll be too busy running the country, when not chortling all the way to the bank.

    This article originally appeared at the Washington Post.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History and is finishing a book on the American future.

  • Infrastructure and Aesthetics

    In his 2005 book Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape, Brian Hayes surveys the built environment with an undaunted appreciation of the vast networks of infrastructure systems in America. Hayes, a writer for American Scientist, argues that common understanding of infrastructure is just as important as an understanding of nature itself. Without the ubiquitous power lines, the oft disparaged garbage dumps, or the controversial mining industry, the United States would not have been able to achieve status as the paragon of 20th Century modernization – a pattern now emulated by the likes of China and India.

    Yet it seems that ‘infrastructure’ has lost its fabled status in America. Our parents – or grandparents, depending on your age – celebrated achievements such as the building of the Hoover Dam or the California Water Project. But starting with the 1970s, as the environmental movement began to gain steam, and more recently after Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth, large scale infrastructure has increasingly become something to be reviled.

    The only time we are reminded of our infrastructure is when tragedy strikes, be it a mining accident, a bridge falling down or a collapsed levee. It’s as if we wish to keep the very things that support our modern lifestyles ‘out of sight out of mind’. No one really wants to know where their trash ends up or what the intricate processes for treating sewage are, nor does anyone want to be a neighbor with a coal burning power plant.

    At the same time what had once been centers for productive industry have also been redeveloped into hip and trendy neighborhoods marketed to those looking for an ‘edgy’ urban experience. To be sure, part of the allure of once industrial areas such as San Francisco’s South of Market and Brooklyn’s Williamsburg lies in the gritty aesthetic and adaptability of warehouse and manufacturing buildings for reuse.

    Yet even though residential development may be halted for the foreseeable future, it is critical to not lose sight of the aesthetic value of the industrial landscape. This ‘diamond in the rough’ appeal applies not only to converted lofts and art galleries but to both our current functioning and yet-to-be built infrastructure as well.

    The potential for infrastructure to please the eye and to uplift the soul is not lacking in historical precedent. Some of the greatest monuments to the genius of ancient architects remain those which served as essential infrastructure, the most notable example the aqueducts constructed by the Romans.

    Yet today, aside from exceptions like the bridges of Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, the world of high architectural design has largely ignored the possibility that infrastructure could be beautiful. Instead, design media is relentlessly focused on museums and other elitist structures with the more mundane and common buildings being “left to the engineers”.

    LeCorbusier, the late Swiss/French architect and one of the ‘godfathers’ of modern architecture would be rolling in his grave if he knew this was the case. In his seminal manifesto Towards a New Architecture, LeCorbusier speaks of his appreciation for the industrial aesthetic: “Thus we have the American grain elevators and factories, the magnificent first-fruits of the new age”.

    LeCorbusier, or ‘Corb’ as he is called, went on to apply the industrial aesthetic to socialist housing schemes while proclaiming that the “house is a machine for living in”. Although the jury is still out on whether or not living in a machine has mass appeal, Corbusier’s celebration of the simple and repetitive massing of structures such as grain silos is a good reminder that beauty can be derived from infrastructure.

    Early 20th Century American city builders also celebrated infrastructure. Willis Polk, a prominent San Francisco architect, was commissioned in 1910 to build a water temple in Sunol, California. Sunol, about 40 miles outside of San Francisco, was where converging water lines met before feeding into the city. Sensitive to the importance of getting fresh water to a growing population, some of San Francisco’s wealthiest citizens hired Polk to design the structure, which was inspired by the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli. Soon after, the area around the iconic structure became a popular spot for park goers.

    Similarly, Los Angeles architect Gordon Kaufman was hired to add aesthetic merit to the Hoover Dam. Still generating power for parts of Southern California, Nevada and Arizona, the massive dam symbolizes one of the most ambitious pieces of infrastructure in American history. At the time, the dam was the world’s largest concrete structure, yet Kaufman softened the aesthetics by adding a simple and elegant Art Deco touch to the otherwise imposing structure.

    The marriage of aesthetic beauty and infrastructure does not always have to take place at the grand scale of the Hoover Dam or the Golden Gate Bridge. In contrast, the barn, according to Brian Hayes, remains “the unmistakable icon of American agriculture and rural life.” The barn, a prevailing theme in American literature, represents function and flexibility of the highest order: one day it could be housing livestock while the next it could serve as a dance hall. Whatever the function, there is no questioning the charm of these structures dotting the rural landscape. With a renewed interest in family and organic farming in current popular culture, these buildings – including new barns – could assume a renewed meaning.

    With the Obama stimulus plan comes not only an opportunity to create jobs but to advance a cultural appreciation for the structures and systems that have made the United States a model to be emulated. Wind turbines, for instance, are gaining traction as the symbols of clean energy. When driving past large scale wind farms like the San Gorgonio Pass near Palm Springs, the movement of the out-of-proportion blades coupled with the dizzying repetition of turbines results in something similar to a pleasant hallucination. The appreciation for wind turbines is a start in the right direction, yet if we are to ensure that the systems that run the country are suited to last for generations to come, the culture needs to once again celebrate, rather than demonize, our infrastructure.

    Adam Nathaniel Mayer is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area. Raised in the town of Los Gatos, on the edge of Silicon Valley, Adam developed a keen interest in the importance of place within the framework of a highly globalized economy. He currently lives in San Francisco where he works in the architecture profession.

  • LAPD Getting it Right

    Though California state government may be truly dysfunctional, one much-maligned institution has managed to reinvent itself and flourish this decade: the LAPD.

    The town that once conjured up images of Bloods and Crips shooting it out as an indifferent and racist police force sat by has seen homicides drop 41%, rapes by 37% and aggravated assaults by a whopping 63% over the last six years. In 2008, Los Angeles had the fewest property crimes since 1959 and the lowest level of violent crime since 1969 – amazing given the plight of the economy. And the benefits are being felt in the city’s toughest neighborhoods: Compton, with 65 gangs crammed into 10 square miles, saw its lowest number of homicides in 25 years last year. All this has happened despite a much lower number of cops per capita – and a much larger area to patrol – than New York.

    Police Chief Bill Bratton deserves a huge amount of the credit for this amazing transformation, but the department has also remade itself in the image of the diverse city it serves. Over a decade ago, the LAPD was 80% white. Today that number is 38%, with 41% of the force composed of Latino officers, 12% black, 7% Asian. Almost 20% of officers are women.

    The LAPD has put a lot of effort into fixing its poor image in the communities where it was most detested – admitting to its checkered past in minority communities. And its strategies are working.

  • George W. Bush: Welcome Back to Dallas, Sort Of

    Any moment now I expect to see the familiar face of our former President, George W. Bush, in the parking lot of our local grocery store. Maybe I’ll run into Laura Bush on the treadmill at the Cooper Aerobics Center where both worked out on trips to Dallas. Once they are settled into 10141 Daria Place, I expect her mailbox to runneth over with invitations from countless charitable organizations, asking her as a former First Lady to be honorary chair and spearhead fundraising. And if only I attended Highland Park United Methodist Church, I may even have the benefit of praying with both the former President and his wife in that venerable Dallas institution: Bible Study.

    But the Bush family’s return to Dallas may not be as spectacular as they are hoping. Not that local journalists would be so rude as to throw a shoe, but when your 27 year-old hairdresser tells you she would refuse to style the former First Lady’s locks, you know something ain’t right.

    When George and Laura Bush left Dallas in 1994, we were sad to see them move. They sold a 3600 square-foot Austin stone home with a gravel driveway in Preston Hollow – a grassy, treed Dallas neighborhood known for its rich share of high net worth individuals. The Bushes lived in a lovely but modest part of PH – they owned a half-acre lot, a far cry from the one to 12 acre mansions west of Preston Road

    Texas pretty much loved his leadership, though it has been said that the governor of Texas really doesn’t do much of anything. “In 35 years of hanging around the Capitol…I have never seen anyone that good at the game of politics,” wrote Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka in 2004. “It was impossible to be around the guy and not like him. He filled a room. He was always himself. He said what he thought. He had the ability to let down his guard without losing the dignity of ‘I am your governor’. Not the governor – your governor.”

    In the Capitol, Bush was a uniter, not a divider and, as Burka writes, he fought the extremists in both parties. “He had the courage to tackle the most important issues: public education and the tax structure. He had a great staff. He made appointments based on ability, not litmus tests. He had the decency to stay above petty politics.” Their twin girls, who had attended the same exclusive private girl’s school in Dallas as my own daughter, opted for Austin public schools. That choice clearly planted the new governor as a “man of the people”.

    Down here, we thought Washington was a mess led by a shameful president. Bush would go to Washington and ditch most of the BS.

    In 2000, he was the man of the hour. A devout Christian, a conservative; nod nod, wink wink, we never believed Laura really was all that conservative. We didn’t think the President was, either. After all, this was the man who lost his 1978 run for Congress to a conservative Christian Democrat named Kent Hance, who stung the Bush campaign by spreading word that young Bush was plying college voters with alcohol, the drink of the devil.

    Then our attention turned to the fact that religious fanatics from another part of the world murdered 2,000 Americans at the Pentagon, World Trade Center, and in a wooded Pennsylvania field on September 11, 2001. Stem cell research, abortion rights, the $1.6 trillion tax cut were no longer Job One – we feared for our safety and couldn’t even open the mail without concern the envelope was laced with Anthrax.

    Post 9/11, Dallas was solidly supportive of the Bushes. Then came the Iraq invasion and all the other disastrous bookmarks of his dual terms that made even the most loyal hometown supporters wonder – what is up with him? What happened to our governor? Bush had promised us a crisp, tight-ship of state. Instead, we got two wars and evidence of more disorganization, culminating with the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression.

    America was fed up; even Dallas was losing patience. Prior to the November election, I gasped one day while driving through the backstreets of Preston Hollow. The Bushes’ own neighborhood had more Obama yard signs than McCain, even in the yards of the homes flanking his old one. President Obama picked off the three largest urban counties in Texas – Dallas, Harris (Houston, home of papa Bush) and Bexar (San Antonio, heavily Hispanic). McCain did win Texas, but Obama racked up 43.8 percent of the total vote.

    Texas has changed in the 15 years since the Bushes left Dallas. We are more diverse, and a Hispanic majority is on the horizon. Not sure how they view the former president, but they adore his nephew, handsome and half-Latino George P. Bush – someone to watch closely.

    Meanwhile Dallas’s population has expanded exponentially, and we are poised to become one of the largest urban centers in the country. Our population is younger, a combination of maturing offspring – children of the Baby Boomers like Jenna and Barbara – and an influx of people who moved here from other metro areas, many post 9/11.

    We are finally developing an urban core, though the recession and credit crunch has slowed progress and put several developments on hold. We have a Ritz Carlton, a W Hotel and Residences. Even Philippe Starck has his imprint etched on Dallas glass. The Perots and Tom Hicks built a magnificent downtown sports arena that promises to be a Times Square. The Mandarin Oriental got us all stirred up then put on the brakes. More recently, one charming high rise project halted construction, leaving a skeleton shell and returning the few buyers’ deposits. Other ambitious projects are leasing cheaply just to pull in warm bodies.

    We have more foreigners living in Dallas; Mexican food is no longer the only exotic fare in town. Travel north of LBJ/Interstate 635, the major highway that divides blue-ribbon real estate from the ‘burbs, and you find entire communities of Sikhs, Buddhists, Muslims – including a sprawling mosque.

    George Bush may have super-glued himself to the religious right, but while he was gone, Dallas grew more liberal and tolerant. Gay men hold hands, kiss in public, and lead corporations. A gay Dallas couple has just filed the state’s first same-sex divorce case. You see more crunchy people and Birkenstocks: Whole Foods has stores across the city. We eat more granola and yogurt and shun the preservatives.

    Even our garbage collection has changed: the president will have to divide paper from plastic into big blue bins to be rolled out bi-weekly.

    There are vestiges of the past: Harvey Goff sold his family hamburger shop, famous locally for insulting their own customers even as they munch on a thick, greasy burger. Jimmy Francis – a Bush supporter – bought the stores and shut down the Lover’s Lane location to make room for a Geek Squad. But there is still a store near SMU.

    Most significant, however, is how the Housing boom changed the face of North Dallas, including Preston Hollow. Dallas may remember how the economy Bush inherited was not in the best of shape, either, and was in fact sinking into recession. The Bush housing policy aimed to make home ownership a dream come true for every American via low interest rates. The cheap money made Dallas a crane-city. The mid-century ranches were scrapped to make way for everyone’s dream home – a 7000 square-foot stone castle-ette with turrets, porte cocheres, media rooms. While this began at the tail of the 90s dot.com boom, Bush housing policies – those low interest rates – magnified the momentum. Now even homes built in 1994 are looking worn.

    So you can’t say that George Bush didn’t change Dallas. But as the Bushes settle in, they also might notice how much the place has changed while they were gone.

    Candace Evans is the Editor of DallasDirt, a Dallas-based real estate blog for D Magazine Media Partners.