The Day I Almost Became a Republican

R.D.Kushner

 

Perhaps our cities are in a state of decay; and perhaps it is up to the architect and the urban planner to save these foci of human activity from imminent death. How then should these architects and planners go about salvaging the city and making it a viable core for human endeavors?

The following is a thought experiment which engages this question. It began as a rhetorical device related to architectural and political theory; seeking to shake the foundation of a steadfast academic foe, it provides a deep look into the intricate web of urban theory, of which architecture is only one of many participants.

Imagine a scenario where an architect promotes a new type of quasi-urban development wherein the density of the city [equated with the evils of the city] is reduced by spreading the population of the city and its commercial core over a larger area. The urban vision of Frank Lloyd Wright's "Broadacre City" mirrors this scenario [as does Le Corbusier's very different vision of the "towers in the park"]. Compounded with government tax incentives for families to move into rural areas and own homes, and cars, and property, we see today a decreased urban density and the rise of "suburbia". This is not to oversimplify the phenomena of growing metropolitan suburbs and suburban sprawl, but to rather loosely associate the conditions of suburbia with a trend in architectural and political thought.

For this argument to proceed we must now entertain the notion that the city is indeed sick, that it needs to be cured, and that one of societies goals is to maintain the growth and prosperity of its urban centers. Indeed this scenario is presented by radical theorists with a claim of dire emergency, seeking to gain favor through scare tactics with a "fear your city not me" scenario.

The argument follows, that in some ways the Broadacre City tradition can be seen as one of the forces which has lead to the decentralization of many of the components of the city. There are many reasons for this movement of people and resources, one of which is the drive of free market forces. It is no mystery that as a rule capitalism will always seek economic efficiency and that limited space gives rise to high property values, discouraging some types of commercial growth in the city; simple supply and demand. Provided with economic incentive, we now bare witness the results of such market forces; suburbia: a response to capitalism's path of least resistance.

Unfortunately such market forces are, by their very definition, responsible only to financial gain [to believe any statement regarding the "good of mankind", implicit or otherwise is to declare naiveté to this system]; architectural urban theory seems confined to the periphery, as rhetorical tool for the implementation of money-making endeavors; Broadacre City may be seen as such a tool. In this light, one may understand the Broadacre City scheme as a symptomatic solution: Frank Lloyd Wright saw the trends of the time and proposed a consistent urban model. this is not to beguile his vision, but to understand the forces responsible for ingenuity. We might further discuss the historically recent advent of the automobile, which has given rise to what we presently call the "commuter", a high speed pedestrian addressed in Wright's visions; an element without which, it is doubtful suburbia would ever have been realized [or even proposed]. The intricacy of issues surrounding the present state of our cities is now becoming very apparent; from here, I will allow my argument to proceed with the ways in which we might encourage the free market to be more responsible and more considerate to our cities.

Everywhere in the American city we can see the dried bones of Modernism holding up our buildings. The exposed steel frame, the glass box, the Miesian grid; all elements borrowed from the modernist agenda. Borrowed, but raped of their intellectual content; capitalism borrowed them for their efficiency not their philosophy. In the same way, our cities sprawl out into the landscape giving rise to words like "suburbia", "commuter", and "shopping mall". Whether or not we give credit to, or admonish Frank Lloyd Wright for these new elements, it is necessary for them to be seen as leading to, resulting from, and robbed of their original theoretical [arguably utopian] content. They represent economic viability; and they persist because of their ability to reap profit for their developers.

One might imagine, rather then letting urban/suburban development progress unchecked at the whim of our free market, a properly equipped and informed urban development committee would have the keen foresight to see the long term problems with certain proposals, for example Wright's Broadacre City, and would be able to put a stop to it before it reaches its apocalyptic demise [assuming it hasn't already]. This would provide a system of checks and balances for the future developers of our cities; the government would provide the American people with a brilliant group of urban designers, theorists, architects and philosophers who would be able to critically assess the state of our cities and the viability of development proposals.

The proposition of a government committee such as the one described above can be seen as a social program typical of the Democratic party; a social program supported by tax dollars, aimed at maximizing the happiness of the American people by protecting their cities. It is fundamentally foreign to Republican notions of "small government", where such programs would not be supported at the Federal level, but would be relegated to the State and Local governing bodies; or worse, urban development would be controlled by the appeal of particular programs to the general public in an economic sphere. The public would "vote" which program would be best in terms of their willingness to invest money; the free market, which I have already established is unable to insure that correct and moral decisions be made for our cities, would be in control once again. Before we disregard the feasibility of such a government program, let us entertain for a moment its potential viability.

The "Committee on Urban Affairs" would be in a position to propose legislation to prevent proposals which might threaten the condition of our urbanity; proposals that, regardless of their attractive economic viability, could be looked at carefully to reveal their true nature and possible adverse long term effects. The results of such studies would not only be to pass laws to prevent the development of schemes which would threaten the viability of our cities, but to propose new schemes to better them; in short, they [the Committee] would save us from the utopian visions of egomaniacal architects, planners, or developers... or would they?

The obvious question which arises is as follows: If it is decided that a particular urban development model is not appropriate, what would this urban development department propose?

In a sense, an urban theory or a development plan is proposed as a means to provide a vision to the growth and/or pruning of our built environment; a vision which undoubtedly aims toward improving quality of life of the inhabitants of the city. The notion of improving the quality of life on as large a scale as a city suggests that their is a list of desirable "abstract goods" so prevalent that agreement on them by the inhabitants of the city, would be unanimous (Popper, 355); this point gets to the notion that visions at the scale of a city have, at their core, a utopian aim of universal application and universal appeal. Karl Popper addresses the problem with these types of visions: "The whole method of first establishing an ultimate political aim and then preparing to move towards it must be futile if the aim may be changed during the process of its realization (360). If, as Popper suggests, abstract goods can not be agreed upon, then this "futility" is precisely what the "Committee on Urban Affairs" would be running up against.

When these "ideal goods" are proposed by individuals in our society, who pander to the masses in an effort to sell their ideas via the free market, I have established that under some circumstances, they have caused harm to our cities [vis a vis the pilfering of urban centers by shopping malls to cite one example]. The aim of the social program described above would be to protect the public from urban proposals or extra-urban proposals which would damage the viability of the city. It could be rationalized as another example of a government intervention to ensure the economic interests of the masses in an area where the free market needs tinkering with: i.e. monopoly breakups [Microsoft] and interest rate adjustments [Greenspan]. The danger here is that in ruling out some propositions and accepting others, this hypothetical committee would have the same power to steer the course of our cities as the capitalist machine presently does. As proposed above, the utopian aims of such a program, however thoroughly analyzed, may be just as dangerous to the city as the free market forces currently in affect.

The problem with such a committee, set up to analyze and then propose the best possible course for the development of the American city, is that in time the failure of these programs to reach an ideal model would result in the periodic reevaluation of the success of the existing model which would be under development [thus getting back to Popper's misgivings on this process]. This reevaluation would be followed by a revision based on the findings of each new study; the result of which is continuing change in ideology over time in a never ending search for the "right" solution. The virtue of such a solution will only approach "truth" in its power to be generally agreed upon; with the understanding that such an agreement is only temporary.

A Broadacre City scheme might be dismissed by this hypothetical panel of experts before the free market would give up on it. I posit that, despite my aversion to the whim of the free market ["the voice of the people"] this would not be an improvement; for if their really is something destructive about a particular urban vision such as Wright's in time the free market will rebound to propose a new solution: a viable solution "voted" for by the American people with their monetary support. Alternately, a "Committee on Urban Affairs" would only serve to increase the cycle of soon to be revised utopias. The success of our cities should be left in the hands of every man, woman, and child in America; we all should feel free to propose an urban strategy. If a brilliant idea is generated, which is sensitive to the current social and political movements of the time, it will, by the laws of the free market, rise into favor. The growing pains of successes and failures is, for better of for worse, intrinsic to our socio-economic and socio-political environment.

I have argued for smaller government... maybe I should have voted for George Bush last November.