The two columns on vocabulary (“The Foundation
of Babble,” Nov. 28, 2005, and “Deconstructing
the Tower of Babel,” Dec. 12, 2005) require a
Postscript. Other columns that appeared in the
Dec. 12 edition of Bacon’s Rebellion and events in the
past three weeks collectively require a
reprise.
First, the Good News
Jim Bacon’s lead column “The Gunst Guide to
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,”
Dec. 12, 2005, is an informative item
on Sidney Gunst’s view of Innsbrook, an
“office campus” which he developed in western
Henrico County. In the
column, Gunst looks back on Innsbrook and Bacon
notes the project's impact on the settlement
pattern of the Greater Richmond New Urban Region.
Bacon reports that Gunst is now committed a
different type of project. He wants to build
projects that create functional patterns and
densities of land use. In the story, Jim never
once used any of the Core Confusing Words, and I
suspect not one reader missed them. (For further
observations on Innsbrook and Gunst’s
perspective see End Note
One.)
One
unintended linguistic landmine is sailed past in
the column. That is the term “Town Center.” As
the reference to Reston Town Center (a proper
noun) and to the proposed “town center” for
Fairfax Center that are cited in End Note One
suggest, there is a wide variance among things
called “town center.” A recent issue of
Virginia Business notes that of the nine (largest)
construction projects in the Commonwealth, two are
“The Town Center of Virginia Beach” and
“City Center at Oyster Point” in Newport News.
Two of the others are “Rocketts Landing” in
Richmond and “Waterview” in Arlington. Some of
these are, and all are likely to be, called
“Town Centers.”
Things
called “town centers” are not all large or
complex. Especially in the lower density parts of
prosperous New Urban Regions, every shopping
center with a little extra landscaping promised by
the developer is called a “town center.” The
same is true for every commercial project with a
mix of uses especially those designed by New
Urbanists. The Mainstream Media coverage of
“town centers” does not clarify the term. See
“Town Centers Never Looked So Habitable; The
Town Center’s Day Arrives,” by Heather
Greenfield, WaPo, Oct. 20, 2005. A subtitle reads:
“Reston’s a Model and More Are Planned” but
few of the projects in the story or others that
are called “town center” have much in common
with Reston Town Center. Reston Town Center, by
the way, occupies the site designated for Reston
center or core in the original mid-60s concept for
of the Planned New Community.
The validity of calling a project a “town
center” can be tested by asking the question:
“Of what ‘town’ is this place the
‘center’.” Reston, Virginia Beach and
Oyster Point pass the test, most do not.
The “what town” question raises the issue of
how big a place has to be to be called a
“town.” A convenient cutoff is that a place
called “town” must be large enough to have a
relative balance of jobs/housing/services/
recreation/amenity. In other
words, the size of a place which Planned New
Community developers called a “village” and
what S/PI terms a Beta Village or, upon achieving
critical mass, an Alpha Village. The key is that
the “town center” is the center of a real
place, not just some curb cuts off an arterial. (See “Balanced
Communities,” Aug. 23, 2005, for a discussion of relative scales of human
settlement pattern components.)
Now the Bad
Also in the Dec. 12, 2005,
edition of Bacon’s Rebellion there were two columns by
Patrick McSweeney: “At Last, A Debate on
Sprawl,” [Add Link] and “A Better Way to
Grow.” These two columns used the
word “sprawl” a total of 21 times in 26
paragraphs without providing a definition. The
columns also used “suburban/suburbanites
suburbs” eight times. We have known Patrick for
nearly two decades and respect his thinking on
settlement pattern issues and appreciate his
contribution to the Friends of Virginia’s Future
more than a decade ago.
Using one widely accepted interpretation of
“sprawl,” I agree with most of what Patrick
says. Using an equally widely used conception of
the term “sprawl” he is talking
nonsense. The problem is that I do not know what
Patrick means by “sprawl.”
The
first use of the term focuses on the cumulative
negative impact of scattered urban land uses which
can be calculated and documented. In other words,
“dysfunctional human settlement patterns.” The
second use is an expression of emotional revulsion
toward certain land uses, building forms, roadside
graphics or the vehicles that individuals drive to
get to and from these land uses. The rhetoric of
this second use is typified by that of James
Howard Kunstler and illustrated by the graphics
used to illustrate his books and reviews of his
books. (See Chapter 15, Box 4, in "The Shape of the
Future".)
Well you say, “EMR has given a lot more thought
to definitions, so he is confused but the average
reader has no such problem.” Hello? The only way
that excuse makes sense is to apply the Humpty
Dumpty rule of linguistics and vocabulary –
“the word means exactly what I intend it to
mean.” In fact that anti-rationale is just why
there is a conflict over the cure for
dysfunctional human settlement patterns – the
curse of Babel.
Each person
reading McSweeney’s columns will fill in their
own neural linguistic framework and support or
oppose the ideas he puts forth based on their
interpretation of what “sprawl” means. How do
we know this? McSweeney’s columns appeared in
print weekly elsewhere before they appeared in
Bacon’s Rebellion. In the second column
McSweeney notes he got negative comments from
“Republicans” about the first one to appear.
That is because of the neural linguistic framework
that has been established by and for those who
support “sprawl” on an ideological basis. In
fact, those at the right end of the spectrum (aka,
“Republicans”) should be supporting McSweeney
but they do not because of his word choice.
Babble on the Blog and the Newswire
Since publication of “The Foundation of
Babble,” Nov. 28, 2005, and
“Deconstructing The Tower of Babel,” Dec.
12, 2005,
“observers/commentators/bloggers” at the
Bacon’s Rebellion blog have pontificated on the
lack of a need for clear language and proposed new
applications of the word “city” like “ring
city.” As suggested by End Note
Two, it is best
to use the word “City” only as part of an
official name of a municipality.
Bloggers have intentionally used terms like
“modern city” – an oxymoron of the “new
antique” class. In this case by opening a
comment with the posting with: “I believe that
modern cities...” they confound the confusion by
implying facts about “cities,” watersheds,
waste water systems and storm water systems that
are not correct and definitely not
“modern.”
Over on the
VA Newswire,
Jim Bacon reported on Dec. 14, 2005, about two new
cutting-edge companies, BoldMouth and
New Media Strategies, that are out to
synthetically duplicate the organic system
that supports word-of-mouth advertising. The
ramifications of this “advancement” to
overpower what Malcolm Gladwell documents in the
revived Year 2000 best seller "The Tipping Point:
How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference" will
be critical to creating effective media
communications. We explore this impact in the
section titled “Economic Competition’s Impact
on Language and Mainstream Media in the Dec. 12,
2005, column.
Kotkin: On a Roll, or
Playing a Role?
As if to confirm that
his earlier writings highlighted in
“Deconstructing the Tower of Babel,” Dec. 12,
2005, were not an aberration, Joel Kotkin wrote in
mid-December a review of Robert Bruegmann’s book,
"Sprawl: A Compact History." (See
End Note
Three.)
As with the earlier work,
Kotkin’s factoids are not “all wrong.” Some
are right but are lost in fuzzy language. The most
important point is that Kotkin fails to realize
his sugary praise of Bruegmann’s work using
inarticulate words undermine the very points he is
trying to make in his reviews and in his book,
"The
City: A Global History," as well as the very points
Bruegmann is trying to raise in his book.
One is tempted to say Kotkin is just “lost in
scale,” the most common form of profound
Geographic Illiteracy but it is more than that, he
is “lost in vocabulary” as well. (See
Backgrounder “Geographic Illiteracy.”)
Kotkin exhibited a very
different style in a column that appeared in the
Dec. 11, 2005, Portland Oregonian. This op-ed
titled “Portland: lost in its own reflection”
is a mean-spirited attack on those who find
Portland attractive. His favorite literary device
is sarcasm: “the Ephemeral City” and
“narcissus of the West.” It was surprising
that he could get so many facts wrong or so badly
misconstrue Jane Jacob’s perspective when there
is published evidence that Ms. Jacobs holds the
opposite view. In fact some residential
neighborhoods in Portland look a lot like Jane
Jacob’s Toronto neighborhood.
The
reason for the problems with Kotkin’s view of
Portland is that the op-ed appears to be
“sponsored content.” This judgment is based on
the speed with which it was sent around the
Internet by the self serving “pro-sprawl”
lobby. We received four copies from different
sources within three days.
At first
blush the Portland op-ed would appear to damage
Kotkin’s credibility as scholar because it
echoes the arguments of the run-of-the-mill
Portland bashers. A quick search of the web
suggests that the problem is worse than that. One
observer pointed out that Kotkin had advised
another New Urban Region (St. Louis) to do just
what he criticized Portland for doing and being
successful at it. Other observers note that in his
sweeping categorization of urban agglomerations he
fails to list places that run counter to his
argument (e.g. the continued decline of the
“city.”) This may be because with an inadequate
vocabulary, the “city” places and or the
“suburban” places do not exhibit the trend he
is trying to be the first to document or christen.
Human settlement pattern is a complex topic and
unless one has a firm grasp on vocabulary and a
comprehensive conceptual framework, these and
other errors are bound to occur. Had Kotkin used
more precise words he may have realized that
errors existed in his generalizations.
Well, now really! What is so wrong with unabashed
statement of differing views even if they are not
supported by fact? It is just like literary
criticism, right?
Wrong. Citizens are not forced
to live in other people’s books or movies. They
are forced to live in human settlement patterns
that have been agglomerated based on the
cumulative impact of bad location decisions.
Here is a good example of the immediate impact of
items like Kotkin’s attack on Portland. One of
the first to flash the Kotkin item on Portland
around the Internet was Ken Reid, a publicist (aka,
spin doctor) who works for Virginia Mobility
Associates LLC and other groups sponsored by Chris
Walker in Reston.
Reid packaged the Kotkin material and sent it to
those whom he thought, if they believed the Kotkin
op-ed or were disheartened by it, might help his
client’s cause with respect to the stopping Rail
to Dulles.
All this would be fun if it
were not so tragic.
Other Straws in
the Wind
First some good news:
Media critic and author of "The Sponsored Life:
Ads, TV and American Culture," Leslie Savan has
written an new book titled "Slam Dunks and No-Brainers:
Language in Your Life, the Media, Business,
Politics, and, Like, Whatever." As the
title suggests, this work may put in a more
accessible context the work of the academic
linguists.
On the very day the
“Deconstructing the Tower of Babel” appeared
with the exploration of how media was being driven
by advertising, WaPo published a story on Rick
Smith’s NewsUSA, Inc. “Firm Files Believable,
Newsy Copy, for a Price; NewsUSA, Inc. Emphasizes
Restrained Style in ‘Placing’ Articles in U.S.
Papers.” The story by Annys Shin describes how
this company distributes items that look like news
stories that feature products and services of
NewsUSA, Inc’s clients, which it then
distributes to newspapers and radio stations. With
Mainstream Media outlets under economic pressure,
they apparently snap up these “news ads.”
(This is an obvious example of “Economic
Competition’s Impact on Language and Mainstream
Media in the Dec. 12,
column cited
earlier.)
WaPo came through with a
“bus” story by the reporter, whom we cautioned
not to use or overuse the word. There is nothing
“wrong” with the story. In fact I expect it to
show up in the clipping services of environmental
/good government groups. The story documents the
plight of those who live here, work there and have
no car. (See Boorstein,
Michelle, "For the Carless, Life Is a Wait,"
The Washington Post, Dec. 18, 2005, Page
C5.)
Why is this a problem?
Because it fails to take advantage of the
opportunity to clarify the great gulf between
mobility systems that rely on private vehicles vs.
those that rely on shared vehicles. By doing this,
the story fuels the conflict between the “strict
father” and the “nurturant parent” views of
society – and settlement patterns – as
articulated by Lakoff.
On Dec.
25, Mark Fisher’s column in WaPo is titled
“Suburbanite Finds a Leafy Refuge From the
Sprawl” with a jump page title of “Community
Spaces Enrich Life in Leafy Enclave.” It is a
nice story about a resident of Washington Grove,
Md. Washington Grove is one of a number of
19th-century summer retreats that have been
surrounded by more recent urban development. The
column could have provided useful insight with the
same facts but for reliance on Core Confusing
Words.
One
more note: Have you noticed that only almost every
form, registration or application that asks for
your address there is a line for "city"
instead of "postal address?" This is
true even for those applying for "rural
assistance."
As
noted in Deconstructing The Tower of
Babel,” Dec. 12, 2005, as long as language
is just a matter of "opionio" and that
information impacting citizen understanding of
human settlement patterns is far game "in
the marketplace of ideas" where there is no
right and wrong, civilization will continue to
slide toward entropy.
--
January 3, 2006
End
Notes
(1) I recall discussing Innsbrook with Gunst in his
office and taking pictures of the project when I
was doing research (from San Diego to Dallas, to
Kansas City, to Atlanta) in preparation for
designing and developing Fair Lakes. What Gunst
says rings true and matches our own reflections on
the 860-acre Fair Lakes/Fair Oaks Estates projects
on I-66 in Fairfax County.
There
are some differences: Unlike in Innsbrook, there
was a concerted effort to create a context for
Fair Lakes. The development entity (Hazel Peterson
aka, HP) applied for rezoning of the property that
became Fair Lakes and Fair Oaks Estates HP
drove/led Fairfax County to create the Fairfax
Center plan. This plan covered 5,500 acres and
included a town center and two village centers.
Fair Lakes was the “employment neighborhood”
of the North Village. This late 70s/early 80s work
was carried out before S/PI started using the term
“Balanced Community.”
Fairfax Center was “designed” by a 54-member
citizen/business task force and a team of
consultants as a Planned New Community with 1,500
different parcel owners but with a balance of
jobs/housing/services/ recreation/amenity. The
role of the Fair Lakes neighborhood was to
contribute most of the employment and some of the
housing for the North Village. The Fairfax
Government Center was the major employment node of
the South Village. Fair Oaks Mall and the adjacent
land was to morph to become the “town center.”
(The third “village” of Fairfax Center should
be Fairfax City but that is another story.)
There is more to learn from Bacon’s
column on
Gunst’s new commitment. The mix of uses that
would result from Gunst’s current vision on the
850-acre Innsbrook are worth considering.
Here is a back-of-the-envelope “plan” for the
site that reflects the original developer’s new
objectives:
Let’s keep 50
percent in open space -- water, woods, and
informal play fields, something like Central Park
– not the one off I-95 in Greater
Fredericksburg, but the one that Frederick Law
Olmstead designed on Manhattan.
Develop the other half of the site with a
"new urbanist, 2-, 3- and 4-story mix of uses
with an occasional node like Reston Town Center.
This is the distribution of land uses that the
market would now reward with the greatest return
on investment and also yield the highest
per-square-foot values for the future owners.
The FAR would be around 2.0 on the developed
acreage, 1.0 on the whole site. That is about five
times as intensive as the existing Innsbrook.
This sketch means Innsbrook would double the
employment (office, service, retail) to 50,000
workers in 14 million square feet of building area
and have enough residential area (in townhouses,
zero lot lines, condos, lofts and live-work units
to house 30,000 people. The garage, driveway,
roadway savings would cover the cost of ubiquitous
broadband for every office, shop and residence as
well as a PRT system to serve the core of Greater
West Henrico. The PRT system could be extend to
other parts of the Greater Richmond New Urban
Region.
Not all the New Innsbrookians
would be among the 50,000 employed in the core of
the Greater West Henrico Balanced Community but a
lot would. The big plus is that there would be no
need to develop 10,000 acres in Goochland County
(or some other place) and VDOT would not have to
build roads to get to and from Goochland County
and all the other places.
(2)
The phrase “ring city” is very likely to be
confused with the phrase “circle city” coined
by the well known ecologist / geographer Philip
Lewis two decades ago. Lewis was, of course,
referring to settlement patterns at a completely
different scale. The New Urban Regions
centered on Chicago, Milwaukee and Minneapolis-St.
Paul comprised part of a “circle city” as I
recall.
(3) Kotkin’s review of Bruegmann’s book (“In
Praise of ‘Burbs”) appeared in the Wall Street
Journal on Dec. 10, and it was e-mailed to
me the next day just after I had sent off the Dec.
12 column.
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