So I enjoy, or at least I like the idea of myself, being someone who enjoys, learning new things, and so occasionally at a bookstore I'll go kill a few minutes looking through a shelf or even an aisle I don't regularly go down. Alan Ehrenhalt's "The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City" came in on the shelf side of that rather irrelevant little equation.
All I knew about urban planning was that it existed, that there was someone named Jane Jacobs, and that the older parts of European cities possess the kind of topographical geometry would drive Euclid himself to suicide. Also, that the conventional model of urban sociology in the twentieth century involved poor people living in the heart of the city, and the richer folks moving the suburbs. Ehrenhalt's thesis is that that process has been (wait for it) inverted, and that in many cases (although not all) the inner cities are gentrifying.
The strength--the meat of this book--comes in his case examples, which rather than simply attempting to prove his point, elaborate on and embrace the fact that each city, each neighborhood has so much going on--culturally, legally, politically, geologically--that the reader appreciates the vastness of the whole enterprise of urban study. It also provokes the realization that there is no prototypical city, no Platonic example. Every one is a series of variables and there is no possibility of a genuine control environment.
Still, learning about the Third Ward in Houston, next to a downtown (apparently Houston has several downtowns) where the prices are artificially kept low so as to allow the poor people there to keep their homes, that's interesting. The fear is that, in the great reshuffling that comes with fluctuating property prices, the little man gets kicked around; in another example, Ehrenhalt talks about Phoenix, which has no natural downtown; Philadelphia, where low property taxes and high wage taxes lower demand for new housing and...well, it gets complicated, but Ehrenhalt explains how changing that is politically dangerous: property owners don't want to pay more, the city needs money, and, because no one wants to sell their property, there is nowhere to build.
Ehrenhalt's ideal seems to be Vienna in the late 19th century, neighborhoods of mixed income families and a lively local culture. It's a nice idea, but one of his themes is the paradox that a neighborhood, in some senses--and this is incorrect phrasing, implying inanimate intent--in some ways, a neighborhood has to develop its own culture. Urban planners, city councilmen, etc. can only do so much: it's just like High School--things only become cool when you think that the authority figures don't approve.
If that makes sense, which it probably doesn't.
There is a risk, in reading about a subject for the first time, of being firmly indoctrinated into the author's biases. A reader who knows nothing about economics, and having nothing to compare it with, will finish Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" as a dogmatic free market capitalist. Philosophy is an obvious case: everyone should read Nietzsche, but no one should start with him.
Ehrenhalt, thankfully, is less prescriptive than descriptive. No doubt there is something here for an expert to quibble with: but then probably on technical matters. Having read this, knowing nothing at the start, I am still incapable of having a fully developed intelligent conversation on the matter of urban design; but now I could at least start enough of a dialogue to learn and understand more.
All I knew about urban planning was that it existed, that there was someone named Jane Jacobs, and that the older parts of European cities possess the kind of topographical geometry would drive Euclid himself to suicide. Also, that the conventional model of urban sociology in the twentieth century involved poor people living in the heart of the city, and the richer folks moving the suburbs. Ehrenhalt's thesis is that that process has been (wait for it) inverted, and that in many cases (although not all) the inner cities are gentrifying.
The strength--the meat of this book--comes in his case examples, which rather than simply attempting to prove his point, elaborate on and embrace the fact that each city, each neighborhood has so much going on--culturally, legally, politically, geologically--that the reader appreciates the vastness of the whole enterprise of urban study. It also provokes the realization that there is no prototypical city, no Platonic example. Every one is a series of variables and there is no possibility of a genuine control environment.
Still, learning about the Third Ward in Houston, next to a downtown (apparently Houston has several downtowns) where the prices are artificially kept low so as to allow the poor people there to keep their homes, that's interesting. The fear is that, in the great reshuffling that comes with fluctuating property prices, the little man gets kicked around; in another example, Ehrenhalt talks about Phoenix, which has no natural downtown; Philadelphia, where low property taxes and high wage taxes lower demand for new housing and...well, it gets complicated, but Ehrenhalt explains how changing that is politically dangerous: property owners don't want to pay more, the city needs money, and, because no one wants to sell their property, there is nowhere to build.
Ehrenhalt's ideal seems to be Vienna in the late 19th century, neighborhoods of mixed income families and a lively local culture. It's a nice idea, but one of his themes is the paradox that a neighborhood, in some senses--and this is incorrect phrasing, implying inanimate intent--in some ways, a neighborhood has to develop its own culture. Urban planners, city councilmen, etc. can only do so much: it's just like High School--things only become cool when you think that the authority figures don't approve.
If that makes sense, which it probably doesn't.
The link between this song (it has the word "Boulevard" in the title!)
and this book is fairly tenuous, but the Lou Reed-iness and
Bowie-ness of it should make up for the High School analogy.
There is a risk, in reading about a subject for the first time, of being firmly indoctrinated into the author's biases. A reader who knows nothing about economics, and having nothing to compare it with, will finish Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" as a dogmatic free market capitalist. Philosophy is an obvious case: everyone should read Nietzsche, but no one should start with him.
Ehrenhalt, thankfully, is less prescriptive than descriptive. No doubt there is something here for an expert to quibble with: but then probably on technical matters. Having read this, knowing nothing at the start, I am still incapable of having a fully developed intelligent conversation on the matter of urban design; but now I could at least start enough of a dialogue to learn and understand more.
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