Limits to Mobility
What the State should NOT do, and Do, in ecological complexity
A Fifty Year Project
This site will post extracts from my fifty-year project to find how my adopted hometown, Troy, NY, was destroyed by State projects. It is all about the formal change in our urban ecology from transit-oriented development (TOD) to auto-oriented sprawl (AOS). Yes the State bears formal accountability that must be understood within a model of complex systems in which the State has limits and responsibilities.
The Past shows the Future
My historical interest hinges around 1893 when our national government (the ultimate level of the State) paused in its manifest destiny of spatial expansion and was left with governing the urban-industrial complexity that had already developed within. It is when the exponential growth of the automobile can be detected and when the Federal highway program starts. It is when the constitutional limits on the Federal State were disregarded in favor of eminent-domain projects (EDP) within existing urban development and the industrial economy. That is the start of all the ecological and political issue that assail us now. The State is diverted from its responsibility to regulate our ecological form (as well noted in the 1972 Limits to Growth) and ever more desperately attempts projects to correct bad outcomes, e.g., the outmigration of industry due to promotion of mobility and indifference to urban form.
A community of thinkers
While I recommend deep changes in our governance form it all amounts to an accountability for risk, that is quite unexceptional in our political thinking. That is a matter of correct allocation of accountability to our hierarchical levels, more and more vital as the complexity increases. The changes cannot be understood by campaign snippets. We need to think long and deep and perhaps some of my writings will promote that.
Free Ideas to free ideas
I will make available by extracts and links my texts, that now go to thousands of pages. Boring? Try it and think. Start with this link to my most compacted draft of Limits to Mobility or https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xfrukYAY7ONGSl6MQTHcW64uSqfG_gFJ/view?usp=sharing
Cover art to LTM: Magritte’s Time Transfixed
