Tag Archives: kotkin

The Prophet of Micropolis

Vince DeSantis

Vince DeSantis

Vincent DeSantis, the author of “Toward Civic Integrity: Re-establishing the Micropolis,” published eleven years ago, works in the spirit of Holly Whyte: quietly, carefully and with great acuity. Vince was my host, at his B&B, on my trips to Gloversville, New York. He is a Gloversville native, an attorney, served as the City Court judge in town for years and is now the at-large member of the city’s Common Council. He’s the moving force behind many of the good things happening in Gloversville. What I didn’t know, I suppose because of his reserve and modesty, is that he wrote a book that was years ahead of its time and that even today should be essential reading for everyone involved in placemaking. Back in 2007, Vince was conclusively making the case for small cities and how to revitalize them.

The book is available here: http://www.amazon.com/Toward-Civic-Integrity-Re-establishing-Micropolis/dp/1933994258/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1529418592&sr=1-1&refinements=p_27%3AVincent+DeSantis or here:

http://shoptbmbooks.com/toward_civic_integrity.html.

A Ted Talk by Vince on the topic can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1qEpNWJGSk.

“Towards Civic Integrity” describes why the small city is a rewarding place to live and how it provides a fruitful medium for supporting an enriched civil society, using Gloversville as an example. Vince discusses how the economies of small cities work – how they add value to raw materials by making things and selling them to the world beyond, thereby creating wealth. He describes the social bonds that are created among citizens of small cities – and how small cities promote civic engagement and simple neighborliness. The book identifies the problems created for localities by capital markets and large corporations driven by lowering the prices for manufacture – and both their utility and their indifference to localities and human impacts. His vision for the future for Gloversville, articulated a decade before I came to similar conclusions after a couple of visits, was of a relatively low-cost, high quality of life for creative people (in the broadest sense) who engage in small-scale manufacture of high quality goods and delivery of unique services. This is economy made possible by the internet and efficient modern delivery systems – and replaces the manufacturing economy.

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TAKING SUBURBIA SERIOUSLY

 

34 Collamore Pic

The house in the suburbs in which I grew up.

 

Joel Kotkin’s latest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us, poses some serious challenges to those of us who focus on urban revitalization, downtown development and the improvement of public spaces. In essence, he asks the question: “What about the suburbs” and using persuasive data argues that it is where most people want to live – and not just here in the United States, but in most developed and developing places around the world. Kotkin’s point is that most people want an affordable place to live, where they can bring up their children, have a yard, a sense of community and good schools – and that means places outside the urban core.

Kotkin distinguishes his analysis from that of Richard Florida, New urbanists and such-like, by saying that while it may be true that over the last couple of decades people are moving back Downtown, and that this may be a good thing, the data shows that it is rather a limited phenomenon and most people still want to live in the ‘burbs. But he goes much further than that. He argues that because of limitations put on housing unit expansion in desirable cities, and the resulting increased density, they are becoming too expensive for any families but the most wealthy. As a result, fertility rates in urbanizing countries are beneath replacement level. Kotkin says that in many/most major cities around the world, since having kids is so expensive, people have stopped having them. His ultimate argument is that in order for countries to grow and remain economically healthy, they need to create policies to encourage affordable housing creation on the peripheries of cities; and those homes should be detached, with yards and a sense of neighborhoods and have good schools. In his final chapter he demonstrates that there are plenty of resources and space to accomplish this. Continue reading