Where there is no vision the people perish. (Proverbs 29:18)

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” – Jesus (Matthew 7:13-14)

Don’t mean to get all theological on you, but President Obama’s reference to Corinthians 13:11 (“the time has come to set aside childish things”) in his inaugural speech, along with articles I’ve recently read about his stimulus package has me thinking that heavy repentance is in order.

Start with David Brooks’ op-ed from last Thursday’s New York Times:

“There is a strong case to be made for a short, sharp stimulus package to restrain the collapse of the American economy… There’s also a very strong case to be made for long-term government reform. America could fundamentally rethink its infrastructure policies — create a new model adapted to new modes of community-building… But the stimulus bill emerging in the House of Representatives does neither of these things… It is an unholy marriage that manages to combine the worst of each approach — rushed short-term planning with expensive long-term fiscal impact.”

On the very same day, Congress for the New Urbanism President and CEO John Norquist follows up with Stimulus to Nowhere?:

Facing the nation’s deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression and hearing from every quarter that the only thing worse than delay is timidity, President-elect Obama called on Congress weeks before his inauguration to draft stimulus package legislation that would kick start the economy and launch the new administration’s domestic agenda. Meeting the timeline, but hardly the spirit of boldness hard times require, the Obama administration and House Appropriations Committee produced a package that looks like it was designed by the outgoing Bush administration. It offers a few hopeful green gestures with tax credits for energy efficiency, but on transportation the Appropriations Committee package commits taxpayer billions to a status quo of lots of big highways and only modest amounts for trains, transit or local street networks that serve as high value settings for development and job creation.

Then on Friday, Harry Eyres draws on the thinking of Ivan Illich for a piece in Financial Times:
Writing at the time of the first energy crisis in the 1970s, the maverick Catholic priest, historian and ecologist Ivan Illich exploded the whole idea of energy crisis. Both the problem and the solution, according to Illich, were to be located not in the earth’s crust but in the mind of man….The key to understanding the energy crisis, Illich said, lay in a “peculiar notion that man is born into perpetual dependence on slaves which he must painfully learn to master”. These slaves could be human beings or machines designed to perform slave tasks. The energy crisis, Illich continued, “focuses concern on the scarcity of these slaves. I prefer to ask whether free men need them.” He had the barmy-seeming idea that we would do better – that is to say would lead more human, fairer and freer lives – if we consumed less energy. Far from freeing us up, the addiction to ever-greater quanta of energy enslaves our souls, making us passive consumers rather than active doers, and concentrates power in mega-institutions…. Much of the energy we consume goes on transportation, and this is the area which remains most stubbornly dependent on fossil fuels, and specifically oil.
So this morning I pick up The Post and Courier and read of the Coastal Conservation League’s alternative proposal to the extension of I-526:

“Our plan will cost significantly less money, have less environmental impact and more economic development” than the $420 million proposal to extend the expressway across parts of James and Johns islands, said Megan Derosiers, the league’s director of conservation programs. She said the league’s plan will cost less than $220 million.”…

Riley said that he can’t support the Coastal Conservation League’s plan because he doesn’t think it will do enough to reduce traffic pressure and increase safety. He also thinks the area needs another route for hurricane evacuations.

Mayor Riley, ordinarily a great champion of beautiful urbanism, has unfortunately gotten himself entangled in a plan that involves an attempt to sustain an unsustainable car-dependent hallucination. The citizenry can no longer afford to pour billions down this money hole. Rather than hurtle down a broad road of destruction in the form of new interstate construction and widening, a far better use of our limited resources lies down the narrow road to life – renovating the infrastructure of our cities to convert them into inclusive, walk-able communities.

In last week’s blog post, I described how Jane Jacobs – that heroine of human-scaled urbanism – defeated the champion of car culture, Robert Moses, in his attempts to run an 8-lane expressway through the SOHO District of New York in the 1960s.
Just after His quote about the two roads, Jesus said “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” (Matthew 7:15).
I wonder if today Jesus might say: “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in Mrs. Jacobs’ clothing, but inwardly they are ravening Messrs. Moses.”
Certainly President Obama understands that much of our politics has become the organized whining of special interest groups. He need only listen to all the clamoring by lobbyists of the transportation-industrial complex to gain a clear understanding of this. Please Mr. President, before it’s too late call a halt to such childish things. Tell all these asphalt-pushers to REPENT!

Vince

Filed under: I'On Group on January 26th, 2009