Month: June 2018

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On Indifference

Dawn breaks over the clouds above Côte d’Azur.

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate   
Somewhere among the clouds above;   
Those that I fight I do not hate   
Those that I guard I do not love;   
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,   
No likely end could bring them loss   
Or leave them happier than before.   
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,   
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight   
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;   
I balanced all, brought all to mind,   
The years to come seemed waste of breath,   
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

(W. B. Yeats, 1918)

Many seem to have trouble fathoming the cause of the widespread indifference that appears to sustain our terrible status quo in this era of nihilism and opiates; of reductive identities and pervasive escapism. In the early 20th century, the great Irish poet W. B. Yeats articulated one probable cause in his incredibly poignant and patently reasonable poem, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.

Written in 1918, exactly a century ago, Yeats’s poem imagined the thoughts of a young Irish fighter pilot — flying for Britain, his legal sovereign, but certainly not an object of sentimental loyalty — during the bloodbath that was World War I. He fought not for patriotism but for the simple, personal reason that he loved the thrill of flying; and because, even with the near certainty of death, his service offered him a daily, enthralling escape from the hopeless drudgery that the status quo guaranteed him at home, in Ireland.

It is not hard to imagine that many working-class Americans and Europeans — not to mention the billions living in crushing third-world poverty — would now register a similar indifference toward the well-being of the so-called global order, even as it looks increasingly imperiled. Just as a poor Irish boy during WWI might have jumped at a chance to fly an airplane, while remaining indifferent to the fortunes of the British Empire, people today may be roused to temporarily escape their misery, even through less inspiring endeavors: narcotics, pornography, the dazzling-but-vapid pop culture, and the fantasies of demagogues. But people cannot be roused to defend a soulless system (on its merits, no less!) that has made the thought of escape so persistently seductive.

Indifference may always be with us, to an extent. Most people are apolitical in ordinary times. But in the face of existential threats to a once-viable order, the manifestation of a critical mass of indifference is not normal. It is a dividend returned to a glib and legalistic system for having scorned the meaningful interests and loyalties of so many, for so long.

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Alberti: Building on the Wisdom of the Ancient World

My latest piece at TAC‘s New Urbs looks at Leon Battista Alberti’s 1452 treatise, De re aedificatoria, and how it served as a vessel for planning concepts between the ancient and modern worlds. Significantly, Alberti’s text, which drew heavily on Vitruvius, was not primarily about urban planning:

De re aedificatoria is primarily a book on architecture. (And it is worth recalling that comprehensive urban planning, as a distinct pursuit, rather than a challenge at the intersection of the traditional social arts, is historically a late development.) But Alberti’s decision to build on the work of Vitruvius, combined with his context of architectural instruction in an overall framework of urban viability, mean that his text still speaks to several important aspects of urban planning. Today, as builders in the developing world face the greatest wave of urbanization in world history— and as cities in the developed world struggle to make space for continued growth—Alberti’s work remains a guidebook for those who value the traditions of both classical and post-Renaissance European architecture. It is worth remembering that such architecture was not usually built in a vacuum, but, instead, in communication with an urban environment.

In addition to his writings, Alberti was a practicing architect. Among other projects, he is credited with having conceptualized the Piazza Pio II in the Tuscan town of Pienza (above, Street View). The entire article can be found here. Enjoy!

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More SROs, Shared Housing in Urban America

The Marlton Hotel in New York City.

The Times has a story about how cities are taking a new look at shared housing situations in light of the increasing cost of individual units in many places. Single-room occupancies and variations on the SRO model get some positive attention.

I lived in an SRO in New York (above) when I was a freshman at the New School. Apart from the fact that the rooms were incredibly small, it was a good living arrangement. In our case, the building was almost entirely occupied by private college students, which may or may not have been a good thing. (However, there was one old man whose long-term tenancy could not be terminated and who was reputed to have been, um, a procurer, in his productive years.)

Today, the same building has been converted to a luxury hotel, trading on its history as place where famous people lived while they were still striving. (I apparently missed being neighbors with Lillian Gish by a mere 85 years.) The renovation is beautiful, and the building is much better appointed today than it ever was when it housed workers, or artists, or students. But where could those kinds of people, on their own dime, sleep in Manhattan tonight?

All this is to say that such arrangements can be fine, and can even have salutary effects for civilization when they create spaces in our great cities for those who arrive with more dreams and talent than riches. There are bad rooming houses, too, of course. So it’s case by case. But as a matter of equity, the need for efficiency accommodations that are genuinely affordable for working people and young people is not being met. SROs and other sharing arrangements can work in that space, and permitting a lot more of them could be part of the solution.

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Missing the Point?

This is what affordable housing once looked like.

Incredibly, Bryce Covert, in a long article at The Nation about the supposed roots of America’s affordable-housing crisis, manages to go on for nearly 5,000 words about the history of American affordability programs and initiatives — while offering only one, almost offhand mention of zoning. And while the focus of the piece is the situation in Los Angeles, migration patterns to Southern California — a huge part of the story there, from post-war internal migration to more recent immigration –don’t even get a passing nod.

The ebb and flow of public monies for housing construction certainly makes for an interesting angle about the changing political philosophies of the United States over the past century. And, to be sure, large-scale federal housing initiatives backed by the power of eminent domain created a lot of new, often spacious units during the post-war period. But that the story of such initiatives, and their decline or disappearance, provides a satisfactory explanation for the current housing crisis is not accurate.

The private housing market has always provided the overwhelming majority of housing units in the United States. (For decades, it has also been heavily subsidized by taxpayers through the mortgage-interest deduction, as well as other elements of federal, state, and local tax policy — but that’s a separate issue.) And until fairly recently, the private housing market has produced sufficient housing to meet demand. What has changed is that, as population has grown, and the remaining land within commuting distance of major cities has dwindled, markets have collided with local zoning policies that prevent new construction. This has chronically limited the number of units, placing a premium on each and every one. Without new units, subsidies to individual households will only push rents even higher.

The argument that poor people cannot afford the carrying costs of new construction is also missing the point. When land prices are not artificially inflated by a policy-imposed scarcity, middle-class and wealthy households, by and large, can afford the carrying charges for new units. Cheaper units then “filter” into the market in older buildings, whose construction costs have been paid off; a knock on effect is that these cheaper units in older buildings, when they exist, can provide a counterweight to forces that might encourage an upward spiral toward exorbitant prices for newer units.

This entire dynamic, which works relatively well in a mixed market, has been distorted by a chronic, artificial shortage of housing units because of restrictive zoning laws. As an aside, some of the public monies now being used to support marginally effective (drop in the bucket) programs could potentially support infrastructure projects, instead, if private development were freed to meet a more meaningful proportion of the current pent-up housing demand.

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Codex Mellon at the Morgan

An example from the Codex Mellon.

The Morgan has posted a long series of plates online, depicting a wide range of architecture from Rome in the early 16th century. A gift from Paul Mellon, the collection has been dated to 1513.

Per the website:

Some of the most notable drawings in the Codex are related to the designs for St. Peter’s by both Bramante and Raphael, but it also records many contemporary and antique Roman structures including the Palazzo dei Tribunali and its church of S. Biagio della Pagnotta, both planned by Bramante for Pope Julius II; the interior of the Pantheon; and the elevation and cross section of the Colosseum.

Little is known about the draftsman responsible for the sketchbook. It has been variously attributed to Domenico Antonio (also called Menicantonio) de Chiarellis, a member of a family of stone carvers associated with Bramante, or to the sculptor-architect Domenico Aino da Varignana.

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After Burnham: A Classical Plan for Chicago

Chicago 2109 aerial view.

Image: Philip Bess/Notre Dame School of Architecture.

Philip Bess, a professor at the University of Notre Dame’s excellent School of Architecture, is directing a fascinating project called After Burnham: The Notre Dame Plan of Chicago 2109. Building on principles of classical architecture, the plan envisions the future growth of Chicago over the next century in a more holistic pattern, drawing on the traditions and philosophy of Western urbanism in past eras, and using them to shape a modern city. Bess writes:

Modernity brings with it certain genuine human goods, and the successes of modernity can be measured in part by dramatic increases in human mobility, life span, and per capita income wherever modern institutions have established themselves. But these successes come at a price. Powerful accounts abound of the human suffering entailed in the transformation of traditional societies into modern societies; and the modern view of nature as raw material for human purposes has resulted in both the potential and the reality of environmental catastrophes at unprecedented scale (often with harshest impact upon the poor) and has created wholly modern eco-discontents. Last but not least, serious questions about the cultural sustainability of modernity arise in light of the individualist / therapeutic / consumerist character-type that modern societies seem to mass-produce.

A long western intellectual tradition dating from Aristotle views cities, character virtue, and human flourishing as intimately and reciprocally related. If true —and we think it is— this should give thoughtful people pause. Ours is a time of exploding urbanization in the modernizing societies of Asia, Africa and South America, and the aftermath of nearly seventy years of American suburbanization. Both of these phenomena represent distinctively modern forms of human settlement, but neither is typically evaluated holistically with respect to the relationship of urban formal order to environmentally and culturally sustainable human wellbeing.

See After Burnham for yourself. It’s a beautiful and fascinating proposal.