Music for an urbanist Christmas: Dar Williams

The men's group I attend at St. Paul's United Methodist Church recently discussed a perhaps improbable article from The Christian Century on heavy metal music (Holloway 2024). Writer Jack Holloway discovered the music of Black Sabbath while studying apocalyptic literature at seminary. Black Sabbath, he wrote, "prophesied an end to war, an end to the reign of the politicians and generals who make war. Was it possible this evil band was reading the Bible more faithfully than the preachers I'd heard growing up?"

Geezer Butler, bass player and composer of "War Pigs"

That led us to a group project in which each of us would present a song we consider meaningful. There were various other instructions, too, which I ignored, and it would seem the others did, too. The eventual collection included songs by Carrie Newcomer, Susan Werner, the Beatles, the Eagles, and James Taylor (two), as well as Leonard Bernstein, John Williams, and Beethoven--understandable for a group of men born between 1945 and 1960 (except for one swing shift worker born in 1992, who brought us "Reach for the Sky" by Social Distortion). We played and discussed 11 songs in about an hour, which unfortunately didn't leave much time for discussion.

My contribution was "The Christians and the Pagans" by Dar Williams, from her 1996 sophomore album, Mortal City. (The title song from that album made this urbanist playlist I made in 2013.) In a light-hearted way, the song tells the story of two young women (in a romantic relationship, Williams added at a concert I attended a few years later) who celebrate the solstice in some natural locale, then pop over to one of their uncles' for Christmas. The resulting cultural clash is restrained due to politeness, but keeps popping out in amusing ways. Always, however, family and common humanity outweigh seemingly incomprehensible religious differences.

Jane and I were having solstice, now we need a place to stay...

Listening to the song yet again, but this time in the company of a dozen first-time hearers, I was struck by two things. First, there clearly is more to the story, which Williams leaves to the listeners' imaginations. Did the young women just happen to pick a spot near the uncle's house, or was it part of a plan? Why hadn't the uncle spoken to his brother in a year? How if at all was little Timmy changed by his encounter with his strange but cool cousin? Secondly, as I'm learning about phrasing from singing in the chancel choir, I was struck how Williams's breathing creates phrases of varied lengths (sometimes four measures, sometimes one or even part of one) to convey different emotional states.

Christmas is like solstice, and we miss you...

My other impressions of the song are 28 years old; thanks to local advocacy of Williams's early work by the Legion Arts organization as well as Iowa Public Radio, I was familiar with the songs on Mortal City almost as soon as it was released. 1996 was a good time for me to receive this message. For probably the first 25 years of my life, I had swum rather unreflectively in a mainline Protestant sea. It was just the world in which I lived. Only in my peripatetic 20s did I encounter devout members of other faiths, not to mention people who did Christianity very differently than I did. I occasionally found myself in faith communities whose Christianity tended to insist on itself (an allusion to I Corinthians 13:4).

Sending hope for peace on Earth to all their gods and goddesses...

By 1996, I had had enough conversations, read enough books, and found a church that helped to clarify my desire to worship and live inclusively rather than exclusively. I'm still a Christian, but I have come to see other religions as complementary rather than opposing ways of understanding God. I have come to understand a lot of non-theistic worlds as rooted in God, though not the too-narrow definition of God we are taught in the West. I think this is a good basis for community. Urbanism requires seeing commonality across differences, rather than rushing to draw lines of distinction.

Where does magic come from? I think magic's in the learning...

Dar Williams continues to record and perform around the country. In 2017 she published What I Found in a Thousand Towns (Basic Books, 2017), an urbanist's tour of places where she's performed that have succeeded in building community. It reads like one of her songs: not a word out of place, good stories about people trying their hardest, and inspiring without being saccharine. Her concept of "positive proximity" (introduced on p. xi!) derives from Jane Jacobs on the importance of causal encounters; she shows how places that enable those encounters allow for connections that lead to community building (or rebuilding). But then people in those places have to do the connecting.

Translation is the magic ingredient that makes successful towns and cities happen. Translation is how we spell ourselves out to each other and the world. A willingness to share our skills, our stories, and ourselves with each other marks the difference between towns that feel like actual places and those with people who jump in and out of cars all day... When people truly arrive at some sort of communication, putting themselves forward and welcoming others in, we have positive proximity circulating and growing. (2017: 177)

Building those places, taking advantage of the opportunities for community building they provide, begins with recognizing each other's common humanity, particularly as we look for the Divine at this darkest time of the year.

Future prospects for our cities

(Source: vecteezy)

In the quarter-century of years beginning with "2," one of the biggest phenomena in America (and other areas of the West) has been the resurgence of central cities. After more than half a century of losing ground to suburbs, cities are "back" with lower crime, new commercial and residential development, and cultural cachet. This is in the main good news: cities are gardens of social diversity as well as economic innovation, and use natural resources more efficiently.

Challenges remain. The resurgence was particularly noticeable back in the years 2005-2015, but even then was felt unevenly across American cities. In super-successful cities like San Francisco, attracting new residents sent real estate prices skyrocketing, resulting in displacement and homelessness; other cities like St. Louis have struggled to catch the wave at all. Particularly since 2020, changing work patterns have left downtown areas with swaths of unused office space at the same time they're struggling to house people.

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A panel of experts convened by the Urban Land Institute (Nyren 2024) commends public-private partnerships, specifically ventures aimed at transforming downtown land use from commercial to residential. Andy DeMoss of the Chicago firm Bradford Allen began with:

They need to focus on the core issue, which is addressing the work-from-home movement. Anything else is most likely not going to be impactful enough to move the needle. Also, a number of city departments are not fully back in the office yet themselves. They need to push their workforce to be downtown, at least three to four days a week, to set an example for the private sector.

Since cities themselves can't force workers back to the office, they can try to create 24 hour areas. They can work on attracting recreational visitors (natural spaces, retail, and entertainment, along with better parking and public transit), as well as getting more housing built in mixed use projects near transit. Chicago, Cincinnati, Miami, New York, and Fayetteville, Georgia, were touted as successful examples. Sheila Ross of HKR in Atlanta summarized:

We need to find ways to activate these spaces year-round, ensuring they remain safe and enjoyable even without events. We have to plan for every day--not just game day. Additionally, the lack of affordable and market-rate housing is a significant challenge, compounded by parking minimums that restrict diverse housing development. Downtowns need equitable access. We must consider how to transform wide, car-centric roads into more human-friendly spaces that can accommodate light rail, bike paths, and spillover activities from local businesses.

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Cities need to work with private entities to build financial and political support for any development, because cities aren't really in control of their own finances. Although when private firms are doing most of the driving, the projects are likely to reflect private profit more than public interest, the alternative is reliance on the national government as well as the states, some of whom are actively hostile to urban areas. In the face of Donald Trump's return to the White House, a Brookings Institution panel speculated on his administration's impact on a variety of urban issues. Trump has famously promised to punish cities that oppose his agenda, and indeed a lot of his support seems to be based on inflicting pain. Can anything move forward in these times?

The most optimistic submissions argue that local leaders can find ways to connect what they need with Trump's priorities. Adie Tomer's section on construction argues that momentum on projects begun during the Biden administration, as well as bipartisan interest in new housing, creates opportunities for federal-local cooperation: Understanding what Trump administration officials want--and persuasively making the case for local projects--could be worth millions of dollars for many communities. It's wise to make calls to newly appointed officials, listen to agency-hosted webinars, and consume any other information that can help make submissions as attractive as possible. 

He likes building, doesn't he? Possibly
President Trump can be sweet-talked into supporting infrastructure projects,
like this reconstructed intersection in Cedar Rapids

Other pieces of a similar bent talk about policies that can help working class and nonurban constituents, including Annelies Goger on work-based learning, Joseph W. Kane on infrastructure projects, Molly Kinder on workforce issues related to artificial intelligence, and Tracy Hadden Loh on strengthening opportunity zones and access to community capital. (I'm not seeing this sort of thing at all here in Iowa, though, where for years Republicans have appealed to working class and nonurban rage without addressing their economic issues.)

Other pieces from the Brookings survey argue either that Trump's ideology will need to bend to practical local imperatives--William H. Frey on immigration, Xavier de Souza Briggs on antidiscrimination and diversity, Manann Donoghoe on climate via industrial policy disaster relief and local innovation--or that momentum behind certain policy directions is sufficient to sustain those policies in spite of Trump's opposition. Hanna Love argues that while the U.S. Department of Justice is sure to lurch towards the punitive, States can enact their own legislative reforms and investigations into police accountability, and importantly, many of the preventative investments needed to improve public safety are under the purview of local governments. Similar hopes are expressed by Mark Muro on sustaining local technology development, and Joseph Parilla on CHIPS and Science Act funds.

Derecho, August 2020:
The climate won't wait for the next election

The most pessimistic pieces involve the administration's ability to act, or to choose not to act, unilaterally, in ways that impact localities. These include Farah Khan on protecting marginalized communities, Robert Maxim on connecting underrepresented workers to the digital economy, Andre Perry on sustaining the growth of the still small proportion of black-owned employer businesses, and Martha Ross on deportation and "downstream effects." Maxim, for example, argues Growing the number of underrepresented workers in the digital economy will require new [congressional] investments in digital skills development and digital infrastructure, increased access to capital, and more robust place-based investments into underrepresented communities. And Congress remains the most essential actor for investing in tribal communities because of its so-called "plenary power" over Native nations.

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It surely will be difficult for cities to find allies in their dealings with the administration, whether their approach is cooperative or defiant. Pete Saunders (2024) argues cities always struggle in the face of American anti-urban bias. Individualism has been baked into America since the Founding, he says, beginning with how the Confederation Congress chose to organize the land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River won in the War for Independence (accessible to speculators, centered around farms). As a result, America struggles with doing things that work toward the common good, and has a firm belief that improving the lives of individuals is the best way to improve the common good. Therefore:

American cities seem almost incapable of capitalizing on their assets, of routinely and easily making the case for greater investment from the federal and state levels of government. We struggle to make public transit investments. We struggle with implementing good placemaking practices. We struggle with undoing bad urban policies, and instituting good ones.

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If we can't agree to fund public transit or build enough housing, we're definitely not going to get to the cities Nika Dubrovsky and David Graeber imagine in their book Cities Made Differently (MIT Press, 2024). The executive version presented on the blogs Wiki Observatory and Naked Capitalism offers four visions, the most appealing of which is the City as a Family, "a city without any strangers, where everything is shared, and everyone looks after each other. There are no shops, no money, and no danger at all" (Dubrovsky and Graeber 2024). The result would be the common good, with the catches that historical communes frequently devolved into dictatorship, and while America suffers from an excess of individualism, having too little autonomy would be bad as well. Two other cities--the City of Greed, and the City of Runners, whose endless competition seems closest to our contemporary experience--are dystopian, and offer tendencies to be avoided. The fourth, Underground City, is a challenge to human physiology, as many noted in the comments.

Source: Adananette

Prediction is fraught with unknowns, but it's safe to say the city of 2029 will probably look, feel and act a lot like the city of 2025. If in the interim policies are enacted to make the rich even richer, and to reduce the problem-solving capacity of government at all levels, as seems most likely, they will be felt most immediately at the margins of society, and will only be widely impactful over time. Still, the path we are on does not seem resilient, and missed opportunities are likely to be rued later. 

10th anniversary post: Yonder comes the train?

 

Amtrak station, Mount Pleasant, Iowa

Since moving to Iowa in 1989, I've made regular trips to Chicago for family, pleasure, and professional reasons. I've made exactly two of those trips by train, which requires a 75 mile drive south to Mount Pleasant. The first was in July 2014, with my then-17-year-old son Eli; that train was 2 .5 hours late getting in; we passed the time agreeably at a coffee shop on Mount Pleasant's town square (See my posts "Yonder Comes the Train?" and "California 2014 (With Postscript, Chicago with Eli)." But we were fully four hours late arriving in Chicago, and had little food and no Wi-Fi en route. The return trip to Iowa also experienced considerable delays. At the time, I noted quite a fair number of passengers were willing to put up with even this level of service, and that with some effort "There could be" a future for interstate train travel in America.

The train arrives, 2014

It took more than ten years, but I tried the train again last month when I went to Chicago for one of the Center for Neighborhood Technology's Visionary Voices panels on housing. The experience was altogether better, and I'm encouraged not to let another ten years go by before I try it. The train from California was an hour or so late, and the return trip was on time. Parking is still free at the Mount Pleasant station, though due to construction in the area, it was difficult to find--impossible, in fact, in the absence of signage, but in time I was able to get directions from the station agent.

Remote parking, two blocks from the Mount Pleasant Amtrak station

The train seemed near capacity in both directions, with a surprising proportion of passengers being Amish. There was plenty of room for my backpack and small suitcase--there was no baggage check in Iowa anyhow--and plenty of legroom, unlike any airplane I've recently experienced. On the train, I cheerfully avoided the constant clot of traffic around Chicago, and spent less on tickets than I would have for two nights of parking at my hotel north of downtown. However, there still is no Wi-Fi on the California Zephyr, and the snack car closed almost as soon as we boarded. 

Some of my improved experience might be random coincidence, but the administration of President Joe Biden did supply some long-overdue upgrades through a $66 million appropriation won from Congress (Hughes 2024; see also Bragg 2024). That is being used to improve tracks, purchase new cars, and add at least one route. The Floridian goes from Chicago to Miami, following a route east through Cleveland and Washington, and then down the East Coast. This neglects the cities of Tennessee, but that state's government is working on service to Chattanooga and Nashville (Gang and Mazza 2024). Meanwhile, the states of New York and Pennsylvania are confident there soon will be service from New York City to Scranton (Ionescu 2024). Those states must be less rail-hostile than Iowa's government. Or Indiana's. 

All this progress is contingent on not being stopped by the incoming Trump administration appointees, many of whom (like efficiency doge Elon Musk) have ties to the auto industry. A lot depends on how much Republicans in Congress and state legislatures value the presence of Amtrak in their states, which is really difficult to predict. More ideological conservatives find trains to be an unwarranted use of government power, though of course they have no objections to the government building and maintaining highways (Russell 2024).

Eric Godwyn of the Transit Costs Project, interviewed last summer on the Strong Towns podcast, recently published, with three co-authors, a set of recommendations on how to improve rail transportation in the U.S. (Godwyn, Levy, Ensari, and Chitty 2024). Godwyn advocates a federal government commitment to intercity high-speed rail, developing minimum technical standards and testing to enable cross-country integration, stronger connections to universities and industry for labor force training, better internal project management and assessment, and better and more expedited planning (pp. 17-39). High-speed rail is defined as at least 155 miles per hour, which would get you from Mount Pleasant to Chicago in an hour and a half.

Whether this is even imaginable depends on broader agreement that the need to "decarbonize intercity travel" (p. 41) is enough of a public good to put public money behind it. If policy makers can agree on that, then they can focus on an efficient and enjoyable experience that will entice passengers. My experience last month suggests there's been some progress in that vein, but more could be done.

The California Zephyr crosses the Mississippi River,
12 November 2024