This world we live in...
It's amazing to think of how many billions of dollars are spent on road and highway construction in America, but most people don't give it a second thought. Wouldn't it make more sense to spend a fraction of that on planning communities that are built on a human, walkable scale?
Too many people here on the Wasatch Front are density-phobic. When some people hear the term high density, they immediately think of slummy apartment buildings or ugly condos. Density can be bad and it can be good. A well-designed, walkable and aesthetically pleasing neighborhood with shops that have one or two stories of living space above them can be very, very nice neighborhoods. "High density" doesn't have to be apartment buildings either. Consider dense neighborhoods with Victorian-style houses. Think of homes with nice porches that front onto tree-lined brick sidewalks.
Oh wait, what I just described existed in America once upon a time. It was a time before we decided that we were going to build our entire lives and landscape around the automobile.
Sometimes I wonder what was going through the minds of developers and local government officials back in the 1950s. Ever noticed how a lot of subdivisions from 40 or 50 years ago don't even have sidewalks? Did they believe that walking was just a thing of the past? I guess it's easy to be mesmerized by the ability to drive everywhere when gasoline costs only $0.21 a gallon.
On page 68 of The Long Emergency, Kunstler so aptly states:
"The denial about global peak in the United States is already fierce, as investments in car-dependent, oil-addicted infrastructure are greater here than in any other nation and Americans consider their way of life a God-given entitlement."
And on page 65, he also writes:
"For many Americans, who have never known a way of life without cheap oil, there is a simple inability to imagine life without it. Some say that just because more oil hasn't been discovered doesn't mean that it isn't there. They are unimpressed by data showing that discovery peaked world-wide forty years ago and has been declining steadily ever since."
Too many people here on the Wasatch Front are density-phobic. When some people hear the term high density, they immediately think of slummy apartment buildings or ugly condos. Density can be bad and it can be good. A well-designed, walkable and aesthetically pleasing neighborhood with shops that have one or two stories of living space above them can be very, very nice neighborhoods. "High density" doesn't have to be apartment buildings either. Consider dense neighborhoods with Victorian-style houses. Think of homes with nice porches that front onto tree-lined brick sidewalks.
Oh wait, what I just described existed in America once upon a time. It was a time before we decided that we were going to build our entire lives and landscape around the automobile.
Sometimes I wonder what was going through the minds of developers and local government officials back in the 1950s. Ever noticed how a lot of subdivisions from 40 or 50 years ago don't even have sidewalks? Did they believe that walking was just a thing of the past? I guess it's easy to be mesmerized by the ability to drive everywhere when gasoline costs only $0.21 a gallon.
On page 68 of The Long Emergency, Kunstler so aptly states:
"The denial about global peak in the United States is already fierce, as investments in car-dependent, oil-addicted infrastructure are greater here than in any other nation and Americans consider their way of life a God-given entitlement."
And on page 65, he also writes:
"For many Americans, who have never known a way of life without cheap oil, there is a simple inability to imagine life without it. Some say that just because more oil hasn't been discovered doesn't mean that it isn't there. They are unimpressed by data showing that discovery peaked world-wide forty years ago and has been declining steadily ever since."
Amen Kunstler.
posted by Utah Peaknik at 3:04 PM
1 Comments:
Hey, peaknik
Did you catch the July 28 SL Trib letter to the editor Praying for an oil crisis by Steve Blackham? It mentions the DOE commissioned Hirsch Report, which everyone should read.
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