The first year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News: Part 6 of several

In the previous installment of this series, I concluded my discussion of the first post in this blog with the following.

I know I promised to cover at least two posts from now on in the previous entry in this series, but I couldn't figure out how to link a second entry to this one. Besides, as the first post, it deserves to be commemorated by itself. Also, this part of the series is short. I'll make up for it by having a later post look at three at one time.

The mere idea of looking at three posts at once ended up being just a bit too daunting, so I didn't do it. As for why I considered doing it, check out this passage from Part 1:

[T]his entry was the most successful of several where promising Kunstler's readers a link to an article in the New York Times got their attention--567 page views worth, the most of any single referring page. There are at three others on this list.

Yes, the three entries I was planning on covering at one time were the same ones where I used a post organized around a N.Y. Times story to lure readers in. It's not a bad theme, but as you can see, it was enough to deter me from continue the series without an external prompt.

So, which of my posts am I featuring today? The one that was in 10th place with 215 page views and no comments--that is, until the revenge of the back catalog hit on July 4th, propelling Happy 4th of July from James Howard Kunstler's Tea Party! from about ten page views to more than 800 in the space of a month, with 700+ of those views the week of July 4th and ~500 of them on July 4th alone, making it the most viewed ever on the site with 888 views and knocking The New York Times explains how to completely avoid the real problems of suburbia, posted on May 8, 2011, completely out of the top 10.

So, how did I use a N.Y. Times story to entice readers from Kunstler's blog? Like so.

By the way, the New York Times ran a review of a bunch of Manhattan designers trying to make over Levittown into a "future surubia." From the perspective of both the reviewer and myself, they generally failed. As I wrote in The New York Times explains how to completely avoid the real problems of suburbia:

Ms. Arieff shows that she has a good eye for the real problems of suburbia. In fact, her list of problems, including her observation that the U.S. has become wedded to sururbia as the American Dream, makes her seem as if she's watched "The End of Suburbia," in which exactly the issues she mentions plus suburbia as the American Dream, are major topics, along with peak oil. Too bad the designers seem not to have watched the movie.

There is a link to the New York Times article at the blog entry.

It worked. Too bad most of the ideas didn't, at least in terms of anything that makes sense as a practical future. On the other hand, the projects the designers came up with became an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream, which runs until August 13th. I hope they work better as art than as real solutions.






There was one project that the reporter thought might just work (Link to N.Y. Times article in the quoted post; I'm not going to waste one of my ten free page views a month just to get it):

The design team of EFGH (Hayley Eber and Frank Gesualdi) with Irina Chemyakova explored the potential benefits that changes to code, zoning and other regulatory modifications might have on the existing suburb. The things they proposed, much in keeping with the work of others spearheading the movement to rethink suburbia like Ellen Dunham-Jones, June Williamson and Galina Tachieva, included increasing density, retrofitting existing buildings for new uses, and experimenting with public/private space.

These changes, along with residents’ inclination to improve their own communities, could lead to better models for future development.

If you're interested in sustainability on the local and personal levels, your biggest obstacles will be homeowners associations, zoning boards, and city councils. Those people will be wedded to business as usual long after it becomes apparent to early adopters that BAU just isn't working any more. Watch those local governing entities hang onto the past like adherents of a cargo cult. If I want to urge any political action (and I actually have a long list of political actions; I just haven't broadcast most of them on this blog), it's to convert a critical mass of people to the necessity for sustainable action and then organize to run for positions on these roadblocks to sustainability. I like the idea of a democratic takeover of local government.

If that bolded passage looks familiar, it's because I re-used it to open my first entry about Julie Bass. Her plight illustrated the point perfectly.

As for what I'll write about next, there are the two other posts I wrote especially for Kunstler's readers that were built around New York Times articles. Both of them discuss Detroit as a tourist destination, a topic I return to occasionally. There's also a post about Dominionism and what they really believe. Finally, there are posts that were in the top ten between January 1st and March 21st, but which fell out by the time I compiled the list. That should take care of the series.

Previous posts in this series.

The first year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News: Part 1 of several

The first year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News: Part 2 of several

The first year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News: Part 3 of several

The first year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News: Part 4 of several

The first year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News: Part 5 of several