Throwing a life ring to those "drowning in concrete"

In my previous post I explained how our national neurosis has led to our "drowning in concrete". We claim to be the champions of democracy and human equality, yet all too many of us secretly desire the trappings of nobility, which we get symbolically through our preferences towards single-family detached homes and private automobiles as as our preferred mode of transportation. While these preferences provide a half-assed simulacrum of the lifestyle of the Lord of the Manor and help resolve our inner psychological struggles, they have a downside in the outer, physical world. They make us dependent on petroleum and other fossil fuels, the use of which endangers our economic security, pollutes the air, and is affecting our climate in ways that will probably make the earth more unpleasant for human life and less hospitable to technological civilization.

What can we do to stop this? All too many on the green community are burying their head in the sand over this. They think some wondrous technological breakthrough, like cellulosic ethanol or plug-in hybrids, will come and rescue us and bring on a whole world of ersatz feudal lords in their sustainable suburban castles and SUVs. Those who do realize that the source of the problem is the neurotic preferences of the consuming public, would demand national group therapy and a cold-turkey change in lifestyle that has as much of a chance of happening as having Hugo Chavez as keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention next year. The other side, the automakers, the oil companies, the real estate industry, etc. didn't achieve their present dominance by forcing themselves on a reluctant public, they exploited what they found. They worked alongside the national neurosis and led their customers to wherever their customers wanted to go. If we are to be successful at countering them, we must do the same.

Wow. That's not going to be easy. Reality would say that energy security and environmental sustainability require the masses to give up on these symbols of faux nobility. Certainly, if everybody lived in inner-city apartments, rode the bus to work, and sent their kids to school with the (other) riffraff, we'd sure be using a lot less petroleum and emitting a lot less CO₂. But any politician who advocates that would never ever get elected. But I do have some suggestions to work with the popular dysfunction, not against it.

First off, the needed Federal policies:

• Very,very important is to control highway spending. I don't mean eliminate it, even. Pork is very important to the politicians. But there's no reason why they need to build high-capacity superhighways, and there's even less of a need to build them to low density "undeveloped" areas and subject them to a "buildout" of typical sprawl. Money can still go into local contractor's pockets and the local economy by keeping bridges in repair, repaving existing streets, and building an maintaining transit systems.
  
• For the real short term, fully fund Amtrak when the appropriation comes up next fall. Yes, As I've mentioned in a recent Daily Kos diary (which I hope to reproduce here), it's true that the fuel/CO2 savings from rail might not be all that high, but rail has an advantage in that it can interface far better with walkable/transit oriented communities than the alternatives. And for the longer term, make a commitment to having passenger rail make up a significant market share of all passenger traffic. They can do it in the Northeast, there's a lot of other places in the country where they can do it as well.
• Its' not just Amtrak that's in trouble, the entire rail system in this country is creaking and under strain. Sooner or later we're going to need to get rail infrastructure to be publically owned, just as highways, airports, ports, and inland waterways. Don't ask me how we can do that without making the railroad companies howl about their private property, but in the long run, it will be better for their bottom line as well as benefit the public. But I can't see how we can pay for the needed improvement in rail capacity and modernization by paying tax dollars to benefit private property. And it makes no sense to expect the private railroads to make the kinds of investment that is needed. (Just as it wouldn't make sense for trucking companies to build their own interstate highways and airlines to build there own airports and air traffic system, etc.)
• Sprawl control -- This is really a state/local thing, but all sorts of Federal rules, in addition the transportation funding, encourage sprawl. Things like Federal housing rules for subsidized loans and such. Maybe the mortgage tax deduction should be limited for residences located in urban areas with large populations are dependent on autos. (There would obviously have to be some way to avoid penalizing real rural people and also prevent gaming the system.)

But none of this will make any difference without --

• Propaganda (or "marketing") -- Effective propaganda that can show people how their psychic needs can still be met even if they own a smaller house and maybe do without a car. If our propaganda-meisters can sell America on the Iraq war, surely they can sell them on the joys of city (or real small-town) living. After all, the old-time nobility also had town houses in the city. Maybe liveried bus drivers and transit attendants are all we need to give people the idea that riding the bus is "first class." Or the hell with subtlety, why not give out knighthoods and titles of nobility to people who live in walkable neighborhoods and have a sustainable lifestyle? (This would require amending the Constitution, though.) Or at least free tolls on EZ pass for their relatively few vacation trips by (rented) auto.
  

However, most of what needs to be done is at the state and local level. First, of course, is that local grass roots need to let Congresscritters know that not all pork is equally desirable, specifically, there should be no political benefit for a Congresscritter to bringing a sprawl highway to one's district. Most local people don't benefit from the sprawl highway, only the few politically connected folks who own land that will become part of the buildout. (Think about Representative Dennis Hastert and the Prairie Parkway.)

Second, of course, is to fully fund transit, expand service in currently developed areas, and resist the temptation to expand more than overall regional population growth suggests is needed.


Finally, it's about time to build a political coalition of rural, inner city, and inner suburban voters to fight sprawl. Rural folks shouldn't be happy about the influx of extreme-commuter suburbanoids who are changing the character of their communities, but aren't bringing in any real contribution except inflated property values. On the other hand, continued sprawl decreases the value of inner-city and inner suburb property values and leaves homeowners in the older neighborhoods at risk of neighborhood deterioration. And, of course, abandonment of responsibility to the inner-city poor due to suburban flight is an old story. Most voters don't benefit from sprawl, but nobody has been able to organize an anti-sprawl political bloc. Who ever can do it will need to deal with the psychic reason why people move towards sprawl, provide an alternative emotional grounding, and educate the members of the diverse coalition about why it isn't in their interests.

"Drowning in Concrete" -- the psycho-political roots of our neurotic land-lust

(Edited/updated) 5/407)

Over at Daily Kos, the diarist Devilstower had a front-page post that captured the dilemma of our current over-reliance on automobiles and other motor vehicles. While all his points are good, and as James Howard Kunstler has pointed out, the Interstate Highway System was one of the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world, effective action can't be taken to correct things unless those who want change understand why we followed the path we did. We made our choices, as is usual, largely on the basis of our collective psyche. Our reasons were not totally rational, and activists who need to change things need to understand and appeal to, or somehow neutralize, the same irrational drives.


Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, is considered to be the "father of public relations." In his 1928 book Propaganda (by which he meant "public relations"), he wrote the following:

It is chiefly the psychologists of the school of Freud who have pointed out that many of man's thoughts and actions are compensatory substitutes for desires which he has been obliged to suppress. A thing may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself. [emphasis mine] A man buying a car may think he wants it for purposes of locomotion, whereas the fact may be that he would really prefer not to be burdened with it, and would rather walk for the sake of his health. He may really want it because it is a symbol of social position, an evidence of his success in business, or a means of pleasing his wife.

This, in a nutshell, is our dilemma. But the reasons why a a car (or a suburban/exurban McMansion, for that matter) is such a powerful symbol run very deep in our history.

Let's start with our mobility and then we can move to were we finally end up when we're done traveling around. "Mobility" is the fetish word of the automotive industry. (Just check out the website of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) or attend one of their meetings.) But to our subconscious, there are different levels of "mobility."

Michael Korda in his book Horse people observes:

-- In countless ways, the horse signifies rank, class, money, and has done so from the very beginning of history, separating the knight from the common foot soldier, the caballero from the peasant, the lordly plantation owner from the lowly dirt farmer, the glamorous cavalryman from the muddy infantryman. The horse stood, among other things, for social superiority, mobility, and not getting your feet wet and muddy like ordinary folk.

. . .

Those who had horses rode with their heads high above the common people, looking down on them, or later in carriages protected from the elements, with blinds you could pull down so you didn't have to look at them. The horse was for centuries the key factor for maintaining and establishing social distinctions, and horsemanship was the common bonding factor between the upper classes of almost every civilized nation and culture.

Let's be honest, public transit is nothing more than mechanized pedestrianism. And I say this from experience as a daily rider, often forced by crowds to spend most of my 2-hour commute in a standing position. And even when I sit, when I get off the bus or train, I have to walk to my final destination. No wonder our culture sees public transit as an "inferior good" mainly for the poor and otherwise disadvantaged. The auto made it easy for the masses to obtain the status of "equestrians." Lots of luck trying to convince the masses that they should give that up.

But there's more.

Autos are only part of the reason why we're "drowning in concrete." Another part is our collective national lust for living in "single family detached houses." If most people live that way, then building high-density compact towns and cities becomes impossible. the result is that not only do the masses rely on autos, they end up driving those autos long distances just to fulfill the requirements of their daily life. And people do insist on single-family homes. And such homes are not affordable any more in the close-in neighborhoods where walking and transit are practical and even if you drive, you don't drive very far. There's just not enough available land in those neighborhoods to build enough single-family houses. Supply and demand thus leads to the stratospheric real-estate prices you see when you go house hunting in places like San Fransisco, New York, Boston, Washington, DC, etc. Thus the homebuilders go further and further afield, 20, 30, 50 miles from town to build the new tracts of McMansions that homebuyers desire.

There's a reason why people lust for these McMansions. And it's part and parcel of the mass neurosis that's so effectively exploited by the real estate, automobile, and petroleum industry.

A good short introduction to the sources of the Anglo-Saxon lust for landed property can be found in Andro Linklater's Measuring America, which is purportedly about the US Land Survey and the development of our system of weights and measures (and also why we didn't adopt the metric system), but contains important background about the Anglo-American land-lust. In fact, the whole story of America is not necessarily about the spread of democracy, but rather the struggle for the wretched refuse of the teeming European shore to become miniaturized versions of European feudal lords. It is related, in equal parts, to the dislocation of the British masses as a result of the Enclosures during the period 1600 - 1800 and the availability of lots and lots of new land in the New World.

"A man's home is is castle" reverberates very strongly in the American psyche. In fact, the racist candidate George Mahoney used it the 1966 Maryland gubernatorial election that gave the world Spiro Agnew. It touched a powerful nerve in the American psyche, a nerve that continues today, where the highest ideal of American homeownership is as large a single-family detached house on as much land as possible. True, McMansions are often sited on postage-stamp sized lots, but them, these are cartoon symbols (as Kunstler would put it) of a manorial estate for the middle-class types who can't afford a real manor.

Again, lots of luck convincing the masses they should live in apartments. You might as well flat-out remind them that they are low-class peasants, always have been, always will be.

So this is our collective neurosis: We claim to support democracy where all are created equal, but deep down our heart's desire is to be a feudal lord. Most of us don't understand this inner struggle and are easy bait for marketers selling us the cheap symbols of upper-class identity represented by the single-family home and automobile. Thus we demand these almost as an entitlement even though for many of us neither the car nor the single-family detached home is actually practical for our current situation in life.

Any activist that wants to change our concrete-drowning ways needs to deal with this psychological barrier. Unfortunately, the status quo resonates very well with most of us, who lack the self-awareness to understand that sometimes the things we lust for aren't good for us. (I know that only too well with regard to diet!! :) ) True green politicians are going to have to figure out ways to shrink-talk the mass of voters into understanding what's really at stake.

As someone else has said, "Good night and good luck."

Welcome to the Green Gearhead

The Green Gearhead -- your site for informed comment on transportation and the environment.


Who am I?

Well, I'm a "Green." The Original Earth Day, 1970, inspired me to chose a career in Environmental science. I remember when the air was brown and the water down at the harbor was a rank green, foul-smelling stew. I've seen the great environmental laws of the 1970's make the world a better place. I've seen these laws under assault by people who care more about short-term profits than about the world their grandchildren will inherit. But I've also seen that this assault has not really succeeded. Unfortunately, though, the challenges that face the planet are more complicated than we realized. Which means that it's going to be harder to maintain our environment than we though in 1970.

And I'm also a "Gearhead." That is, I work with automotive engineers who are attempting to design more low-emissions cars and trucks, and with transportation planners who are attempting to reshape cities and towns to keep people moving, yet keep the air and water clean. Not the easiest job to succeed at in a culture that values growth and profits above all else. But we try. And sometimes succeed.

With this blog, my goal is to provide regular commentary on scientific and technical issues related to transportation and the environment. How important is transportation? Very. I maintain that advances in transportation since the industrial revolution have been the ultimate cause of most of our environmental problems. The human conquest of time and space by mechanized transportation has allowed movement of people and goods around the world to a degree unprecedented not just in human history, but also in geologic history. The train, the steamship, the car, the truck, and the plane have caused ecological disruption that far exceeds local pollution of the air by their exhaust gases.

So while. I may post about emissions and so forth, I will also post about (sub)urban sprawl, transportation demand, energy policy, alternative fuels, and a lot of other related stuff.

At this time, I'm only going to attempt to post once a month -- I have a day job, and it keeps me busy enough. Some of the stuff from my day job might end up as grist for posts here, which is one reason why I'm blogging anonymously. Not that I intend to be a rabble-rouser, but I've found that large organizations somethings get upset about the strangest things. However, it should be obvious that all the opinions in my posts are mine alone and don't necessarily reflect the views of my employer or anyone else. As for opinions in the comments, they represent the commenters, and I take no responsibility for them. (Though I will try to weed out spam and slander.)

Again, welcome to the Green Gearhead. Stay tuned. The first post wil lbe on its way shortly.