The Deleted Scenes - New and Old #176
Every word of this is worth reading. Benfield worries in the intro if urbanists will take offense at his questioning of the term, but I don’t think so. And I think he’s right that most regular people don’t know what the hell “urbanism” means. We have to be careful that we don’t end up doing for urbanism what J.D. Vance has done for starting a family, as I put it here: “concealing something normal and human behind a bizarre ideological edifice.” Now I don’t think most of us do that, but communicating ideas clearly is really, really important. He goes on to note that the boutique use of “urbanism” to mean something like “modern advocacy for traditional urban patterns” is not even a recognized dictionary definition of the word. And he notes—a point I emphasize all the time—that urbanism can exist outside of what most people would consider “cities”:
My own thought: I think you could say that self-identified urbanists are a little bit like foodies: we (I think I’m both) talk about food and architecture in detailed, specific—you know, nerdy—ways. But a lot of people sense and feel these things without a precise language, and we can sound like elitists or obsessives (or nerds). The key is to figure out how to communicate these “boutique” concerns about things that really affect all of us every day. Read the whole thing. It’s excellent. The Vicious Cycle of American Housing, Liberal Currents, Kevin Erdmann, April 10, 2024
Interesting. No doubt that a lot of public policy is basically messing with a mess and making more of a mess. There’s a lot here and it’s a little bit technical. But I want to point to Erdmann’s really great term for “superstar cities”: “closed access cities.” Sometimes the right words help you perceive what’s going on. That’s precisely it. The Supreme Court, when it found zoning constitutional, “opened up a century where city-building as it had necessarily occurred in the past could be outlawed as a nuisance.” That’s it. It all changes when you understand that this is what happened and what we’re trying to undo. What does this situation mean? For people without a ton of money, this:
This also clarifies and articulates some things:
There’s also this important point:
I think part of the resistance to this is the sense that people who end up homeless must have deserved it. Perhaps, on some level, people even think the unfair situation is the one where people who “deserve” to end up homeless are kept off the street by cheap housing—that by getting rid of bottom-rung housing we’re making the outcome in reality match what it’s “supposed” to be. Maybe I overestimate how heartless people are. I’d like to think so. I can’t tell you if everything in here is correct, per se. But it’s really well written and it recasts a lot of these housing issues in a way that makes you look at them new. The last days of California’s oldest Chinese restaurant: From anonymity to history, Los Angeles Times, Jessica Garrison, August 1, 2024
A story hiding in plain sight. That’s what so much “history” is: accidents of discovery that could just as easily have gone unknown. These sorts of “lasts” are one of my favorite things to document and learn about. These questions of how far back you can trace a thing, and whether we can ever really conclusively know the answer. There’s also the question of immigration and, yes, racism. And also the weird fact that restaurants are in a lot of ways instruments for immigration and immigrant families as much as they are sort of businesses enterprises in their own right:
Really interesting, complicated piece. Read the whole thing. The case of the angry history postdoc, Noahpinion, Noah Smith, May 28, 2024 A lot of what’s in here has to do with intra-progressive social media spats, but this is the bit that stands out, along with the basic argument that we’re “producing” more highly educated people trained in specific academic fields than we have an economy that can absorb in jobs having anything to do with what they studied and paid for:
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Hamming It Up
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What Do You Think You're Looking At? #176 ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Can You Be Cozy Everyday?
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Or, can you feel like you're away at home? ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
We Did It
Tuesday, August 20, 2024
What Do You Think You're Looking At? #175 ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Urbanism And Gratitude
Tuesday, August 20, 2024
On the immense subjective value of something almost lost ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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