I'm on vacation, starting tomorrow until the end of July.
I could say that I will try to post from the road, but I've spent the last day or so trying to leave everything else behind -- including work, bills, and personal electronic devices -- so it seems appropriate to try to leave this blog behind for the month. When I return, I should have pictures!
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Saturday, June 18, 2005
"Batman Begins" and "Sin City"
(WARNING: This blog posting contains spoilers for both movies! However, you should know that Sin City sucked, really sucked badly).
Just saw Batman Begins last night, which more than amply fulfilled my summer-action-movie cravings. Going out on a limb, I am a little uneasy because I found the movie particularly, deeply profound in its depiction of the city and its super-hero.
In the story, the city -- Gotham, of course -- is recast as the legacy of the Wayne family, and their struggles against evil in all of its forms. There is a scene when Bruce Wayne's father gestures out of the window of the subway, talks about the family's responsibility to the city, and how the family built the city's infrastructure -- a spindly monorail topped by grimy New York subway cars, circa 1980 -- to unite the people of Gotham. Alfred, the butler, frequently reminds Bruce Wayne of how his parents fought to save the city, and how their deaths rekindled the spirit of “the good people” of Gotham. Bruce Wayne's love interest, Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes) is embroiled and endangered in the grimy city, yet all of her gestures and speeches are to the people of the city, and to the hope and spirit of the city itself.
Evil, of course, is also represented by the city in its squalor and filth. Though the CGI rendering shines a bit too brightly through clouds of steam, it is a different kind of dystopian vision of the city than in Blade Runner. That movie by Ridley Scott depicted the city as a place of Frankenstein-like technology run amok; instead, Batman Begins shows the city as a kind of shantytown that mocks our original ambitions for city life, and is instead weighted down under decaying infrastructure, aging buildings and a core rottenness of human spirit. Liam Neeson, who plays a great villain, for once -- instead of a hammy hero -- delivers two great speeches identifying Gotham as the very embodiment of grotesque excess, and that cities themselves must be destroyed. “Every time a civilization reaches excess, the League of Shadows emerges,” he says, and then quietly and powerfully delivers one of the best and most over-the-top lines of the movie: “We sacked Rome. We spread the Black Death. We burned London to the ground”. He goes on, in a super-villanous way, to recap and plausibly explain the struggles of our cities in this century: “Now the weapons are more sophisticated.... we tried to use economics to destroy Gotham.... but people like your parents stood in our way”. Batman replies, “there are still good people in Gotham,” but even his reply acknowledges that the city has somehow subsumed and enslaved them, and that the worst elements have come to rule the city.
Tom Wilkinson (“In the Bedroom”) turns in a small but spectacular performance as the mob boss, and restrains Bruce Wayne's desire for vengeance by threatening holds most dear. “Kid,” he says to a young Bruce, waving a gun in his face, “you haven't thought this through.” He says to this effect: “Power is knowing how to hurt you. Your lady friend at the DA's office, that old butler you have,” listing Bruce Wayne's remaining emotional connections, “they might get hurt.” Emotional ties and communities are what criminals use to threaten and ensnare the good people.
The web of infrastructure in the city again takes on particular meaning as the means of transmission of disease. The villain, the Scarecrow, disguised as a psychiatrist -- though the wire-rimmed glasses certainly give him away as a villain -- uses the insane asylum as his lair, and by breaking into the decrepit water mains, is able to infect the entire city. The climactic battle scene between the villains and Batman is a race to save the city's infrastructure, and to prevent it from exploding and harming the citizens, by unleashing chemicals in the water supply, but more importantly, their own madness.
Depictions of the city in the movie come to symbolize and reify Bruce Wayne's fears and struggle. In a theme that is brilliantly translated from the original comic book by Frank Miller, Gotham City is the ecosystem in which the Batman arises. Has there ever been a more fitting hero and his city? Batman's Gotham City is filthy, rainy, shrouded in grey night, while Superman's Metropolis is filled with clean, muscular buildings and light-filled avenues. Batman doesn't have superpowers: instead, he is a human being, and though equipped with weaponry and a costume, his struggles are all internal and his impact is symbolic. He plans to revive the spirit of the inhabitants, and strike fear in the hearts of criminals through theatricality, deception, symbols and legend, all things which bind us together in the city.
Caryn James, the New York Times critic, has an interesting article on the Manichean representation of good and evil in both Star Wars and Batman Begins.
In comparison, Sin City, though slavishly and faithfully copied from another Frank Miller graphic novel, was relatively boring. The city is stunningly drawn as a dark, mysterious, unfamiliar place. There is certainly corruption there -- in the police, in the Church, in the government, and certainly in the inhabitants -- but none of the characters are ever given the kind of story or background that gives Batman Begins its narrative richness. Sex -- in the form of thong-wearing prostitutes, naked parole officers, brightly-lit, golden-haired Jessica Alba as a stripper -- are all supposed to indicate something about the inhabitants, but whatever point the directors were trying to make founders under its own garishness.
Just saw Batman Begins last night, which more than amply fulfilled my summer-action-movie cravings. Going out on a limb, I am a little uneasy because I found the movie particularly, deeply profound in its depiction of the city and its super-hero.
In the story, the city -- Gotham, of course -- is recast as the legacy of the Wayne family, and their struggles against evil in all of its forms. There is a scene when Bruce Wayne's father gestures out of the window of the subway, talks about the family's responsibility to the city, and how the family built the city's infrastructure -- a spindly monorail topped by grimy New York subway cars, circa 1980 -- to unite the people of Gotham. Alfred, the butler, frequently reminds Bruce Wayne of how his parents fought to save the city, and how their deaths rekindled the spirit of “the good people” of Gotham. Bruce Wayne's love interest, Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes) is embroiled and endangered in the grimy city, yet all of her gestures and speeches are to the people of the city, and to the hope and spirit of the city itself.
Evil, of course, is also represented by the city in its squalor and filth. Though the CGI rendering shines a bit too brightly through clouds of steam, it is a different kind of dystopian vision of the city than in Blade Runner. That movie by Ridley Scott depicted the city as a place of Frankenstein-like technology run amok; instead, Batman Begins shows the city as a kind of shantytown that mocks our original ambitions for city life, and is instead weighted down under decaying infrastructure, aging buildings and a core rottenness of human spirit. Liam Neeson, who plays a great villain, for once -- instead of a hammy hero -- delivers two great speeches identifying Gotham as the very embodiment of grotesque excess, and that cities themselves must be destroyed. “Every time a civilization reaches excess, the League of Shadows emerges,” he says, and then quietly and powerfully delivers one of the best and most over-the-top lines of the movie: “We sacked Rome. We spread the Black Death. We burned London to the ground”. He goes on, in a super-villanous way, to recap and plausibly explain the struggles of our cities in this century: “Now the weapons are more sophisticated.... we tried to use economics to destroy Gotham.... but people like your parents stood in our way”. Batman replies, “there are still good people in Gotham,” but even his reply acknowledges that the city has somehow subsumed and enslaved them, and that the worst elements have come to rule the city.
Tom Wilkinson (“In the Bedroom”) turns in a small but spectacular performance as the mob boss, and restrains Bruce Wayne's desire for vengeance by threatening holds most dear. “Kid,” he says to a young Bruce, waving a gun in his face, “you haven't thought this through.” He says to this effect: “Power is knowing how to hurt you. Your lady friend at the DA's office, that old butler you have,” listing Bruce Wayne's remaining emotional connections, “they might get hurt.” Emotional ties and communities are what criminals use to threaten and ensnare the good people.
The web of infrastructure in the city again takes on particular meaning as the means of transmission of disease. The villain, the Scarecrow, disguised as a psychiatrist -- though the wire-rimmed glasses certainly give him away as a villain -- uses the insane asylum as his lair, and by breaking into the decrepit water mains, is able to infect the entire city. The climactic battle scene between the villains and Batman is a race to save the city's infrastructure, and to prevent it from exploding and harming the citizens, by unleashing chemicals in the water supply, but more importantly, their own madness.
Depictions of the city in the movie come to symbolize and reify Bruce Wayne's fears and struggle. In a theme that is brilliantly translated from the original comic book by Frank Miller, Gotham City is the ecosystem in which the Batman arises. Has there ever been a more fitting hero and his city? Batman's Gotham City is filthy, rainy, shrouded in grey night, while Superman's Metropolis is filled with clean, muscular buildings and light-filled avenues. Batman doesn't have superpowers: instead, he is a human being, and though equipped with weaponry and a costume, his struggles are all internal and his impact is symbolic. He plans to revive the spirit of the inhabitants, and strike fear in the hearts of criminals through theatricality, deception, symbols and legend, all things which bind us together in the city.
Caryn James, the New York Times critic, has an interesting article on the Manichean representation of good and evil in both Star Wars and Batman Begins.
In comparison, Sin City, though slavishly and faithfully copied from another Frank Miller graphic novel, was relatively boring. The city is stunningly drawn as a dark, mysterious, unfamiliar place. There is certainly corruption there -- in the police, in the Church, in the government, and certainly in the inhabitants -- but none of the characters are ever given the kind of story or background that gives Batman Begins its narrative richness. Sex -- in the form of thong-wearing prostitutes, naked parole officers, brightly-lit, golden-haired Jessica Alba as a stripper -- are all supposed to indicate something about the inhabitants, but whatever point the directors were trying to make founders under its own garishness.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Senate Energy Bill
After blogging on the House energy bill a couple of months ago, I noticed that the Senate energy bill narrowly passed a bill with a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) yesterday, 52-48. Plus, the Finance Committee passed a $14 billion tax incentive package for energy efficiency and alternative fuels. However, the Senate rejected a bill 53-47 that would have required us to reduce our oil imports by 40 percent over the next 20 years. Articles in the Washington Post, and in the New York Times here and here, today summarizing the debate, or at least the rehearsed quotes of the various leaders from each party. Knowledge Problem, the energetic economist, has a short post on ethanol.
Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) offers a predictable criticism of the idea of a federal energy policy as an intrusion into states' rights: “It imposes a one-size-fits-all mandate on the whole country”. I suppose that he thinks that we're fighting a war in Iraq as individual states, also. Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) throws in the obligatory, hoary gas-tank analogy: “The Bush administration is running on empty when it comes to our nation's energy policy,” though I like his follow-up: “As long as America's energy needs are tied to the interests and profits of oil cartels, we have no control over our future.” Nobody, and I mean nobody, likes a cartel.
Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) makes some weirdly mocking comments about the Segway: “I envisioned everybody this summer or next year traveling with their little Segways - two or three piled on each one - going out to the Nationals' games.” This was his prepared quote presumably about the impact of the energy bill on transportation, and seems in keeping with his political personality, which is generally humorless, controlled, and generally off-topic, as in a “I'm-trying-too-hard-to-indicate-my-dislike-for-liberals” way. His unnatural, contortionist efforts to play to the conservative base, if not so dull, would be amusing -- do you think he keeps his Princeton and Harvard degrees in the closet?
There's an interesting reference in the NYT article about Senator Robert Byrd's (D-WV) calling attention to a “Government Accountability Office [GAO] study that characterized the nation's energy policy as a vast assortment of uncoordinated programs with few clear ways to measure their effectiveness” (NYT). The abstract of the report can be found here, with links to the entire report in pdf format. The report describes the huge number of policies:
Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) offers a predictable criticism of the idea of a federal energy policy as an intrusion into states' rights: “It imposes a one-size-fits-all mandate on the whole country”. I suppose that he thinks that we're fighting a war in Iraq as individual states, also. Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) throws in the obligatory, hoary gas-tank analogy: “The Bush administration is running on empty when it comes to our nation's energy policy,” though I like his follow-up: “As long as America's energy needs are tied to the interests and profits of oil cartels, we have no control over our future.” Nobody, and I mean nobody, likes a cartel.
Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) makes some weirdly mocking comments about the Segway: “I envisioned everybody this summer or next year traveling with their little Segways - two or three piled on each one - going out to the Nationals' games.” This was his prepared quote presumably about the impact of the energy bill on transportation, and seems in keeping with his political personality, which is generally humorless, controlled, and generally off-topic, as in a “I'm-trying-too-hard-to-indicate-my-dislike-for-liberals” way. His unnatural, contortionist efforts to play to the conservative base, if not so dull, would be amusing -- do you think he keeps his Princeton and Harvard degrees in the closet?
There's an interesting reference in the NYT article about Senator Robert Byrd's (D-WV) calling attention to a “Government Accountability Office [GAO] study that characterized the nation's energy policy as a vast assortment of uncoordinated programs with few clear ways to measure their effectiveness” (NYT). The abstract of the report can be found here, with links to the entire report in pdf format. The report describes the huge number of policies:
“Over 150 energy-related program activities and 11 tax preferences address eight major energy activity areas: (1) energy supply, (2) energy's impact on the environment and health, (3) low-income energy consumer assistance, (4) basic energy science research, (5) energy delivery infrastructure, (6) energy conservation, (7) energy assurance and physical security, and (8) energy market competition and education. At least 18 federal agencies, from the Department of Energy (DOE) to the Department of Health and Human Services, have energy-related activities.... ”This is actually something I find myself thinking about quite a bit: how do we get government to meet its goals? Somebody said something to me terrific a few weeks ago, and I find myself thinking about how to implement the point of it:
“While DOE reports that most of the 2001 NEP [National Energy Policy, May 2001] report recommendations are implemented, it is difficult to independently assess the status of efforts made to implement these recommendations because of limited information and the open-ended nature of some of the recommendations themselves. For example, the NEP report recommended the development of energy educational programs, including possible legislation to create education programs funded by the energy industry. However, DOE's January 2005 status report on NEP implementation provided only an overview of federal energy education efforts and made no mention of possible legislation to create such programs. In addition, some of the recommendations are open-ended and lack a specific, measurable goal, which makes it difficult to assess progress. Without a specific, measurable goal, it can be difficult to understand how and to what extent activities are helping to fulfill a recommendation.”
“We know that government agencies can hit their environmental targets when they want to.... but how do we get them to want to do it all of the time?”I can't get out of my head the importance of clear principles and strategies for translating government intentions into action, and asking myself, what are the simple, easy-to-make and easy-to-communicate arguments about energy, or about environmental issues in general? For energy, good places to start are energy security, energy efficiency, and global warming.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Picking and Moving to Green Cities
Another ranking of green cities came out last week at GristMill and SustainLane. Also, Reader's Digest has a list of the 50 cleanest and dirtiest cities in the U.S. (I know: Reader's Digest has a website?) These complement other lists at Sperling's Best Places and others, that tell you the best cities by schools, dating, number of hospitals, etc.
I wonder if these lists are for people to choose where to live, or for cities to compete: there's some value in both, I suppose. Of course, Americans might be the only people to choose where to live on the basis of abstract rankings, since we move so frequently (and far). The U.S. Census issued a report analyzing our geographical mobility, titled straightforwardly enough: “Geographical Mobility” here. From 1999 to 2000, 43.4 million Americans moved out of a total population of 281.4 million, or 15% of the population. 20% of these movers, or 3% of the total population, moved to a different state entirely; and 20% move to a new county in the same state, which given the size of U.S. states could be near or far. In comparison, the U.K. has very low rates of geographical mobility: in a given year, about 10% of households move house, with only 1% moving between regions (and those regions are small to start with).
Why do we move so much? The U.S. Census issued another report addressing this titled “Why People Move”, that can be found here. The top reasons for moving between March 1999 and March 2000 are summarized in the survey:
I wonder if these lists are for people to choose where to live, or for cities to compete: there's some value in both, I suppose. Of course, Americans might be the only people to choose where to live on the basis of abstract rankings, since we move so frequently (and far). The U.S. Census issued a report analyzing our geographical mobility, titled straightforwardly enough: “Geographical Mobility” here. From 1999 to 2000, 43.4 million Americans moved out of a total population of 281.4 million, or 15% of the population. 20% of these movers, or 3% of the total population, moved to a different state entirely; and 20% move to a new county in the same state, which given the size of U.S. states could be near or far. In comparison, the U.K. has very low rates of geographical mobility: in a given year, about 10% of households move house, with only 1% moving between regions (and those regions are small to start with).
Why do we move so much? The U.S. Census issued another report addressing this titled “Why People Move”, that can be found here. The top reasons for moving between March 1999 and March 2000 are summarized in the survey:
- New/better house/apartment (19%)
- “Other family” reasons (13%)
- “Other housing” reasons (12%)
- To own home/not rent (12%)
- New job/job transfer (10%)
- To establish own household (7%)
- Changes in marital status (6%)
- Cheaper housing (6%)
- Better neighborhood/less crime (4%)
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Re-Examining Gentrification
Lots of articles and studies popping up challenging perceptions of gentrification earlier this year, so I thought I would just summarize a few of them. USAToday (for once) publishes a useful summary of the issue and new studies.
One of the first studies questioning the process of gentrification -- at least in terms of spatial displacement -- was by Duke University economist Jacob Vigdor. His 2001 paper, “Does Gentrification Harm the Poor?” (only available through Project Muse) studied changing neighborhoods in Boston and actually found that living in a gentrifying neighborhood made it less likely for a poor resident to move. Recent work by Columbia University urban planner Lance Freeman, in his 2005 paper “Displacement or Succession? Residential Mobility in Gentrifying Neighborhoods”, found the same result in New York and in other cities, in a national study, published in Urban Affairs Review (again, paid access only). Here are press releases, interviews, and a student paper article about his work. Freeman, with his colleague Frank Braconi, also builds on an earlier study by the non-profit Citizens Housing and Planning Council. The earlier study used the New York City Housing Vacancy Survey to survey movers on their reasons for moving, and again found no evidence of increased displacement of low-income tenants during the real estate boom of the 1990s.
There is of course, always a frenzy over real estate prices in New York, and to some extent, everyone feels priced out of New York. However, the last couple of weeks takes the prize: real estate is on the cover of the New Yorker, New York magazine, and in the New York Times. Gotham Gazette publishes a useful summary here.
Finally, a lot of discussion about gentrification is really about perceptions of spatial, urban, and community change. 2blowhards.com had a terrific posting about the origins of the term “gentrification” last fall, here, stimulating a really good set of comments and replies. Douglas Massey, a Princeton sociologist, has comments for both Vigdor and his critics, also in Project Muse here.
One of the first studies questioning the process of gentrification -- at least in terms of spatial displacement -- was by Duke University economist Jacob Vigdor. His 2001 paper, “Does Gentrification Harm the Poor?” (only available through Project Muse) studied changing neighborhoods in Boston and actually found that living in a gentrifying neighborhood made it less likely for a poor resident to move. Recent work by Columbia University urban planner Lance Freeman, in his 2005 paper “Displacement or Succession? Residential Mobility in Gentrifying Neighborhoods”, found the same result in New York and in other cities, in a national study, published in Urban Affairs Review (again, paid access only). Here are press releases, interviews, and a student paper article about his work. Freeman, with his colleague Frank Braconi, also builds on an earlier study by the non-profit Citizens Housing and Planning Council. The earlier study used the New York City Housing Vacancy Survey to survey movers on their reasons for moving, and again found no evidence of increased displacement of low-income tenants during the real estate boom of the 1990s.
There is of course, always a frenzy over real estate prices in New York, and to some extent, everyone feels priced out of New York. However, the last couple of weeks takes the prize: real estate is on the cover of the New Yorker, New York magazine, and in the New York Times. Gotham Gazette publishes a useful summary here.
Finally, a lot of discussion about gentrification is really about perceptions of spatial, urban, and community change. 2blowhards.com had a terrific posting about the origins of the term “gentrification” last fall, here, stimulating a really good set of comments and replies. Douglas Massey, a Princeton sociologist, has comments for both Vigdor and his critics, also in Project Muse here.
Technorati Tags: cities, economics, gentrification, urban
Friday, June 10, 2005
What are the Most Effective Energy Efficiency Policies?
The Energy Information Administration (EIA), an independent statistical and analytical agency in the U.S. Department of Energy, released a report this week titled “Assessment of Selected Energy Efficiency Policies” (in pdf format here). The new report responds to a request from Senator Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND) requesting a quantitative analysis of the impacts of various energy efficiency policies.
Energy models, like the EIA's, give us a comprehensive view of how energy supply and demand, economic activity, and technology all interact. This model comes to some interesting conclusions, because it can forecast the effects of various policies and predict impacts to GDP. This is important because when our president actually admits that global warming is occurring, he still justifies his lack of action as “protecting the economy”. This, even though our economy is threatened by our dependence on foreign oil, even though our economic competitors (Europe, Japan, and China) are already moving forward on this issue, and even though new industries and technologies are likely to be developed with or without U.S. participation.
If we were to do something, however, EIA's forecast shows that the impacts of selected energy efficiency policies are relatively moderate, both to the economy and the atmosphere:
Though the results of energy models have to be taken with a grain of salt -- and many barrels of oil -- my take-home conclusion is that we need more (and more effective) energy efficiency policies!
Energy models, like the EIA's, give us a comprehensive view of how energy supply and demand, economic activity, and technology all interact. This model comes to some interesting conclusions, because it can forecast the effects of various policies and predict impacts to GDP. This is important because when our president actually admits that global warming is occurring, he still justifies his lack of action as “protecting the economy”. This, even though our economy is threatened by our dependence on foreign oil, even though our economic competitors (Europe, Japan, and China) are already moving forward on this issue, and even though new industries and technologies are likely to be developed with or without U.S. participation.
If we were to do something, however, EIA's forecast shows that the impacts of selected energy efficiency policies are relatively moderate, both to the economy and the atmosphere:
- Macroeconomic impacts: The economic impacts of energy efficiency policies are relatively low. Based on case 1 and case 2 -- see the policies included on page 5 -- the losses in productivity are either $445 billion (0.14 percent of potential GDP) or $864 billion (0.27 percent of potential GDP) between 2006 to 2025. However, this doesn't take into account reduced energy prices because of reduced demands for energy, which could offset or mitigate these costs in productivity.
- Carbon emissions: Reductions in carbon dioxide emissions are moderate. The various policies analyzed by the EIA taken together only reduce our overall emissions by 3.5% in case 1, to 8.3% in case 2 from 2006 to 2025. In comparison, the original target for the United States in the Kyoto protocols -- unfortunately never approved by the U.S. Senate and eventually abolished in Bush's first term -- calls for a 7% decrease over 1990 emissions levels. In comparison, we are already 13.4% above 1990 levels in 2003, based on EIA figures here, so even the many policies included in this EIA analysis will not get us to the original targets of the Kyoto protocol. (Good thing we never agreed to it! -- just kidding)
Cars: Reforming car fuel economy test procedures, or the CAFE standards, to eliminate the difference between stated fuel economy values and the lower mileages realized in actual driving conditions, reduces our consumption by about 20.6 quadrillion BTUs, or just 0.87% decrease (though this is 9.68 million barrels of oil).The study also finds that tax incentives for various technologies such as combined heat and power (CHP) and new buildings and shells are relatively ineffective.
Buildings: Revising commercial building codes to improve energy efficiency only reduces our demand by 5.1 quad BTUs, or just a 0.21% decrease! Revising residential building codes similarly only reduces our demand by 0.09%!
Ceiling fans: I have no idea why, but new efficiency standards for ceiling fans generate the most savings among all building appliances evaluated -- minus 2.7 quad BTUs or 0.11% of our total energy consumption -- more than including air conditioners, refrigerators, furnace fans, or hot-burning torchiere lamps. I suspect that this includes HVAC systems, and new standards lead to proper sizing and therefore more efficient heating and cooling systems.
Though the results of energy models have to be taken with a grain of salt -- and many barrels of oil -- my take-home conclusion is that we need more (and more effective) energy efficiency policies!
Technorati Tags: economics, energy, environment
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Manufacturing, Economics & Cities
After Daniel's recent postings (in Spanish here, in English here) about his weekend here in New York, and decrying my comments about manufacturing in New York, and sprawl elsewhere, I think it's worth discussing the reasons for the decline of the manufacturing sector in New York and other cities, and more in general, the direction of economic processes in cities, and how cities respond to economic change.
We tend to think of New York City as a financial capital rather than a manufacturing city, and this first impression is, for the most part, correct. Even in the relatively early days of American capitalism and urban development, New York City rapidly established itself as a capital of finance and trading relative to Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. However, manufacturing and industrial uses -- in particular, port trading functions -- were an important part of New York's development. A walk through downtown today takes you through New York's manufacturing past, passing, in turn:
In general, the best analyses of the manufacturing sector generally come from government agencies including the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (specific analysis of the decline of the manufacturing sector is here) and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (historical facts and figures here). A “powerful new tool” that would be neat if it worked (it won't work for me) is the Location Quotient Calculator, that calculates sector and industry breakdowns by U.S. total, states, counties, and metropolitan areas.
The best specific analysis I've seen of the manufacturing situation in New York is from Jonathan Bowles, director of the Center for an Urban Future, an excellent, liberal, economic development thinktank. In his 2003 testimony to the City Council, and the excellent report, “Engine Failure”, I think Bowles' approach to, and points about, manufacturing are generally correct when he says:
I do maintain, however, that given Manhattan's centrality to the city, that manufacturing is probably not an appropriate activity for the island, and besides, most manufacturing today already exists in the outer boroughs. This wrinkle, however, I think is at the heart of Daniel's objections to my statement that manufacturing has no future in Manhattan, which is less of an analytical argument rather than an emotional one. I don't say this to be patronizing, it is just that (for those of you who know me) I am a bit less sympathetic to emotion than analysis. Daniel writes:
First, the passage of industries and communities over space and time is an entirely normal process in cities. As the history article above pointed out, Soho was originally residential, and in the past one hundred years has gone from residential to industrial to slum to residential and retail. Why particular industries and communities aggregate in specific areas -- i.e. the process of spatial agglomeration -- is neither a well-understood nor uniform process, but it is certainly not a static process. The city is in fact a site of dynamic and successive relocation, and the uses and users of places in cities always change! If we were to 'preserve' the character, say, of the East End of London, what would we be preserving, exactly? Would it be the original Victorian slum and manufacturing uses, the subsequent waves of Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century, or the Asian immigrants who have replaced them?
Daniel's question as to whether or not civic or social institutions should also move, I think, is meant to be slightly absurd, in saying that the market should have no bearing on the location of our cultural capital, but this too is a fundamental feature of urban change. For example, one of the major landowners in most American cities is the Catholic Church, and churches have been closing and converting to other uses for years, as a result of declining church attendance, a process further accelerated by the church's disposition of land in the wake of multiple and systemic sexual abuse scandals. Nonetheless, I don't think this occurs because of the market, which is Daniel's fundamental objection -- rather it is the inevitable outcome of long-term social change.
Second, to get back to manufacturing, is that we have an overall declining need for it, and we are less willing to tolerate its environmental costs than before. Most societies when they reach a particular level of development begin to value environmental goods such as clean air and water more highly, and manufacturing clearly has negative impacts on the local environment.
(Of course, to criticize the over-extension of my own criticism, the 'free-market environmentalist' stance is somewhat hypocritical because I don't think that there is any proof that people value global ecological health particularly highly, yet -- they just want the pollution away from their local environment. Pollution then just becomes a more distant externality that people choose to ignore. So, when the English talk about their vast increases in air quality, I think they are ignoring the obvious fact that they have basically just exported their dirty manufacturing processes, and imported fossil fuels that are cleaner than the original coal they were using. I don't have a problem with the fact that this is all in exchange for service jobs).
Third, whether we like it or not, we live in a world of competition. Any American or European who opposes this should seriously consider whether or not what they are willing to give up for the alternative, because we are not, emphatically not guaranteed to be wealthier than the rest of humanity. All of Thomas Friedman's recent columns in the New York Times, such as this one, “Racing to the Top” -- and whether or not you like his easily digestible and overly repeated phrases like the 'world is flat' -- boil down to the fact that there are roughly four to five billion relatively poor people around the globe who are willing, and waiting, to take a chance to earn their way out of poverty. So, how, exactly, does anyone think that we are going to hang onto manufacturing jobs in this country? Does someone want to suggest an alternative to developing higher and faster, if only to preserve our relative economic status? And though I won't argue that the process is painless, the developed world isn't switching to service jobs because globalization, free trade or “markets” are being imposed on them, rather, it is because economic concepts such as competitive advantage and increasing productivity really do exist and do take place. I am struck by the virtual unanimous opinion on this subject among economists and development experts on this subject: the left-wing economist Angry Bear wrote rather eloquently on globalization recently.
OK, despite my highly structured criticism, I will tell you where I believe that Daniel is asking the right question -- but I don't know the answer, and don't who knows the answer. Contrary to Daniel's impression -- that I probably give when I usually give my usual contrary opinions -- though I do believe that capitalism and transparency are extremely productive and in fact necessary in the short term, I don't believe that unfettered economic growth, or individual agency, is ultimately going to lead us to where we want to be. The direction of economic growth, and all of the effects associated with it, are not as clear as they are usually made out to be, and I think Daniel is right to ask where we are heading as a society when capitalism promotes, and indeed fetishizes, individual agency and desires. This is a question that I often ask myself as I consider what the state of grace that we repeatedly refer to as “sustainability” might look like.
I found myself reading two articles this weekend that spoke precisely to this sentiment. In Pankaj Mishra's review of William Pfaff's new book on violence and utopia in the May 26th New York Review of Books, he writes about Pfaff's skepticism about the notion of progress:
We tend to think of New York City as a financial capital rather than a manufacturing city, and this first impression is, for the most part, correct. Even in the relatively early days of American capitalism and urban development, New York City rapidly established itself as a capital of finance and trading relative to Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. However, manufacturing and industrial uses -- in particular, port trading functions -- were an important part of New York's development. A walk through downtown today takes you through New York's manufacturing past, passing, in turn:
- the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the tragedy that helped to define the industrial labor movement;
- the industrial warehouses of Soho and TriBeca, that once housed factories, goods and commodities, were actually once called 'Hell's Hundred Acres' because of the neighborhood's propensity towards fire (history here), and are now converted to decidedly upscale lofts and boutiques;
- the former (and still present) sweatshops and factories of Chinatown; and
- the formerly working, now disused, waterfront of the Lower East Side.
In general, the best analyses of the manufacturing sector generally come from government agencies including the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (specific analysis of the decline of the manufacturing sector is here) and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (historical facts and figures here). A “powerful new tool” that would be neat if it worked (it won't work for me) is the Location Quotient Calculator, that calculates sector and industry breakdowns by U.S. total, states, counties, and metropolitan areas.
The best specific analysis I've seen of the manufacturing situation in New York is from Jonathan Bowles, director of the Center for an Urban Future, an excellent, liberal, economic development thinktank. In his 2003 testimony to the City Council, and the excellent report, “Engine Failure”, I think Bowles' approach to, and points about, manufacturing are generally correct when he says:
“I’m not here today to convince you that manufacturing is the answer to the city’s economic problems or that it will be one of New York’s leading growth industries in the future. But I do strongly believe that with better public policies, the city could be doing a much better job of retaining manufacturers, enabling existing industrial firms to grow within the five boroughs and cultivating new start-ups in niche areas ranging from ethnic food production to high-end furniture making....”So, if I gave Daniel the impression that I am against manufacturing in all of New York, then I probably overstated the case. There are good arguments for specialized niche manufacturing and start-up businesses as important components of high-growth economies, and the “Engine Failure” report, when I read it a couple of years ago, seemed to have a lot of them. Cities such as Chicago and San Francisco seem to have had success with planned or protected industrial zones (Pratt Institute has a summary here) and I won't quibble with that.
“Make no mistake; the manufacturing sector has suffered significant job losses nationwide as companies have increasingly shifted production to less expensive factories overseas. But few cities have fared as badly as New York....”
“New York can no longer afford to write off industries like manufacturing and wholesale trade.... manufacturing and wholesale trade need to be one part of a new, more comprehensive economic development strategy -- one that seeks to diversify the local economy, create a better climate for entrepreneurs and growing firms, tap natural assets like the city’s growing immigrant population, and use more of the city’s geography.”
I do maintain, however, that given Manhattan's centrality to the city, that manufacturing is probably not an appropriate activity for the island, and besides, most manufacturing today already exists in the outer boroughs. This wrinkle, however, I think is at the heart of Daniel's objections to my statement that manufacturing has no future in Manhattan, which is less of an analytical argument rather than an emotional one. I don't say this to be patronizing, it is just that (for those of you who know me) I am a bit less sympathetic to emotion than analysis. Daniel writes:
“I’m afraid that he is only going to be right if we understand the market as the force with priority, as the legitimate and just organizer of our lives. In principle he would oppose state interventions and promotes individual agency, or the market to configure our surroundings. Personally the long hands of the market and the state equally shake me. In an ideal and pure market, would other civic and social institutions be subject to relocation? Temples, libraries, health centers, recreational areas… What is the hierarchy, the selection of the regulated, protected, elements?”There are two things going on here. Daniel objects to the demand-driven model of spatial location -- that is, the highest value activity gets to locate where it wants to -- and that the cultural character of places like Chinatown will be lost in time. In the case of manufacturing in particular, I think it is right and legitimate that we think of it as an economic activity, and as such, it is not entirely inappropriate to me that it will eventually pass from Manhattan. My three main arguments for this are the dynamic patterns of urban change in space and time; environmental desires connected to wealth and development; and outright competition from other countries.
“Let's imagine for an instant that Chinatown will disappear like this and only traces and memories will be left. This is the consolidation that is beginning to take place in Washington DC. In a future message I hope to be able to tell in detail its twisted history. It is sufficient to say here that there is an aesthetic regulation that forces to maintain in the area Chinese elements, bilingual signs even on the new Irish taverns. But there is no regulation that guarantees that the Chinese quarter will be, precisely that, Chinese. It is simple to invest in urban make up.”
First, the passage of industries and communities over space and time is an entirely normal process in cities. As the history article above pointed out, Soho was originally residential, and in the past one hundred years has gone from residential to industrial to slum to residential and retail. Why particular industries and communities aggregate in specific areas -- i.e. the process of spatial agglomeration -- is neither a well-understood nor uniform process, but it is certainly not a static process. The city is in fact a site of dynamic and successive relocation, and the uses and users of places in cities always change! If we were to 'preserve' the character, say, of the East End of London, what would we be preserving, exactly? Would it be the original Victorian slum and manufacturing uses, the subsequent waves of Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century, or the Asian immigrants who have replaced them?
Daniel's question as to whether or not civic or social institutions should also move, I think, is meant to be slightly absurd, in saying that the market should have no bearing on the location of our cultural capital, but this too is a fundamental feature of urban change. For example, one of the major landowners in most American cities is the Catholic Church, and churches have been closing and converting to other uses for years, as a result of declining church attendance, a process further accelerated by the church's disposition of land in the wake of multiple and systemic sexual abuse scandals. Nonetheless, I don't think this occurs because of the market, which is Daniel's fundamental objection -- rather it is the inevitable outcome of long-term social change.
Second, to get back to manufacturing, is that we have an overall declining need for it, and we are less willing to tolerate its environmental costs than before. Most societies when they reach a particular level of development begin to value environmental goods such as clean air and water more highly, and manufacturing clearly has negative impacts on the local environment.
(Of course, to criticize the over-extension of my own criticism, the 'free-market environmentalist' stance is somewhat hypocritical because I don't think that there is any proof that people value global ecological health particularly highly, yet -- they just want the pollution away from their local environment. Pollution then just becomes a more distant externality that people choose to ignore. So, when the English talk about their vast increases in air quality, I think they are ignoring the obvious fact that they have basically just exported their dirty manufacturing processes, and imported fossil fuels that are cleaner than the original coal they were using. I don't have a problem with the fact that this is all in exchange for service jobs).
Third, whether we like it or not, we live in a world of competition. Any American or European who opposes this should seriously consider whether or not what they are willing to give up for the alternative, because we are not, emphatically not guaranteed to be wealthier than the rest of humanity. All of Thomas Friedman's recent columns in the New York Times, such as this one, “Racing to the Top” -- and whether or not you like his easily digestible and overly repeated phrases like the 'world is flat' -- boil down to the fact that there are roughly four to five billion relatively poor people around the globe who are willing, and waiting, to take a chance to earn their way out of poverty. So, how, exactly, does anyone think that we are going to hang onto manufacturing jobs in this country? Does someone want to suggest an alternative to developing higher and faster, if only to preserve our relative economic status? And though I won't argue that the process is painless, the developed world isn't switching to service jobs because globalization, free trade or “markets” are being imposed on them, rather, it is because economic concepts such as competitive advantage and increasing productivity really do exist and do take place. I am struck by the virtual unanimous opinion on this subject among economists and development experts on this subject: the left-wing economist Angry Bear wrote rather eloquently on globalization recently.
OK, despite my highly structured criticism, I will tell you where I believe that Daniel is asking the right question -- but I don't know the answer, and don't who knows the answer. Contrary to Daniel's impression -- that I probably give when I usually give my usual contrary opinions -- though I do believe that capitalism and transparency are extremely productive and in fact necessary in the short term, I don't believe that unfettered economic growth, or individual agency, is ultimately going to lead us to where we want to be. The direction of economic growth, and all of the effects associated with it, are not as clear as they are usually made out to be, and I think Daniel is right to ask where we are heading as a society when capitalism promotes, and indeed fetishizes, individual agency and desires. This is a question that I often ask myself as I consider what the state of grace that we repeatedly refer to as “sustainability” might look like.
I found myself reading two articles this weekend that spoke precisely to this sentiment. In Pankaj Mishra's review of William Pfaff's new book on violence and utopia in the May 26th New York Review of Books, he writes about Pfaff's skepticism about the notion of progress:
“Pfaff notes that despite the ample evidence against them provided by the barbarisms of the twentieth century, 'naive and desiccated versions of the theory of historical progress provide a vocabulary in which the declaration of governments are still phrased, editorials written, and a good deal of the routine work of the academy is conducted'. This may be because what he calls 'the myth of secular salvation' had 'generally replaced religion in Western high culture' in the nineteenth century. Certainly the current version of this myth -- that democracy, free enterprise, globalization, and technology will save humanity from violence and chaos -- is now commonplace among powerful elites around the world, invisibly shaping the prejudices and assumptions that an average issue of The Economist, or a column by Thomas Friedman, contains. But as Pfaff put it in Condemned to Freedom,Or, as David Orr writes in The Nature of Design, a really rather terrific book:
'A faith that the free play of market forces will eventually end in Good is, in fact, more 'absurd' than religious belief, for there, at least, there is a presumption of an intelligent Agent Who writes straight with His crooked lines'”.
“The unfolding problems of human ecology are not solvable by repeating old mistakes in new and more sophisticated and powerful ways. We need a deeper change of the kind Albert Einstein had in mind when he said that the same manner of thought that created problems could not solve them (quoted in McDonough and Braungart, 1998, Cradle to Cradle, p. 92)”So, again, the question for all of us is, what kind of lives, cities, economics, and earth, do we ultimately want to have? And if manufacturing isn't the answer -- I don't think it is -- what is?
Technorati Tags: cities, economics, urban, urban planning
Friday, June 03, 2005
Science & the Public
One particularly interesting aspect of the Nature feature on the avian bird flu is that it has a fictionalized account of the onset of a global flu pandemic here. I find this interesting because there seems to be a growing interest, particularly among scientists, in alternative channels and forms of communication. I think that scientists themselves have begun to realize that the traditional models of scientific communication are not working, because of politics, commercialization, and fractured public discourse.
For example, in the last part of her series on climate change, Elizabeth Kolbert contrasts the state of discourse in the political sphere about global warming:
Nature's willingness to run a fictionalized, though rigorously researched, account of a possible pandemic is another step towards a growing openness to thinking about how we communicate about science, whether through scenario planning and challenges that focuses on policy outcomes, such as the U.N. Millenium Goals; or countless academic re-arrangements towards interdisciplinary outcomes, like the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO) at Arizona State University, or Center for Science and Technology Policy in Colorado ; or in collective blogs, meant to bring these issues directly to the public, such as RealClimate.org, Prometheus or Resilience Science, or the Becker-Posner blog, all written by distinguished academic authors.
[Update 6/8/05: The New York Times reports that a senior Bush administration official, who previously led the oil industry against limits on greenhouse gas emissions, was allowed to edit administration reports to downplay links between emissions and climate change. The article states,
For example, in the last part of her series on climate change, Elizabeth Kolbert contrasts the state of discourse in the political sphere about global warming:
“Senator [James Inhofe], who has called global warming 'the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,' went on to argue that this important new evidence was being suppressed by 'alarmists' who view anthropogenic warming as 'an article of religious faith.' One of the authorities that Inhofe repeatedly cited in support of his claims was the fiction writer Michael Crichton”,to the unanimous opinion within the scientific community,
“In legitimate scientific circles, it is virtually impossible to find evidence of disagreement over the fundamentals of global warming.... out of a study of the more than nine hundred articles on climate change published in refereed journals between 1993 and 2003 and subsequently made available on a leading research database.... not a single article disputed the premise that anthropogenic warming is under way.”There is a building level of frustration about how issues such as evolution and climate change are discussed in public, as evidenced by the formation of groups like Scientists and Engineers for Change, or the increasing willingness of Nobel Prize winners to speak out about economics, stem cells, or science policy, or Scientific American's hilarious new editorial policy.
Nature's willingness to run a fictionalized, though rigorously researched, account of a possible pandemic is another step towards a growing openness to thinking about how we communicate about science, whether through scenario planning and challenges that focuses on policy outcomes, such as the U.N. Millenium Goals; or countless academic re-arrangements towards interdisciplinary outcomes, like the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO) at Arizona State University, or Center for Science and Technology Policy in Colorado ; or in collective blogs, meant to bring these issues directly to the public, such as RealClimate.org, Prometheus or Resilience Science, or the Becker-Posner blog, all written by distinguished academic authors.
[Update 6/8/05: The New York Times reports that a senior Bush administration official, who previously led the oil industry against limits on greenhouse gas emissions, was allowed to edit administration reports to downplay links between emissions and climate change. The article states,
.... critics said that while all administrations routinely vetted government reports, scientific content in such reports should be reviewed by scientists. Climate experts and representatives of environmental groups, when shown examples of the revisions, said they illustrated the significant if largely invisible influence of Mr. Cooney and other White House officials with ties to energy industries that have long fought greenhouse-gas restrictions.]
Technorati Tags: science
Disease and Public Health in Cities
This week's copy of Nature, via Resilience Science, has a special feature highlighting the threat of a global avian bird flu pandemic. There also seems to be a steady drumbeat of articles in the media about the possibility of a pandemic, such as in this Washington Post article. I really like immediate issues like this where science and politics meet, where the natural world pushes back into the human world, and that certainly requires a “reality-based” solution. Similarly, this also reminds me to continue my list of environmental concerns in cities, and I have been meaning to write about the huge topic of disease, public health, and cities.
Disease, and the fear of it, has evolved with cities. One of the fundamental themes of the literature of cities is the nature of proximity and connection, and disease frequently indicates to us the subsequent dangers of gathering in cities. The Bible seems to smite every city with plague, notably Sodom and Gomorrah, the “cities on the plain” of the Canaanites, and what many consider to be the very first cities, in the Levant. Whether the Bible is fundamentally anti-urban is an interesting question, that better-qualified religious scholars have addressed here, but there are many other examples of disease in cities. Arnold Weinstein writes about this so well in his passionate and excellent book, and articulates this theme terrifically in his lectures on the city (offered here), that I will simply quote him:
Urban planning, of course, has its roots in public health. London for most of its history killed a substantial fraction of its inhabitants, a figure astonishingly (and inevitably) offset by continued in-migration and urbanization. The impact of disease in Industrial Revolution cities can be found in this account. The Anglo-American school of urban planning arose out of Victorian concerns with public health, and the earliest heroes of urban planning were in fact, not urban planners. Dr. John Snow stopped the cholera epidemic of London of 1854, when he located the source of the epidemic with the help of maps and plotting (in a famous example of graphical thinking, recounted by Edward Tufte). When the authorities removed the handle of the Broad Street pump, Snow simultaneously stopped the means of transmission (by infected water) and settled the medical argument over the causes of cholera infection. Sir Joseph Bazalgette is credited with saving more lives and shaping the city more than any other person, with the construction of the Albert and Victorian Embankments, that for the first time provided the city with a functioning sewer system.
Contemporary urban planners are still quite interested in the links between urban form and health, in particular with a recent interest in obesity. A good contemporary summary of public health information in U.S. cities is in the Gotham Gazette here. A particularly interesting body of work is the U.N./World Health Organization's Healthy Cities movement, with many local projects and initiatives underway.
Disease, and the fear of it, has evolved with cities. One of the fundamental themes of the literature of cities is the nature of proximity and connection, and disease frequently indicates to us the subsequent dangers of gathering in cities. The Bible seems to smite every city with plague, notably Sodom and Gomorrah, the “cities on the plain” of the Canaanites, and what many consider to be the very first cities, in the Levant. Whether the Bible is fundamentally anti-urban is an interesting question, that better-qualified religious scholars have addressed here, but there are many other examples of disease in cities. Arnold Weinstein writes about this so well in his passionate and excellent book, and articulates this theme terrifically in his lectures on the city (offered here), that I will simply quote him:
“Private illness makes its fateful itinerary to collective disaster and plague, writing large the mystery of human connection/infection and the crucial social mechanisms enlisted to save the community. Once again, Sophocles' Oedipus (among other works) comes to the fore, this time as the master plot for how a community copes with catastrophe. The apparent backdrop of the Greek play, plague -- people dying like flies in Thebes, the Oracle's tracing of the scourge to a concealed murder -- provokes a central question that recurs throughout history: who is responsible for the epidemic? The great Sophoclean theme of illicit connection, at once political and sexual -- a man kills his father the king, sleeps with his mother the queen -- is also understood bacterially. Of course, Sophocles was no epidemiologist, but his account of mass deaths intrigues us because it turns on the key issue of secrets, both erotic and communal, and thus tells us (in the way literature tells us things) that the story of plague is a shockingly broad, social story, a revelatory story that thrusts the culture's connections, both licit and illicit, into full view.”Disease can also be understood as the simple biological consequence of our decision to gather in cities. Many books in recent years have described the potential consequences of new and terrifying transmitted dieases in cities, as comprehensively described in The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett, luridly pictured in The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, or recently connected to environmental change, as in Six Modern Plagues by Mark Jerome Walters. My favorite among these books is certainly Laurie Garrett's book, which despite its rather sensational title, manages to be simultaneously both well-researched and passionate, dryly humorous and sometimes simply outraged at human stupidity. In her chapter titled “Microbe Magnets”, she writes:
“The Sophoclean story of a city or culture threatened with plague -- with apocalypse -- is replayed throughout history. In narratives by Daniel Dafoe and Charles Dickens we see London under siege, and these stories echo strangely still today, evoking for us what it might well have looked like, had we been citizens of Thebes, of Sodom or Gomorrah, of Dresden or Hiroshima or Grozny, or what it could look like in the wake of bioterrorism, with its threats of anthrax and smallpox and other toxins.”
“The very word 'plague' has -- or used to have -- a yesteryear ring to it, an archaic condition located either in the past or in underdeveloped societies where medicine has not made the advances we take for granted in the West. But we are increasingly aware that mass disease and lethal infection cannot be ruled out of modern life. For just this reason my chapter closes with several stunning works of the twentieth century: Albert Camus's allegorical novel, The Plague; Ingmar Bergman's ground-breaking film of 1956, The Seventh Seal; and Tony Kushner's epochal play about AIDS, Angels in America. All of these works face up to apocalypse, but they use the specter of mass death to posit human connection -- the mysterious bonds of love -- as civilization's most precious legacy” (A Scream Goes Through the House, introduction)
“Cities afforded the microorganisms a range of opportunities unavailable in rural settings. The more Homo Sapiens per square mile, the more ways a microorganism could pass from one hapless human to another. People would pass the agent to other people in hundreds of ways every minute of every day as they touched or breathed upon one another, prepared food, defecated or urinated into bodies of water with multiple uses, traveled to distant places taking the microbes with them, built centers for sexual activity that allowed microbes to exploit another method of transmission, produced prodigious quantities of waste that could serve as food for rodent and insect vectors, damned rivers and unwittingly left cisterns of rain water about to create breeding pools for disease-carrying mosquitoes, and often responded to epidemics in hysterical ways that ended up assisting the persistent microbes.... Cities, in short, were microbe heavens, or, as British biochemist John Cairns put it, 'graveyards of mankind'. The most devastating scourges of the past attained horrific proportions only when the microbes reached urban centers, where population density instantaneously magnified any minor contagion that might have originated in the provinces. And microbes successfully exploited the new urban ecologies to create altogether novel disease threats” (page 235)Garrett then goes on to detail disease in the cities of ancient Egypt, Greece, the Roman Empire, China, India, including typhus, the plague, smallpox, pneumonic plague, leprosy, tuberculosis, and syphilis. Pandemics caused by bubonic or pneumatic plague struck Europe in the 14th century, with catastrophic results:
“Rumors of the Asian scourge preceded its arrival in Europe, and it was said that India, China and Asia Minor were literally covered with dead bodies. The Chinese population plummeted from 123 million in 1200 to 65 million in 1393, probably due to the plague and the famine that followed.... As the plague made its way across Europe and North Africa, each city anticipated its arrival and tried by a variety of means to protect itself.... outright slaughter of tens of thousands of Jews and alleged devil worshippers were staged. The city of Strasbourg alone savagely slew 16,000 of its Jewish residents, blaming them for spreading the Black Death.”Our fascination with the catastrophic effects of disease continues right up today, whether in books like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, which makes an argument for the pivotal effects of germs on the course of human history; to “28 Days Later”, a movie that profoundly transcends its zombie movie origins with its depiction of fundamental relationships gone awry, either between ourselves and our origins (the apes); society and the uses of technology; the terror of connection with strangers; and the loneliness of cities when social bonds are broken. There is also the always shocking vision of a city burning (in this case, Manchester). There is a intriguing review of the movie by Harold Varmus, a Nobel Prize laureate in medicine, here.
“The daily death rates were staggering: 400 in Avignon; 800 in Paris; for Pisa, 500; Vienna buried or burned 600 bodies per day; and Givry, France, 1,500 daily. By the end, London, with a pre-plague population of 60,000, had lost 35,000. Half of Hamburg's and two-thirds of Bremen's populations perished. Most historians believe that at least one-third of Europe's total human population (20 to 30 million people) died of the plague between 1346 and 1350. The highest per capita losses were consistently in the cities” (page 238)
Urban planning, of course, has its roots in public health. London for most of its history killed a substantial fraction of its inhabitants, a figure astonishingly (and inevitably) offset by continued in-migration and urbanization. The impact of disease in Industrial Revolution cities can be found in this account. The Anglo-American school of urban planning arose out of Victorian concerns with public health, and the earliest heroes of urban planning were in fact, not urban planners. Dr. John Snow stopped the cholera epidemic of London of 1854, when he located the source of the epidemic with the help of maps and plotting (in a famous example of graphical thinking, recounted by Edward Tufte). When the authorities removed the handle of the Broad Street pump, Snow simultaneously stopped the means of transmission (by infected water) and settled the medical argument over the causes of cholera infection. Sir Joseph Bazalgette is credited with saving more lives and shaping the city more than any other person, with the construction of the Albert and Victorian Embankments, that for the first time provided the city with a functioning sewer system.
Contemporary urban planners are still quite interested in the links between urban form and health, in particular with a recent interest in obesity. A good contemporary summary of public health information in U.S. cities is in the Gotham Gazette here. A particularly interesting body of work is the U.N./World Health Organization's Healthy Cities movement, with many local projects and initiatives underway.
Technorati Tags: cities, environment, science, sustainability, urban
They're Shocked, Absolutely Shocked!
News, both outrageous and ridiculous, reported by the BBC and Reuters today:
“Serbian President Boris Tadic has appeared on TV to express deep shock over a gruesome video showing Serbian soldiers killing Bosnian Muslims.... [it] begins with a Serbian Orthodox priest blessing paramilitaries before they go into battle. It ends with what appears to be the same paramilitaries shooting badly beaten civilians prisoners in the back with machine guns..... The killers are wearing the uniforms of a unit known as the Scorpions, which prosecutors say fell under the command of the Serbian interior ministry.”News like this is outrageous because it shows how everyday people, in this case Serbians, can remain distant from genocide and ethnic cleansing carried by their government. News like this seems ridiculous because it seems impossible to me that the public did not know what was happening -- if they were ignorant, they chose to be so. When we are all confronted with tangible evidence such as this, atrocities made visible -- in a homemade video -- horrifying events like this make belief in ethical progress, or innate human sympathy, seem utterly absurd.
“Nonetheless, only one newspaper carried the story of the video on its front page on Thursday..... a survey last week suggested that only half the Serbian population believe the Srebrenica massacre actually took place.... the same survey suggested that two-thirds of the public believe Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic are heroes.” (my italics; BBC, June 3, 2005)
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