Transcript AllureUrbTechGreenSpacesPres

The Allure of Urban Technology and
Green Spaces:
Dewey, Leopold and Car-less Suburbs
Shane J. Ralston, Ph.D.
Penn State University-Hazleton
Penn State University-World Campus
Outline of the Paper


The problem: Suburban sprawl and automobile dependency
decreased quality of human life, environmental loss
–
One suggestion: A procedural solution (e.g. Robert Kirkman’s ethical
deliberation)
–
Difficulty: Lacks substance/content
Two suggestions with substance: Suburbs with gardens, without
cars
–
Three sources: John Dewey, Aldo Leopold and two experimental suburbs
Two Views: Kirkman and Kunstler

Robert Kirkman, The Ethics of Metropolitan Growth (2010):
–

[In] debates over metropolitan growth in the United States . . . one person can
look at a picture of an urban street and see a vibrant economic and cultural life,
while another can look at the same picture and see only filth and the threat of
being mugged or swindled; each might think the other is deluded.
James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere (1993):
–
Americans have been living car-centered lives for so long that the collective
memory of what used to make a landscape or a townscape or even a suburb
humanly rewarding has nearly been erased. The culture of good place-making,
like the culture of farming, or agriculture, is a body of knowledge and acquired
skills. It is not bred in the bone, and if it is not transmitted from one generation to
the next, it is lost.
The Problem: Urban Sprawl

Four disadvantages

Vagueness in the expression’s meaning

Land-use patterns and zoning laws

Empirical dimension
–
Limit inefficiencies
Normative dimension

–
Deleterious consequences
The Problem: Automobile Dependency
Metaphor of drug addiction

–
Vicious cycle

–
Difficulty of opting out
Environmental sustainability

–

Necessity and convenience
Sim Van der Ryn and Peter Calthorpe on sustainable communities
Turning private spaces back into public spaces
Smart Growth and Its Critics

What is smart growth?

Critics of smart growth
–
Wendell Cox
–
National Motorists Association
–
National Center for Public Policy Research/Cato Institute
Kirkman’s proposal to improve smart growth

–
4 step framework for ethical deliberation
–
Lacks substantive recommendations
Two Philosophical Approaches
Dewey’s pragmatism

–
Experimental inquiry
–
Ethic of control
–
Gardens in schools and suburbs
Leopold’s environmental ethic

–
No strict society/environment boundary
–
Ethic of restraint
–
Land/earth ethic
A New Kind of Suburb
Smart Planning

–
German suburb of Vauban
–
American suburb of Quarry Village
Four Advantages

–
New directions
Conclusion
Brief anecdote about Hazleton, PA


–
Deweyan ethic of control
–
Leopoldian ethic of restraint
Suburbs with gardens and without cars