"As a rule of thumb, places create wealth. Non-places consume wealth."

The very concept of sprawl is pre-determined by available space. No space, no sprawl. It leads to a larger point, about place versus non-place.

My, how I detest auto-erotic automobile supremacy.

Visualizing Place vs. Non-Place, by Daniel Herriges (Strong Towns)

It started with an actual, attention-grabbing point. Then, as is the way of all things Internet, it became a snarky meme. As is also the way of all things Internet, the meme has more to it than meets the eye.

A few years ago, our good friend Steve Mouzon (author of The Original Green) shared this graphic on his blog: a juxtaposition of the Renaissance-era core of Florence, Italy with a single freeway interchange in Atlanta, Georgia. It has made the rounds repeatedly in various urbanist and transportation circles ever since.

Mouzon’s graphic (above) is intended to make a point about the gargantuan amount of land consumed by automobile infrastructure, particularly when it’s intended for high-speed driving. Speed requires wider turn radii, wider lanes, wider medians and shoulders, and buffer space to separate people and buildings from that fast, deadly traffic. The result: the same land area that could accommodate a bustling urban district of tens of thousands (Florence in 1425 had an estimated population of 60,000) is easily consumed by a single interchange.

Supersize that to the scale of a metro area like Atlanta’s, with all of its similar freeways and subsidiary feeder stroads, and you have a place where the actual destinations people want to get to are pushed so far apart by all this road space that it becomes inconceivable to travel between them without a car—necessitating even more land-hogging car infrastructure, in a vicious cycle.

Whatever “human scale” is—one imagines medieval Florence qualifies—it sure ain’t our modern highways ...

Erich Fromm: "As long as we can think of other alternatives, we are not lost; as long as we can consult together and plan together, we can hope."

The source links sprinkled throughout the text are wonderful, and the final paragraph's links are like a course outline. There's a lot to chew on here.

The Sane Society: The Great Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on How to Save Us From Ourselves, by Maria Popova (Brain Pickings)

“The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born, when we die.”

“Every advance of intellect beyond the ordinary measure,” Schopenhauer wrote in examining the relationship between genius and insanity, “disposes to madness.” But could what is true of the individual also be true of society — could it be that the more so-called progress polishes our collective pride and the more intellectually advanced human civilization becomes, the more it risks madness? And, if so, what is the proper corrective to restore our collective sanity?

That’s what the great German humanistic philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm (March 23, 1900–March 18, 1980) explores in his timely 1956 treatise The Sane Society (public library).

Fifteen years after his inquiry into why totalitarian regimes rise in Escape from Freedom, Fromm examines the promise and foibles of modern democracy, focusing on its central pitfall of alienation and the means to attaining its full potential — the idea that “progress can only occur when changes are made simultaneously in the economic, socio-political and cultural spheres; that any progress restricted to one sphere is destructive to progress in all spheres” ...

Genever for breakfast: "Going Dutch."

Encouragement for a Tuesday morning comes from the Sunday NYT magazine. Perhaps if we're fortunate, we can catch HB on break from his daily Obama bashing and elicit a comment or two.

Going Dutch, by Russell Shorto (New York Times Magazine, April 29, 2009)

But to ponder relative tax rates is only to trace the surface of a deeper story. In fact, as my time abroad has coincided with the crumpling of basic elements of the American economic and social systems, and as politicians, commentators and ordinary Americans have cast about for remedies or potential new models, I have found myself not only giving the Dutch system a personal test drive but also wondering whether some form of it could be adopted by my country.

One subtext of the World Economic Forum at Davos in January was the question of whether, amid the derailing of American-style capitalism as we have known it, the European approach, which marries capitalism and social welfare, and which in times of economic crisis seems to offer more stability both to individuals and to society, could suit the United States.