Post No. 600: Blogging in a World Gone Backwards

 

No Kings Day crowd at the Rhode Island State House

After the heady experience of the nationwide No Kings Day protests last Saturday, a high school friend posted on Facebook: Did all of the No Kings protesting initiate a change process?

Spectacular, yes, but did it initiate change?
March for Our Lives, Washington, D.C., March 2018

A few days later, the prophet Pete Saunders wondered if America's "anti-city sentiment" is so inherent as to be intractable. If anti-city sentiment just means people don't want to live in Chicago or New York or Providence, that's probably okay; but it seems to mean that efforts to create sustainable, inclusive communities are so threatening that people are quickly and easily frightened off them:

I'm tired of this cycle: Protests occur after some event. Police and protestors spar as police try to contain the protestors and limit damage, and the protestors defiantly try to make their point. Each engagement like this has every opportunity to become violent, and sometimes does. When violence does occur, the general public's attention often moves away from the act that initiated the protests and shifts towards the damage done by the protesters. Then it goes even deeper. Cities get attacked for being crime-plagued and ungovernable.

I understand the frustration that people have with damage from protests. I've witnessed property damage from protests personally and I've had the exact same frustration. But every time this happens, two questions come to mind: (1) Why does the focus shift so quickly from the initial act to the protests? (2) Why do cities bear the brunt of the negativity?... Unfortunately, this will always be the case in America, because cities are social entities in an individualized society (Sanders 2025).

President Trump, love him or hate him, is a master at changing the subject. Less than a week after No Kings Day and his own miserable parade, Trump had moved on to maybe bombing Iran, maybe sic'ing the military on New York and Chicago--there's that anti-city sentiment again, and he plays it so well--and maybe canceling the Juneteenth federal holiday.

Mural, Providence's Downcity Arts District

It was so nice to get away for a few days to CNU33 last week, to hear of hope and see signs of progress. Even so, as Addison Del Maestro--who chose the Strong Towns national gathering instead of CNU--reminds us:

As someone who enjoys debating and thinking about ideas--which is true of many people working in urbanism, broadly--I think I sometimes make the mistake of thinking that urbanism is only about ideas. Urbanism isn't a Philosophy 101 puzzle or math problem that can be solved and which is then, you know, solved. The problem in real life is still there.... For a lot of people, the hump to get over isn't intellectual but political or practical. Do I trust the actual people who would be implementing this stuff? And do I think it will come out successfully and not corrupt/over budget/screwed up? (Del Maestro 2025).

If urbanist ideas are nothing without ensuing action, it's also true that the ideas themselves remain necessary to counter anti-city sentiment, and the cynicism and the oligarchy that it has produced in our day. So, it is time for us to gather for a minute around our screens and celebrate 600 posts over the 13+ years of this blog. Is Holy Mountain leading to meaningful social change?

Westside Library under construction, May 2025

Essays are small things, half teaspoons of sand on the beach, and the results are going to be attenuated, but by golly, four different people or groups have contacted me this year to discuss development in our city. So maybe in time, whatever half-teaspoons and quarter-teaspoons we're able to add to the mix will add up to meaningful change? In the meantime, there's nothing we can do but keep trying.

Besides, I'm writing all the time anyway... I might as well try to do some good with it.

Top posts of the 2020s

Pandemic hearts, April 2020

1. "The Hearts of Cedar Rapids," 11 April 2020
2. "Black Friday Parking 2021," 26 November 2021
3. "The Kind of President Joe Biden Could Be," 3 July 2020
4. "Hy-Vee is a Symptom of a Deeper Problem," 23 May 2024
5. "Move More Week Diary," 10 October 2022
6. "Even a Pretty MedQuarter Isn't Right," 12 September 2023
7. "What Should Go into Brewed Awakenings?" 31 July 2020
8. "More New Less Bo?" 4 July 2022
9. "Project 2025 and Our Common Life," 19 August 2024
10. "The Suburbanization of New Bohemia," 17 September 2024

As yet undiscovered posts of the 2020s

Doing Justice book cover

1. "Book Review: Doing Justice," 4 March 2025
2. "MPO Ride 2024," 11 May 2024
3. "Downtown Dreams and Reality," 31 May 2025
4. "Riding the Districts 2024," 10 June 2024
5. "Book Review: City Limits," 5 June 2024
6. "Don't Blame Trans People for Dems' Loss," 11 November 2024
7. "Film Review: 1946: The Mistranslation That Changed Culture," 8 June 2025
8. "FY25 Budget," 13 March 2024
9. "10th Anniversary Post: Is a Baseball Complex a Merit Good?" 30 September 2024
10. "Iowa's Legislature May Never Run Out of Symbolism," 23 May 2025

SEE ALSO: "Post No. 550: Now What?" 28 June 2024