Article about "Green" by Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert

Anyone who's read Dilbert likely thinks that Scott Adams is quite a funny guy. For those who haven't read Dilbert, I provide this article, "How I (Almost) Saved the Earth." In his typical comedic style, Adams presents some very poignant views on the current Green movement.

Intellectuals and the Suburbs

I do plan another post about Lollapalooza and on finishing my Families and Cities series, but right now, I'd like to present a note about intellectuals' views and writings on the suburbs.

Alex Marshall is a journalist who served as a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Having read the first half of his How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Roads Not Taken, I think that he has a unique way of quickly summarizing very complex situations. In his remarks about the suburbs and how people have related to them, Marshall compares the writing of James Howard Kunstler--a harsh, modern critic of the suburbs and a big fan of New Urbanism--specifically in his 1993 The Geography of Nowhere, and that of John Keats (not to be confused with the British, Romantic poet) who criticized the suburbs equally as harshly in his 1957 book, The Crack in the Picture Window. Marshall notes how their critiques are very similar despite the vast changes to suburban America in the intervening 36 years.

But what does the similarity of their critiques say about the suburbs themselves, or about people's views on the suburbs, Marshall asks? He comes up with three answers:

1. "Intellectual leaders have always recognized the flaws of suburban growth, and have tried to avert it. But the bulk of America's political and economic leaders" have prevented meaningful reform to prevent sprawl.

2. "The intellectual classes have had a snobbish aversion to granting the middle and working classes what the rich have enjoyed--space, a decent-size home, privacy, and an abundance of consumer goods that the suburbs deliver more cheaply."

3. Intellectuals criticize "the suburbs for something they can never have, which is a sense of place. Fragmentation is the nature of cities built around the car and there is no way to change that."

All three answers, Marshall concludes, are correct, and he moves on to a brief history of the suburbs to understand their nature better. But where do those three answers leave us?

The first answer is not really that interesting. It's the one most readily observed and most easily understood. The third one is more interesting, but I would argue that it is somewhat subject to personal taste or fashion and less important than material interests such as people's livelihoods. While both 1 and 3 are important, I find the second answer to be the most interesting, perhaps because it presents a challenge to urban-oriented planning solutions. How much can planners, even in well-intentioned efforts to promote environmental preservation and social justice, restrict the right of individuals to pursue improvement in their quality of life by selecting lower property costs in exchange for a less tightly-knit community or more reliance on cars?

I think this question is the greatest weakness of such "solution" arguments as those made by Kunstler or David Owen in his Green Metropolis. I hope, nonetheless, that there is a way to put that deficiency of urban-oriented planning to rest (cheaper, more efficient public transit extending to inner-ring suburbs may be part of the solution; economic incentives for infill development is likely to be another part) and that we can lessen our negative environmental effects, improve our standards of social justice, and still allow freedom of choice in where to live for the working and middle classes. Otherwise, the increasing costs of our current approach--i.e., the rising cost of gas, increasing environmental degradation, etc.--may take care of the discrepancy itself, but probably not in a way that we are going to enjoy.

Lollapalooza Day I: Lady Gaga and company

We drove into Chicago too late to see B.o.B, whom I had remembered fondly from WILD at Wash U a couple of years ago. But I was able to see and/or hear Wavves, Los Amigos Invisibles, The Constellations, Jukebox the Ghost, The New Pornographers, Dirty Projectors, Hot Chip, Chromeo, and--most notably, Lady Gaga. All of them, in my opinion, sounded good, with music that appeals to a wide array of listeners and musicality that shows great talent among the generally young artists. But none of them matched Lady Gaga--in terms of investment in the set design, choreography, fan interaction, entertainment, and even talent.

Some may hate Lady Gaga, for whatever reasons, but one must admit that she is talented. Her style blends the glam rock of Queen with the branch of the pop idol movement as represented by Michael Jackson and Madonna, yet her talent shines the brightest when she sits down at a piano and accompanies stirring chords with her powerfully grabbing voice. Even then, though, she is wont to stand up and assume unexpected positions while playing the piano, resting her foot on the keys, then using it as a third hand. I think it's a shame that her piano ballads don't receive the same airplay that her pop hits do, but that's the world of commercial radio, I guess. It certainly shapes the public's perception of her, perhaps in the direction of talentless, pop industry puppet, but anyone who's heard her piano pieces should be able to attest to the contrary.

Speaking of her style, her sharp choreography and chorus of dancers, her futuristic outfits, and her appeal to theatricality scream the influence of Michael Jackson. The makeup and wigs and the guitar jams remind us that there is glam rock in it yet. And while I thoroughly enjoy the work of Queen, Bowie, Jackson, and others in those groups, Lady Gaga's combination of it all was hard for me to reconcile for myself at first. With time and repeated exposure, though, I came to accept her character and her music. It's unique--which gives it some immediate value--and it may yet have some staying power, though in a pop world that is post-Andy Warhol's 15-minute fame decree, that may be debatable. Regardless, she assumes a character who has been ill-treated in school and in other social circles, and who nonetheless has emerged from it victorious, famous. I don't deny that she is telling the truth, opening up to her "little monsters," as she calls her fans, but the fact that it is part of her performance makes it part of her stage character. She repeated how great it felt to prove her doubters wrong, returning to Lollapalooza after three years of quickly-achieved fame. This may prove socially beneficial, as it may encourage some young people to accept themselves as they are, thereby increasing self-confidence among young people.

I would also like to touch on the stage set. Clearly more thought out and designed with more investment--most notably temporal and creative investment--than any of the sets of the other acts, Lady Gaga's background for her performance had the air of a futuristic urban environment, reminiscent of Blade Runner. Neon signs advertised such enterprises as "Implants, Sedation, Dentistry," and another lit promotion was for the HOTEL HASS, which, due to certain letters not being lit all the time, occasionally spelled out "HOT A**." Admittedly, it wasn't more creative or innovative than the many other stereotypical dystopian pictorials of failed urban settings, but it was reminiscent of how pervasive such representations have been in our culture. Reinforced by Gaga's admitted appreciation of this country's highways, developed during her road trips on the expansive web of freeways and expressways, the set suggested that there is little belief in the future of our cities. Yet, greater tolerance in part caused by exposure to different kinds of people is most often tied to the city rather than to the suburb, including the tolerance for people of different sexual orientation, which was a key theme in Gaga's dialogues with her supporting cast directed at her audience and is a issue close to her heart. Cities, then, must also be valuable for Lady Gaga. But her performances stand out from the rest of today's pop culture, and should be seen by everyone who is able to get a ticket to one of her shows.

Cities and Families Part II: Education

Charter schools. They've been praised for the choice that they provide to families living in bad public school areas, many of which are urban. An alternative to poorly performing schools, they also have the potential to worsen the problem that they are meant to remedy. By attracting the students who are most eager to perform well in school and the parents who care the most about their children's education, they leave underachieving schools behind with a higher concentration of students who don't care, who don't understand why they should care, and whose parents are too busy to look after, or perhaps are simply uninterested, in their children's education. Despite a brief search through the academic literature, I'll admit that I haven't seen any reference to this process, but it seems to me that it is likely occurring, and hopefully someone can suggest some sources that will either support or contradict my hypothesis. After all, it's the same process that occurred with white flight for neighborhoods (which, through property taxes, played a large role in the trend in public school quality for many areas).

Charter schools can provide value for an educational system through forced competition. But, as with many free market forces, they may trade considerations of equality for the efficiencies that arise from that competition. They should be developed not as a cure-all solution to the ills of the bleeding public school system, but as a complement to strategies aimed at applying pressure to the wounds of that system to stop the bleeding, fix the issues therein, and improve the public schools. Strong, influential charter schools, however, may find it in their interest for the public school system to fail, since that would give them more business, so to speak. So, the public eye must keep watch to prevent the conflicting interests of business to interfere in our shared interest of educating our children, including the children of the poor.

How to improve the public schools themselves deserves much more attention than I can provide in this post, but I would like to make a quick comment thereon. Based on some short conversations with my high school track coach--who has done some great work in the realm of education of the underprivileged and hopes to do more--I believe that the problem with our struggling public schools is not in a lack of funds, as it is often portrayed, as much as it is in a misappropriation of funds. Due in part to the emptying of our cities, many schools have insufficient numbers of students to make the most of their resources, to use those resources efficiently. This is why, I conjecture, struggling public schools sometimes spend the same amounts per student as top tier private schools, yet with frighteningly different, i.e. worse, results. Public attention is often focused through ballot initiatives on the funding of public schools; unfortunately, not enough attention is paid to what happens to the funds. This is where public schools can benefit from the market-based devotion to efficiency, part of the reason why some public school systems use leaders from the private sector to recover after a collapse. But the schools need leaders who not only can ensure funds are used efficiently, but who can also remember that the purpose of what they do, even more important than reducing financial losses, is to educate young people, to reduce human losses.

Coming back to the subject of charter schools, they are an important weapon in improving the education that we provide to our children. Like any weapon, they can be used inappropriately--to sap the public schools of their best students and to leave them without caring parents or responsible public figures invested in their success. But, used appropriately--as a supplement rather than a replacement--charter schools can boost the quality of all schools, including those in the city. And when a city's public and charter schools serve as an asset rather than as a liability, then cities can expect more families to choose to live in their borders rather than only those with few or no other options. Quality education, furthermore, is important to cities not only in creating a more qualified workforce for advanced, better-paying, more respectable jobs, but also in giving young people a serious and promising alternative to crime, which brings me to my next post.