The New Urbanism

So I've been on the road for a couple of days. It really makes me think about the whole idea of "The New Urbanism". Basically the idea is that as more and more jobs and opportunities come up in the cities, more and more people will be moving to them. This is usually hailed as a good thing because the denser people are packed, the easier it is to manage them, and make sure they get access to all the things they need.

I have been wondering about whether or not this is a good thing. I mean, for the longest time people have been congregating around street corners in order to sell goods, and collaborate into communities. But never have we gotten together into such size before.

On Thursday I headed out for the coast. intending to take U.S. 101 down to Crescent City California. I got a late start, so took I-5 down to Eugene, and cut across to the coast that way (instead of going to Tillamook). The ocean was beside the car all day, and I passed through small towns, content with the coastal one way thoroughfares and main drags.

These towns are small, quaint, and close, ensuring people can get from place to place easily, and to the regional hubs with somewhat ease.

The next day I traveled to Santa Rosa in anticipation to visit San Francisco the next morning. This was a gradual step up from the small coastal towns I passed through the day before. Driving through the Redwoods made me forget I was on my way to one of the largest and most upcoming cities on the West Coast, if not the entire United States.

The woods were encapsulating, and really took my imagination with their majesty and grandeur.

Me at the aptly named "Big Tree"

 Me driving my car through a tree.

The day ended with a trip on California State Route 1, as I played the Decemberists album "Castaways and Cutouts". The end song chimed in as I rounded a cliff and up through a coastal meadow, and I was content and nostalgic.

After a windy road back to Santa Rosa (and delicious Vietnamese food), I set out for the Golden Gate Bridge and the massive cultural megalith of San Francisco. Arriving at the bridge, it came out to be larger than life. It is still hard to believe that such a structure can be conceived of, and built, in the 1930's.

The ride across was amazing. The 1930s art-deco style reigned supreme, and there were so many bicycles and pedestrians on the shoulders (which were huge, clean, and had their fare share of people on them).

Coming into and around San Francisco I saw the money. The dense apartment blocks, the wide avenues, the businesses, the new cars, and the money. There is so much money in San Francisco. It's amazing to see how exactly the tech startups and industry has affected the town.

I saw the transit, the sidewalks, the access to services that people get in San Francisco. But I also saw the gentrification, the homeless, and the exclusiveness that urban density brings. I saw all white, all suits, all Porches and Bentleys. This is the side of the "New Urbanism" that I can't quite accept.

This urbanism has the unintended side effect that the very people it's trying to link up are pushed out of the urban core because of it's unobtainable affordability. The very people it's designed to conglomerate to support (seniors, people with disabilities, minorities, and general low income earners) are forced out because they can no longer afford the place they may have once lived, and therefore now cannot live in the dense areas designed to centralize services.

Chinatown

TransAmerica Tower 

Financial District

The Castro

F Line Trolley

After the rush of San Francisco, I turned my sights south towards Bakersfield, in preparation to see Death Valley the next day.

I will not lie. I did not have high hopes for Bakersfield. I was expecting a smaller town, with a couple of stoplights, maybe a mall, etc. I was completely wrong. The hours spent driving to Bakersfield (from San Francisco) were through sun setting barren hills (to Stockton area) and then down through the Central Valley. Along I-5 I smelled things so horrendous that dissuaded me to ever visit the Central Valley ever again. Giant livestock operations, fruit orchards and vegetable fields spread for over four hours. But Bakersfield itself reminded me of a midsize Midwestern town. It had a mall, housing developments, and a somewhat sizable downtown with a couple of buildings over three stories.

Bakersfield is a balance. It is an urban core and center, but does not have a robust urban support system. It allows its residents to stay where they are, but without the benefits high density brings.

At the other end of the spectrum is the Interior Basins of California. These are places that have towns of 100 people or fewer. These places are most likely family run to cater to the stray tourists that may come through, and if not tourists, military bases that may be nearby.

It seems neigh impossible to imagine life this isolated. Towns are 60 to 100 miles away from each other, and require hours of driving through rugged and near impassible terrain. One wonders why people may even choose to settle here at all, and why places haven't been abandoned all together.

The desert out here is vast and harsh. It does not forgive those who traverse it. The polar opposite of the "New Urbanism" is Death Valley. A place with one tourist hotel, two gas stations, and hundreds of miles of uninhabitable wastes. There are salt flats, scrub-lands, rock fields, and simply just miles of dust. It is quite a sight to marvel at.

A rare water hole in the salt flats of Death Valley

The salt path to the salt flats.

The flats themselves, ever expansive, harsh, and unforgiving. 

The Devil's Golf Course. Aptly named because the salt formations are tricky holes to walk across.

Death Valley is an amazing place to visit. It shows you the intensity of what a barren landscape can look like. The elevation dips below sea level in many places, including Badwater Basin, the name of the salt flats above.

That sign says "Sea Level"

Standing down at 282 feet below Sea Level, I was thinking to myself: What if this "New Urbanism" isn't so great? What is so wrong with people living in small, closely connected communities, similar to what they have on the coast. We don't have to choose between living in dense, urban centers, where we can't afford anything but have access to everything, or out in the middle of nowhere, where we can afford things and may have piece of mind, but access to nothing else. Let's settle on something in the middle. Like the Pacific coastal towns have worked out.


I've been struggling with this my whole experience in my field of transportation, and as I make my way back East, I can't help but think to myself: "What do I believe when it comes to this?" I can't quite say yet, but I find myself in Las Vegas tonight, the place where they play everything up, and make everything a show and a performance. I am off to see the sights tomorrow, starting with Hoover Dam and some museums, and ending with an evening on the Strip.

With the salt still fresh on my lips from the valley of death, I charge forward into a city that never should have been, in a region of this country that is full of my own locally perceived contradictions in order to find out more. Because that's what life is all about isn't it?