by ilene - July 11th, 2010 1:52 pm
Courtesy of Charles Hugh Smith Of Two Minds
The roots of suburbia extend deeper into Cold War policy than most of us know.
The built environment (roads, railways, structures and towns/cities) is integral to any understanding of energy, resiliency, fragility, society and the economy. Any discussion of energy consumption must include the fact that roughly half the energy consumed in the U.S. is used to heat and cool buildings. No discussion of transport or economic strength is integrated without an understanding of rail and seaports, and their vast efficiencies.
To mention one example out of hundreds: the construction and marketing of distant suburbs (exurbs) as the ultimate extension of the suburban lifestyle has strained the American family to the breaking point via crushingly long commutes; wage-earners have no time to spend with their children because their waking, productive hours are spent getting to work, working and then crawling home exhausted.
Thus the built environment has a direct causal effect on divorce rates, teenage alienation and the "bowling alone" isolation and ennui that characterizes so much of American life.
A long-forgotten, underappreciated aspect of encouraging widely dispersed suburbs was rooted in Cold War defense against nuclear attack.Planner/correspondent Tom Christoffel alerted me to this fascinating connection between military/defense policy and the effective abandonment of cities in favor of suburbs in the poast-World War II era. Here are Tom’s comments:
RE: The Future of Cities (June 17, 2010):
I think you’d find interesting: The Reduction of Urban Vulnerability: Revisiting 1950s American Suburbanization as Civil Defence by Kathleen A Tobin, Purdue University, Cold War History, Vol.2, No.2, January,2002.
This is an unrecognized if not forgotten history of the roots of sprawl in the U.S. as a defensive measure. The outcome of the defense was similar to that of the attack it was meant to survive – a cratering of the cities.
Although incorporation of the automobile into city design began early in the century, it has been since the 1950’s that American housing, retail and employment sites – the business campus, have been designed for the automobile. Distances are unwalkable and very often there are no sidewalks to connect buildings.
There are very few cities where owning an automobile is optional. Jurisdictions are cities in name and legal structure only. New urbanism is simply an attempt to accommodate the car.
There are
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Tags: auto industry, cities, Employment, Energy, Housing, infrastructure, roads, sidewalks, suburban sprawl economy, suburbs, urban volnerability
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by ilene - June 10th, 2009 2:28 pm
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Another twilight zone episode, courtesy of Mish. Maybe we’ll have a marathon.
The Obama administration on Wednesday will name a ‘pay czar’ with power to reject compensation plans at companies receiving "exceptional" government aid, an administration official said on Wednesday.
The administration will also call for "say-on-pay" legislation that would give the Securities and Exchange Commission authority to require public companies to hold nonbinding shareholder votes each year on executive pay, the official said.
The pay czar, or "special master," will review compensation structures for the top 100 salaried employees of firms receiving exceptional assistance, the official said.
Obama Tells American Businesses to Drop Dead
Kevin Hassett at Bloomberg writes Obama Tells American Businesses to Drop Dead.
I’ve finally figured out the Obama economic strategy. President Barack Obama and his team have been having so much fun wielding dictatorial power while rescuing “failed” firms, that they have developed a scheme to gain the same power over every business. The plan is to enact policies that are so anticompetitive that every firm needs a bailout.
Once that happens, their new pay czar Kenneth Feinberg can set the wage for everybody and Rahm Emanuel can stack the boards of all of our companies with his political cronies.
Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer came to Washington to announce what Microsoft would do if Obama’s multinational tax policy is enacted.
“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said, “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S.” If Microsoft, perhaps our most competitive company, has to abandon the U.S. in order to continue to thrive, who exactly is going to stay?
Hassett is talking about Obama’s proposal to end the deferral of multinational taxation.
I have a simple suggestion. Instead of taxing American businesses to death in the United States, why don’t we eliminate corporate income taxes in the US altogether? That way, businesses would not have an incentive to hide profits, waste money inventing schemes to defer profits,
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Tags: auto industry, FDIC, Federal Reserve, GM, Obama, Pay Czar
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Will the Obama administration’s meddling in the affairs of business ever end? That’s what I am asking as I read 
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