Post No. 400: Thorns in my urbanist side

"Sermon of St. Paul Amidst the Ruins" by Giovanni Paolo Pannini (1691-1765) (Wikimedia commons)

Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me... (2 Corinthians 12:7b-8, NRSV)

Paul described himself as being plagued by a (surely metaphorical) thorn in part of a long passage where he defended himself against critics in the church he had established in the Greek city of Corinth. What was that pesky thorn? Leaving aside sci-fi explanations (Gooder 2006), it could have been a chronic illness, a physical disability, one or more persistent critics, or even homosexuality (Spong 1992; a long list of historians' conjectures is in J. Paul Sampley, "The Second Letter to the Corinthians," in The New Interpreter's Bible [Nashville: Abingdon, 2000], XI, 162-168).

Whatever it was, Paul clearly felt it was important to God that it remain (v. 9), and that it served the function of keeping him "from being too elated." As he traveled the Mediterranean world, convincing people to become Christians, his message arguably was made more effective because the Christian life was (somehow) not easy for him, either.

Having taken this blog into its eighth year, and today reaching another milestone post, I remain committed to the urbanist approach to place making. Yet though I may spray words into the Internet like the Trump administration spraying tear gas into our cities, I should tell you that living my urbanism has not been as easy as I would like. Urbanist solutions, it would seem, are easier said that done, and it's important that I know this. It's important for you, beloved reader, to know that I know this.

1. I am an introvert. I have handled the pandemic shutdown--in Iowa, it's been a sort-of-shutdown--with remarkable aplomb because I was already somewhat inclined to social distancing. I don't like crowds, noise, or unstructured social situations, and after awhile being around even nice people tires me. I prefer a quiet evening at home, and have rather enjoyed the extent to which the pandemic has forced more of these to occur. Enough of such evenings adds up to a boring life, and I understand the need for human interactions of various levels of intensity. I want to help build my city. I wish it weren't so tiring, but it helps me relate to others' reluctance to participate and/or need for places of quiet retreat (See also Kelly 2020).
2. The dementors next door. Urbanism is rooted in strong neighborhoods, and neighborhoods are made out of neighbors. Neighbors are made by everyday interaction, not merely by physical proximity (Marohn 2020). But some people are... difficult. There is, to be specific, one couple in my neighborhood who I avoid as much as I can. Years of complaints, criticism, and unsolicited advice flowing from them to us has made me chary of any encounter I can possibly avoid. That's not very urbanist of me, is it? And yet there remain some people who are toxically negative, violent, manipulative, or hateful (see Peck 1983; Martha Nussbaum, The Monarchy of Fear [Simon & Schuster, 2018], esp. pp. 81-84). The neighboring couple dwell well within my circle of care, but nothing I say or do is going to change them. My own preservation limits my neighborliness.

One thing I missed: coffeehouses. Trying to catch up!

 

So I struggle, and as I do, I recognize that urbanism is not always pleasant or easy. If it were, there would be no need for me to write about it! Speaking of which, the most read posts since April of  '13:

1. A Silent But Needful Protest, 1 November 2016 [Coe College responds to the defacing of Multicultural Fusion posters]
2. Snout Houses? In Oakhill-Jackson??, 16 October 2016 [Suburban style development in a historic Cedar Rapids neighborhood]
3. Crime and Our Common Life, 1 August 2016 [The mysterious rise and fall and possibly now rise of violent crime rates in America]
4. Let's Hear It for Cedar Rapids, 5 September 2016 [The Mayors Bike Ride and everything else going on Labor Day weekend]
5. Gentrification: What Do We Know? 26 July 2016 [literature review analyzing a complex and controversial phenomenon]

And in the interest of balance, the least read posts:

1. City Design after the Pandemic, 3 June 2020 [what might last, what might not]
2. Strong Towns' Bottom Up Revolution (III), 31 March 2020 [covering chapters 5-7 of Charles Marohn's book]
3. Race Relations after the Pandemic (II), 2 September 2020 [responding to the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha]
4. Halloween 2013, 1 November 2013 [Halloween as civic holiday] 
5. Maple Syrup Festival, 1 March 2014 [a community rite of spring in Cedar Rapids!]
6. Interesting Place for a College, 17 April 2014 [a sense of place at Park University]

Whether this is the 400th post you've read, or the first, thanks for sticking with me!

 

Constitution Day: Whatever happened to the separation of powers?

Independence Hall, Philadelphia

On this Constitution Day, we may pause to remember our founding document, the oldest written constitution in existence, while wondering whether this fall's elections will be able to proceed. Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have described the constitutional framework as "a Republic, if you can keep it." Can we?

The separation of powers with checks and balances featured in the U.S. Constitution was a product of the Framers' 18th century worldview. This worldview was informed by both a Biblical understanding of human sinfulness and a rationalist-humanistic understanding of human potential.

Temptation of Christ by Juan de Flandes (1460-1519) (Wikimedia commons)

The Bible taught them that sin was part of the human condition, and that this sin was driven by self-interest. "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," wrote Paul (Romans 3:23, NRSV); Jesus, the one who did not sin, was nonetheless tempted by the self-concern inherent in his human nature. The Gospel of Luke describes Jesus being tempted in the desert with food, kingdoms, and protection from physical harm (4:1-13)... later generalized in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan into gain, glory, and security, the three motives for people to "invade" each other. Individually we might learn to resist these temptations, but governing the new country would require attention to them, both in the citizens and the government. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 51:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.  If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.  In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

The Framers were confident they could solve this "great difficulty" because they were living in a time of rapid scientific discovery. Scientists in the 18^th century were announcing their findings with increasing confidence (see Hooker 1997).  Isaac Newton’s discoveries led him to describe the universe, in Principia Mathematica (1687), as essentially a set of mechanical processes.  Robert Hooke, Jan Swammerdam and Antony van Leeuwenhook discovered animal and plant cells.  Benjamin Franklin discovered lightning is electricity in 1749. Karl von Linné catalogued all known species—a term he coined—in 1767.  Henry Cavendish discovered the gas hydrogen in 1766, Joseph Priestley oxygen in 1774. The first vaccine, against smallpox, was developed by Edward Jenner in 1796. As knowledge of the natural world increased exponentially, people increasingly believed that many human problems, perhaps all of them, could be solved with the appropriate application of scientific methods.

Baron Montesquieu, "constitutional engineer" (Wikimedia commons)

Many of the Framers cited the work of Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu (1689-1755), whose Spirit of the Laws described a system of checks and balances that made it possible for government to be strong enough to carry out its functions, but not so strong as to become oppressive. The government would be designed by dividing it by function, and then each governmental body would be given leverage over the others. The self-interest in human nature, which Calvinists condemned, would if harnessed work for the benefit of humanity, because it would encourage each part of government to control the aggressive tendencies of the other parts. It's a similar logic to another great 18th century work, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1723-1790); Smith argues that free markets work because individual self-interest is harnessed to produce the optimal supply of goods at the right price. 

The U.S. Constitution divides power/sovereignty not only between parts of government, but also between national and state governments, between mass and elites, and between factional interests in a “great country” (See Federalist 10). Each division was designed so that the natural human motivation to defend individual self-interest would also defend the institution and the collective from excessive power, while exercise of power would require cooperation and compromise. So, bad policies would be filtered out, while good ones could be passed.

Designs can look better on paper than in operation, but for much of U.S. history the system of checks and balances has worked more or less as the Framers intended. Policy making has followed a mostly pragmatic course, abetted by the development of norms and at times the rivalry of political parties. David Mayhew (1991) argued based on an exhaustive survey of enactments that divided party control of the Presidency and Congress posed no obstacle to the frequency or quality of laws passed. In the one bit of academic writing I've done that's gotten a fair bit of attention, Paul J. Quirk and I argued that "because American politicians notoriously look out for themselves more than for their parties, they can often cooperate across party lines" (1994: 539). At the same time, divided government means "both liberal and conservative views are influential and thus that the policies adopted are ideologically moderate" (1994: 550).

By the 2006 edition of the book, we were hedging our bets. Intensified partisanship meant that less was getting passed by Congress, and what was getting done was happening because of the overriding of norms against unilateral executive action--while other norms, like financing the government or holding hearings on Supreme Court nominees, were also overridden for partisan motives.

So, what happened to the Madisonian system? The Framers provided separated powers and selection methods, so that the parts of government would have different interests that they would defend against encroachment from the other parts. They anticipated that in this way individual self-interest could be harnessed for the good of all. Why is it no longer working?

I admit there is no metric for when government is “working” on issues like climate change, health care, trade with China, election security, or for what constitutes “other high crimes and misdemeanors” in the Constitution’s definition of impeachable offense. Should Trump have been removed from office? Should Bill Clinton? Public approval of Congress is running in the mid-20s, which is not good, but pretty much average for the last 50 years. No sideline officials with chains is going to emerge to determine this with precision.

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Republican leader since 2007

AND YET! The 2013 government shutdown, blanket blocking or approving of appointments to the Supreme Court, and ten years of Republican bloviating about the Affordable Care Act without a single committee hearing on a proposal of their own suggest that somehow the incentives for elected officials to take necessary actions are broken. At the same time, Presidents are getting away with stuff, particularly a Donald Trump who cares not for rules-of-the-game written or unwritten (See Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018). Trump's shakedown of Ukraine is only the most obvious example from the current administration. Republicans in Congress treated Trump’s impeachment as a partisan Democratic exercise, and never took it seriously other than to do what they could to limit the exposure of information and get the whole thing over with. Same goes for Russian interference in the 2016 election, where congressional Republicans boldly ran interference for the President with the Mueller investigation. They have been quiet about the qualifications, statements and actions of Trump’s political appointees, even health officials in a global pandemic, and about the administration's most egregiously inhumane actions.

It's easy for me to demand that congressional Republicans take a stand for the Constitution, norms, ethics, and regular order. The Madisonian system of checks and balances is designed to work on self-interest, not the lofty expectations of someone in an ivory tower. (My office is actually in a brick building that is a mere three stories tall, but a timeless metaphor is a timeless metaphor.) And what do congressional Republicans see when they look at their incentives? The President's approval rating remains low-ish but rock-steady in spite of all--43.1 percent as of this Constitution Day on 538--while it's stratospheric among self-identified Republicans, who predominate in their districts and states as well as among their likely supporters. Their incentives say: work with President Trump, whatever he says or does, institution be damned. And the coronavirus? The heck with it, too, until voters in their districts start preferring preventive action to whatever it is Trump is doing. (See also Frey 2020.)

Political parties, particularly the nationally polarized version we have today, fuse the interests of fellow partisans in Congress the Presidency and the states—not automatically, as witness the variety in state responses to the pandemic—in ways the Framers did not envision. Perhaps they thought the extent of the country could frustrate national combinations, or the diversity of interests at the congressional district level would encourage members of Congress to take a broader view than support or opposition to the current President? Incentives are all on the side of partisan-ideological coalitions now. Good luck, America.

SEE ALSO: 

"Will We Ever Stop Being Angry?" Holy Mountain, 18 October 2018

"The Budget Deal and the Future of Congress," Holy Mountain, 10 February 2018 [note particularly remarks of Molly Reynolds]

Yuval Levin, "Reviving the Congress," National Review, 9 September 2020

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die: What History Tells Us About Our Future (Crown, 2018)

David R. Mayhew, Divided We Govern: Party Control, Lawmaking, and Investigations, 1946-1990 (Yale University Press, 1991)

Paul J. Quirk and Bruce Nesmith, "Divided Government and Policy Making: Negotiating the Laws," in Michael Nelson (ed), The Presidency and the Political System (Washington: CQ Press, 4th ed, 1994), 531-554.

Catherine Rampell, "The GOP Traded Democracy for a Supreme Court Seat and Tax Cuts. It Wasn't Worth It," Washington Post, 21 September 2020

Another place for me?

"Roxanne" was set in a walkable small town with third places. It is, alas, only a movie.

 

 (from globalfilmlocations.net, used without permission)

[The title of this piece riffs on the title of a blog, no longer available online, by Gracen Johnson about her move to Fredericton, New Brunswick. She and Chuck Marohn later collaborated on an episode of the Strong Towns Podcast called "Another Place for Chuck?"]

A couple weeks ago on Twitter, Brent Toderian, an urban planner and urbanist based in Vancouver, asked on Twitter:

If you could live in ANY other city in the world OTHER THAN the city that you currently live in, what city would you choose? Your answer is interesting, but even more interesting is WHY you chose the city you chose, so be sure to include an explanation.

The answers he got are interesting, including a lot of "the usual" world-famous cities (Barcelona, Paris, New Orleans, New York), as well as places near and dear to urbanists (Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Vancouver, and--new to my radar--Utrecht). Most of the places were in Europe, with Canada and the United States close behind, but the non-western world got shouts for Mexico City, Singapore, and Tokyo, among others. And there were some votes for less-famous places, like Sunderland, U.K., Durango, Colorado, and a number of Dutch towns I'd not heard of.

I did not vote, because as you are about to experience, I immediately began overthinking the question. I thought if I answered it would be either ignorant (based on reputation but no personal experience) or superficial (a pleasant day or two spent on vacation). I do know I have no desire to move back to any place I've already lived, except maybe Washington, D.C.

Yet I've been thinking a lot lately about Decorah, Iowa, about two hours north of here and where we've spent some time because it's where my older son went to college. I've thought about retiring there, though I don't think it's going to happen. It's a small town (pop. 7526) with a terrific downtown centered on Water Street. I imagine I could live well in a manageably-sized home in the residential area south of downtown, and on a morning walk down this hill...

(Google maps screen capture)

...to one of Decorah's three downtown coffeehouses. And it has a fine independent bookstore (Manson 2015).

So maybe my answer is Decorah? 

Trying to think more systematically, here are some qualities I'd hope to find in my new home. 

• walkable, most daily life can be accomplished without using a car;
• accessible to natural areas as well as the wider world (like a train to a larger city)
• cultural life (arts and thought, especially) which in most places requires a college, particularly if I'm going to make this imaginary move before I retire
• diverse by race, religion, occupation, and social class, as well as politically
• climate is a consideration: though I've lived in the Midwest nearly all my life so I should be able to put up with anything I'm not sure I could put up with relentless heat, particularly if paired with relentless humidity
• cost of living should not be unreasonably high

(Someone responding to Brent Toderian's question did try an even more systematic approach, with an impressive spreadsheet full of metrics, albeit the topic is really too subjective to get much out of statistical analysis. His winner, by the way? Philadelphia.)

Jim's Steaks, Philadelphia PA. George Washington did not eat here but Tony Taylor did.

Decorah's small size attracts me because I imagine it guarantees life could be lived on a human-scale and at a moderate pace, with available quiet spaces. Small towns don't guarantee this--the smallest place I've ever lived has a WalkScore of 30 and no cultural life--but I know Decorah well enough to know it does. Decorah's WalkScore is 83--lower than San Francisco but higher than Boston. On the other hand, it's 94.6 percent white, so hardly diverse, and the 6.8 percent drop in population since the 2010 census is indicative of peril. The nearest Amtrak station is 54 miles away in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Minnesota's Twin Cities are 150 miles away.

What about Fairfield, then? It is also small (pop. 10,425) but growing--up 10.2 percent since 2010. WalkScore is 73. The Maharishi Institute of Management has attracted a decent-sized Asian population, though it remains 90.3 percent white (down from 94.35 percent in 2000, though). We know they have good coffee. It's 71 miles south of Iowa City, and 23 miles west of the Amtrak station at Mount Pleasant. It has twelve parks and was named a Blue Zones community in 2015, but is in a decidedly less beautiful part of the state than Decorah.

We visited Flagstaff, Arizona on our southwestern vacation last year. Its population is bigger than Decorah or Fairfield, but smaller than Cedar Rapids: 75,038, up nearly 10,000 since 2010. It is 73.9 percent white, 11.7 percent Native American (mostly Navajo), and 18.4 percent Latinx. It has a small state university, Northern Arizona, where my cousin got a master's degree, and the Lowell Observatory. It was the first city designated an International Dark Sky City. Its average WalkScore is only 38, but nearer downtown it's as high as 91, and its BikeScore is 65. There's an Amtrak station in town. On a plateau at the edge of a mountain range, it's higher than most of the state and its climate is to die for. (When we attended church there, the pastor was preparing to move to a church in Tucson. This seemed like a bad idea to us.)

What about looking outside the United States? It's difficult to relocate internationally, but we are dealing in the realm of speculation here anyway, so let us not be detained by practicalities. I'm a bit tired of the United States just now anyhow--we've pretty well botched the pandemic, because individualism, and 43 percent of us still think, in the face of massive evidence to the contrary, that Donald Trump is doing a good job. A series of policy and personal choices have landed us at #28 on the international Social Progress Index, with the biggest decline of any country on the chart (Kristof 2020). So while not expecting the grass to be greener just because it's on the other side of the fence--see this grim report from Germany, for instance--what about checking out the lawns of Europe?

Edinburgh, Scotland (Wikimedia commons)

Edinburgh got a few mentions in Brent Toderian's survey. I've been to Scotland but not to any of the cities. Helo (@Helo_Yellow) said: It's Scottish, it's gorgeous (medieval and Victorian), it has the sea, the hill, and OK the clubs close at 3 a.m. but you can always jump on a bus or a train to take you to Glasgow to continue the party! (Thanks, but that probably won't be necessary.) Tim Wilson (@TimWil014) adds: A fantastic walking city. Simran Arora (@simran_aro) said: Probably Edinburgh because it would be like waking up in a (cold) fairytale. 

 

BBC Radio Scotland has a weekly show called "Out of Doors" that would soon get me prowling the countryside like a native. And who could not love a country with a legislated "right to roam" on private land? For the record, its population is 488,050, with the metropolitan area over 900,000. The population is 91.7 percent white, with Asian being the largest nonwhite category. It is home to three universities and hosts the well-known Edinburgh Festival among others.

Leuven, Belgium (Wikimedia commons)

Leuven got no mentions, but I have fond memories of visiting this university town nearly 30 years ago. Its Catholic university, currently called KU Leuven, dates from 1425. Its population is just over 100,000. I remember a town square and outdoor cafes. I don't know about life in a university town, though. My five years in a university town during my 20s made me think that high a concentration of young, temporary residents lends a sort of manic energy to the town that is more about consumption than community. Would Belgium be different from Illinois? Or living farther from campus?

Utrecht, The Netherlands (Wikimedia commons)

Utrecht, as I said, got a lot of love in Brent Toderian's survey. Doug Gordon (@BrooklynSpoke) said A wonderful place for cycling, of course, but also a vibrant university town and a site of so much history. Central to so much of the Netherlands, which would provide access to many of its great cities and lovely countryside. I have dreams of moving there all the time. Rory Davis (@_roryearle) said: Human-scale/car-free streets, historic architecture, great connectivity to other cities, views of water, everywhere is 'walkable,' international student population, rapid access to open space. (Any of those international students have a hankering to try my U.S. Constitutional Convention simulation?) Clir Susan still 2m away Gallagher (@sugallagher2) added: I really admire the Dutch approach to flood management and transport planning. The Netherlands is a country that has interested me since I was a child, but apart from a few weeks picking apples in Zeeland as a student, I've never lived there. The population is 358,454 and growing; statistics are not strictly comparable but it seems more racially diverse than Leuven or Edinburgh.

After this survey, am I any closer to identifying my dream city? I don't think so, but I feel more clear about the characteristics I value in a town. Maybe the answer, as Grant Henninger wrote on Strong Towns, is to work towards developing those characteristics in my own town.

I also note how many of the places I picked to examine are predominantly white. It could have been an accident of selection. (New Orleans is cool, and it's only 33 percent white.) Or it could be that racial bias is so strong that it prevents us from building the communities we would otherwise build, because we're building barriers instead.

Race relations after the pandemic (II)

Source: de.wikipedia.org

[I did not participate in the anti-racism demonstrations in my town this June, because of the coronavirus pandemic. I now regret this, for we are in a time where it is important to stand up and be counted.]

Shockingly and tragically, another name has entered the list of black Americans who have been killed or maimed by the police. Jacob Blake was entering his car when a Kenosha police officer grabbed his shirt and shot him seven times in the back. Accounts vary, as they will, but more than a week later the police have not articulated any rationale for detaining Blake, much less for putting that much ammunition into him.

Two days later, a white teenager from across the Illinois border shot and killed two demonstrators and wounded a third. His gentle treatment by the police has been contrasted with how they treated the unarmed Blake, but we might charitably credit the police chief's statement to the effect that his force was overwhelmed and confused by the outpouring of demonstrators and agitators in the wake of Blake's shooting. I'm sympathetic, but maybe they should have thought of this before they shot him seven times.

These awful events coincided with the Republican National Convention, which renominated President Donald Trump, whose political career has thrived on chaos, much of which he himself has created. (Hello, Portland!) A week's worth of speeches blamed violence at demonstrations on feckless Democratic state and local leaders, complete with video that turned out to be taken in Barcelona, Spain. Vice President Mike Pence said, "The hard truth is, you won't be safe in Joe Biden's America." Pence cited the death in Oakland of federal officer Dave Underwood as a prime example of the "violence and chaos in the streets of our major cities" which would supposedly increase under a Biden administration, but the person actually charged with killing Underwood is a member of the right-wing Boogaloo Boys (Millhiser 2020).

Democrats, starting with presidential candidate Joe Biden, are certainly put in an awkward position by any association of violence with anti-racism demonstrations, given that blacks are one of their core constituencies and civil rights one of their core issues. Biden has articulated a nuanced position of considerable integrity (Feldman 2020), for all the good that may do in the foodfight that is contemporary American politics.

John Locke (Wikimedia Commons)

John Locke (1632-1704), the English philosopher who strongly influenced 18th century political thought including that of the Framers of the Constitution, argued that law enforcement by the state was more "convenient" than doing it yourself in a state of nature, but only if the state was fulfilling its contractual obligation to protect individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the like. Black citizens have long wondered with some justification whether the state is much interested in their individual rights. It is, to say what should be screamingly obvious, an urgent matter for both the police and the whole body politic to contribute to a society where black lives matter. A race war might reelect the President and boost Tucker Carlson's ratings, but in time it's a war that nobody wins.

Martin Luther King Jr. (Wikimedia commons)

One reason I'm continually drawn to the political thought of Martin Luther King Jr.--whose public approval ratings in the 1960s, by the way, were not far from the Black Lives Matter movement's now--is his sustained focus on long-term outcomes. His movement was about remaking American society into one where blacks and whites, including those who opposed him, could live together in genuine community. His activism served his constructive strategy, rather than reacting to provocations of the moment (or playing at presidential politics). 

Looting and violence, even if borne of frustration, don't get us to community, and rightly or wrongly, serve to distract attention to the core issues. Same goes for choosing one side or the other without some constructive action to follow up. However, as in past struggles for justice, both the moral force of protest and the pragmatic tactics of political leadership can move us forward.

Whether sympathetic to Black Lives Matter or not, those speaking out on this issue must do even more to articulate a vision of the American future that [a] takes into account the legitimate grievances of black Americans, and [b] imagines a future inclusive community with [c] law enforcement that acts to support this vision by protecting the rights of all.

SEE ALSO

"Race Relations after the Pandemic," 27 May 2020

Perry Bacon Jr., "Could a Backlash Against Black Lives Matter Hurt Biden? The Two Don't Appear Linked So Far," FiveThirtyEight, 27 August 2020 [includes polling data on BLM though not past the time of the Jacob Blake shooting]

Laura Bliss, "An Alleged Bike Violation Brings on a Police Shooting of a Black Man," CityLab, 1 September 2020

Nicholas Kristof, "The Lawbreakers Trump Loves," New York Times, 29 August 2020

Alec MacGillis, "What Can Mayors Do When the Police Stop Doing Their Jobs?" ProPublica, 3 September 2020

Sarah Maslin Nur, Michael Wilson, Troy Closson and Jesse McKinley, "7 Police Officers Suspended as a Black Man's Suffocation Roils Rochester," New York Times, 3 September 2020

Scott Wilson, "'Why Were You Attacking Me?'" Washington Post, 3 September 2020 [2019 choking-drugging incident in Aurora, Colorado]