Securing the Pundit's Pulpit
Move over David Brooks, there’s a new kid in town, and he appears to be so good at conveniently missing the point as to make the bobo author look like an amateur. I am, of course, talking about Joel Kotkin, who manages to do something our favorite conservative could never quite pull off: repeat himself in a novel way every article. He does this, simply enough, by glancing at the front page—thereby discovering the newest piece of evidence that New York is dead and the future lies in Phoenix (after his artful interpretation, of course). It should therefore come as no surprise that the London attacks spell, according to Mr Kotkin’s percipient pen, the end to everything that doesn’t involve an attached garage.
Why? Well of course! Automobiles are, like airplanes, terrorism proof while trains are, as London and Madrid have demonstrated, not. Of course people will flee any city that can’t protect them from invaders so New York and London are as good as dead. That’s the thesis of his article, at any rate. And that is where Kotkin really shows himself to be a true master of the editorial page. His point here is both mind-numbingly obvious and terribly wrong at the same time.
Fresh off of writing a 256 page global history of the city, Kotkin now feels expert enough to bring history in to make his point. Now let’s take a step back for a moment. I have on good authority that Kotkin’s book is mostly a summary of Lewis Mumford’s 720 page The City in History, minus the condemnation of suburbia at the end (Mumford calls the suburbanite a member of “the lonely crowd”.) I’ve read Mumford’s tome, and it’s a very good book. But I’ve not read Kotkin’s retread—nor do I intend to—but if the history is nearly as selective and inaccurate as the history in the above referenced Washington Post article, it would appear that Mr. Kotkin should have followed Mumford much more closely.
It is true that Rome declined after the fall of the Roman empire, for instance. And it is true that the period following the fall of the Roman Empire was marked by a de-urbanization of Europe. What doesn’t hold is that people left the cities out of fear. After all, that was before the time of airliners and dirty bombs so what better protection was there than the city wall? The truth is that Europe de-urbanized because the city-based portions of the economy shrank. Most people became sustenance farmers and there simply wasn’t the economic need for markets enough to channel goods through an Empire any longer.
Mr. Kotkin also mentions South America. It would so happen that I have studied Peruvian civilization (at least) and can say that his assessment doesn’t add up. He claims that most pre-Inka civilizations in Peru fell due to invasion. Not quite. Yes, there are a few civilizations that we know fell for that reason, mainly the ones invaded by the Inka (Chimú, for instance). But for civilizations like Chavín, Nasca, Moche, and Tiwanaku, archaeologists tend to favor environmental explanations (in particular, especially bad El Niño weather inversions.) It is now believed that the cause of the downfall of the Maya was hardly invasion but rather, deforestation of the rainforest caused by their mass-producing plaster to build their terraces and walls.
And good for the Chimú, as they made out a lot better than the Moche or the Maya. Weather or an abused environment are much harsher mistresses than a foreign invader. The Inka left the Chimú kingships intact as local governors, and the Spanish chose the Inka capital city of Cuzco as the seat of their imperial government. Kotkin mentions the Aztecs and fails to note that their capital city, Mexico City, is now the capital of Mexico and the largest city in North America—some say the world.
Sometimes invaders do try to destroy a city. In 146 BC, Carthage was defeated by Rome, its population massacred, its buildings burned to the ground, its harbor destroyed and, reportedly, its fields salted. Yet Carthage rebuilt, and within a few hundred years it was second only to Constantinople in the western Roman Empire.
The point is that security is rarely an impetus for the city. Cities exist for other reasons. They exist to provide markets, to be seats of government, to facilitate that free-flowing, unplanned, and unrestricted human interaction that is necessary to maintain great civilization. In return, cities have been ravaged by war, or disease, or disinvestment, or by the forces of nature, but it is only the last of those that can truly destroy a great city.
Now in the 1950s, the US government feared WWII-style strategic-bombing raids on American cities. They advocated dispersal. The interstate highway system was built to allow rapid evacuation and to open the suburbs to development. Then thermonuclear weapons were invented and it became a futile gesture. But we did succeed in dispersing, and in doing so became the most wasteful energy users on the planet. Is it any wonder that the Arab world—the very place that breeds the terrorists—also produces the oil that makes supposedly “safe” cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles possible? Moreover, what of the environment? We are set to become, not the next Chimú, not the next Carthage, but rather, the next Maya. So I have to ask, is the plaster really worth it?
[Jul 25, 2005] | [cities] | # | G
