On Folk Malthusianism, The Bristlecone, Ned Reskinoff, November 13, 2022

Degrowthers scored some major policy victories between the 1960s and the 1990s. In major cities across the United States, they successfully spearheaded a wave of downzonings to cap population growth. But perhaps their most enduring victory was ideological: to this day, folk Malthusianism is the fundamental premise of NIMBYism. It is not uncommon for NIMBYs to argue that their city has already hit the natural limits on its growth, and that any additional housing will lead to the sort of degradation and disorder you would expect in a standard Malthusian trap model. Or to put it more colloquially, [Los Angeles/San Francisco/New York] is “full.”

This is a really neat point, especially for right-NIMBYs who are otherwise conservatives. The fact that NIMBYism was historically underpinned by a sort of Malthusian environmentalism, generally of a left-ish Paul Ehrlich variety, should concern those on the right who subscribe to it, shouldn’t it?

Read the whole thing.

What’s Working in Laconia, Quarantine Creatives Newsletter, Heath Racela, November 6, 2022

This is a fantastic illustrated piece about Laconia, New Hampshire, a large town/small city of 16,000. Racela (who also links this piece of mine!) notes that it nonetheless has a small-town feel. He profiles the town in detail and makes me want to visit it.

What you’ll notice is that everything that makes Laconia great is more or less the same stuff that makes every city or town great. Yet we almost never say that small towns “all feel the same” or “look the same.” We say that about suburban sprawl because we don’t really like it, not because places looking the same is a bad thing.

The Car and the World, Apex’s Notes, April 7, 2021

The problem that we face is that the Car is now seen as normal. It is expected that one possesses a vehicle. And so society is built around them. What used to be 20 minutes away by foot can now be placed 20 minutes away by car, because who walks anywhere anymore? The car is no longer a way to explode boundaries: it has become the boundary-setter itself.

There are obviously a lot of the same broad ideas here as in my own work. This was a great read, and a bit of a philosophical one. Check it out!

For the fourth item today, a neat post by a builder about his experience building a China Coast location, a strange 1990s attempt to create a P.F. Chang’s-style national Americanized Chinese chain restaurant. The chain failed within a few years, and the buildings, which were highly ornamented and complicated, struggled to sell.

Anyone have any idea if a single one, out of about 50, is still standing in its original form?

Related Reading:

New and Old #11

New and Old #12

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