Modern Problems- Is it all just about the car? (edited)

 I have to edit this blog right now so that no one misunderstands my rant, which should have been proofread.  I actually really like Florida and the US, so I don't mean to be too negative or offend anyone.

The topic is: Where did all these modern problems come from?

I don't understand why we, people today, see sustainable living as something dependent on a technological revolution.  We consumed less energy and produced less waste a hundred years ago.  Certainly we have some of the solutions to the energy crisis already.  For example, air conditioning and don't need to be as prevalent as they are (in the US).  Food production could be more local, cutting down transportation costs and pollution.  Food production itself could be more environmentally friendly.   The list goes on and on.  The modern technology of the past 100 years has caused a lot of problems.  Why is technology the exclusive solution?  What if we have to go back, partly, to how we used to live?  Walk more, shop in your block, Travel using public transportation.  Pay more for food and more for your home.  Less packaging, because food doesn't haven't to travel the whole world for retail.  Take baskets and cloth bags shopping, just like people have for thousands of years.... It's not a new idea!

Let me give an example of how people are unaware of the effect that new technology has has on their own production of waste and pollution: the human north-to-south migration to naturally hot areas requires air conditioning.  Lots of people in Florida like to say, "I love the heat in Florida!"  I'm like, "Oh really?" I didn't have air conditioning in Philly because I didn't need it in an insulated town house. 

Those people tend to be the northern American immigrants, to be specific. I have to be specific because there are a lot of people in Florida from Vietnam or Puerto Ric, for example, and they don't really talk about how wonderful the heat is, because it's already normal.  

When hearing northerners talk about the wonderful heat in Florida, I'm thinking in my head is, "You don't like the heat at all.  You like air conditioning- is more like it- and now you have a reason to turn it on.  You don't know a thing about the heat in Florida."  None of us do, really, except for that horrible day when the electricity goes out because a hurricane blew a tree over the powerlines.  And maybe you're crying too because the gator ate your dog, Snuf. (For a scenario) But, when was the last Summer day  that you could bear to be outside all day, without rushing inside to "cool off", as they say or run away from alligators?  As far as I'm concerned, there is very little about Florida "heat" and weather that people like, so instead they hibernate inside all summer and most of the rest of the year, and travel around in air-conditioned cars otherwise.  There is nothing "green" about that.

As a side note, city-construction/city planning and architecture methods of previous centuries discovered ways to build buildings that creates a drought through the buildings.  Building height (more than just one story obviously) and awnings can also strategically be used to create shade from the sun.  Also, older Florida homes were built longways and parallel to the sea, in order to get the breeze from the ocean.

I have an anecdote to complement this topic: my mom, while visiting historic downtown Orlando, said more or less something like, "Wow, it's so breezy and shady.  It's so nice to be outside here. It's hard to believe it."

That is the problem, it's hard to believe that we already have all the answers we need for so many of our modern problems.  Only, they aren't necessarily all going to be new solutions; a lot of them will be what has been time-tested and true in terms of urban design.

I want to say, "We are too dependent on air conditioning!" These modern technologies have become a crutch for Florida living.  I am not particularly nostalgic, I just don't think that current energy usage can sustain the kind of Florida-lifestyle that is almost exclusively available now.
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But, there is another problem confronting urban design: where will we put the cars?

 It seems to me that our problem is just our mobility with the car.

I know, I know; I'm simplifying things too much.  It isn't just the car. But the car is at the bottom of a lot of our new, modern problems, which have been encouraged or exacerbated by car-living, car-design and the industries which strive to make it possible for the accompanying car-based infrastructure and economy.

Given, the trend began with the train; with its advent, people rushed out to settle new areas, resulting in lower population density in our cities and fueling a popularity of small-town living.  And, even before that, thinkers like Thomas Jefferson were already espousing city-life as decrepit and corrupt, dirty and unnatural.  I understand why they felt this way.  Most of those Americans were tired of London and idealized the simplicity of smaller towns.  But those smaller towns were in every way more urban than the car-designed small towns and suburbs we have today.  The older small towns, like Cottbus until 1945, were as dense as many modern walkable cities are today.  But, since the revolutions leading to car affordability, we are even more likely to live in low-density communities, which defy all historic precedent.

The evidence for this is on record: small towns and cities used to be dense.
Low-density is new.  Today, we have lots of new problems.  Therefore, low-density may be related to our modern problems.  Could it be a root cause?

Is low-density the  Problem? I mean, I just discussed air-conditioning, but maybe the car is the elephant in the room, so to speak.  No everyone wants to talk about their car usage and the participation in creating the hole in the ozone layer.  But, isn't that, like, the main cause of it?  Or a big cause of it?  I heard that Americans consume 30 percent of the petroleum supply (in the US) on personal automobile travel.  That compared to like five percent or something in Europe... and other countries don't manage to use that much at all.

We worry about a lot of things, and it might all be random and disconnected.  But, let's play the game of asking ourselves whether our modern problems could be caused or related to the isolation or social/economic structure of low-density living.

We have modern energy problems,  physical-health problems, modern mental-health problems, economic problems, a dependence on large corporations (for our employment and for the supply of products), food access and food quality, global warming, access to nature, etc, education, etc.

1. Physical-health problems? Obesity?  -- People used to use their legs for transportation.   This problem could be car related.

2. Mental-health problems?  Isolation? Lonliness? Are we left to learn what is right and wrong only from tv?  How many people today go into the gas station just for some human interaction?  In a dense environment, people walking on the street and shopping in their own neighborhood had a community.  In residential, car-friendly developments, businesses are against zoning ordinance and people jump in their car because walking talks too long.  No easy human interaction here.  Car-design could be the problem.

3. Economic problems?  Lars said to me once after looking at the US Department of State's fiscal budget pie chart, "Whoa! The US doesn't have a debt problem at all, just a Military problem"  He said that because the budget showed 30 percent allocations to the military, excluding police etc.  And, not to simplify things, but aren't we at least partly involved in the wars in the Middle East because we need peace in that area, or we'll have an energy collapse in supply?  And isn't the oil for cars mostly, and plastic secondly?  Maybe that is just gossip...

Besides the oil business higher density with proper mixed use design is good for business.  That is because we all know what our community needs, and business owners can react more quickly to local demands if they have a fighting chance to compete with chain stores.  Big box stores do better in surban settings than in dense settings... because there just isn't the space for a Wall-Mart type thing in a city.  If you don't know what I mean, go to a really dense city street in any big city, and you'll see all kinds of things.  The more the better, right?  Isn't that the free market?

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Another thing, what if bad urban design strangles out the small-time business shop owner?  Malls are an option, but how natural is a mall?  The whole issue is super complex I think, but my feeling is that malls aren't flexible enough because they can't really shrink or grow with the demand for space.  And, you always have to problem of inconvenience.

In a dense neighborhood (it doesn't have to be in a city) we would have an even stronger feeling of what residents in our town need.  We could be the one to supply it.   We would know, because we would sort of see our neighbors more if we traveled less by car and interacted with our neighbors more, in a mixed use designed/permitted neighborhood.

If Zoning and real estate prices make it unattractive or impossible to open a business in our neighborhood, then less people can open their own businesses.  Big Box is the easy solution. The economy is then dominated by MBA's who run big stores and think in numbers and have no relationship with us.

Do you ever feel like there is nothing personal about shopping anymore?  If all we have is those big box stores or shopping malls with comercial chains run out of NYC or wherever, then this is a sad sort of modern world.  It is similar to the stories I have heard about communism in East Germany and Poland.  Except it's worse.  The stores decide what to put on the shelves based on "market studies", but it is impossible for us to meet our own communities demands.  We are just a number, a consumer.  This is not the nice-communism that makes sure we all have health insurance, for example, and some type of employment, haha, but something else, something unintentional.  This is a big issue, and I couldn't begin to argue about this without some additional/concrete facts... but maybe I'm on to something.  I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of this.

Another issue is insurance and healthcare.  Those big insurance companies don't care about you, even if the individuals who work there might want to care about you; they have no time to do so.  They are stressed out, don't see a face.  And the lawyers, they profit on the problem (but most not that much), and can you blame them?  Besides, there's a new trend of turning law offices into corporations, where even the lawyers get abused, and who can they complain to if the whole system works that way?   They're under pressure to take on more and more and more cases.  It all comes down to economics, which is somehow related to how we run our communities...

A good way to counter all these new modern problems is to focus on phsyically creating/allowing small walkable neighborhoods where we interact on a personal basis and shelter ourselves a bit form the cold, impersonal modern world.  I think it is necessary to build higher density, walkable towns and cities.

I know this seems too simple.  Experts, politicians, engineers, lawyers: they should all be concentrating on making a simple solution possible: How can we live without the car.  We don't need more complicated answers and solutions.  We need communities; we need to care about each other in a personal way.  I think the reason we sense something amiss is because something is amiss.  Our basic instincts tell us this.  As they say, "Keep it simple, silly."  The car is a problem.  It starts with the car, leads to car-based design, and a whole domino effect follows.

The Baby-Boomer generation especially thinks of higher density living as stressful, but what if you took the car out of the equation?  Are they just stressed out about traffic? Cities can be denser, but density doesn't equal traffic jam.  Traffic jams only occur with cars!!! Lots of people on foot can be hectic, but you are still moving!  If traffic is caused just by moving about the city, then planners have already failed.  Traffic is often about getting out of the city.  But if you live in the city, you don't have to leave it and sit in traffic.

Thoughts on Food Deserts

When I worked on the Activity and Food Landscape Project at Penn (August 2010-October 2010), I learned a lot about the "Food Desert." It is a very very complex issue with interesting causes, terrible and surprising results and innovative solutions.  One cause of the food desert is that grocery store chains deem inner city neighborhoods of a certain demographic as "too risky", so they don't open shop, even though there are people this is the demographic, which tends to travel the most on foot or with public transportation, and traveling to a far away grocery store is an all afternoon affair.

But it isn't just inner-city neighborhoods.  The high-end, yuppy neighborhood I lived in in Orlando (which I like, by the way) has been the antithesis of a blighted inner-city for at least a decade, yet hadn't had a grocery store in a square mile radius for, like, 30-40 years!!  It was impossible to live downtown without a car, but a compact downtown isn't possible if everybody has a car, so the whole venture was doomed, until Publix opened a grocery store on Central and Eola Dr..

Also,  I know this because I lived in a food desert in Philly.  I lived a couple of streets away from a poorer part of town, but my neighborhood was all college students (no cars) and professors.  Corporations can be really blind sometimes when it comes to knowing where to invest.  I took me a half an hour usually to take the bus to the nearest grocery store, that or I had to walk two miles or so, also taking a half an hour.  My solution: I bought a backpack with wheels!  Two miles doesn't seem like a lot to some car-driving executive, but without a car it's a long way.  At least the walking was nice and I could walk down a recreational trail on the river on my way to the grocery store.  I guess I was privileged.

A surprising solution to the food desert problem is that the residents in these areas supply their own services for their own demand, and the result is a very non-corporate America in it's most authentic form, in my opinion.  There are parts of America that McDonalds, Wallmart's, and big chains don't care about a bit, so they don't open shop.  Access to fresh food suppliers for small scale and corner stores must be difficult though and could explain why lots of food-stores in inner-cities don't have good quality food, or if they do, it can be expensive compared to the chains.  At least a local resident had the pride of being his/her own boss.  

I mean, it is not as if all grocery stores need a pharmacy, bakery, meat counter and wine store within it; That is potentially six different stores, potentially run by six different small business owners.  The grocery stores might have to be smaller, but if there are lots of small stores, it comes out to the same amount, just spread out between a lot of hands, a lot of entrepreneurs.

But what do I know; I'm no entrepreneur or small business owner.  Or is this common sense?

Another solution are food markets on the weekend (from local farmers or imported, whatever), food trucks, and smaller grocery stores spread out more often (like every corner, darn it!).  Suddenly there are a whole lot of people in Generation X and Y, who want to have a farm, raise cows and churn out organic cheese.  That, or small family farms might have an alternative to selling en masse to some retailer. 

New Apartment, Same Town

Lars and I recently moved into our new apartment.  We now live practically in the town square, in the center of town life. 

Lars is my hero.  He found our apartment while I was visiting Agata in Poland.  Before my trip, we looked everywhere, but were faced with few options.  We saw an apartment in a Plate Development (with even a higher rent, but same space) in the south of the city, which seemed to be our only alternative to the loud apartment we had then.  Without a car, I would have been stranded after 7 PM in the Plate Development, when the last trolley serviced our area.  Our problem with finding an apartment was that we only want to rent short-term and we have a dog.  This time of year, with students going back to school, there's nothing left at all.

Miraculously, Lars found a two-room plus kitchen apartment for a lower price than even the Plate Apartment, and in the Old-City!  When I got back from Poland, he showed it to me and we moved in immediately.  Apparently, it was all luck; the last owner had just moved out.  Lars was the first person to commit to the apartment.  So, finally, Lars and I can say that we are settled in Cottbus, at least for the next 3-6 months!

Above is the view from the Foyet looking into the bedroom on the right and living room on the right.
Below are two pictures looking out of the bedroom window.  In the first picture, one can see a mixture of older buildings, Gründerzeit buildings and Plate-buildings.  In the second picture, you can see a  "Gründerzeit"building on the left, otherwise known as "Jugendstil" or in English, Art Nouveau style, a style connected to the American Arts and Crafts movement for its emphasis on organic and human form and decoration.  To the right is a building, similar to the own we live in, of Plate construction, or "Plattenbau."  A lot of the Old-City looks like the Plate building.

I learned that the reason for this is that much of the Old-City was destroyed during a bomb raid from the American-allies during WWII.  Since then, really nothing had been rebuilt until the Wall came down in 1989.  At that time, the town planners took a very conservative approach to rebuilding the Old-City: the decided to recycle the Plate-material they had on hand, but, instead of building large Plate building common to East European, they built building that fitted into the local buiding style and tradition.  That is why the Plate-buidling across the street doesn't really look like a communist Plate-building, even though the material is the same. 

Look to the Town Center "Alt-Markt", or Old-Market

View out my window, looking down a side street.  Plate-Building on the right.

Former site of City-Wall

Above is a interesting picture of the site of the historic City-Wall.  The stones mark the spot.  To take the picture, I stood in the middle of the street and looked south.  The street is also historic and was a main access into the city until 1500.  After 1500, the area around the wall became more settled, and I'm not sure what purpose the wall served then.  Still, the wall marks the boundary of the town until industrialization and the coming of the railway system, which caused an increase in wealth and an expansion of the city in all directions, especially southward.

I have been learning all of this in a class at the university, in which I get to look at really old maps of Cottbus and have to redraw maps.  One map I made shows the settlement pattern of Cottbus.  The city stayed the same size from its settlement in the 3. or 4. century AD. (according to wikipedia) until industrialization, and then again after WW2.  So, in the last 150 years, the city has exploded in size!  By looking at the maps, I'm guessing that one could fit 12 Old-City size Cottbuses into the current Cottbus.  Basically, there was an exposion of growth with the advent of the railroad, and again with the arrival of the personal car.  Does that also count as urban sprawl.....?

City Gate and entrance to the left and house built into the old City-Wall

House built into the City-Wall

Old City-Guard station on the wall.

Market street leading toward the Alt-Markt. My apartment is further down on the left.

Above is the Plate-building I live in, designed to fit into the local building style.  The entrance to my apartment building is on the right.  Number 12, Marktstraße.