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

Post No. 550: Now what?

I'm movin' out

Last month I retired from full-time teaching after 37 years, two of them at Western Illinois University and 35 at Coe College. Retirement has been more of a process than a clean break: I am scheduled to teach a political theory class in the spring, I am maintaining an office on campus, and I'm writing this at the "summer office" in the New Bohemia District I've been using the last few years.

I am nevertheless standing at the cusp of something new, of which I have only the vaguest idea. In that sense, I resemble America! It too is standing at the cusp of something new!! The future is always uncertain, but seems especially so now; just think of the questions that loom over the next 10/20/50 years: 

So much vacant office space, along with recent inflation and AI
are among causes of economic insecurity

• What will happen with work? The unemployment rate is a manageable 4.0 percent, but that masks uncertainty about career stability inflation, and future volatility, as well as the distortions produced by income-wealth inequality. Maybe I'm overly sensitive, living as I do in the non-profit sector, but even as we manage a "soft landing" after the pandemic, there are a lot of causes for worry, especially among young people.
• How will our lives be impacted by the changing climate? Despite the 21st century's return to the city which was inspiring the creation of this blog, most people remain in car-dependent situations, vulnerable both to climate emergencies and any public policy efforts to forestall them. As climate impacts multiply, they will set off causal chains affecting migration, financial stability at every level, public health, resource availability... you name it. Things could get really interesting, in the not-very-nice sense of that word.
• Can American democracy survive? The United States has through history survived such awfulness as the Civil War and the Great Depression, but that's no guarantee we're ready for the next big challenge, or even that we won't self-destruct on our own. We are so polarized we can't agree on basic facts, much less common objectives. Our leading political figure, Donald Trump, thrives on chaos and division. A second Trump administration would be unrestrained (cf. VanderHei and Allen 2024), but as the events of 6 January 2021 showed he doesn't need even to win the election in order to sow destruction. And the U.S. Supreme Court apparently will ensure there are no consequences for those who sow that destruction (Marimow 2024).
  
• On a more practical level, what will happen with government? Seeing my city and state double down on what Strong Towns calls "the suburban experiment" makes me wonder when the fiddler will need to be paid. When does the struggle to meet obligations become more visible, and who will suffer when it does?

Widening Mt. Vernon Road between Wellington Heights
and Oak Hill Jackson, because cars

We will all be dealing with these mega-questions in the years and decades to come, whether or not we are urbanists. Pete Saunders speculates one way they and we might evolve in the coming decades:

Urban Revival Period (2020-2040): rebirth of cities actually does take hold nationally, as... Interior cities will tout their assets and amenities and become cheaper alternatives to the coasts

Urban Suburbia Period (2035-2055): Suburbs will begin a period of adaptation largely based on their proximity to urban growth areas....

 Exurban Retrenchment (2050-2070): ...many revert into a semi-rural form, since we'll discover that their current form is economically unsustainable.

My town, Cedar Rapids, contains some of each of those elements, and will face each of those challenges.

 

Screw the transect! We want a casino!! (Source: Peninsula Pacific Entertainment via cbs2iowa.com

)

Meanwhile, as I prudently choose activities to fill my retirement, I too will be dealing with these questions, only not in the capacity of college political science teacher. I may not be much help building websites or building houses, and I'm nobody's activist leader, but in a world of uncertainty some sound analytical thinking might come in handy. That's justification enough to keep blogging, even as I mostly am trying to sort out all the incoming information for myself.

I published a book once

Is there a book hidden somewhere in this blog? Michelangelo (I think) used to say that he started sculpting with a block of stone, and kept chipping at it until the sculpture emerged. 550 posts averaging 1037 words apiece--an estimate based on the total word counts of ten randomly selected posts from 2013-23--means I've piled up over 570,000 words along the way. That's a sizable block of stone--according to the website VelocityWriting,com, a non-fiction book will run 25,000-150,000 words--and I am daunted by how much chipping will be required to find any presumed book. Do I have, somewhere in there, a message the public needs to hear (other than bike to work good, sprawl bad, casino also bad)? Moreover, I've already written two books, one published (The New Republican Coalition: The Reagan Campaign and White Evangelicals [Peter Lang, 1994]), one not, so I'd need a more solid purpose than just to do another one. We'll see.

Top posts of the 2020s

Hearts across the pandemic, 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. "Move More Week Diary," 10 October 2022
5. "Even a Pretty MedQuarter Isn't Right," 12 September 2023
6. "Hy-Vee is a Symptom of a Deeper Problem," 23 May 2024
7. "What Should Go into Brewed Awakenings?" 31 July 2020
8. "More New Less Bo?" 4 July 2022
9. "Cycling to Marion," 15 August 2023
10. "The Urbanest Places in Cedar Rapids?" 16 July 2020

Undiscovered posts of the 2020s

MPO Riders on the Sac and Fox Trail

1. "MPO Ride 2024," 11 May 2024
2. "Bike to Work Week 2024," 12 May 2024
3. "Riding the Districts 2024," 11 June 2024
4. "10th Anniversary Post: West Side Greenway," 3 June 2024
5. "FY25 Budget," 13 March 2024
6. "Book Review: City Limits," 5 June 2024
7. "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Day," 24 March 2024
8. "10th Anniversary Post: Preservation or Demolition?" 1 May 2024
9. "Post No. 500: Transition," 29 May 2023
10. "The Future of American Democracy," 25 May 2024

Post No. 500: Transition

Getting to the 500th post on this 10+ year old blog caught me by surprise. The school year at Coe College just ended a couple weeks ago, and congratulations to the class of '23 as well as long-time colleagues who are retiring. I then spent a week or so immersed in thinking about bicycle commuting--luxuriating in that much time focusing on a single subject! This week I'm off to Charlotte for my first-ever in-person Congress for the New Urbanism. Somewhere in all this my birthday happened. But despite all this whirl, I am not one to let a milestone pass uncommemorated.

               When times are mysterious, serious numbers will always be heard--PAUL SIMON

When I started writing this in 2013, I was needing a place to park and reflect on the information I was amassing for a first-year seminar course on place I was teaching at Coe. That course soon begat another, Politics of the City, for the Department of Political Science. Presently I was connected, to my delight, with communities of fellow urbanists outside the college, both locally (Corridor Urbanism started meeting in January 2015) and worldwide (through Strong Towns and eventually CNU). My blog thus became a means of participating in broader conversation about our city and cities in general, on top of being a resource for teaching and occasional public speaking engagements. All that in turn kept me writing.

This is my town

My year-old reflections from number 450 stand pretty much unchanged. Yet from my vantage point atop this pile of now 500 posts, I am aware that the context for writing is changing. In a year or three I will be retiring from my faculty position at Coe, so I'll no longer have a professional rationale, nor the salary to fund urbanist initiatives (trips, books, memberships). At the same time my urbanist communities are going through changes, and so those connections doubtless will be altered as well. Who will I be, when I'm no longer a college teacher who co-runs a civic group on the side? Who will be my tribe, and where will be my place(s)? What will be my relationship to my neighborhood, and my city? My path is murkier than it's been for a long time, when I was a lot younger. Reply hazy--try again.

Role model: Everywhere she lived, Jane Jacobs
contributed both theory and activism to her community

I'm thinking I might could take a crack at local activism. I came out of Bike to Work Week feeling that I have some things to say that nobody else was saying, and that I could become an advocate for commuter cycling and other active modes of getting places in town. Until now I've never been comfortable as an advocate: teaching as I practice it is analytical not argumentative, and so frankly is my brain. But spending a week thinking only about bicycling enabled me to focus and gave me confidence I knew of what I spoke and had (have?) something to contribute to the community.

After 2013 I narrowed the focus of Holy Mountain from the broad topic of "place" to the ingredients of human community ("our common life," in a felicitous phrase I snatched from a correspondent a few years ago). I focus on what I feel I can contribute to the dialogue, and don't feel at all compelled to track current headlines. I'd probably need to narrow my scope even further to have enough knowledge to be an effective advocate, maybe to three core issues like active commuting, affordable housing, and local business development.  

Local businesses are essential to successful communities,
just as coffee is essential to successful blogging

A narrower scope would retreating from other important aspects of our common life (the environment, equity, parks, transit, &c.), though there could be opportunity to incorporate those as well. For example, one reason bicycle commuting is crucial, and not just valiant, is the increasing stress cars put on our environment. 

Crosswalk sign took one for the team
(Czech Village, 2023)

One thing that gives me pause in all this is awareness that I am easily frustrated and discouraged. Zach Mannheimer, who gave the keynote address at the Iowa Ideas in-depth series on creative placemaking this month, told the audience that every initiative he's ever undertaken has required four years to overcome resistance. If I'm going to make it through four years, I'm going to need a team of  friends/colleagues/partners, a veritable quantity of quality people. 

I also don't want to become a crank. I've known quite a few people, typically retired people, who get one or more ideas that they can't stop talking about. They are not, to say the least, effective promoters of those ideas, but they don't know enough to improve or quit. I really don't want to become them.

Then just when I needed an infusion of courage, Addison Del Maestro reflected on his time at his blog, The Deleted Scenes: 

Newslettering is like telling a long story in many pieces. Each article stands alone but isn’t necessarily meant to stand alone. The really fun thing about a newsletter is getting to write almost the same piece over and over—not beating the dead horse and filling column inches, but slowly sharpening an idea until it’s just right.

Del Maestro used examples from three of his posts on small towns, concluding on his most recent If I hadn't written several previous iterations of this, I would not have been able to put it just right here. 

Reflects on writing:
Blogger Addison Del Maestro (from substack.com)

I realized instantly that he was right, that through my own blogging exercise I too was refining my thoughts about the various subjects as I engaged with others, responded to new information, and reflected on my own expression. That's true, for instance, of all three subjects I dealt with this month: the Iowa state legislative session, bicycle commuting, and housing.

I wonder what this blog will become once it's abstracted, as it inevitably will be and probably soon, from the context in which I have been writing. Maybe Del Maestro provides a clue to the answer with the title to his May 22 newsletter: "Just Write." If writing is what I do, then by gum I will "just write," and purpose(s) will appear. And if I become a crank, it's easier for everyone if I'm doing it online instead of across from your face.

Top Posts on Holy Mountain by Time Period

Posts 1-100 (2013-2014)

1. Am I Blue, 6/4/2013

2. Shutdowns and Sillypants (and the Statler Brothers), 10/8/2013

3. No CR Casino... Now, What?, 4/17/2014

100. Climate Change and the Dysfunctional Congress, 6/27/2013

Posts 101-200 (2014-2016)

1. Post No. 200: Next to the Arena, 5/26/2016

2. Touch My Street and Die, 5/15/2016

3. MPO Ride 2016, 5/15/2016

100. What's Happening to the Bike Lanes, 5/21/2014

Posts 201-300 (2016-2018)

1. A Silent But Needful Protest, 11/1/2016

2. Snout Houses? In Oakhill-Jackson?? 10/16/2016

3. Crime and Our Common Life, 8/1/2016

100. Education Update, 6/16/2017

Posts 301-400 (2018-2020)

1. LGBTQ Presidential Forum, 9/22/2019

2. Three Questions for Places in the New Year, 1/4/2019

3. The Hearts of Cedar Rapids, 4/11/2020

100. City Design After the Pandemic, 6/3/2020

Posts 401-500 (2020-2023)

1. Black Friday Parking 2021, 11/26/2021

2. More New, Less Bo? 7/4/2022

3. Move More Week Diary, 10/10/2022

100. Greetings from New Carlisle, 4/23/2023

Post No. 450: Nine years in

I began writing Holy Mountain nine years ago this month. That spring I was on a sabbatical leave from Coe College, gorging myself on literature about the phenomenon of place.  I needed somewhere to park my ideas, to help me process all the stuff I was reading.

At the same time I was encountering for the first time the school of urban design known as new urbanism. Writers such as Jane Jacobs, James Howard Kunstler, Chuck Marohn and other seemed to be on to something, to have found both explanation and antidote for a world gone mad. I listened to podcasts, read books and blog posts, and walked the familiar streets of my town while seeing them through new eyes. Things were awry, for sure, and had been going awry since the end of World War II, but there were ways to start making them right. A housing crisis, rising gasoline prices, falling crime rates, and some popular TV shows were causing young people to consider the attractions of urban life. America, particularly young America, seemed to be discovering the keys to a better, communitarian, inclusive, environmentally- and fiscally-sound future at the same time I was.

In those heady days, I teamed up with a friend and former student, Ben Kaplan, to start a local discussion group which came eventually to be known as Corridor Urbanism (not coincidentally the title of Ben's blog). I got in on the ground floor of Strong Towns' blog roll, which enabled me to exchange ideas with a number of virtual members. Corridor Urbanism hosted Chuck Marohn in 2015, and in 2017 ginned up a grand day in the Mound View neighborhood. Every time I turned around there were new concepts, new insights, new possibilities.

2017: Imagine Mound View, 1600 block of F Avenue NE

I'm still blogging nine years later, and Corridor Urbanism has survived the pandemic shutdowns and is now in its eighth year. In fact, we meet next Wednesday 4/20 at Thew Brewing in Cedar Rapids, and Wednesday 5/18 probably in Marion. Come join us! We are persisting!! Our city has converted one-way streets back to two-way, and added considerable amounts of sidewalks and bike infrastructure. New housing concepts are emerging, at least in the core neighborhoods on the west side of the river.

Nevertheless, something is missing from the early days: A sense that the way forward was simple, and if we explained it enough it could be achieved? That the arc of the design universe was bending towards urbanism? That these ideas, which seemed away around the bitter dualities of national politics, have been incorporated into the conservative movement's pantheon of demons? Or merely the excitement of novelty is no longer with us?

I wrote 14 posts that first month, and 77 posts in what was left of the year 2013. I haven't approached that since. I seem to have less to say. Maybe I can find a book in the piles of words that I've written? Or maybe it's time to stop writing and get involved? 

Kharkiv before Putin moved in (from travelafterkids.blogspot.com. Used without permission.)

It was empowering in 2013 to think that we had found a way to build communities on a local level, while ignoring the political theater of national politics. That was before Donald Trump took political theater way past the threshhold of pain, and begat Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, and their painful ilk. But are our local conversations about missing-middle housing, roundabouts, or scooters any better? I see my state being run on the politics of bilious cultural rage, my metropolitan area focused on building and widening highways, and a promising urban district devolving into a clot of greasy burgers, hair salons, and condos that cost more than my house. My favorite coffeehouse across the street from my office closed in March 2020. Meanwhile, teaching has its benefits, but I mostly seem to be annoying students who would rather be doing something else.

The core ideas remain. We are better in every way when we live in genuine community. There is value in difference, and virtue in welcoming the stranger. Natural and financial systems work according to their own rules, so we had best learn to live with them. And maybe my thinking gets sharper when I realize how non-obvious is the road ahead.

Most read pieces, 2013-2022:

(1) A Silent But Needful Protest, 1 November 2016: "At Coe College, where I teach, nearly 100 members of the community responded yesterday to a call by the student organization Multicultural Fusion to stand in silent protest during the noon hour." 

(2) Snout Houses? In Oak Hill Jackson?? 16 October 2016: "Oak Hill Jackson is a historic neighborhood located south of downtown Cedar Rapids."

(3) Crime and Our Common Life, 1 August 2016: "Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump is asserting a dark, dystopian portrayal of America in 2016 as overwhelmed by predatory criminals and terrorists, in spite of data that show the national violent crime rate has steadily fallen for 25 years."

(4) Let's Hear It for Cedar Rapids, 5 September 2016: "A great city has places to go and ways to get there, and Cedar Rapids celebrated both this Labor Day weekend." 

(5) Gentrification: What Do We Know, 26 July 2016: "A number of forces--economic, ecological, health and fashion trends--are driving middle-class Americans back to the central cities many of their own ancestors abandoned decades ago." 

Least read pieces, 2013-2022:

(1) I Think This House Will Be OK, 18 March 2021: "It's not often my neighborhood makes the news, but last week the Board of Adjustment was called in to grant a zoning waiver to a house on my very block."

(2) Dear America Brings Light in the Heat, 8 July 2021: "The U.S.-Mexico border right now is a mess, which is not new."

(3) Theater Review: "Respect," 15 June 2014: "Cedar Rapids's marvelous arts venue, CSPS, hosted the premiere Saturday night of the University of Iowa's Summer Rep production of "Respect: A Musical Journey of Women"."

(4) Rollin' Recmobile Brings the Fun, 28 June 2021: "Cedar Rapids Parks and Recreation's Rollin' Recmobile started its week of fun this morning at Redmond Park in the Wellington Heights neighborhood."

(5) Nothing Says Community Like..., 13 January 2014: "...a great big pile of Christmas trees!"

Stronger in community:
Volunteer at the 2022 Maple Syrup Festival

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!

 

Post No. 350: Back to school

A highlight from my summer trip to Seattle

Round-number posts mean time to reflect, coinciding with the start of another school year. Six and a half years into this blog project, what keeps me writing? After 32 years of full-time teaching, what--besides the need for money to convert into food and shelter--keeps me in the classroom?

When I was a student forty or so years ago, the changes we're dealing with were already underway, but it was difficult to see at the time. One day my political science professor announced, "Well, the world gained an empire last night!" (The tiny Central African Republic had rebranded itself, temporarily as it turned out.) None of us students knew this, until our professor told us. A few years later, in my own classroom, I found a note on my desk relating to our class discussions about American covert involvement in Nicaragua: "Could you please explain who or what are the contras?"

Today, anyone curious about the contras, or the latest news from the Central African Republic, could become more knowledgeable than me with a quick Internet search:

The academic model of discrete bodies of knowledge, possessed and dispensed by experts, and memorized by students to some degree or other, measured quantitatively and then rated on an ABCDF scale, has been overtaken by technology... if indeed it was ever very useful. There's some comfort on both sides in continuing to play the game, though, particularly for those of us who are (or were) very good at memorizing and articulating. Everyone knows their role (expert/grader, good student, poor student), the numbers give us an appearance of objectivity, and real life keeps going outside the classroom.

Did I really think, all those years ago, that all I had to do was make through college, then flash my diploma and my GPA, and lifetime employment would be mine? Did I really think, once I began teaching, that my role as objective explainer would be easy to define? Did we really think, all those years ago, that cars would always cheaply get us anywhere we needed to go?

"Who Made This City?" (1:00)

My hope this fall for my first-year students is that they set about owning their college education from day one, and they use this opportunity to cultivate the qualities that will enable them to live a good life: creativity, imagination, initiative, resourcefulness, and open-mindedness. I hope I can help them learn to perceive and reflect on, say, the places where they find themselves--the built environment, the political culture, the problems.

Source: Youtube

I hope I can help them learn these habits without having to be neutral about everything. The big questions of our time center on how to manage change: economic change, social change, environmental change. Without presuming to have all or any of the answers, does objectivity really require me to be neutral about presidential race-baiting? Then what about suburban sprawl? The preponderance of evidence on climate change?

Source: Pixabay via Journalists Resource

James Morone, in The Devils We Know (Kansas University Press, 2014), the fine collection of his essays from which I'm teaching this semester, portrays American political culture as an ongoing negotiation among individuals, institutions, and traditions. That seems a good way to approach anything as complex as a political culture, or a town, or an individual life. No one person or group can contain the entirety of a complex truth--which makes the "sage on the stage" model of academia even more obviously absurd.

Even so, there must be ways to distinguish among the claims for our support, and make some judgments, however tentative, about their validity. Empirical evidence will get you some ways down the road, but I'm finding myself increasingly drawn to moral arguments. Is it some life-cycle thing with me personally, or has some social consensus broken down that requires sides be taken?

(Good urban design, bad urban design)

One can't teach a seminar like mine on A Sense of Place without taking note of the impact of intracity highway construction on American life: the growth of the suburbs, the marginalization of the "inner city" and its nonwhite inhabitants, the types of businesses (mainly franchises) that were viable, the ways of getting around (any way but cars) that were not viable, the stress on government budgets once the maintenance bills started coming due. I grew up at a time when all this was taken for granted; it was "the way things are." If I thought about it at all, I assumed this is how supply, demand and available technology were naturally working things out. Of course suburban sprawl stemmed from policy decisions. And a lot of those policy decisions were motivated by racial segregation, highways drawn through black neighborhoods and to maintain "the boundary between the white and Negro communities," in the words of former Atlanta mayor Bill Hartsfield (Kruse 2019). Policies that work to the advantage of whites at the expense of nonwhites are not good, right?

To shape the future, the very future that my students will inhabit far longer than I will, we need to come to grips with what ails the present. And that means finding some other way to respond than  racism, greed or fear, while praising responses like that of Ottumwa Main Street that are both imaginative and incremental.

Ottumwa Better Block video (3:30)

I write, and I teach, as my way of contributing to a collective conversation-negotiation about our common future. Written and oral presentation helps me sort out the blizzard of information that is out there, not to mention my own responses to that information. Readers of this blog, known to me or not, like my students, help keep my sorting out accountable to something bigger than myself. If you've read this far, I am really grateful to you.

Downtown farmers' market, Butte MT:

Objectively preferable to a strip mall on a high-speed stroad?

Of the previous 349 posts, the most popular are from summer-fall 2016 (hereafter "Peak Holy Mountain" or perhaps "Holy Mountain Peak"):

1. A Silent But Needful Protest, 1 November 2016 [Coe College responds to the defacing of Multicultural Fusion posters]
2. Crime and Our Common Life, 1 August 2016 [The mysterious rise and fall and possibly now rise of violent crime rates in America]
3. Snout Houses? In Oakhill-Jackson??, 16 October 2016 [Suburban style development in a historic Cedar Rapids neighborhood]
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]

The least popular list has some new entries, joining some long-time un-favorites from the early years:

1. Where are the Suburbs? 24 June 2019 [three definitions of the urban-suburban divide, applied to Cedar Rapids... a tangle of a post crying out for some graphic accompaniments]
2. Halloween 2013, 1 November 2013 [Halloween as civic holiday] 
3. Downtown Construction Continues, 23 September 2014 [early stages of the CRST building]
4. Nothing Says Community Like..., 13 January 2014 [Take your Christmas tree to this parking lot and it will be made into trails]
5. Book Review: Cities for People, 18 July 2018 [Danish planner Jan Gehl looks at city design from the perspective of human nature]

Post No. 300: A new earth? Or learning to live together on the old one?

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. (Revelation 21:1)

Biblically-minded urbanists know that the Bible begins in a garden and ends in a city. This is true for Jews as well as Christians: The Hebrew Bible ends in Jerusalem in about 430 BCE, with Nehemiah having returned from Persia to administer the rebuilding of the holy city, and incidentally to purge the city of foreigners and punish those Israelites who had married foreign women. And I contended with them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair... (Nehemiah 13:25a). Not exactly Mister Rogers.

Icon of Nehemiah (Source: Wikimedia commons);
I'm looking closely for hanks of someone else's hair

The city described in Revelation 21-22 at the conclusion of the Christian New Testament is not historical but a futuristic "New Jerusalem, coming out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband" (21:2). The city is huge, bounteous, with water for all who thirst and a tree of life that bears a different type of fruit each month, and beautiful.  The wall is built of jasper, while the city is pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with every jewel... (21:18-19a). No Eyesores of the Month here! The closing chapters of the Christian Bible promise an eternity of peace and plenty--"Nothing accursed will be found there any more" (22:3a)--which must have been hopeful to those suffering poverty and persecutions in their current lives.

Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth? (6:10)

The images that close the book of Revelation are among the most beautiful in the Bible, marred only by, well, the entire rest of the book. The path to the peaceful New Jerusalem is strewn with violence, vengeance and death--possibly understandable given the context in which it was written, but maybe too many burned, mangled bodies to serve as a helpful model for resolving today's political issues. For most of Revelation, God and his angels fight a series of spectacular battles against assorted monsters. When God wins, those who opposed us on earth are subjected to frightening punishments culminating in a lake of fire. Those who showed insufficient zeal are also excluded from the New Jerusalem. The remnant who are saved, numbering 12,000 from each of the tribes of Israel, are a remarkably un-diverse lot.

The beast with the lamb's horns and the beast with seven heads,
from Revelation 13-14
woodcut by Albrecht Dürer, c. 1497-1498
(Wikimedia commons)

It is tempting to imagine how ducky life would be if only we could get rid of the people we don't like--maybe it could be as ducky as described in the last two chapters of Revelation! Most of us can only wish ill on our "enemies," but given enough might or enough money or the force of law some of us can attempt to act on those wishes. When the U.S. moved its embassy in Israel to the disputed city of Jerusalem this spring, it made me think of the fantasy of the New Jerusalem, particularly after Israeli forces responded with such violence to the inevitable protests in Palestinian ghettos. The same impulse--to build a paradise while ignoring or excluding the other--fueled the suburban model of development. That may not have proven as futile as the prejudices that fuel the Middle East, but it's come with its own set of high costs that Americans are only beginning to acknowledge.

Exclusion never works as neatly as its advocates think it ought to. Neither does the "shock-and-awe" approach. There's no magic formula for getting along, either, but if we can't afford to build long enough roads or high enough walls to keep everybody apart, we're going to have to learn how to live with difference. During my last weekend in Washington, I found myself reading these words at the Martin Luther King memorial.

The quotation is from Dr. King's sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Christmas Eve 1967. It came at a time when he was getting pushback for expanding the scope of his civil rights activities to include poverty and the war in Vietnam. King saw, maybe sooner than others did, how modern life connects us all, however we might feel about that.

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. Did you ever stop to think that you can't leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world?

I began blogging more than five years ago, believing in these times we--we in our town, we in our country, we on the planet Earth--have no choice but to learn how to live together, to listen to and learn from each other. I also know that this is not easy, but there are people who are trying to make this happen, and places where progress is being made. Further, there are social arrangements--the physical design of a town, the way an economic system structures opportunity, inclusion across differences--that facilitate or obstruct our lives together.

This continues to be my project. It has forced me out of a comfortable academic abstract objectivity, and has meant that I'm writing for someone other than the American Political Science Review. If you've read this far, I'm writing for you! and thank you for your time and your thoughtful responses.

Of the previous 299 posts, the most popular are from fall 2016.

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. Is Our Children Learning? 15 August 2016 [inverse correlation of student poverty with school test scores]

With one exception--hey, what's up with that?--the least popular are short pieces from the early years.

1. Halloween 2013, 1 November 2013 [Halloween as civic holiday] 
2. Nothing Says Community Like..., 13 January 2014 [Take your Christmas tree to this parking lot and it will be made into trails]
3. A Holiday Tradition, 24 November 2013 [Christmas at Brucemore National Historic Site]
4. Downtown Construction Continues, 23 September 2014 [early stages of the CRST building]
5. King Street That Complete Street, 27 April 2018 [Alexandria VA redesigns its main drag]