|
Our
last column, “Bread
and Circuses,” appeared the day before the
7 November elections. Now that the election is
past, one might hope that the high season of
partisan electioneering were over. That is not
the case.
In
“Bread and Circuses,” we noted:
Until
there is Fundamental Change in governance
structure and citizens move beyond the current
two-party duopoly, the very best one can hope
for is that neither party gains control of
more than one branch of the legislature and
the executive mansion at federal or state
levels. It would be best if neither
party has unquestioned control over any
legislative chamber or executive branch.
That
is about what happened on 7 November and that is
about all that could be hoped for at this point.
There will be divided control in “the capital
of the free world” and that is a good thing,
given what one-party control has wrought over
the past six years. However, eliminating
monopoly rule is only the first step. Duopoly
rule is also a long term loser.
Where
to From Here?
Jim
Bacon summed up the election very nicely in a
blog posting titled “Elections,
Shmelections. Nothing Has Changed.” Many
of the posts to this string point out critical
shortcomings in the current structure of
governance but offered few solutions.
The
party now in control of Congress has a narrow
majority. Many who were elected won by small
margins. The donkey clan leaders are already
fighting among themselves and the elephant clan
rank and file are abandoning their most recent
flag bearer. There is little prospect of real
change in the months and years ahead under the
current political construct.
Mark
Weinberger, a partner in Ernst & Young and
former treasury official, was quoted in WaPo
on 9 November as saying: “There is nothing
more important on either party’s mind than
winning the presidency in 2008. The window for
bi-partisan cooperation is very small.”
Creating
a sustainable trajectory for civilization
requires Fundamental Changes: Fundamental Change
in human settlement pattern and Fundamental
Change in governance structure. (See End
Note One.)
Everyone
now in office is beholden to the current
duopoly. The same is true for those who were
just elected. Talk of going to the capital –
state or federal – and making a significant
positive change is meaningless rhetoric.
In
Virginia, citizens went to the polls to vote for
representatives at the national and municipal
scales. The winning participant’s platforms
and the agendas outlined since the election by
all governance practitioners reflect no interest
in any significant change from the partisan
efforts that are leading toward profound
economic, social and physical unsustainability.
The “agendas for change” are just lists of
past initiatives that have failed.
Both
the winners and the losers in Virginia are
positioning themselves for more gridlock in
January – political and vehicular. The
primarily focus on the next legislative session
will be jockeying for position in anticipation
of the 2007 elections when all the General
Assembly seats will be up for grabs. In
preparation for the 2007 elections you might
consider putting the following on your bumper:
Voting
for an incumbent is voting for
Business-As-Usual.
If
you really like the way civilization is headed,
vote for an incumbent. If not, vote for change.
If
you are pleased with society in general – the
economy, foreign policy, the trade deficit, the
environment, consumption of resources, security
and safety go for Business As Usual. The same is
true for your family, your dooryard and your
community. If you are happier and more secure,
and there is no problem with mobility and access
in your region, and everyone in your community
has access to affordable housing, then there is
no reason for you to vote for change. If you and
your family are better off now than five years
ago go for the status quo.
Based
on the three-tiered economic profile outlined in
PROPERTY DYNAMICS, if citizens vote their
enlightened self-interest, there will be a
landslide for Fundamental Change.
A
Matter of Scale
Dysfunctional
human settlement patterns are incentivized
/subsidized by federal and state legislation,
programs and policies. Dysfunctional patterns
and densities of land use are, however,
implemented primarily by regional, community-,
village- and neighborhood-scale actions.
The
problem is there exits no regional-,
community-, village- or neighborhood- scale
governance structure.
All
that now exists are state (province) and
municipal governance structures. The current
structure was conceived to support citizens in
the agrarian society that existed in 1760. These
structures were not well suited for the onset of
the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th and
19th Centuries. (See End
Note Two.)
Current
governance arrangements are profoundly outdated
in the face of 21st Century economic, social and
physical realities. Global competition,
electronic communications, advances in
science/technology are only the most obvious
indicators of governance structure obsolescence.
It is not the ideals of democracy and freedom
that need changing but the mechanism to achieve
these common goals.
County
governments are technically not
“municipalities” but they provide municipal
serves for the majority of the citizens of the
Commonwealth. There are almost no municipal
governments (including counties) that are of
Alpha Community or even Beta Community scale.
Most counties are too large or too small to
serve as Alpha Community governments. Many
counties inside the Clear Edge around the Core
of Virginia’s three New Urban Regions cover
the territory of several potential Alpha
Communities. Fairfax County covers eight
or ten community-scale components.
Most
Cities and towns are far smaller than the
logical Alpha Community. Jim Bacon explores the
transportation impact of freezing annexation
which has exacerbated this reality in “Seventy
Five Years,” 9 Oct 2006. In addition,
towns are only semi-municipalities because of
the roll of counties in town governance.
There
are a few municipalities that are of Alpha
Village Scale. The “cities” of Fairfax,
Falls Church and Poquoson are sometimes cited as
examples of appropriately scaled “village”
governments. Many of these small “cities”
are not coterminous with the organic Alpha
Village boundaries, however, and all have powers
that far exceed geographic reality, which
thwarts the rational allocation of governance
functions.
There
are no neighborhood- or cluster-scale
governments. The closest entities that exists
are homeowner associations. Homeowner
associations, as currently structured, are
woefully inadequate to meet even the tasks for
which they are now responsible.
There
are no regional or subregional governments,
PERIOD. Is there anyone who thinks that mobility
and access, affordable and accessible housing or
safety and security are not regional and
subregional problems?
The
Countryside has no coherent governance
structure.
The
existing mishmash of wrong-sized or vacuum
governance structures, leads to dysfunctional
governance, which results in dysfunctional
human settlement patterns.
As
long as citizens/voters have no opportunity to
make input at the level of impact,
least-common-denominator governance flourishes.
The
National Party
One
underlying cause of dysfunctional governance is
the illusion that there can be meaningful
one-policy-fits-all party platforms and
positions.
“National”
party platforms should focus on national
interests and the “regional” party
platforms should focus on regional interests.
Problem is there are no “regional”
parties.
A
statement of objectives for a group of like-minded
representatives at the national scale on topic
“A” would be different from the objectives
of a similar group on topic “A” at the
regional scale. While the overarching goals may
be compatible – e.g. increasing home ownership
– the implementation strategies would be
different. For this reason the platform of the
any political party must be different at
different scales.
As
noted in “Bread
and Circuses,” the vacuum of governance
agencies at the regional, community and village
scales has bucked problems up to the state and
federal scales. The same is true for political
parties.
Here
are examples of scale dysfunction in housing,
transport and social cohesiveness:
Few
question the goal of increased home ownership as
part of the larger objective of affordable and
accessible housing for all citizens. Programs
that may support this goal at the national level
-- the federal mortgage interest subsidy and the
creation of tradable securities from pooled
mortgages -- yield obvious problems at regional
and community scales. These blunt federal tools
have resulted in building wrong-size houses in
the wrong location. (See “Solutions
to the Shelter Crisis,” 25 July 2005.)
In
transportation the idea of an interregional
expressway system to support national defense
and interregional commerce is sound national
policy. However, the regional impact of pouring
federal money into an “Interstate and Defense
Highway System” has disaggregated urban fabric
at the community and regional scales. (See “Interstate
Crime, 28 February 2005, and “Regional
Rigor Mortis,” 6 June 2005.)
Similar
problems of scale emerge when looking at
settlement pattern parameters from the other end
of the spectrum. What constitutes a sound policy
at dooryard and perhaps cluster scale – e.g.
homogeneity – can be disruptive at the
neighborhood scale. Homogeneity leads to total
dysfunction at the village and community scales.
This is because homogeneity does not facilitate
the evolution of a balance of
Jobs/Housing/Services/ Recreation/Amenity at
these scales, which is essential to
sustainability.
Of
course, scatteration of homogeneous enclaves is
an economic, social and physical disaster at
regional scale. (See “Regional
Rigor Mortis,” 6 June 2005.)
It
is impossible for a single “party” to adopt
a platform with meaningful detail and
specificity to cover areas such as housing,
mobility and access or patterns of land use
generally that relates to all scales of human
settlement.
It
goes without saying that the policies and
programs at the nation-state scale are often
different than those at the multi-national
scale. This issue is faced every day in the
European Union.
Politics
of Expediency
The
historic rationale for political “parties”
was to have an umbrella organization that
represented common interests and philosophy in a
society with low levels of literacy and
primitive means of communication over vast
distances. Party politics never work well but
party managers have found a way to capitalize on
the governance structure vacuum to create a
duopoly and perpetuate dysfunction.
Electronic communications eclipses most of the
reasons for simplistic, one-size-fits-all
parties and platforms.
Party
platforms, and politics in general, have
degenerated to meaningless platitudes about
“freedom,” “low taxes” and
“middle-class values.” Understanding the
importance of different interests at different
scales could be the nail in the coffin of
one-size-fits-all scales politics.
As
we noted in “Bread
and Circuses,” the current political
parties champion lower taxes, provide subsidies
and lower cost of goods and services, including
scarce resources, to increase “competition”
and spur “growth.” The net result is to
waste resources and accelerate evolution of an
unsustainable human settlement pattern. This is
true for all resources but especially energy. (See
“Soft Consumption
Paths,” 7 August 2006.)
Role
of parties has morphed to focus on the
generation of platitudes. These simplistic
catchall sound bites are designed to secure 50.5
percent of the vote.
Private
interests and proclivities have eclipsed what
governance should focus on: Public interest and
general welfare. Separation of church (religion)
and state (governance) is one way to put it,
separation of religious and other private-choice
organizations from political parties is another.
A
late 19th and early 20th Century
“progressive” ideal was that “local”
elections should be non-partisan. Some municipal
elections are nonpartisan by charter, others by
custom. Other “nonpartisan” arrangements
reflect an attempt to avoid being saddled by
elements of state or national party platform or
personalities.
The
root problem with this idea is that “local”
is a confusing word. Does “local” mean
“regional,” “community,” “village,”
“neighborhood,” “cluster” or even
“dooryard. (See the discussion on “Local”
in Appendix Two, Core Confusing Words of "The
Shape of the Future.")
There
is a simple sound-bite solution to the
“national party” problem:
No
political party can support candidates running
for office to at more than one scale.
This
would result in the creation of distinct parties
at nation-state, regional, community, village
and neighborhood scales. Parties might form
multi-scale coalitions when they share mutual
interests, but the focus would be on policies
and programs that relate to a specific scale,
not meaningless sound bites like
“conservative” or “liberal.”
Current
political parties serve those in office, but not
citizens. Citizens and society in general need
functional governance. Parties serve as a spring
board for politicians to “move up,” creating
pressure from elected officials to have parties
that purport to span all the scales of human
settlement pattern.
The
goal of both the donkey clan and the elephant
clan is to get 50.5 percent of the vote, and
winning an election is more important than
governing. Programs with substance offend those
who profit from Business As Usual, so spin
masters nix substance.
Society
has reached the current gridlock on affordable/
accessible housing, mobility/access and now
safety and security via least common denominator
decisions (aka, “political compromise”).
Compromise is appropriate now and then but when
trajectory of civilization is down, and the path
is wildly unsustainable, citizens must find a
way to achieve Fundamental Change, not
compromise. This is especially true when the
primary area of agreement between donkeys and
elephants is continued over consumption of
resources and unsustainable “growth.”
(See “Bread and
Circuses,” 6 November 2006.)
What
Is This Fundamental Change of Which You Speak?
Here
is a quick, threshold check list of milestones
on the path to Fundamental Change in governance
structure:
The
"Shape of the Future" provides a
threshold survey of alternatives, including the
37-state proposal of Brunn, and a more profound
restructuring to reflect Joel Garreau’s
“Nine Nations of America” categorization.
-
Create
elected regional governance structures for
at least the largest 68 New Urban Regions in
the USofA. (See “The
Shape of Richmond’s Future,” 16 Feb
2004) for a snapshot of the process to
create this governance structure. The key is
to understand the imperative of evolving
Balanced Communities within sustainable New
Urban Regions.
The
Bottom Line
Bottom
Line is this:
If
civilization is to evolve toward a sustainable
trajectory, it will require Fundamental Change
in human settlement patterns. (See End
Note 1.) Fundamental Change in human
settlement patterns will not be achieved under
the current governance structure. This is
because current governance practitioners –
elected and appointed – believe that their
power and that of their party is best served by
the status quo and avoiding Fundamental Change.
That
is why progress on PROPERTY DYNAMICS is
critical. (See End
Note Three.)
End
Notes
(1).
This will be the topic of a forthcoming
Backgrounder titled “Understanding Human
Settlement Patterns,” which will become the
Introduction to TRILOGY.
(2).
Many aspects of these policies were set down in
the Northwest Ordinance of 1789. This view of
desirable settlement patterns reflected the
vision of all the major political and economic
perspectives of the time. The Industrial
Revolution was already making these perspectives
obsolete when the Northwest Ordinance was
adopted. See discussion of the 1800 to 2000
transformation from an agrarian society to an
urban society in “Burned
Out,” 10 July 2006, and in “Regional
Rigor Mortis,” 6 June 2005.
(3).
This column and the prior column (“Bread
and Circuses”) are being revised to serve
as the introduction to PROPERTY DYNAMICS in
TRILOGY.
--
November 20, 2006
|
