15thWardSTL.org

Here is the problem with the politicized development process in St. Louis: the people in the driver's seat don't know where they want to go and don't know how to get there. It's a sort of Zen approach where they pick someone who looks like they know where they're going and follow, figuring that wherever they end up, they probably need to be.

One of the main reasons this problem has developed is that there's simply not enough critical thinking going on regarding the cumulative effect of poor design on our physical environment. James Howard Kunstler talks about "places worth caring about" in many of his speeches and books. Essentially, he means that the human condition is improved when we live, work, and play in spaces that are rooted in "place" and that facilitate interaction through their physical design. St. Louis has a lot of these places: the Loop, Grand South Grand, Soulard, the Central West End. These places are economic engines and fuel a sense of community.

We've also got a growing list of horrible places - banal, auto-centric sprawl that depresses a sense of place and simply aren't worth caring about. This is why we have vacant strip malls just ten years after they were constructed (often at great public expense). They simply aren't worth caring about. When politicians promote development of such places, they are in effect telling us that the city isn't worth preserving. Actively promoting inclusion of a McDonald's drive-thru as part of a developing pedestrian district says "I don't understand what makes this place different from all other places".

When such differences aren't considered, understood, and celebrated, we end up accepting by default whatever is proposed, simply because it is new. It is a failure of imagination.

You Will Go to This Web Site
I'm using this introduction as a clumsy means of getting to where I really want to go with this post, which is to let you all know about TED. Those of you who have high speed internet (most of my readers) will go to this web site, and your life will be changed.

TED = Technology Entertainment Design

Take an hour and listen to these three speeches:

1. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/53
   
2. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/121
   
3. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92

Majora Carter actually had tears in my eyes.

We Know Not What We Do...
I'm going to use the following term with the knowledge that nobody under the age of 14 will care enough about these issues to have gotten this far in this article. Those between the ages of 14 and 18 probably know the term already, and anyone over 18 is legally an adult and is old enough to decide to stop reading if they feel offended.

In his TED speech, James Howard Kunstler uses the term "technosis externality clusterfuck" to describe the suburban retail strip mall environment. Brilliant. This is the same problem we have with the development process here in the City as well. Let's parse the term.

technosis: The repeated act of developing and implementing technical answers as tactical solutions to problems encountered as a result of inadequate, non-existent or misunderstood business requirements (MROToday)

externality: An incidental condition (or side effect) that does not enter into the conventional arithmetic that determines how we use our resources (adapted from The Free Dictionary)

clusterfuck: self explanatory

This is what we our representatives are allowing developers to do to our City. By believing the business interests that tell us it's impossible to build in an urban manner and depending on the technical requirements in our outdated zoning code to define our built environment (technosis) we end up promoting the destruction of the very built environment that makes the City a place worth caring about (externality). As a result, we end up in an endless destructive cycle of tearing apart our historic urban fabric in order to save it (clusterfuck).

We need a local TED - and we really, really need our local representatives to listen.