My idea of a Livable Community

vinyl upholstery works great on the floor too!

Gerteeville on a cold and sunny fall morning
low 20, high 65!

I don't think everyone shares the same ideas about what a livable community means.

My idea of a livable community is Gerteeville, Alaska where I now live. I can guarantee you, not very many people would agree with me. Too many summer tourists tell the local kids I'm "weird" for living in a tent year round.

So how does the livable world system based on perfectly managed urban density accommodate people like me? I know most Americans don't live my way, but other people do all over the world. And if we think those people aren't happy because they don't have a fully plumbed government inspected apartment and a cell phone, we are mistaken.

I really love what I've accomplished here, and I'm rather proud of it too. I've hand built every dwelling we have using both new and used materials. We have no indoor plumbing and use wood stoves for heat and cooking. We burn as much beetle killed spruce as we can get access to (difficult when there's no public wood cutting areas). We haul freshwater from the community well and use about 50 gallons per week for a household of three people. I get electric off the grid.

There is no local government here. There is no county or borough government. Our only police are State Troopers whose offices are 40 miles away. All privately owned land is tax free. There are no land use regulations and no inspectors. We have an all volunteer fire department. We live side by side with moose, fox, lynx, ravens, eagles, owls, dogs, wolves and bears.

We have severe winters and nasty summers. It was 20 above this morning at 8am. I had to get up and saw a load of firewood with a broken chainsaw that barely gave me 4 pieces of slab. Every day presents new challenges, and the only time I get to be lazy is when everything is done. But these are prices I'm willing to pay. I like my independence and honor the personal responsibility I have for my own health and safekeeping. I love opening my strange little home to strangers who meander through our wilderness. I am nourished by the closeness I feel in spirit to the people who live in our neighborhood (except for the WISE bunch, who also happen to be the communitarians out here). We are not isolated nor are we alone, and it's funny that old acquaintances who live antiseptically alone in big beautiful Seattle homes think we are. Will people ever stop projecting their own limited views of life on others?

I was introduced to Building Livable Communities in Seattle, WA in 1999.

Seattle planners told us they were rebuilding our neighborhood to be more livable. They had many new ideas for how they could possibly implement what they called our "local" vision for the future. Several of the ideas included using federal police to gather our private data.

To verify their claims that our rights to privacy and property had been "balanced" against the community, I went door to door on my block (N.E. 65th Street entrance to Roosevelt H.S.) and not one of my neighbors had any idea about the plan to build a livable community.

Over the next year I asked hundreds of Seattle residents what they thought about their plan, and the answer was always, "What Plan?"

Everyone I knew also insisted I made up the quote from the Seattle Police's Mission Statement: "To increase livability by reducing fear." Seattle neighborhood planners refused to define Livability for me. Seattle Democrat Nancy Rising thought it all sounded completely ridiculous. My repeating the planners terminology in my letters to the planners got me branded as a wacko.

My original opposition to Building Livable Communities was based on the fact that the planners lied when they claimed it was what the whole community said they wanted. When I learned Livable Communities was a communitarian idea and that a old Israeli terrorist named Amitai Etzioni was the guru for the big new idea for livability, my opposition expanded to be based against the communitarian theory behind building livable communities.

A recent commenter raised the point that our opposition appears to play into the dialectic. We've pondered that ourselves many times at this blog. The ACL Manifesto is obviously, by default, the dialectical opposite of Etzioni's communitarianism. If communitarianism is not the perfect unnamed final synthesis in the Hegelian Dialectic, it does need opposition to morph into the next planned evolutionary phase. Our antithesis proves it is not the perfect final solution to unjust social systems, because Marxist teachers told us the final dialectical synthesis/solution would be so perfect it gives rise to no opposition. We exist, therefore it cannot be perfect.

So now the question I'm sure most rational readers ask is, does the ACL exist merely because we recognized their imperfect lies or because we are their agents and we're frauds? Are we truly independent opposition or are we controlled opposition? I have no way of proving that to you. All you can wonder is why the hell we're the ONLY dedicated opposition research in the world. If there's supposed to be a "movement" arising from the people that opposes communitarianism, then based on the way that's NOT happening I'd guess we're going to be stuck in the communitarian phase of the Hegelian dialectic for a looooooong time.

Other writers have some evidence communitarianism is just another Hegelian phase of the forced evolutionary process, and I linked down on the right to Bobby Garner's Dialectical Tetrad article for those interested in the theory of Transcendence. Much of the idea is based on Alice Baily's writings, which I've yet to find time to study, and I'm guessing I'm going to learn more about it from Manley Hall when I find time to read his works. Will I stop being the opposition if I become convinced I am only helping move society toward the final Stutopian solution? Good question.

Livable Communities Coalitions and Global Livability Actions

Regardless of whether Senator Dodd's Livable Communities Act passes or not, Livable Communities will be built across the United States and all over the world. Here's a good representation of the way it's been introduced and implemented... already:

What We Stand For
Our goal is working to improve quality of life in the Atlanta region through smart growth. The Livable Communities Coalition is establishing a coordinated framework for working together to achieve its four guiding principles of smart growth. By adhering to these principles of smart growth, we can provide better choices for our citizens and businesses, reduce traffic, recycle underutilized and blighted properties, be more efficient in our use of public infrastructure, and save green space.
The Coalition advocates four principles:
Support greater densities and mixed use developments in appropriate areas, especially in our region’s centers and transportation corridors
Integrate transportation investments with appropriate land use
Increase housing choices by removing barriers that artificially restrict the market Guide how greenfield land is developed, promoting a sense of community, provide more houisng choices, leverage existing infrastructure, and conserve natural resources.

http://www.livablecommunitiescoalition.org/

In England Livable Communities are being renamed the Big Society:

Christian groups responded en­thu­siastically to the Prime Minister’s speech on the Government’s Big Society programme this week, which laid out a larger place for voluntary groups in serving local communities. Speaking in Liverpool on Monday, David Cameron said that the Govern­ment planned “the biggest, most dramatic redistribution of power from élites in Whitehall to the man and woman on the street”. It would “foster and support a new culture of voluntarism and philan­thropy”. The Evangelical Alliance said the Big Society was “an immense oppor­tunity for community service which Christians should not pass up”. The organisation’s dir­ector, Steve Clifford, said: “We are delighted that the Prime Minister has recognised the in­credible work community groups are already doing, and want to en­thusiastically encourage churches to accept his invitation to get stuck in.” The Interim director of Livability, a Christian charity that works with disabled people, Adam Bonner, said: “This new emphasis on community work could prove a great way to highlight and develop the existing long term work that many churches and Christian projects are already doing and present further oppor­tunities for involvement.” It re­mained to be seen, however, “whether there will be enough funding and support offered to implement this Big Society initiative”.

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=98079

In the Philippines it's sounding like a pretty good idea too:

Public Seminar

on “URBAN PLANNING FOR MORE LIVABLE COMMUNITIES”

on September 23, 2010 (Wednesday)

at the Central Philippine University EMC Conference Room

8am – 5pm

http://www.cpu.edu.ph/news.php?newsid=1283411556

It's ALL about the partnerships which have already been established:

For the past 30 years, Bob has led Partners to become the national leader on issues of livability and better communities. A network of over 1,000 organizations ranging from the World Wildlife Fund to the Urban Land Institute, Partners embodies the diversity and consensus-building needed in the recovery of the American city.

http://www.livable.org/about-us/staff/47

In South Africa studies in creating Livable Communities is well underway too:

The distribution of land uses can have a major influence on total transport needs, car ownership and use, the availability of alternative ways to travel and the effectiveness and viability of public transport. Government’s Policies are to encourage public transport, walking and cycling over the use of the private car. The paper presents a case study of how the coordinated spatial, urban design and transport planning approach can provide a transport system that will reduce the present excessive dependence on the private car, while providing a more efficient transportation service that supports, rather than impedes the development of a livable community.

http://repository.up.ac.za/dspace/handle/2263/5876

Building Livable Communities is like a Science for Humanity:

Supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), teams from cities in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East will exchange ideas and lessons on how they are making their cities healthier and safer places to live. These teams are composed of researchers, field experts and politicians. They are part of IDRC’s Focus Cities Research Initiative, an 8-city project where communities act as urban laboratories, testing innovative solutions to problems in such settings as landfill sites, urban agriculture plots, and water treatment facilities.

Here are just a few examples of this initiative’s unique work:

• Jakarta, Indonesia: Organic waste is collected from poor households every day and is sorted, shredded and composted in order to prevent the contamination of community water sources.
  
  
• Kampala, Uganda: In Africa’s “garden city,” local government is working with the Kawaala-Kasubi community to transform garbage into electricity, convert organic waste into fertilizer, and improve agricultural production in urban plots.
  
  
• Ariana Soukra, Tunisia: Small-scale farmers are developing new technologies to harvest greywater and rainwater to irrigate urban crops in a water-stressed environment.
  
  
• Moreno, Argentina: People from different walks of life are working closely together to address waste management and water provisions to ensure that their neighbourhoods are safer.

http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-126394-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

This is just a sampling of how this ideology has been slipped into the human consciousness around the globe. And on the surface it all seems lovely, doesn't it?