I remember a front page of the Futurist which showed the city of the future, complete with wonderfully drawn highways sweeping through the center - and what might be called "futuristic" cars travelling their streamlined high speeds along the roads. It looked great, but showed how we take a wrong path, resist contrary ideas, then defend to the death.
I've already pointed out how this has happened with Global Warming, AIDS, even the Overpopulation campaign. I think it may have happened to the Lovins - and other environmentalists.
The city is the obvious manifestation of civilization. There you should find a concentration of the things that make living in the 21st century worthwhile. Great theater companies competing with each other to provide excellence. On every side, opera houses, and restaurants, cinemas, singers, and entertainers (in and out of buildings). Among them people living and working in buildings rising high rather than taking up valuable space.
It should be a walking city, without roads and streets (serviced from below the ground). With such compact living, moving sidewalks would be practical - but desirable places would be so close to each other walking would be normal.
Actually, everyday activities would be simpler. Perhaps you might wake in your apartment on the 80th floor, have a light breakfast in the deli on the 6oth floor, go to your office on the 12th. After work, you might have a quick swim on the 90th, before having dinner in your apartment and going to the theater on the 18th.
Or, perhaps, after work you would walk to the country. A delightful part of this fanciful compact city is that you would not be far from the country - wherever you are. It's been called the "Fifteen Minute City". No-one would be more than 8 minutes from the surrounding country.
Why would anyone need a hybrid car - or any other personal transportation (unless you were infirm and needed an electric wheelchair, or a golf-cart, or something).
And who would care about fuel cells - except maybe in one of the golf carts?
But, that's an hypothetical. When Bartholomew studied 53 US central cities almost 50 years ago, he found that 29% of the space was unimproved, and 28% was used for streets and allies. He came to the conclusion that in the downtowns we actually lived on rather less than half the space. He didn't check on substandard and empty buildings. He marked them improved. Yet, many of them should be pulled down to make way for better buildings.
That was 50 years ago. Have things much changed? Probably some of the empty spaces have been used, but the buildings are 50 years older. You can see them in the Los Angeles downtown, empty -with broken windows boarded up - and round the corner a line of people sitting and lying on the sidewalks, because that's their home.
I've written a lot about land prices soaring. The evidence is overwhelming. Rising land prices cause people to hang on to land, rather than sell, or put it to use. Land prices in Los Angeles apparently went up 20% last year. Would you sell and invest your price in a S&L for 2% - or hang on and earn 20%?
As you know, this non-use and under-use drives people further and further out looking for affordable housing (which means cheaper land). To solve the commuting problem, freeways are built. The freeways, in turn, open up land still further out, which is settled in blotches, requiring freeway extensions - and so it goes.
So the attention of futurists is directed to the concrete, the automobiles, the invasion of habitats, the degradation of the air - in fact, anything except the poor land use that causes all these things.
The latest nonsense is "infilling". They are suggesting buying the empty and underused land and developing it. Landholders get the best price for this. Trouble is that those next to the infilling now slaver at the thought of deep-pockets coming back with a slew of money and their prices rise even further, making private development impossible.
I am interested in Land Rent collection - the land-value tax - not for its revenue, but for its economic effects. As I tell Georgists: "Better to collect Rent and throw it in the sea than not collect it at all."
You see I'm a curmudgeon to the Georgists as well as to the Global Warmers, the AIDS establishment, the Malthusians, and the Futurists.
The economic effect of Land Rent collection is that holding land for speculation will cease to be profitable. You will hold a piece of city land for ever - enjoying the continual price rise, even as the city flows past you on its way to the country.
But, if you have to pay $5 million a year land value tax on it, the gloss will disappear. Problem is that when you put it out for sale, you will find everyone else will be trying to sell too. Land prices will head downward and you will either sell for anything you can get - or you'll have to improve it. However, this isn't something that will happen all at once. It will be an ongoing process. The fingers of an approaching land-value tax will reach far ahead.
Once (a new profession?) city planning architects get busy in this new situation where high priced land is no longer a barrier, they will be able to move towards the Fifteen Minute City - or something even better that I haven't thought of.
I would suspect that cities would form around existing islands of high activity (to be seen in present cities) but we will have to wait. Economic public transport would link cities, for rapid transit is most effective when connecting densities, rather than dribbling from downtown into the suburbs.
Of course, this is a fancy, a dream, but it based on the solid thinking of 200 years - and perhaps 300 years. I suggest it is better than enthusiastically patching up an existing bad system.
Harry
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arthur wrote:
Haven't read it all, but makes my point. Has all the "gee whiz" strategies to make cars lighter, fuel efficient, etc., but never questions why the emphasis on cars and not on public transport. The current system is OK just needs lots and lots of high tech gadgetry.Never heard Lovins speak out against SUVs, suburban sprawl, etc. arthur
****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
--- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.427 / Virus Database: 240 - Release Date: 12/6/2002
