(no subject)

[gfish]

While I spent last week fretting over what was wrong, The Stranger came up with some answers. I really like it. I really like it. Urbanism as a political identity. It has a strong base, it reflects the realities of the demographics, it focuses on important things, it's self-perpetuating (a platform of improving city infrastructure to lure more people to the cities is brilliant), it has strong rhetorical potential. And it doesn't mean snivelling over to the right. Until someone comes up with something better, I'm going with this.

Comments

[brithistorian.livejournal.com]

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I really like this too. Urbanists unite!

[adularia.livejournal.com]

The Stranger's cover and related article stood out to me. That's how I've been feeling, but not how I want to feel. For all I seem to practice it, I really don't enjoy the us-vs-them mentality, and it rather saddens me that my country of birth is so divided. Romantic fuzzy-headedness of me, almost certainly.

Nor does isolationist urbanism fix the ideological problems with Red America. If we, in our nice little progressive cocoons, diverge further and further from life and society in the rest of the nation, but fail to secure a real majority, we will still ultimately have to put up with more Bushes for leaders

Perhaps . . .

[ilmarinen.livejournal.com]

While I agree with the description of what is happening, I'm not sure I want to embrace it philosophically.

Having grown-up out in the country, I would be loath to "abandon" it. And moving towards a patchwork of city-states (walled even, suggests the article) is counter to my hopes for our country.

Possibly more important, it is probably not a pragmatic strategy.

On the dealing-with-reality side of things, those rural ares control our food, water, biodiversity, etc. Face it, cities are dependent on the surrounding countryside far more than we are willing to admit. I would prefer not to let the loggers manage all the forest lands.

On the political reality side, the structure of our federal government gives over-representation low-density populations.

Of course, in some ways, this idea mirrors my version of the Cascadia idea. Not just one new country, but several, in a loose federation:

• Peoples Republic of Cascadia (Where the Green Party actually holds offices, and we build mass transit, etc.)
  
• New Free State of the Inland Empire (Columbia River Basin, they can have their pickups and gun racks, vote libertarian, etc., just keep the food flowing and we'll need ecological treaties . . . )
  
• Liberated Yukon Territories (Obviously, the people who live there are different kinds of folks, let them be, and we can take cruises to visit, fly fishing trips, etc.)
  
• Restored Kingdom of Hawaii (Because I like the name)
  

And this could go one, I mean, the great lake blue states need something, and Union of New England States or something like that. Perhaps New York and LA would become independent City-States. Oh, and perhaps Cuba will liberate Florida.

OK, that sounds like fun . . .

[shadowblue.livejournal.com]

Democrats have been the urban party for a long time, haven't they?

I don't know that being equipped with this knowledge really accomplishes anything. A party that admits to being The Cities Party will never get a majority in either house of congress, and really pushing urban-centric ideas will just alienate the vast fields of people who identify with "the white, Christian, rural, and suburban identity".

The ideas in the article just sound like serious degeneration of powers to the states, which just seems like a prelude to the United States turning into something as useful as the United Nations, i.e, not incredibly.

If things are allowed to go to complete shit in non-urban areas, it seems like this just means that the people willing to sing along with the new urban democracy and pay lip service to being a good and nice liberal will be able to make some serious profit from raping the hell out of the environments and populace of the places that are too uneducated to vote for self-protection. Virginia will become the new Southwest China, or random country in Africa, only with less potential and closer to home.

I guess this all comes back to the argument over whether 'enlightened' people should be intervening in other cultures in order to save people from hurting themselves, the environment, or third parties. Should the cities turn their back on the rural populations just because they piss us off?

Anyway, now that I've babbled, I realize a problem that is much more important: "Kerry won urban areas by a whopping 60 percent--that actually represents a 15 percent drop in urban support from 2000". So, cities voted 75% for Gore and he still lost. The electoral college system prevents cities from solely determining the presidential election, which is sort of what it was designed to do. It won't help if "yay, urban rights" means that people in NYC and Seattle and San Francisco and Los Angeles and Chicago and Boston and DC vote 100% democratic. They're already in blue states.

Maybe it'll work, if we can attract the medium-sized cities, too; in Iowa and Ohio and places like that, but it seems iffy. There's still the congress problem.

Anyway, neat article. Thanks for linking it.

[socialistboy.livejournal.com]

i thought it sucked. not only do i live in backwards hickville, but i hate cities. they're fine for you, but i don't want to live in any place as big as seattle, or chicago. i miss out on a lot of "culture" living where i do, not many art shows, not many concerts, not amazing spakers... etc. but i live the slower pace of life, the fact that i can get to any edge of town in five minutes. to give up on this area of the country would have to mean going vegan, this is the feed corn and soybean capital of the nation. and, more importantly, we need help. poor progressives who live around these parts can't afford to go anywhere, and even if we did, most of us "working poor" are unskilled anyway. we'd just wind up in the same poverty we're in now, where we can get a part time job getting you coffee but not pay the rent. anyway, this is a braindead morning rant, i can give you a better argument later if you want. DON'T FUCKING ABANDON ME. :)

[gfish.livejournal.com]

The abandonment part isn't what I'm impressed by. If I were to rewrite this as a real manifesto, there is a lot I would drop. (Most of the spiteful negative comments. While I understand the anger that prompts, and think that the left deserves a couple weeks of grousing like that, it doesn't help in the long wrong.) What I like is that it provides a real framework that talks to the real core of the party. The Dems have tried to be everything to everybody for so long, we could really use a solid focus. I like the idea of the Dems not acting ashamed of their core for once. Properly done, I think it has the rhetorical capability to counteract the 'true america' bullshit that the GOP gets away with. Neither is any more true than the other, and I want a party that's willing to stand up and say so.