Thread by @drvolts

The American front lawn is a symbol of how we've abandoned public space & sought to replicate all its benefits in our small private estates, which turns out to be impossible. volts.wtf/p/a-rant-about…

In this post I call out something I was told by Salvador Rueda, the visionary behind so much of Barcelona's transformation: residences, businesses, & roads can get you *urbanity*, but until you have public spaces -- "the public's living room" -- you don't have a *city*.

It always stuck in my head as a perfect description of a growing portion US land use: urbanity without cities. Highways, chain stores, and suburbs in an endless, undifferentiated smear, with no *center*, no place for community to form & evolve.

In places like this, life becomes entirely private, about how much stuff you can buy for your private estate, how easily you can get around & park in your SUV, how much shopping is nearby. You are an atomic unit, on your own, not part of any meaningful place or community.

And when people have no places, no communities, they turn for social connection to ... the f'ing internet. They get involved in online communities & conspiracy theories & factional political tribes. Everything becomes nationalized & symbolic; local concerns fade.

We need to dedicate ourselves to creating *places* -- actual, accessible, pleasant places, with abundant public space. Not just urbanity, but cities, with centers & identities, designed to live in, not just drive through.

I've been thinking this for a while. Way, way back in 2011, I did a series for Grist: "Great Places: reorienting progressive politics for the 21st century." The idea is that good placemaking addresses a whole bunch of social dysfunctions simultaneously.

grist.org/article/2011-0…

I wanted the progressive movement to recenter on placemaking -- tackling environmental damage, climate, sprawl, isolation, lack of social trust, & the housing crisis all at once.

Sadly I'm just me & I didn't have discipline to follow through. If you want stuff like this ...

... to catch on you have to be a stubborn, persistent evangelist, and I'm too much of a flittery dilettante to do that.

I still think it's on target, though. Politically, environmentall, socially: America need great places. Places, places, places. </fin>

Just couldn't get all the way through without a typo... 🤦‍♂️