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Slow that city down!
I read an interesting article recently in the International edition of Der Spiegel about the "Slow Cities" movement that started in Italy and is apparently spreading in Europe and even into Asia. As the article's teaser touts, this is a movement "trying to develop livable cities, banning cars from city centers and blocking McDonald's branches and supermarkets."
A very visible component of this is keeping cars out of the city center to develop more of a pedestrian-friendly culture. Even apart from this movement, Italy--and Europe more generally--have seemed to me to have a much more pedestrian-based culture, through a combination of lively piazzas or platzes where people gather or pass through on a face-to-face basis as well as good public transit to complement the walking culture and cities that are organized in such a way as to encourage travel by foot. Even so, the Slow City movement takes this a step further, making large pedestrian zones in thriving city centers.
Less visible but perhaps even more important as a piece of this is the emphasis on local. You won't see fast food chains--or even slow food chains--and the food that comes from locally-owned eateries is also grown, raised, or produced locally. Although the article doesn't make it clear exactly how local the food production must be, it sounds like it's certainly different from the way most of us in America get our food.
Anyway, I found it to be an interesting article. There are 42 cities in Italy conforming to the movement's standards (incidentally, one of those requirements is a population of fewer than 50,000--perhaps "Slow Towns" would be more apt?) and a growing number of cities "in Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Poland, and Norway," with cities in Japan and South Korea evidently expressing interest as well.
I find it difficult, however, to imagine places in the United States getting on board with this. Our towns of 50,000 or fewer residents have by and large sold their souls to the automobile on the one hand to get around them and large corporations on the other to supply their needs.
Our zoning works decidedly against implementing "Slow City" practices, as we put our houses in suburb-like developments that are often far enough away from anything you'd want to go to that a car is a must. We wrap ourselves in the metal and glass insulation of our cars, insulating us from human contact and draining away non-renewable resources. Contrast this to these small European cities, where a good deal of housing is available close to the town's businesses, close to the places people go to work, to eat, to buy things. Meanwhile, good public transportation fills in the gaps.
We've given over our food largely to corporations; the result is food that comes to us from hundreds of miles away after having been extensively processed from its own life all the way until it reaches your styrofoam plate, exchanging natural taste for artificial flavoring. Meanwhile, the profits from such an enterprise are largely siphoned away from the community to corporate headquarters (and typically the franchise owner, who often does not live in the community) in exchange for mostly-low-wage jobs and, perhaps, lower prices for consumers. That, right there, points to one of the main effects: we become consumers only, while far few people own the means of production. Contrast that with Slow Cities, where more and more citizens have opportunities to own their own business because the large multinational companies aren't allowed in. Did you know that most millionaires get that way by owning their own business? When such entrepreneurs are running local businesses in the communities where they live, they also are spending more money in their communities, helping to support the other locally-run businesses.
The way we've organized things in our country are largely a net loss in terms of quality, in terms of economic opportunities for larger numbers of people, and in terms of community, yet it's a trade we seem happy to make for a 99 cent double cheeseburger or an abundance of cheap plastic widgets.
When my mom traveled through Europe she noticed right away how different
life is there compared to America. People live where they work. Public
transportation is used for traveling any distance outside of walking.
There is a better sense of community. She also noticed that there weren't
very many mature trees or forests. Houses were made of stone, tile, brick
and man made material instead of wood. Telephone poles were metal. Food
was very region specific. Marketing was done on the way home from work.
Large refrigerators and freezers weren't common to the average house.