In Defense of a Ghost Town
John Schwenkler, discussing a few other posts in which density is invoked as the Holy Grail of urban planning, points out that by definition, urbanism won’t help rural America:
The real problem, though, is that most of the areas where people are emitting the most carbon per capita and spending the largest portions of their income on gasoline are ones where urbanist solutions are maximally unlikely to work. In the first place, as I have already mentioned, such areas tend to be those in which the local economies are not “thriving”, and it seems a bit cold-hearted to suggest that we pursue economic policies that will turn large portions of the American landscape into ghost towns.
Call me heartless, but I say bring on the ghost towns! Appalachia, for instance, is full of putative “communities” that only stay afloat thanks to severance taxes, disability checks, and Oxycontin sales. A glance at this map shows the combined effect of high fuel prices, long commutes, and lousy wages on Appalachian counties. The coalfields were only populated as densely as they were because self-contained enclaves of corporate micro-statism suited the needs of the industry at the moment it emerged into national and global prominence. Even then, though, right-thinking parents encouraged their children to get educated and eventually leave. Now, on the other hand, politicians sell economic development to nervous parents as a way to keep the next generation close by, even if the young people are all driving an hour to work at a call center.
Heartless.
— southpaw · Jun 12, 05:28 AM · #
You really, really, really need to read some Wendell Berry and some Wes Jackson as well. This post could only have been written by someone who has never considered in any thoughtful way the human connection with the natural environment.
— PDGM · Jun 12, 01:56 PM · #
Right – I say bring on the ghost town! I can think of another town that’s entirely dependent on government largesse, drug trades, and statist interventions. But what would we do with DC?
— Michael Simpson · Jun 12, 02:16 PM · #
PDGM sez:
“You really, really, really need to read some Wendell Berry and some Wes Jackson as well. This post could only have been written by someone who has never considered in any thoughtful way the human connection with the natural environment.”
I sez:
Well, the people living in those towns should, too, right? According to Berry, shouldn’t most them become farmers? Isn’t the issue with rural America (at least how Berry and Jackson see it) that factory farming and poor farming practices in general led to the destruction of farming as a productive, family-focused activity?
I think urbanists like JH Kunstler would agree that reviving small scale farming (which can be done in a more localized manner around cities, by the way, which then limits the distance the food must travel) is absolutely critical for surviving the Long Emergency.
— bjanaszek · Jun 12, 02:42 PM · #
No mention of the phrase “Ghost Town” should lack a reference to The Specials in the comment section.
— Mark in Houston · Jun 13, 12:12 AM · #
PDGM-
Does Wendell Berry think the “human connection with the natural environment” is best served by turning rural residents into Supermax guards, Wal-Mart greeters, and state dependents? Because I missed that essay.
nichevo-
Thanks for trolling at The American Scene! Bye for now.
This is too good to be true: the two commenters in high dudgeon over my affront to the yeoman farmer are from Los Angeles and Brooklyn. They can be forgiven, then, for thinking that the counties I’m referring to have any non-forestry agriculture to speak of. Sure, there are some farmers in the coalfields, but it’s mostly the sort of crops that the state troopers look for from helicopters.
I’m not sure what these Agrarian Avengers have in mind when they picture places like Pike County, KY or McDowell County, WV, but I suspect it involves hardscrabble farmers — noble savages in overalls who spit laconically in the dust for punctuation. Just like their daddies and their daddies’ daddies did.
What actually remains in the really bombed-out parts of Appalachia, the places from which anyone with the ability should move tomorrow, is the leftovers of a labor pool that was imported two generations back to feed the maw of industry, and has been kept there through a combination of policies — some well-intentioned, others less so, some self-imposed, some imposed by the outside. Confusing these places with the absolutely idyllic counties to the east and west, where family farms still thrive and towns are functional, is a patronizing mistake.
— Matt Frost · Jun 13, 04:25 AM · #
This sounds about right, and dovetails with a Salam post re investment in Buffalo: http://theamericanscene.com/2007/10/30/booming-buffalo.
The government should invest in people, not places. However, I can’t really envision the incentives for elected officials to follow that kind of formula. They’re elected to represent a place and so they will lobby for projects in their districts. Why would they support policies that will cause their constituents to move from Wilcox County to Atlanta?
— Ilya Gerner · Jun 13, 06:06 PM · #
Spot on commentary.
— Dave Barnes · Jun 13, 06:36 PM · #
Wow! I’m an Agrarian Avenger! Where’s my uniform? Matt’s tone is lame, though, and he’s never read Berry very well. Might there be something wrong with economies that allow ruralish communities Wal Mart and penal institution work, but not a lot else? This is the Berry I’m talking about: the smaller economies of scale, so that smaller communities are not simply victims, but in part authors of their own fates.
And certainly, this would involve a refiguring on the part of the people directly involved. Maybe this smaller economy needs to be accompanied by—or led by—some greater independence on the part of the people involved as well.
And I’m not sure your version of some rural folk, Matt, in the negative, is any less cartoonish than the version you are attributing—falsely—to me. I’d be willing to bet I spend more time in marginal rural communities than you do, and deal with the people in them. These aren’t in Appalachia, but I don’t think that matters.
— PDGM · Jun 13, 11:33 PM · #
PDGM-
All “marginal rural communities” are not created equal. I’m arguing that the particular histories of some localities mean that they are now an affront to “the human connection with the natural environment,” rightly understood. These are places that are naturally unfit for residential agglomeration, even by independent people living in a wholesome economy who have read enough Berry to know what’s involved in controlling their own destinies.
You and I probably share a similar vision of what a rightly ordered American economy would look like, at least on some points. I think it’s safe to assume that in our ideal world, people would distribute themselves differently than they do now. You don’t have to be a raving Kunstlerite to think that some suburban tracts are unsustainable without cheap petroleum and would become superfluous in a healthier social and political context. Why shouldn’t the same thing apply to certain blighted rural areas that were settled by industry, for industry?
The West is dotted with those 19th century ghost towns whose residents left when either the demand for labor or the supply of minerals was exhausted. In the eastern coalfields, the local demand for labor dwindled just as automobiles became widely available, so gas-powered mobility could mask the hard reality that nearby jobs had vanished. The rise of the long-distance commute allowed communities to slowly wither without disappearing altogether. Thanks to the automobile, the dregs of the modern service economy, and the political mandate to preserve every place at any cost, it’s possible to keep these towns on dignity-free life support. But that NY Times map shows just how expensive it can get for the people who live there.
— Matt Frost · Jun 14, 11:37 AM · #