How Should The East Coast Prepare for the Inevitable

+ Until we move from binary to triadic thinking from pragmatism to pragmaticism from proselytizing to universalism we will be doomed to make the wrong decisions and celebrate them as master achievements Thus Manhattan contemplates building big flood blockades that will protect Wall Street and inundate Brooklyn or some such silliness + The brutal truth is that we are already doomed to an ongoing deluge and will  be doomed to the current painful agonies until we answer affirmative to the following proposition The solution to flooding and tidal inundation is to either create or move to higher ground and build our dwellings there + The pragmaticist obligation is to stop lavishing attention on the sexy notion  of  diverting future tidal inundations with monstrous blockades (the binary way) and instead to assume that any level above an anticipated inundation level is the level at which it is safe to create places to be occupied by children and women and men and pets From this premise many fine premises can be elaborated + IMAGE Top First is the Sign of Unity in Diversity Second is the cold reality of our penchant for inundation Third is the happy intended result of a creative collision of First and Second issuing in specific new solutions to the problem of higher ground  Stephen's Remarkable Kindle Store

The Mythological Bipartisan Council of Mega Brains

A few premises one might considerwhen we finally assemble mega experts 
A mega-shift that is neededto recasta society so stratified that it is laughablea sprawl that even now lapses into decaya policy of zoning that only aids stratificationa construction industry that is retro and riddled with corruption an economy that has no relation to life on the ground
A mega shift to create models of communities where having a vital local economy is the starting pointwhere living working and recreating and educatingtakes place in the same walkable areawhere cars and other fossil-fuel suicide machinesare peripheraldesigned to recede not to rule the roost
I shall stop here because I lose peoplewhen I start to actually explainBut at least give me the benefit of your doubt  And if you think this makes sense follow the labels

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Visualizing A Car Free Cyber Community One

Visualizing A Car Free Cyber Community Two | ShortFormContent at Blogger:
The squares are residentialThe rectangles are commercial and institutionalThe circles are squares for sitting and playThe ovals are kiosks and other small structuresrepresenting specialties and local employmentConnections between structures are part of a commonmatrix that serves the wholeA cyber community is made up of a maximum of four levelsThe total area is a mile or so square

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A new vision of how to change the economy

A new vision of how to change the economy is a combination of the following elementsbeyond sprawlredensifyingcar-freevibrant local economiescyber-communitycyber-cityintegration of work residence and everything elseSimply follow topics via searchOr the labels below

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Looking Back After The World Ignored The Truth Updated 12/6/2012

Say it's 2050 and though the roads are not as full as now, people make do with cars if they can afford it. Most others stay where they are because there is no way to cheaply go anywhere at all.


Construction has not changed but more and more of sprawl has been abandoned and more large vacated highway spaces have been chopped up into efficiency apartments.

The schools are now moving toward thirtieth worst in the world and higher education is for the wealthy only with a receding  number of scholarships based on merit.

I could go on but let me simply state my theory for the umpteenth time:

We need a totally new theory of settlements based somewhat on Alexander's "Pattern Language" modified to insist that human settlements be car free, that we live in numbers of about 5-10K in a square mile, that all elements of a city be within a single community, and so forth.

We need to generate huge new industries based on creating the modular components of the new construction. We need eco matrix production so that each community can be sustainable in itself, recycling everything, generating its own energy, etc. We need to create local governance that is made up of residents who live and work in these cyber-communities.

I am not saying we cannot adapt what we have now. But we need a model to be built and no one has even drawn it yet.

If this became our plan we would have a vibrant economy and smart solutions and a good future. If we ignore the reality we mark time until we cannot even dream of it.

We will not get the change we need until we are willing to articulate what it is.

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The future city will not be this. It will be the cyber-community

Future City:

"This painting by Frank R. Paul's of a city of the future and is pretty typical of such predictions. The city is a massive pile of steel, plastic and glass put together in a way that not only has no past, but actively rejects it. It is a place of heroic technology with skyscrapers the size of whole districts, roof-top aerodromes, wide pedestrian boulevards, and metal roadways strangely devoid of traffic. There are even urban space launch pads where giant rockets are winched upright before blasting off to the heavens. Noise regulations, Shmoise regulations."

The future city will not be this. It will be the cyber-community - clusters of cyber-communities will make up the cities of the future. Car free, non-high rise and compressed enough to enable a viable economy to be a feature of each community.



Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Why Yesterday's Construction Technology Must Go

It is too expensive

It is not mass-produced at a proper scale

It is not smart

It cannot be easily integrated into a grid that could supply energy and remove waste for a whole community

It is in the hands of developers whose aim is to extract the last dollar with little regard for human needs or human participation in planning

The idea of making each distinct structure a stand-alone eco-plant multiplies costs and hurts efficiency

Concentration on renewing old structures delays the day when new initiatives can create genuinely 21st Century communities where all elements are integrated, where all surfaces are smart, and where life in all respects is within walking distance 

Yesterday's construction was for sprawl, highways and endless separated housing segregated so you have to drive everywhere

Tomorrow's construction will be integral, beyond green and reflect a new economy that integrates grass roots and global

What nobody gets about the future

For what it's worth here is what I would sayNo one is getting about the futureThat the day of driving our lives away will endThat the day of building detached houses will endThat the race to save these things will impede the futureThat the future will be either necessity or choiceWe could freely decide to move to car free communities and a high tech alternativeTo today's sclerotic and impossible transportationOr we could be forced into ultimately conceding the conclusions aboveChoice is vastly better than necessityWe could create multi-zoned car-free cyber-communitiesWith modular spaces build within an eco-sufficient matrixWith reformed education because the neighborhood becomes a schoolBy accepting their ultimate necessityAnd modeling new forms of social beingWhere we could walk to everythingWhere the need for  necessary travel is trumped by technologyWhere the need for urban in gratified in the micro environmentWhere cyber means that we utilize cyberAs communal experience via kiosks staffed and placedThroughout the cyber-communityAnd so forth and so on as noted hereAnd in the blog complex
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Why is the world economy falling falling falling

World Stocks Fall Amid Economic, Euro Worries | Fox Business:

'via Blog this'

It is falling because the oil sprawl economy to which the whole world aspires is a failing project that can only continue to sputter and fail

It is falling because the lack of confidence that this reality engenders is formidable and going nowhere but up

It is failing because no one has listened to this simple argument and concluded that we could turn things around by predicating everything on the need for car-free cyber communities globally built on pattern language principles. Click labels for emendations.


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When will people get it through their head

Bad Planning and Sprawl Are a Lethal Formula Worldwide | Sprawl World:

When will people get it through their head

That planning as we know it leaves us dead

Architects and planners need to think

Instead of bowing to the folk who blink

Well if you want more click through to the NYT evidence at the link above. We have built a world ripe for ascending weather emergencies and when they take place what do we do? Rebuild. How dumb can we be? We need to get rid of ascending car and road presence and begin building human scale cyber-enabled communities that are car free and that recognize the common need for urban amenities within walking distance everywhere. If you think the blinking reference in my quatrain is random, think again and go back to Zarathustra and reread Nietzsche's prophetic description of a comfort-addicted world. Chilling. Apposite. Relevant.

Actually it is Nietzsche's Moment Now

ShortFormContent at Blogger: How could Nietzsche the scourge of democracy become its advocate?:

If you have the patience to scope out the post at the link above, you will catch a bit of a prevision of what is happening in earnest now not far from where I live. The neighborhood that saw panic and trauma ten years ago is seeing peaceful revolution in the making now. It is clear that the President cannot achieve any objective without the people and now the people are rising. And it will not stop. And when it is over the Tea Party will be revealed as a nativist backwater funded by billionaires. And the people will be seen as the 99 percent who are being squeezed by a corporate culture that cares not for the general welfare. Nietzsche anticipated a revaluation of values and that is what this revolution is about. It is a global values revolution to save the world from permanent repetition of the 20th century and its tragedies and wars.It is a war against stratification, reification and the mindlessness that exists when elementary fairness is subordinated to authoritarianism and bureaucracy, not to mention the profit motive. During this century sprawl overtook the planet and oil dominated and automobiles became the driving force of the economy. The revolution will help give more heft to .the universal values of non-idolatry, tolerance, democracy and helpfulness.


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We need to evolve into a world of intelligible neighborhoods

Evolving a Neighborhood Society - Associated Content from Yahoo! - associatedcontent.com: "Scale is the key. Current metrosprawl densities are impossible economically. We need to evolve into a world of intelligible neighborhoods. "

More at the link aboce

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It's been years since I watched Leno or Letterman

Nobody Watches Late Night Anymore: "A year plus after the whole late night kerfuffle, everyone's back to not caring at all about late night. During this past premiere week (when all the shows are new and sparkly) both Jay Leno and David Letterman's ratings bombed."

TV is a compensation for the power elite's decision to create metrosprawl as the default community-buster.

'via Blog this'


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Platform For A Global Democratic Revolution

All governments should be based on democratic idealsDemocracy as the right of all to full equality and rightsThe rule of lawAnd the practice of tolerance helpfulness and non-idolatryWe affirm the following goals:Full gainful employment to all who desire itEqual public education for all A transition to car-free communitiesWith the attributes of cities but with face to face local community And local democratic governanceThe creation of a world where the use of fossil fuels is lessened over timeBecause we will have eliminated the sprawl associated with the age of oil ad the automobile
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Dispersed homes will never recover their “value”.

Dispersed homes will never recover their “value”.

Economic viability in the future will be five times greater for those living in close proximity in communities that integrate a good deal of what is now all over the map. Another way of saying this: Energy costs are five times greater in dispersion than in denser areas.

Both the dispersed (metrosprawl) model and the commute-by-car, do-everything-by-car models are unsustainable. Ultimately it may be less expensive to redesign and rebuild communities from scratch, than try to continue propping up today’s default sprawl.

This is the underlying reason for the crisis we are in. Remember we said we needed to move to a post-oil economy?

Current efforts to tie recovery to the resuscitation of the automobile and housing markets are unlikely to do more than sputter. Meanwhile the vision of a truly sustainable economy can be found in the thought of thinkers like Christopher Alexander. Alexander's one mistake was to assume the continued necessity of the automobile.

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Sprawl World: Designing to Defeat Sprawl

Sprawl World: Designing to Defeat Sprawl:

More at the link above.

Almost no economists are capable of doping out the future because they are lost in the benchmarks of the past. We need some sort of transcending of the existing boundaries between disciplines and expert areas before we can even make sense of a post-environmental notion of how to integrate technology with realistic principles of design for human beings.

Designing to Defeat Sprawl

1. Purchase about ten square miles of relatively vacant land near some railroad tracks currently in use or that could be in use with a little work.

2. Advertise the creation of an experimental community to test certain theories about a 21st Century economy.

3. Assemble the range of skills needed to develop a new model of living from the ground up.

4. Ensure that the land can be developed without regard to existing zoning laws.

3. Plan and design an integral human settlement that can sustain itself in terms of energy, economy, healty and education.

4. Sponsor a design competition to based on this outline.

5. Condition One: This community will have few if any motorized vehicles within its perimeter. Residents will get themselves from place to place by foot.

6. Condition Two: This community will have graded ramps instead of stairs to ease walking, exercise, and movement from place to place.

7. Condition Three: This community will scale size and design institutions and commercial establishments to a community of 5-10,000 where residents travel mainly by foot.

8. Condition Four: This community will integrate residences with commercial, recreational, educational, cultural, athletic and other facilities.

9. Condition Five: The community relies on mass-produced modules for housing and the creation of a skeleton for the organization of these spaces.

10. Condition Six: The community will utilize natural power sources to the extent possible and be built around principles of conservation and sustainability.

11. Condition Seven. The community will be designed to withstand any conceivable natural disaster or weather condition.

Making Sense of Density

Sprawl World: Low density, automobile dependent development:

Making sense of density

Requires simple reason

Telling us that too little

Is a recipe for poverty

Likewise too much

Creates sclerosis

And reifies us all

This defines metrosprawl

The answer lies in creating

From what exists

What next must be

10,000 in proximity

In walkable communities

Rezoned to contain everything

But cars

Thus to spawn new economies

And shelve what is

To make new room

For mass production beyond green

For reaffirmed community

Then we won't need to move

To Mars

Clearing our brains of dross would help

3quarksdaily: "Our modern system for generating novelty and prosperity has stretched to encompass the entire planet, growing more complex and expansive, so that now it seems to groan and shudder beneath its own weight. In its service, some things are falling apart: Non-renewable resources are profligately consumed, ecosystems disrupted, and social traditions steadily relinquished. "

Dross includes allegiance to roads and automobiles in preference to the creation of sustainable communities linked by yet-to-be-invented public means. Dross includes acceptance of stratified zoning principles that create and abet sprawl. Dross includes a sense that we can solve everything building on the premises we now base our planning and design on. Dross is the power elite's best friend.



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An intelligent alternative to global energy death

An intelligent alternative to global energy deathWill involve the simplest of solutionsBunch upAnd walkNot in existing communitiesThese must be remade so thatEverything we need is withinWalking distanceToday's sprawl represents our conscious orUnconscious commitment to eventual global suicideWe can avoid this by intelligent design of a new world
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