Bacon's Rebellion

THE GOVERNOR AND MOBILITY

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by

James A. Bacon
in

As noted elsewhere in Bacon’s Web Empire, WAPO carried a front page story today on last night’s transport forum in West Falls Church. WAPO reports that there is little (no) consensus on “solutions.” Some who have the Governor-Elect’s ear have told us they understand that the only “solution” to improved mobility and access in contemporary New Urban Regions is Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns. These advisors and confidants have either not articulated this understanding well or the Governor-Elect has chosen to ignore and/or keep mum about this reality.

In the same story WAPO also reports that the town hall tour has attracted “hundreds of frustrated commuters.” Neither the MainStream Media nor the Governor-Elect has been willing to tell “commuters” that they need to go home and look in the mirror if they want to see the root cause of growing congestion. They have three choices, they can move their job, move their home or move both. Many are opting to jump out of the frying pan in one New Urban Region only to find themselves in the fire in another New Urban Region.

The “live here, work there” population (aka, commuters) cannot realistically expect any government action that will bail them out since it a physical impossibility to provide functional transport for dysfunctional settlement patterns. Dysfunctional human settlement patterns can be quantified by the Vehicle Miles Traveled per capita, per job and per household. See “The Commuting Problem,” 17 January 2005 at dev.baconsrebellion.com

WAPO as recently as 2 January 2006 editorially supported road building as a way to improve commuting. The growing economic pressure on MainStream Media makes it impossible for them to be honest with readers about the solutions to the growing mobility crisis because honesty would anger advertisers. Honesty would also anger subscribers because governance practitioners have not prepared citizens for understanding the Physics of Gridlock.

This raises the question: Can democracy, prosperity and sustainability be supported with the information derived from for-profit media? On the other hand, is volunteer media at the neighborhood, community, regional and nation-state scales the basis for the 21st century “Fourth Estate?” These are questions we will be exploring in future columns and through PROPERTY DYNAMICS.

EMR

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4 responses to “THE GOVERNOR AND MOBILITY”

  1. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    I don’t buy the argument that “Dysfunctional human settlement patterns can be quantified by the Vehicle Miles Traveled per capita, per job and per household. “

    What if you had two dysfunctional human settlements with the same number of people and jobs, and the inhabitants of A traveled farther than B. You’d say A was more dysfunctional.

    But what if the A people made more money, had more space, used less gas, caused less pollution, and were happier and more devout?

    VMT doesn’t mean squat, unless you consider how well it is used.

    I’ll agree it a physical impossibility to provide functional transport for dysfunctional settlement patterns. VRE, METRO bus and rail, Shirley Highway, Route 66, Route 270, and New York Avenue combined prove that conclusively.

    The obvious conclusion is that we should eliminate the metropolitan Washington area. Then we could all live in places like Warrenton, but we would need to have several thousand more such places.

    It is also impossible for everyone to live next to where they work. If we ever actually tried that, the physics of gridlock would kick in the instant we all left our office to deliver our goods and services.

    Volunteer media doesn’t exist without an agenda, and they still need money to operate. The question is whether they support truth, reason, and equity, or whether they have a dog in the fight.

  2. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Ed, You raise an interesting question. Can the “lack of popular understanding” properly be attributed to a for-profit media? In my experience, advertising pressures rarely entered into the newsroom, and when they did, it was only in response to specific stories in which the advertisers felt aggrieved. I can’t imagine that the housing/developer/real estate lobby would think, much less have the power, to shut down insightful reporting on land-use issues generally.

    The reason that the journalism is so poor and superficial is twofold: (1) the lack of knowledge and understanding on the part of reporters and editors themselves, and (2) the typical organizational structure of the newsroom. The two problems are interrelated.

    Most newsrooms assign an individual reporter to cover an individual local government. That reporter dutifully attends all the City Council meetings or Board of Supervisor meetings, reports the occasional planning commission hearing, covers the big press conferences, and writes feature stories examining various controversies in more depth. As a result, newsrooms provide “silo” coverage of their regions. No one is looking for the common patterns that cut across localities. As a result, few land use-related controversies are viewed in their larger context. (It wasn’t until I became editor of Virginia Business, which by its nature had a larger context for viewing issues, that I began to develop a deeper understanding.)

    Aggravating this problem is the problem of turn-over among the reporters. Covering politics in the fast-growth, but outlying counties is rarely a treasured assignment. Most reporters want to move on and up to something more exciting. Few have the opportunity to develop an in-depth knowledge of governance issues.

    Finally, I would add this perspective: Most reporters simply parrot back the perspectives of the governance practitioners and citizen activists they talk to. If the governance practitioners and citizen activists have no deeper understanding of the issues, the journalists are not likely to acquire it.

    However, I agree with you that newsrooms across the state are a critical fulcrum. If there would be some way to reach the journalists…. to give them a comprehensive framework for understanding the issues on a more profound level, then it might be possible to improve the quality of coverage.

    Which leads to an idea…. Perhaps someone, working through the Sorenson Institute perhaps, or the Virginia Press Association, could put on a series of seminars for the purpose of educating local government reporters.

  3. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Jim:

    All good points, but…

    Several recent conversations with reporters and the sale of a community newspaper cause me to believe that the pressures have grown far greater over the past months.

    You will recall I help found and served on the Board of Directors of a chain of community newspapers and saw this coming for a long time.

    The Sorenson idea is a good one for the short term. In the long term we need the media (aka, Fourth Estate) to be restructured to reflect the organic structure of society with far more effort by volunteers at the cluster, neighborhood, village and community scales and far less focus on making money and at the same time “informing the public.”

    The Internet makes that possible but it also erodes the locational imperitive.

    EMR

  4. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Was the Citizen sold because it was losing money? I know that in his final editorial the owner made much of the early sacrifices, but by appearances he had enough ads to be in good shape now.

    According to the paper, part of the deal was that he would pursue other interests outside of journalism. That makes it sound like Arthur Arrington got a thorn out of his side, and wanted to make sure the bush didn’t grow back. It will be interesting to see how the paper changes.

    Another source told me that (Emerson?) had legitimate outside interests he wanted to pursue. Maybe he just decided that now was a good time to liquidate the farm and get the money out he had worked so hard to create.

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