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Many in China also want to own cars and have big houses and big lots--they basically want the suburbs. If it happens, then we're in for a hell of a time. However, it'll probably correct itself somehow through scarcity making fuel prohibitively expensive or someone actually figuring out how to get incredibly cheap energy.
That's already been happening for decades. You're correct that the thing that will stop it is fuel scarcity driving the price prohibitively high -- either that or some technological advance that comes along and is cheaper than burning fossil fuels to produce energy.
We actually have a fair degree of control over fossil fuel supply here in the US, so if we were actually concerned with GHG/global warming, we could just stop all extraction and leave the CO2 in the ground.
Nope, sorry, I couldn't imagine that. When I lived in DC, the people on my neighborhood listserv would completely freak out any time there was a shooting or a robbery. So could you imagine taking all of the hood element in Prince George's County, MD and putting it back into DC? The whole city would be like Johannesburg where the wealthy live in gated communities and hire private security guards.
China isn't just waiting for some technological advance to come along, they spent $40 billion last year to develop their solar power industry--which is about the same amount that the US spent subsidizing the oil industry in the same year. Yes, China uses a lot of fossil fuel, but they are seeing the negative effects--whether it is massive pollution and resulting health causes, or week-long traffic jams on their brand new freeways. Sure, the Chinese middle class may want cars, but keep in mind that China is still a highly authoritarian police state and still technically Communist--people could say "we want cars!" but if the Central Committee decides otherwise, tough luck Comrade!
I agree with you about nuclear power, Malloric--I'm particularly interested in thorium reactors, a safer alternative that was abandoned in the mid-sixties after promising trials because they didn't produce the then-desirable waste products so useful for nuclear weapons, and next-generation liquid sodium reactors. But we should continue exploring our renewable energy options--the use of liquid sodium has also been explored for solar power plants, using a large tank of liquid sodium as a thermal "battery" that would allow the plant to continue generating power at night by using the stored heat in the liquid sodium tank.
There is still plenty of fossil fuel in the ground, but the easy-to-reach stuff is mostly gone, and the stuff still in the ground is harder and/or messier to reach. This increases the cost of extraction and thus the price paid at the pump. Part of the concerns many folks have about making neighborhoods more "walkable" and "sustainable" is to reduce some of the negative effects that permanently more expensive fossil fuels will have on those who are dependent on the automobile--which is still most of us--and those who depend on fossil fueled vehicles to ship goods--which is all of us.
nei: Primarily nonwhite neighborhoods, because those neighborhoods were "redlined" under FHA rules and thus bad credit risks. The white populations in adjacent neighborhoods were typically "ethnic" Europeans--Italians, Greeks, Portuguese, Jewish, Polish, Russian--who gradually went from not being considered white to being considered white in the mid-20th century.
During the post-WWII building boom, these newly white populations often moved out of their old city neighborhoods into new suburbs, while nonwhites often moved into the recently abandoned ethnic neighborhoods if they could. And yes, white and wealthy neighborhoods were often more successful at blocking or at least redirecting freeway construction.
Where I live, the freeways created de facto walls between the white inner-core suburbs and the nonwhite neighborhoods adjacent to them, neighborhoods that in many ways are still divided by the highways' existence. A highway that was originally planned to wipe out all of our old waterfront was diverted only when one of our "old money" families (the heiress of the local newspaper fortune) championed the cause (an earlier attempt by a Portuguese businessman to do the same thing failed.)
Pretty much anywhere you find large civic edifices of the redevelopment era, there's a nonwhite neighborhood underneath. Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles is built on top of an old Mexican barrio; the St. Louis Arch on top of an old African American neighborhood; Japan Center in San Francisco was intended primarily to block the growth of the African American neighborhood in the Fillmore from moving closer to the white neighborhoods of Pacific Heights and Nob Hill.
Maybe the east coast is different, but I think of a number of civic edifices / highway developments of that era that are in white neighborhoods (maybe working class but still white). This urban renewal project I mentioned was a white area and the surrounding areas are almost entirely white (the most similar neighborhood next to it is 90% white)
There was white flight before these projects but a lot of these efforts accelerated it. Wikipedia describes how this white Pittsburgh neighborhood was blighted by urban renewal and encouraged white flight:
urban renewal was an attack on urban residents, white and non-white, there's no need to give minorities a special victim status. And likely, these areas might have remained more white if it weren't for these projects.
The BQE (Brooklyn - Queens Expressway), a mostly elevated highway in New York City was built through many white middle class areas, which are still mostly middle class though in parts less white (the whole city got more diverse). The residents now have to deal with an ugly block through their neighborhood and noise and pollution.
In Brooklyn Heights [rich neighborhood], residents in homes overlooking the highway can be awakened by trucks during the only hours they are not slowed by traffic, between 2 and 5 a.m. If a truck going 50 miles an hour hits a single pothole, or one raised seam in the road, sleep might be finished.
“When they hit these bumps, it sounds like a bomb going off,” said Bo Rodgers, who has lived in an apartment overlooking the B.Q.E. since 1975.
The state cannot afford to maintain this road ($1.1 billion for the next 3 years). I think a transit line would have made more economic sense, but I'm not sure how regional traffic and business deliveries would have worked.
I've driven on this road at midnight on a weekday at got stuck on a traffic jam. There have been other times I've driven on it when it's not so bad, and then I like it for keeping me awake because of the "interesting" road conditions and traffic patterns. A poster in a forum wondered whether stuck traffic on this road could count towards parking minimums!
Once I was on a jammed expressway in NYC, the driver (a friend) decided to drive on the shoulder to pass the traffic. Was pointless because so many other got the same idea the shoulder jammed.
I'd post example of urban renewal elsewhere in non-poor neighborhoods but I'd have to spend time doing more research.
Hmm, wasn't LA mostly white in the early 60s? The freeways must have gone through white nabes.
There was white flight before these projects but a lot of these efforts accelerated it. Wikipedia describes how this white Pittsburgh neighborhood was blighted by urban renewal and encourage white flight:
Another instance: In Cincinnati, Over-the-Rhine was an Appalachian ghetto -- low-income, but white -- until the mid-60s, when urban renewal and I-75 came barreling through.
Cincinnati's Bottoms neighborhood, destroyed to build I-71, Columbia Parkway, and Riverfront Stadium (which replaced Crosley Field, located in Over-the-Rhine near where I-75 runs now), also was mostly white, although by the time the stadium was under construction, the neighborhood had already begun to transition.
Interesting story about East Liberty in Pittsburgh, though I think its decline was exaggerated. I had some good friends who lived there in the early 70s; I recall thinking it was a nice neighborhood and considered moving there myself.
nei: LA as a whole, yes, but the downtown neighborhoods most directly affected (as in demolished) by highways were Chinatown and Japantown. Chavez Ravine was a Mexican barrio, demolished to make way for a baseball park for the Dodgers. A large Black population arrived in the early/mid 20th century. But it wasn't so much the percentage--it was where the were located, typically at the heart of downtown. Sacramento didn't have enormous nonwhite populations either--but they were located right in between the Sacramento River and the State Capitol, exactly where the city and the state wanted to put a Grand Entrance to the city.
Most of the white population lived in the newer suburbs that were made possible by highway construction--which, in Los Angeles, started before World War II, so for the most part the highways either came before the neighborhood or had minimal effect--they were built on orange groves and other agricultural uses.
Urban white neighborhoods weren't immune to the effects of redevelopment, they just weren't the primary targets: redlining had four different categories, one for wealthy white, one for working-class white, one for ethnic white and one for nonwhite. Until comparatively recently, an Irish, Italian, Portuguese, Jewish, Polish or otherwise "ethnic European" neighborhood wasn't even considered white. Such neighborhoods also had "obsolete" design, such as mixed-use buildings, or close proximity to workplaces, which downgraded their credit status. So yes, some neighborhoods could technically be "white" and still be redlined, declared "blighted" and demolished for the new office building or highway, and they were. But nonwhite neighborhoods were the highest-priority targets, and unlike whites, in the 1950s and early 1960s there were still legal barriers preventing them from moving into the suburbs, where the ethnic whites could move. So not only were nonwhites disproportionately affected by redevelopment, they had fewer options for relocation.
Urban white neighborhoods weren't immune to the effects of redevelopment, they just weren't the primary targets: redlining had four different categories, one for wealthy white, one for working-class white, one for ethnic white and one for nonwhite. Until comparatively recently, an Irish, Italian, Portuguese, Jewish, Polish or otherwise "ethnic European" neighborhood wasn't even considered white.
Likely California was different, but in the northeast, particularly New York City, by the 50s mostly whites, wealthy or working class, were "ethnic". The older stock was a very small minority, and much of the political elite was "ethnic" as well. The people in the burb I grew up in were mostly from an "ethnic white" background; the non-ethnic white was mixed in but small. I remember being surprised after leaving Long Island at the difference in last names (much fewer vowels at the ends of last names — from an Italian heritage). Also most whites were a bit lighter complexioned as there Jewish & Italian ancestry was less common.
I gave a few examples of places where urban redevelopment affected whites in my previous post, and OhioGirl added another. I just thought of a few more:
New York City thought it was a great idea to put a tower in the park housing project in every neighborhood to increase diversity. Didn't manage to finish the job, but they did a good try. More poor minorities got them than white ones, but white and non-poor neighborhoods got many too. Looking on a map, you can find them in odd random places, a bit of an ugly blight that a neighborhood is stuck with for a likely very long time into the future.
And in something closer to your example, Chicago built the Dan Ryan Expressway through a minority neighborhood and lined with a 4 mile stretch of housing towers along the expressway. More isolated and concentrated than the NY housing projects, but Chicago tore those down for whatever reason, unlike NYC which has no plans or interest in doing so.
This is the opposite of redevelopment and but partially by deliberate government design, but in the 70s large sections of NYC's poorest minority neighborhoods, especially unfilled unfilled housing, were wrecked with arson. Redlined (though with good reason) after white flight, the landlords started burning their buildings for the insurance. Tenants started fires on purpose, too. City government purposefully neglected services in the worst neighborhoods to save money. About 40% housing loss in the South Bronx in one decade, average of 15 fires / hour. I flipped through the book Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning, an interesting book on urban decline and destruction.
From what I have seen and read, in the western US Europeans shed the "ethnic" aspect earlier than in the east coast, largely because there were groups even less "white" than ethnic Europeans, so the Europeans closed ranks. It seems like even today ethnic-white identity is more pronounced and important in the eastern parts of the US, even if it isn't grounds for prejudice anymore (at least in most parts.) As I said, whites weren't immune, but the effect on nonwhites was disproportionate and the consequences more dire. Some urban historians have even argued that a lot of inner-city unrest in the 50s and 60s can be attributed to the demolition and displacement of nonwhite neighborhoods, leaving people who formerly had a neighborhood in a burned-out wasteland or poorly-run public housing projects instead of a self-supporting neighborhood.
In a lot of places, there was not enough replacement housing built to rehouse those displaced--in Sacramento, 3000 or so migrant workers were moved and not given replacement housing, on the basis that HUD only required relocation assistance or replacement housing for families, and single workers didn't count as families. Part of the consequence of this loss of low-income housing and no replacement has been an increase in homelessness--"homeless" used to include people who stayed in residential hotels, now those living long-term in hotels or motels are considered housed.
Now, in the western US, there are abandoned suburbs, some not even half-built, where there are so many foreclosures that I wouldn't be surprised if they started burning them down like the Bronx. Our "planned shrinkage" will be on the suburban fringe.
From what I have seen and read, in the western US Europeans shed the "ethnic" aspect earlier than in the east coast, largely because there were groups even less "white" than ethnic Europeans, so the Europeans closed ranks. It seems like even today ethnic-white identity is more pronounced and important in the eastern parts of the US, even if it isn't grounds for prejudice anymore (at least in most parts.) As I said, whites weren't immune, but the effect on nonwhites was disproportionate and the consequences more dire. Some urban historians have even argued that a lot of inner-city unrest in the 50s and 60s can be attributed to the demolition and displacement of nonwhite neighborhoods, leaving people who formerly had a neighborhood in a burned-out wasteland or poorly-run public housing projects instead of a self-supporting neighborhood.
In a lot of places, there was not enough replacement housing built to rehouse those displaced--in Sacramento, 3000 or so migrant workers were moved and not given replacement housing, on the basis that HUD only required relocation assistance or replacement housing for families, and single workers didn't count as families. Part of the consequence of this loss of low-income housing and no replacement has been an increase in homelessness--"homeless" used to include people who stayed in residential hotels, now those living long-term in hotels or motels are considered housed.
Now, in the western US, there are abandoned suburbs, some not even half-built, where there are so many foreclosures that I wouldn't be surprised if they started burning them down like the Bronx. Our "planned shrinkage" will be on the suburban fringe.
I agree with the bold, having grown up in a very "ethnic" as you guys call it area, and having lived here in Colorado these last 30 years. However, it's not quite that simple. I have to insert here that I don't get why Italians and Poles are considered "ethnic" while Germans, Scandinavians and Brits are not! However, that seems to be the definition of ethnic whites here in the US; that is, eastern and southern Europeans.
In western PA, those ethnic groups were recruited to work in the mills and mines, given free passage from Europe to come here. Now by the time I was alive, in the 50s, living patterns were pretty decentralized, all Italians did not live in the Bloomfield section of Pittsburgh, nor did all the Poles live in the South Side. In the mill town where I grew up, my family lived in the former Polish part of town for a while. But the big difference I see between Pittsburgh and Denver is that there simply was a larger number of "ethnics" in Pittsburgh. That meant, back in the early days of the last century, lots of Polish clubs and Croatian Clubs, Serbian Clubs, etc. Denver did have its own "Little Italy" on the NW side for many years, now long dispersed, especially to the western suburbs.
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