Sarx

On Monday, the New York Times‘ Andrew Revkin blogged the end of the 1950s - or at least he blogged a movie preview about the topic: The End of Suburbia

Revkin promises to blog attempts to “uninvent” Suburbia. The movies to which he links, which are now on my “must see” list, seem very clear about the idea. But I’m rather certain Americans don’t, generally, want to hear it. Mrs Obama said the other night, the only answer our Republican Overlords have given us to the current crisis is “shop”. The only people making sacrifices are our men and women in green - and we’re not even paying them back. We’re not asked to save canned goods or darn socks or even to buy war bonds. We’re just told to shop more.

This isn’t working - our American Greed is draining the rest of the world of peace. And we’re killing ourselves in the process: I’ve been told that Buffalo has 20,000 houses for sale - 10,000 of them boarded up and ready to be bulldozed. One person leaves western New York every 30 seconds. Nature is taking over the eastern side of Lake Erie - and yet we are building here: row on row of little houses made of ticky tacky. I’m currently living in the first generation of those: people fleeing down down urban Buffalo. And the outward flight continues.

So what are the options?

Resources like Ernest Callenbach’s ecotopia books and other advocates for high density urbanism, point toward something that isn’t normal for us at all: sharing, common ground, a decrease in “private” property concepts (although not an elimination of them) and more of a community-oriented, communal model.

Today’s news, (coincidentally?) brings us word of Israeli-style Urban Kibutzes imported to the US. (Props to nextbook.) At the same time that the USA was selling the gluttonous lifestyle of suburbia, Israel was building a new nation using Kibbutzes - collectivist farms. These new folks focus less on the collectivist farming of their elder brothers and sisters and more on social activism, but collectivism still plays a part.

Instead of abandoning the communal model embodied by the kibbutz movement and idealized by the Zionist youth groups, one Israeli youth group determined to adapt the kibbutz to the modern age. That group, called Noar Oved ve’Lomed, began to send its graduates to found small urban kibbutzim, called kvutzot, throughout Israel. Instead of a connection to the land, these kvutzot organized themselves around addressing specific social problems.

Imagine that energy tuned to the artist/social activist communities found in Buffalo and other places, seeking to bring to urban areas new life and a financial fecundity that has long since left the city centre to move out to the strip malls and Wal*marts.

This is not an appeal to gentrify: many cities (eg, San Francisco) come back to life with artist(/etc) collectives and then promptly destroy the life those folks built by bringing in huge amounts of money from the outside to buy up and destroy what has been built. On the other hand, other cities (eg, Asheville) get all fetishistic about their “cool” revitalised centre, and force the strip malls up the sides of mountains.

In modern Israeli society, the challenge of pioneering is no longer draining swamps, clearing land of rocks, bringing produce to market and building roads. The swamps that must be drained are swamps of urban poverty. The “produce” that must be generated is often hi-tech solutions that are marketed abroad. The roads that must be paved are roads of understanding between different communities in Israel. (Source.)

So to it is here, the need is not to homestead in isolated communities across the prairie or to isolate within our mega-houses, mega-churches and hummers, but rather to work in our cities to heal and renew what we have broken. And to work with those people we would leave behind - usually abandoning peoples of other races the same way we abandon slums and boarded up storefronts.

This seems to me a Jewish parallel to the New Monasticism movement within the emergent communities where the focus is to colonise the “urban Desert” with the Kingdom of Heaven. (Although, I think many of the kvuzot folks would avoid such overtly religious language.) I see this kvutzot movement as sort of a middle ground - encouraging the advancement of sustainable development within cities while, at the same time, avoiding the extremes of pure socialism and pure capitalism. Perhaps, given the lack of either of those extremes in the world, this is a more realistic approach?