New and Old #196
Friday roundup and commentary
The Never-Ending Lockdown, The New Urban Order, Diana Lind Nov 26, 2024
This is a follow-up to a piece Lind wrote for Slate. (This “hey look what I wrote in a magazine, here’s a little more on it” is a great use of the newsletter format, by the way.) She quotes this bit from the original piece:
When a Whole Foods opened in my neighborhood in 2016, it featured a ground-floor café where patrons could look out toward Philly’s famed Benjamin Franklin Parkway through double-height windows. Open an hour earlier than the supermarket, the café featured elaborate pour-overs and an afternoon menu featuring wine and beer in addition to food. Although Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017, it wasn’t until the pandemic that the new owner ripped out this so-called third space. Now the ground floor resembles an Amazon shipping facility: The windows are frosted and lined with refrigerator cases full of groceries bagged for delivery, while patrons queue in a busy gauntlet, cellphones with QR codes at the ready, to pick up and return Amazon packages.
It’s an example of a place where the pandemic tipped the balance between the digital and in-person worlds. In the past, the digital world serviced the physical one; now it feels like the other way around.
That definitely feels like one of maybe a few skeleton keys or meta-explanations of what’s…going on in society since 2020. “Never-ending lockdown” really captures something. Doldrums, malaise, fallout are all other words that come to mind.
Check out her whole piece!
The Expansion of the “Citadel of Affluence”, The Corner Side Yard, Pete Saunders, December 13, 2024
“In reality I see the ‘Two Chicagos’ meme as overplayed. Chicago may be better understood in thirds -- one-third San Francisco, two-thirds Detroit.”
At the time, that statement caused a huge reaction on Twitter, positively and negatively. There were many supportive reactions from people who seemed to understand that Chicago’s deep divides were widening and hardening, and got the general point that the city needed to be more beneficial to more of its residents. Some of the reactions were visceral; many Chicagoans could not fathom a comparison of Chicago with Detroit, a city understood by many to be well below Chicago’s stature. In fact, friend and fellow Substack writer Aaron Renn told me that the quote had reached former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and was discussed during an interview he had with him. He hated it.
But that underscores a misunderstanding about both Chicago and Detroit. Detroit is not the completely collapsed urban dystopia that many imagine it to be; there is a rapidly revitalizing downtown, and great neighborhoods that are getting stronger. However, there is poverty and crime, and neighborhoods that sit on an uncertain precipice. Similarly, Chicago is more than its beautiful skyline, fantastic lakefront neighborhoods and the strong post-industrial economy that supports that part of the city’s growth. Chicago is also the city well known for its legacy of government patronage and political corruption, and reviled for its own high violent crime.
What’s this got to do with anything, you say?
This is an interesting read, a little bit in the weeds if you’re not into urbanism a lot. Check it out.
Las Colinas is a perfectly fine neighborhood, and anyone from the shanty towns of Kampala would be over the moon if they could live there, certain they’d won life’s lottery. It’s safe, wealthy, functional, clean, and most of all, a wonderful environment to raise your children, and if any Kenyan or Ugandan asked me for their advice, I would say yes, if you can, immigrate to Las Colinas, because as I’ve written, I’m not foolish enough to romanticize destitution.
Still, by moving to Las Colinas, or the thousands of other indistinguishable US towns, that person would be making a trade, gaining material wealth, while giving up an elementary part of being human, which is best described as communal, but is deeper than that. It’s about thriving and flourishing, in the ways people have for millions of years understood what that means.
This is sort of Arnade’s central schtick (I don’t use that word with any implied judgment), and if you think there’s nothing to it, you may not like his work. I think there is something to it.
I don’t know that Arnade is an urbanist per se, but he fundamentally is in the sense of grokking how the built environment is a primary factor in what society looks and feels like. For example, this:
The only other people I saw during my walks (or on the buses I eventually took) are physically, economically, or legally incapable of having a car, and lonely enough they don’t have friend or relative with one.
Check him out.
I don’t usually do politics here, but this struck me as a pretty good description of how political parties (and advocacy movements) should think about their task. Cass has more negative things to say about the Democrats than the Republicans, but here he addresses both of them:
I realize that the term “inclusive” may not be popular on the right these days, and perhaps seems especially out-of-fashion this week. But I will use it anyway: No political movement in modern America will succeed for any significant period of time without being intentionally and aggressively inclusive. Some of the people who are in the coalition now are going to leave, which means you’d better have a plan to add even more of the people you just beat. Indeed, the moment of victory is the moment when outreach is most important. Is that as much fun as gloating and retaliating? No. But I promise it’s a lot more fun than what the Democrats are facing.
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RE the never-ending lockdown, I think this is also a decent parable for the way suburban life works in general. Third spaces just don't exist, or are a 5-10-20 minute drive away.
I must admit being distracted by images of 10,00 buildings burned and ascending numbers of dead in the California urban conflagration. Surely you will offer us a meditation on this complex reality.