Suburban Nation - Andres Duany [132]
dr
Of the current gasoline tax, 15 percent does go to transit, but 85 percent still goes to highways (Tea-21 User’s Guide, 7). The comparison to smoking is not as farfetched as it seems, since the number of “excess deaths” from breathing air pollution in the United States is between 50,000 and 125,000 annually, and each gallon of gas pumps 5.5 pounds of carbon into the atmosphere (Andrew Kimbrell, “Steering Toward Ecological Disaster,” 35; and Bill McKibben, The End of Nature, 6).
ds
The D.O.T. must also reconsider its current approach to funding transit, in which it contributes little to the operation of the new systems it helps to build. Trains and trolleys are quite distinct from highways, in that they require drivers, administrators, and constant tuning and replacement. For many cities, receiving a new transit system without an operating budget is like receiving a Christmas toy without its batteries. This situation can be especially problematic, as local citizens will often vote down funding for the only form of transportation that serves the non-voting poor. Since shortsighted decisions are easy to make at the local level, it is in the federal government’s best interest to provide dedicated funding sources for the operation of transit, much as it does for the FAA.
dt
The nonsensical argument that “design can’t affect behavior” is so persistent that one must always be armed with evidence to the contrary. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal was particularly compelling. It described the old town of Rhineland, Missouri, which was relocated to a bluff one mile away to escape the flooding Missouri River. All but one of 160 residents moved their houses up the hill, but they were rearranged into a suburban configuration of six curving roads without sidewalks. More significantly, the town’s post office, daycare center, and tavern stayed in the valley. Now “the residents of Rhineland seem to have lost their sense of community. In the six years since the floods, the town hasn’t had another August block party. Few residents stroll the streets; most prefer now to drive around town. And neighbors who used to while away the afternoons at the local tavern don’t speak quite as often anymore.” As one resident reported, “We used to go over and talk to our neighbors. You don’t see that now … We were just closer down there” (Jeanne Cummings, “Swept Away: How Rhineland, Mo., Saved Itself But Lost a Sense of Community,” A1, A8).
du
Viable albeit poor neighborhoods were demolished and their inhabitants conscripted into these experiments, which went bad almost immediately. Any number of additional factors can also be held responsible for the crime and violence of these projects—including concentrated poverty, poor administration, and inadequate policing—and it is not clear that these places, if traditionally designed, would have been successful. But few people now doubt that design played a significant role in their demise. Similarly, few people are surprised that Ray Gindroz’s traditionally organized low-income projects dramatically reduce crime.
dv
The intentional ignorance and dismissal of precedent that dominates many architecture schools is an inevitable outgrowth of the modern image of the architect as heroic genius. Codified in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, this image encourages young architects to think of each new commission as an opportunity to stand out rather than to fit in, and thus works strongly against the creation of physically coherent communities. This frenzy of self-glorification is further encouraged by an architectural fashion press that promotes novelty at the expense of urban performance, such that architects design their buildings less for their surrounding neighborhoods than for the cover of Architecture