It seems that we're actually starting to have this national discussion that I find ABSOLUTELY thrilling. It's a discussion about place.
Like a giant brain, it takes us a little while to get our heads wrapped around something. Sure, there's always the person who stands up in front of 5, 20, or 150 people and says things that sound really logical and forthwright, but decision making on a national level doesn't work like this. There needs to be 150,000 logical and forthwright people standing up, and then there needs to be, of course, columnists to write about what these people say. Then bloggers post bits about them, then...maybe, it becomes a news story. Then a bunch of news stories that sustain themselves over several months. Then, maybe, we get some watered down action in a similar trajectory that those 150,000 logical and forthwright people were talking about.
It's like that Saturday morning cartoon.
Have this happen several hundred times and we find ourselves with a new reality.
This is roughly my interpretation of how urban renewal came about. And it will be about the same way we'll start to dismantle our suburbs and move deeper into the city and create multi-modal transit/living centers. But it's going to take a lot of work. And a lot of people are going to lose money. And when that happens in America, people sue. Which just makes the whole process much longer, more expensive and painful. So prepare yourself.
Now that gas has been hovering around $4 a gallon for several weeks, we've started a new chapter in this discussion about energy we've been having since gas sustained itself at $2.50 a gallon.
First, it was about pairing back on trips. Then, it was about fuel economy. Then, it was about smaller cars. And now, we're reaching this new point where we start talking about (gasp) no cars. OH MY GOD!!!!! HAPPY DAY!!!!!
I remember when I was like 19 years old and would say things (because I was angst-ridden and contrarian) that it would be great if gas was $5 a gallon. So much would change. I even wrote a paper about it for a college class. Of course, it couldn't go to $5 a gallon overnight. Even at 19, I knew that was a recipe for economic disaster. Okay, then I thought, how about over several years, like 10. My thought wasn't market driven though. It was a tax. The government would say that in 10 years, gas will be $5 a gallon and every so often, we'd raise the tax toward meeting that $5 a gallon point. And all the money would be invested in transit.
I was promptly written off. Hey, I was 19.
Cars are becoming like cigarettes. In the 1960's, after it was becoming apparent that we'd all been sticking death in our mouths, people started smoking a little less. Then, every cigarette became filtered. Then lights. Then just when you were out at a bar. Then, about 1985, it was like, "hey, should I be smoking at all?"
And right now, we're starting this most excellent discussion. "Should I be driving at all?" I'm so happy and excited that I get to see this stuff not in the APA journals, but by perhaps the most mainstream of newspaper columnists, Paul Krugman at The New York Times. Read the question right here.
I can't wait to not sound like a fool by harrasing everyone I know about the pleasures of living without the need of an automobile. I'm not stranded anymore.
