{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "Andr\u00e9s Duany lecture, part 4 of 9\n\n This is more subtle than ever, the residential situation. [The neighborhood depicted in this...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/169055596493/", "html": "\n
This is more subtle than ever, the residential situation. [The neighborhood depicted in this slide] is in Palm Beach county, where there\u2019s lots of landscaping and lakes, and it shows easily that the problem with the suburbs is not necessarily that they\u2019re ugly. Palm Beach County is beautiful. It\u2019s full of landscaping and golf courses. The problem is that it doesn\u2019t work, and [more specifically doesn\u2019t work] in a very insidious way, socially. You see, this system of planning by pods has attached to it a segregation by income. Everybody that lives in this pod has paid over 350 thousand dollars for their unit. Everybody that lives in this pod has paid about 250 or less for their unit. And everybody that lives in this pod, which is quadruplexes, has paid 100 thousand for their unit. What has happened in our suburbs is that, for marketing reasons which I believe are completely artificial\u2013 this element of snobbis[hness] which is pushed, which is \u201cIf you live in here you\u2019re better than everyone else that lives outside, and if you live here you\u2019re better than everyone else\u201d and it sort of pecks on\u2013 there\u2019s a pecking order all the way down.
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If you were to offer to build a 250 thousand dollar house here in this empty lot, this homeowner\u2019s association would have a major fit, because the real estate prices going\u2013 what has been happening is that people now have a great fear of anybody who isn\u2019t making exactly their income. We\u2019re not talking about bringing the homeless in from downtown Palm Beach. It\u2019s someone who has a quarter of a million dollars to buy a house not being permitted to build it. That is completely insidious. The amount\u2013 the kind of political fragmentation that is taking place in the suburbs, the dislike and suspicion that people have for each other is making it virtually impossible to govern intelligently. And that\u2019s been built into this system and it\u2019s completely unnecessary. Look at the old system. Basically the American system. This [slide] is [of] Georgetown. On this street you have apartment buildings on both sides of the street, which is\u2026quite affordable housing. Over on this street you have townhouses facing each other, which is\u2026relatively more expensive housing. Then on this street you have big houses, which is\u2026quite expensive housing. And, finally, here on this estate, probably one of the great famous fortunes of America living in splendid quarters. All within a very, very short distance from each other, and all sharing the same public realm. This is the way we used to do it.
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Now, what\u2019s interesting or, rather, important, about mixed-use planning is that it is not just important to have workplaces and shopping places and living places. It is equally important to have a range of incomes living together because, if you don\u2019t, you have to begin importing people of different incomes to work for each other.
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A typical situation in Palm Beach County: Palm Beach County has to send busses to Brower County to pick up workers to come cook hamburgers and mow the lawn. That kind of thing is\u2026also going on in Cape Cod.
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In [the older] system there\u2019s the theoretical possibility that the person who mows this lawn can live within walking distance of one of these apartments. And there\u2019s another thing that\u2019s important: It isn\u2019t just important to have the lower economic classes integrated into the upper. It is equally important to have extremely wealthy people distributed among the neighborhoods and villages. That can be seen all over the midwest and all over the northwest. There are two types of small towns in America. Those that have one wealthy family and those that don\u2019t. The ones that don\u2019t have that wealthy family have no [high] culture. They\u2019re dead ends. Those towns that have the good fortune of having had one [*plausibly-nervous coughing from audience*] tycoon. One factory owner. Those are the ones that have the beautiful parks, and museums, and cultural activities. It is necessary, to have a full society with\u2013 with a cultural component, that there be people of wealth and leisure integrated into the rest of society. Because everyone else is working too hard, and doesn\u2019t have enough money to actually pursue culture. Only the very wealthy can. So, it\u2019s important to build all these things together.
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In Europe, in any city, it\u2019s not only in the United States that you find that this is the traditional pattern. In Europe\u2013 the great dukes, the Popes, and so forth\u2013 any European city you see has the palaces next to very humble artisans\u2019 dwellings. All societies have been able to integrate by income. They have not been able to integrate foreigners, necessarily. There are Turkish quarters and there are Jewish quarters in Europe. But by income, yes. Because it is necessary and intelligent, in fact, to integrate by income. It is only now that we\u2019re inventing this ridiculous system.
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This is why I find it amusing when supposedly smart people turn their noses up at watching lectures. Academia\u2019s literary advantage died the day\u00a0David Deutsch made his QC lectures available online. The Andr\u00e9s Duany lecture above was uploaded to youtube in 2006. I wonder if Murray and Putnam have heard of him because, well:
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He has a short wikipedia page. He also (mostly coincidentally) shares a page with Murray in a book called \u201cThe American Paradox: A History of the United States Since 1945,\u201d which makes sense.
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A lot of this reminds me of the millyard in my hometown. Dean Kamen bought a bunch of the old buildings to use as maker studios. People get mad at Trump for naming all his stuff, but DeKa is Dean Kamen. Trump seems to be a democratic immune response manifest as a bizarro hitler grenade, possibly due to an accumulation of the toxins produced when beepboops and aristocrats fuck up.
At Christmas dinner, the side of my extended family that retired to Florida from being New Jersey executives was talking about how their community center offers Spanish lessons, which is a change from before when they taught the servants English
and I\u2019m thinking \u201coh how woke\u201d when they continue that it was because as soon as they learned English they\u2019d been leaving for better jobs