A New Map for America
April 16, 2016 9:16 AM Subscribe
Seven? I thought there were 12 districts?
posted by phunniemee at 9:24 AM on April 16, 2016 [72 favorites]
posted by phunniemee at 9:24 AM on April 16, 2016 [72 favorites]
No way are you gonna get Boston and New York to be part of the same state. We can barely stand being part of the same country.
Seriously. Shouldn't the tri-state area be its own state in any new setup?
posted by hobgadling at 9:25 AM on April 16, 2016 [3 favorites]
Seriously. Shouldn't the tri-state area be its own state in any new setup?
posted by hobgadling at 9:25 AM on April 16, 2016 [3 favorites]
Remarkable how the map and the agenda reminds one of the Baby Bells back in the day.
posted by halfbuckaroo at 9:39 AM on April 16, 2016 [10 favorites]
posted by halfbuckaroo at 9:39 AM on April 16, 2016 [10 favorites]
I was all prepared to come into this thread full of vim and vigor about the subject, but after reading the article, I see that it isn't proposing that we get rid of state boundaries. Instead, it is talking about recognizing how the country has naturally evolved to organize itself into regions, and that by recognizing the regions we might be able to make better infrastructure and funding plans going into the future.
I was a BIT shocked to see that Albuquerque - Denver is considered an urban corridor, but there is nothing going between Albuquerque and El Paso, which is a closer distance and is in a lot of ways more important (including the El Paso / Juarez junction, which has a lot to do with manufacturing under NAFTA, etc).
Also a bit shocked that there is no direct Seattle - Minneapolis connection shown as a proposed high speed rail route. We already have a lot of rail running between the Midwest and Seattle directly, connecting with Spokane, Missoula, Butte and other points in-between.
Honestly, I wish the US would come up with a comprehensive, nationwide plan to update its infrastructure in bold ways that would involve dedicated passenger rail routes so Amtrak could be dependably somewhat on schedule outside of the Boston-DC corridor.
posted by hippybear at 9:41 AM on April 16, 2016 [21 favorites]
I was a BIT shocked to see that Albuquerque - Denver is considered an urban corridor, but there is nothing going between Albuquerque and El Paso, which is a closer distance and is in a lot of ways more important (including the El Paso / Juarez junction, which has a lot to do with manufacturing under NAFTA, etc).
Also a bit shocked that there is no direct Seattle - Minneapolis connection shown as a proposed high speed rail route. We already have a lot of rail running between the Midwest and Seattle directly, connecting with Spokane, Missoula, Butte and other points in-between.
Honestly, I wish the US would come up with a comprehensive, nationwide plan to update its infrastructure in bold ways that would involve dedicated passenger rail routes so Amtrak could be dependably somewhat on schedule outside of the Boston-DC corridor.
posted by hippybear at 9:41 AM on April 16, 2016 [21 favorites]
I'm sure The Senate would love voting hemselves out of power.
Maybe after the great coming psycho-militia-god vs the cities war coming later this century we'll end up with a map like this.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:41 AM on April 16, 2016 [3 favorites]
Maybe after the great coming psycho-militia-god vs the cities war coming later this century we'll end up with a map like this.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:41 AM on April 16, 2016 [3 favorites]
I think the basic idea is that instead of driving decision-making based upon old affinity groups like states there should be decision-making based upon these new affinity groups that are clustered around regional economic mega-cities.
This allows for decision-making that crosses traditional boundaries such as MA, NY, DC, PA to incorporate regional cross-state decision-making power that reflects that the needs of Boston and New York and Philly and DC are closer in alignment than the needs of NYC and small areas of upstate New York. So instead of NYC being subject to the political needs of rural New York you have decisions that reflect the economic, demographic and organizational needs of city clusters.
Basically think of it this way. Boston-NYC-Philly-DC has become Megacity One and all the other areas of the states in which Megacity One have become the rural wasteland that is effectively ruled by mutant warlords.
posted by vuron at 9:43 AM on April 16, 2016 [10 favorites]
This allows for decision-making that crosses traditional boundaries such as MA, NY, DC, PA to incorporate regional cross-state decision-making power that reflects that the needs of Boston and New York and Philly and DC are closer in alignment than the needs of NYC and small areas of upstate New York. So instead of NYC being subject to the political needs of rural New York you have decisions that reflect the economic, demographic and organizational needs of city clusters.
Basically think of it this way. Boston-NYC-Philly-DC has become Megacity One and all the other areas of the states in which Megacity One have become the rural wasteland that is effectively ruled by mutant warlords.
posted by vuron at 9:43 AM on April 16, 2016 [10 favorites]
To be clear, the author is not advocating dissolving the 48 states and reforming them into 7 mega-states. He's talking about rethinking investment of infrastructure in a way that doesn't stop at state lines.
That said, this plan to get past state-oriented thinking by Congress seems to involve... Magic, I guess. He asks the next president to "get past platitudes" as if President Trump's sheer force of will will get Congress to change their entrenched and obstructive ways. Or that a majority of the House and Senate will read this op-ed and be persuaded?
posted by ejs at 9:43 AM on April 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
That said, this plan to get past state-oriented thinking by Congress seems to involve... Magic, I guess. He asks the next president to "get past platitudes" as if President Trump's sheer force of will will get Congress to change their entrenched and obstructive ways. Or that a majority of the House and Senate will read this op-ed and be persuaded?
posted by ejs at 9:43 AM on April 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
I'm sure The Senate would love voting hemselves out of power.
I'm sure you would love reading the article before commenting.
posted by beerperson at 9:47 AM on April 16, 2016 [22 favorites]
I'm sure you would love reading the article before commenting.
posted by beerperson at 9:47 AM on April 16, 2016 [22 favorites]
For my own amusement, I'd like to believe that this article will accidentally become the seed of a conspiracy theory about a plot by THEM to reshape the country, the way that a professor's concept of an "amero" somehow became enshrined in the fears of Moon Lawyers.
This is wishful thinking, but not unappealing. Maybe such concepts could put the brakes on the kind of decisionmaking we've seen in Mississippi and NC, where the Republican governments have pushed through hateful bills and cost their citizens millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs to spite other states and please their rural bases. But, for that very reason, I doubt it would ever gain traction.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:52 AM on April 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
This is wishful thinking, but not unappealing. Maybe such concepts could put the brakes on the kind of decisionmaking we've seen in Mississippi and NC, where the Republican governments have pushed through hateful bills and cost their citizens millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs to spite other states and please their rural bases. But, for that very reason, I doubt it would ever gain traction.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:52 AM on April 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
Hippybear, most the underlying map is based upon the definitions of megapolises as defined by the regional planning association (RPA). The Front Range Megapolis for instance is technically Albuquerque to Colorado Springs-Denver and then Cheyenne.
In rare cases you have a city actually being a part of two megapolis such as the case of Houston existing in the Texas Triangle Megapolis (DFW, Austin, Houston, San Antonio) and the Gulf Megapolis (Corpus, Houston, New Orleans, Mobile, Pensacola).
Basically these megapolis regional groups need to be able to transcend traditional city and state boundaries and operate on regional footprints perhaps even raising taxes on a regional level so that they can enact policies that make sense for their citizens.
posted by vuron at 9:52 AM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
In rare cases you have a city actually being a part of two megapolis such as the case of Houston existing in the Texas Triangle Megapolis (DFW, Austin, Houston, San Antonio) and the Gulf Megapolis (Corpus, Houston, New Orleans, Mobile, Pensacola).
Basically these megapolis regional groups need to be able to transcend traditional city and state boundaries and operate on regional footprints perhaps even raising taxes on a regional level so that they can enact policies that make sense for their citizens.
posted by vuron at 9:52 AM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
Until there's some sort of special district where Albuquerquites and Denverzens and Cheyenners pay taxes for their region's infrastructure I don't see how this will get done.
posted by Monochrome at 10:11 AM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Monochrome at 10:11 AM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's hard to imagine a thing like that.
posted by Monochrome at 10:12 AM on April 16, 2016
posted by Monochrome at 10:12 AM on April 16, 2016
This is an excellent approach to infrastructure planning. We've seen it in the past with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (one organization).
In the SF Bay Area, we often can't even get neighboring counties and cities to think on a bigger scale than themselves.
posted by eye of newt at 10:13 AM on April 16, 2016 [7 favorites]
In the SF Bay Area, we often can't even get neighboring counties and cities to think on a bigger scale than themselves.
posted by eye of newt at 10:13 AM on April 16, 2016 [7 favorites]
strangely, there is no call for the gloabal and regional revitalization of labor unions in the piece that I could find.
posted by mwhybark at 10:15 AM on April 16, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by mwhybark at 10:15 AM on April 16, 2016 [3 favorites]
No way are you gonna get Boston and New York to be part of the same state. We can barely stand being part of the same counry.
If Boston and New York are in a rivalry, it's one that New York knows nothing about.
posted by Automocar at 10:18 AM on April 16, 2016 [23 favorites]
If Boston and New York are in a rivalry, it's one that New York knows nothing about.
posted by Automocar at 10:18 AM on April 16, 2016 [23 favorites]
... seed of a conspiracy theory about a plot by THEM to reshape the country ...
The Donald? The Man in the High Castle?
posted by kneecapped at 10:25 AM on April 16, 2016
The Donald? The Man in the High Castle?
posted by kneecapped at 10:25 AM on April 16, 2016
This allows for decision-making that crosses traditional boundaries such as MA, NY, DC, PA to incorporate regional cross-state decision-making power
That is such a great idea. There's a vague proposal floated around from time to time to break the Greater Toronto Area off into its own province, pretty much entirely because of regional concerns and how difficult it is to develop sane policy across an area about a third that of the USA. There are some bits and pieces happening--transit is becoming more centralized at a regional level, though not taking the logical step of single integrated fares right across the entire system, Presto notwithstanding--but it's slow going.
I think easier to sell politically in the USA too, maybe? I feel like you could play on state patriotism much easier than we can appeal to the regional stakeholders up here. Like for you, state politicians can be all "The Great State of _______ is leading the way to a better future for ______ and ______" and have it heard in a way that like, trying to get some sort of real support behind Hamilton linking up with Niagara Falls, or getting anyone to want to do anything with Toronto is difficult. Does that make any sense?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:26 AM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
That is such a great idea. There's a vague proposal floated around from time to time to break the Greater Toronto Area off into its own province, pretty much entirely because of regional concerns and how difficult it is to develop sane policy across an area about a third that of the USA. There are some bits and pieces happening--transit is becoming more centralized at a regional level, though not taking the logical step of single integrated fares right across the entire system, Presto notwithstanding--but it's slow going.
I think easier to sell politically in the USA too, maybe? I feel like you could play on state patriotism much easier than we can appeal to the regional stakeholders up here. Like for you, state politicians can be all "The Great State of _______ is leading the way to a better future for ______ and ______" and have it heard in a way that like, trying to get some sort of real support behind Hamilton linking up with Niagara Falls, or getting anyone to want to do anything with Toronto is difficult. Does that make any sense?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:26 AM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
so glad to see the hard line between arkansas and oklahoma remain. although, northwest arkansas would much more likely make it over to tulsa than little rock.
posted by nadawi at 10:27 AM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by nadawi at 10:27 AM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
My favorite part is how the article is all, "this will totally help Appalachia, too, because . . . uh, wineries? And a transportation corridor!" And then you look at the map and not only is there no such transportation corridor, the actual territory of Appalachia sits on the borderlands of 3 different regions, thus perpetuating all of the problems this is trying to solve.
posted by Copronymus at 10:29 AM on April 16, 2016 [19 favorites]
posted by Copronymus at 10:29 AM on April 16, 2016 [19 favorites]
Didn't someone do this 30 years ago or so?
Joel Garreau wrote The Nine Nations of North America in 1981, but I think his focus was as much about culture as it was about economics.
posted by Johnny Assay at 10:36 AM on April 16, 2016 [3 favorites]
Joel Garreau wrote The Nine Nations of North America in 1981, but I think his focus was as much about culture as it was about economics.
posted by Johnny Assay at 10:36 AM on April 16, 2016 [3 favorites]
Entrenched rural poverty wouldn't be solved by this plan but let's keep in mind the current state system doesn't exactly do a great job with issues if entrenched rural poverty either.
Many problems will continue to have to be handled at a national level and some of the underlying issues that contribute to complex problems like rural poverty probably require other regional or national structures to help solve.
However maintenance of the current balkanized system limits coherent response to regional issues
posted by vuron at 10:52 AM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
Many problems will continue to have to be handled at a national level and some of the underlying issues that contribute to complex problems like rural poverty probably require other regional or national structures to help solve.
However maintenance of the current balkanized system limits coherent response to regional issues
posted by vuron at 10:52 AM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
I prefer the attempts to do this that try to match the putative electoral influence of each region.
posted by belarius at 10:59 AM on April 16, 2016
posted by belarius at 10:59 AM on April 16, 2016
Yeah, Indy to Chicago is no 'urban corridor' unless you're counting the wind farms as people.
posted by leotrotsky at 11:01 AM on April 16, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by leotrotsky at 11:01 AM on April 16, 2016 [3 favorites]
My favorite part is how the article is all, "this will totally help Appalachia, too, because . . . uh, wineries? And a transportation corridor!"Yeah, that struck me too. I think that regional planning is a really good idea, but I can't see how this helps those of us who are out in the hinterlands. It seems to increase the focus on metropolitan areas and to reinforce marginalization of anyone who's not in a metropolitan area and/or on the high-speed train lines. What does this mean for Wichita or Santa Fe or Sioux Falls or Lincoln or any of a lot of smaller places that aren't on this map?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:05 AM on April 16, 2016 [6 favorites]
Wind farms are people, my friend.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 11:05 AM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Pater Aletheias at 11:05 AM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
I like visiting the wind farms in the spring, just after all the new winds have been born, and they are frolicking in the fields that have fresh flowers... It's just great to know those young winds will grow up to be full-grown winds that will be slaughtered harvested for all our mutual consumption and benefit.
posted by hippybear at 11:08 AM on April 16, 2016 [17 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 11:08 AM on April 16, 2016 [17 favorites]
This article isn't proposing doing away with states, but I can't figure out what actual useful purpose they serve. A national reorganization that eliminated states and left the nation with one consistent set of laws, one way to fund schools, one consistent tax policy, etc, would surely be more efficient. All the feds to establish whatever regional grouping is necessary for administrative purposes, and allow them to shift boundaries, add or consolidate regions as needed. Retain county and city governments for fine grained policy focused on matters of local concern only.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 11:15 AM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Pater Aletheias at 11:15 AM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
For me there are two major sections of our nation: those states paying more in taxes than they get back in various services from the federal govt.; and those states paying less and getting more back from the govt.
posted by Postroad at 11:16 AM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Postroad at 11:16 AM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
This version of regional planning seems to ignore all of the regional cultures we already have.
The Appalachia example upthread is a great example, and this map breaks lots of places that have alliances and tie together lots that want to stand alone.
Montana Wyoming and Idaho should stay together. Minnesota is excluded from the Great Lakes, and Iowa probably should get lumped with Minnesota and Wisconsin and not the more Southern states.
posted by littlewater at 11:17 AM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
The Appalachia example upthread is a great example, and this map breaks lots of places that have alliances and tie together lots that want to stand alone.
Montana Wyoming and Idaho should stay together. Minnesota is excluded from the Great Lakes, and Iowa probably should get lumped with Minnesota and Wisconsin and not the more Southern states.
posted by littlewater at 11:17 AM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
Pater Aletheias: The US is built on a russian-nesting-doll set of inefficiencies in how it works, in order to keep any actual progress from happening too quickly unless there is truly a majority swell of social movement that entirely stacks everything (local, state, federal) governments with the same party, in which case a lot of gigantic things can happen.
Otherwise, in every branch of government from every level of government from city to county to state to federal, it's all stacked against that kind of wave of change from happening.
This is both a blessing and a curse.
posted by hippybear at 11:20 AM on April 16, 2016 [8 favorites]
Otherwise, in every branch of government from every level of government from city to county to state to federal, it's all stacked against that kind of wave of change from happening.
This is both a blessing and a curse.
posted by hippybear at 11:20 AM on April 16, 2016 [8 favorites]
Iowa probably should get lumped with Minnesota and Wisconsin and not the more Southern states.I could make a case for the green zone extending to the western Des Moines suburbs. Eastern Iowa is more like Illinois. Western Iowa is more like Nebraska.
But mostly, I don't think the guy who made this map is very interested in the regions he's got in blue and orange. They're kind of afterthoughts.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:22 AM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
Basically, when it comes to the US making actual forward national progress toward being efficient and making decisions that actually make sense for the country as a whole, we approach the world just like the detective Monk.
posted by hippybear at 11:22 AM on April 16, 2016
posted by hippybear at 11:22 AM on April 16, 2016
Yeah Iowa is probably where some of the real lakes meets east meets plains happens.
posted by littlewater at 11:25 AM on April 16, 2016
posted by littlewater at 11:25 AM on April 16, 2016
First move in the game: yellow takes Richmond-Norfolk.
posted by ctmf at 11:34 AM on April 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by ctmf at 11:34 AM on April 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
I think the basic idea is that instead of driving decision-making based upon old affinity groups like states there should be decision-making based upon these new affinity groups that are clustered around regional economic mega-cities.
trimet is like this! (but on a much smaller scale ;)
Joel Garreau wrote The Nine Nations of North America in 1981, but I think his focus was as much about culture as it was about economics.
The eleven nations of America
also btw...
-The Eleven States Of Violence
-What The Nation's First Electoral Map Reveals About Today's Partisan Divide
-U.S. Redrawn As 50 States With Equal Population
-Patchwork Nation
-America the big
posted by kliuless at 11:36 AM on April 16, 2016 [7 favorites]
trimet is like this! (but on a much smaller scale ;)
Joel Garreau wrote The Nine Nations of North America in 1981, but I think his focus was as much about culture as it was about economics.
The eleven nations of America
also btw...
-The Eleven States Of Violence
-What The Nation's First Electoral Map Reveals About Today's Partisan Divide
-U.S. Redrawn As 50 States With Equal Population
-Patchwork Nation
-America the big
posted by kliuless at 11:36 AM on April 16, 2016 [7 favorites]
Seven? I thought there were 12 districts?
Some of those were in Canada and Mexico.
posted by WizardOfDocs at 11:51 AM on April 16, 2016
Some of those were in Canada and Mexico.
posted by WizardOfDocs at 11:51 AM on April 16, 2016
One word -- "O.N.A.N."
posted by hwestiii at 12:21 PM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by hwestiii at 12:21 PM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
and that by recognizing the regions we might be able to make better infrastructure and funding plans going into the future.
That's the bind. State boundaries create divisions between groups of people in the same situation, especially when those lines are drawn half-way across a river or some other geographic feature. But state lines are arbitrage zones, generating friction, exploiting difference: state income tax on one side, sales tax on the other side; fireworks on one side, liquor on the other side. Louisville has Clarksville-Jeffersonville; Portland has Vancouver, Kansas City MO has Kansas City KS.
The US mostly sucks at federated government, not least because it was the first to try states and made all the mistakes of an innovator. States are very much empowered to do stupid things, but not really empowered to do smart things, especially on a larger regional basis.
What does this mean for Wichita or Santa Fe or Sioux Falls or Lincoln or any of a lot of smaller places that aren't on this map?
It sort of means that you bought it, you own it. A lot of smaller places in what you might call the American Outback currently do okay because they have two US senators acting on their behalf. The US has always had marginal areas that don't really want to be anything other than marginal, and they get propped up somehow because Heartland America.
posted by holgate at 12:49 PM on April 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
That's the bind. State boundaries create divisions between groups of people in the same situation, especially when those lines are drawn half-way across a river or some other geographic feature. But state lines are arbitrage zones, generating friction, exploiting difference: state income tax on one side, sales tax on the other side; fireworks on one side, liquor on the other side. Louisville has Clarksville-Jeffersonville; Portland has Vancouver, Kansas City MO has Kansas City KS.
The US mostly sucks at federated government, not least because it was the first to try states and made all the mistakes of an innovator. States are very much empowered to do stupid things, but not really empowered to do smart things, especially on a larger regional basis.
What does this mean for Wichita or Santa Fe or Sioux Falls or Lincoln or any of a lot of smaller places that aren't on this map?
It sort of means that you bought it, you own it. A lot of smaller places in what you might call the American Outback currently do okay because they have two US senators acting on their behalf. The US has always had marginal areas that don't really want to be anything other than marginal, and they get propped up somehow because Heartland America.
posted by holgate at 12:49 PM on April 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
Ha, but what of the vast Peninsular Cabal of the 1840's.
posted by clavdivs at 12:54 PM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by clavdivs at 12:54 PM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
States based on other vital infrastructure
posted by clew at 12:55 PM on April 16, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by clew at 12:55 PM on April 16, 2016 [3 favorites]
The emerging infrastructure problem for the Gulf Coast would appear to be whether to seawall or dome, given coastlines to come.
posted by y2karl at 1:43 PM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by y2karl at 1:43 PM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
This article isn't proposing doing away with states...
Well why the hell not?!
posted by evilDoug at 1:47 PM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
Well why the hell not?!
posted by evilDoug at 1:47 PM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
"Great" Northeast? I get Great Lakes and Great Plains, but plain "Northeast" seems fine to me.
posted by TedW at 1:55 PM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by TedW at 1:55 PM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
Didn't the Roman emperor Diocletian do the same thing by breaking up the provinces into smaller pieces and organizing them into an overarching structure of dioceses? Sure, its all sunshine and moonbeams in the short run, but then over time you've got to deal with all the Huns and Visigoths and other riff-raff turning up...
posted by Captain l'escalier at 2:04 PM on April 16, 2016
posted by Captain l'escalier at 2:04 PM on April 16, 2016
Yeah, thanks but no thanks.
I'd rather my small city of 100,000 people not have to compete with San Francisco, for god's sake, for allocation of resources.
On a state level, at least we have a fighting chance, though we are often outvoted by the much larger primary metro area.
But in a regional planning authority where we contend against cities that have greater population than my entire state? Forget it.
posted by madajb at 2:27 PM on April 16, 2016
I'd rather my small city of 100,000 people not have to compete with San Francisco, for god's sake, for allocation of resources.
On a state level, at least we have a fighting chance, though we are often outvoted by the much larger primary metro area.
But in a regional planning authority where we contend against cities that have greater population than my entire state? Forget it.
posted by madajb at 2:27 PM on April 16, 2016
they get propped up somehow because Heartland America
You're not going to find a more passionate urbanite than me, but the people who live outside these zones of denser settlement are citizens, too. We can't just pack them up and move them out at gunpoint, nor can we just leave them to wallow in their misery (even if they do keep rejecting federal aid dollars because brown and/or lazy people might get some). This article seems remarkably indifferent to the plight of the people left out of these zones. This matters even if I'm not sure why anyone living in a city of 100,000 people feels entitled to a disproportionate share of resources.
posted by praemunire at 2:54 PM on April 16, 2016
You're not going to find a more passionate urbanite than me, but the people who live outside these zones of denser settlement are citizens, too. We can't just pack them up and move them out at gunpoint, nor can we just leave them to wallow in their misery (even if they do keep rejecting federal aid dollars because brown and/or lazy people might get some). This article seems remarkably indifferent to the plight of the people left out of these zones. This matters even if I'm not sure why anyone living in a city of 100,000 people feels entitled to a disproportionate share of resources.
posted by praemunire at 2:54 PM on April 16, 2016
Parag Khanna is a senior fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.
posted by bukvich at 2:56 PM on April 16, 2016
posted by bukvich at 2:56 PM on April 16, 2016
This feels like another attempt for coastal liberals to get rid of those heartland rubes that ruin everything, like that Jesusland vs The United States of Canada map so popular after the election of Bush 2.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 3:00 PM on April 16, 2016
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 3:00 PM on April 16, 2016
We can't just pack them up and move them out at gunpoint, nor can we just leave them to wallow in their misery (even if they do keep rejecting federal aid dollars because brown and/or lazy people might get some).Wow. You realize that some of us live in those places, right? Like, we're right here and we can hear you.
Sometimes Metafilter feels really gross.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:08 PM on April 16, 2016 [23 favorites]
You're right, map-maker. Seattle, Portland, S.F., L.A. and San Diego are all alike. That's adorable.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 3:11 PM on April 16, 2016
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 3:11 PM on April 16, 2016
Love this post; esp thanks to Kliuless for the wonderful links.
11 nations was a fun read for me, and even with some quibbles left a permanent mark on my thinking - highly recommended.
Still, this article doesn't suggest an end to states. A beautiful dream to be sure, but any real attempt a new civil war too.
Where the authority should lie to accomplish the stated aims of the writer though....?
posted by Alter Cocker at 3:14 PM on April 16, 2016
11 nations was a fun read for me, and even with some quibbles left a permanent mark on my thinking - highly recommended.
Still, this article doesn't suggest an end to states. A beautiful dream to be sure, but any real attempt a new civil war too.
Where the authority should lie to accomplish the stated aims of the writer though....?
posted by Alter Cocker at 3:14 PM on April 16, 2016
Any map that has a skinny "Left Coast" state that still includes Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley makes no sense to me. (I spent a year of my life living and working south of Fresno... it WAS Another Country)
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:20 PM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:20 PM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
Looks like the map of North America in 1993's Syndicate.
posted by MarchHare at 3:20 PM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by MarchHare at 3:20 PM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
I can't agree with ArbitraryAndCapricious enough.
Metafilter is at it's grossest when discussing rural areas or the poor, and really shines when discussing both at the same time. I'd love to say it's gotten better over the years, but it hasn't. If we aren't all racist monsters, we're poor desperate people who need the big helpful hand of a city to show us the way to prosperity, as urban areas really have the whole "employment, crime and education" part locked down. Ya'll are obviously miles ahead, at least where it's just white people.
We can't just pack them up and move them out at gunpoint, nor can we just leave them to wallow in their misery
Oh, and my family fled to the rural US to flee people actually trying to move us into cities at gunpoint because we were not 'useful' to that nation in the eyes of the urban people, a movement that killed every last member of my family that didn't flee to the rural US, so maybe think a little bit before referring to actual techniques of genocide in reference to your fellow citizens, especially after calling yourself out as sympathetic to us?
posted by neonrev at 3:36 PM on April 16, 2016 [17 favorites]
Metafilter is at it's grossest when discussing rural areas or the poor, and really shines when discussing both at the same time. I'd love to say it's gotten better over the years, but it hasn't. If we aren't all racist monsters, we're poor desperate people who need the big helpful hand of a city to show us the way to prosperity, as urban areas really have the whole "employment, crime and education" part locked down. Ya'll are obviously miles ahead, at least where it's just white people.
We can't just pack them up and move them out at gunpoint, nor can we just leave them to wallow in their misery
Oh, and my family fled to the rural US to flee people actually trying to move us into cities at gunpoint because we were not 'useful' to that nation in the eyes of the urban people, a movement that killed every last member of my family that didn't flee to the rural US, so maybe think a little bit before referring to actual techniques of genocide in reference to your fellow citizens, especially after calling yourself out as sympathetic to us?
posted by neonrev at 3:36 PM on April 16, 2016 [17 favorites]
Speaking as a Heartland Rube, many of us welcome the idea of high-speed rail corridors linking major cities via smaller regional cities; it would make some kinds of industry more viable in our smaller towns, make the big cities more accessible to us via regional centers (which is how most of rural America is organized thanks to the Northwest Ordinance and the railway towns -- evenly-spaced small towns around relatively evenly-spaced regional centers that link to major urban centers). In the midwest, it's pretty common for state universities (especially flagships but also directional states) to be in outlying regional centers which are cheaper and smaller than the big urban centers, which provide counterweight to the big urban centers. Like, the idea of urban corridors and linking up regional cities to major urban centers is the logic of the entire organization of our part of the country. Farms rely on small towns; small town rely on regional centers; regional centers rely on big urban centers like Chicago. The logic of our transit system, our distribution system (both from farms to urban tables, and from warehouses to small-town stores), our cultural networks -- they're all aligned to this idea of urban networks and transit corridors. The Big Ten midwestern colleges desperately want high-speed rail corridors to link our college towns with Chicago and Minneapolis and St. Louis and Indianapolis. (They've done economic impact work that puts the economic impact for outlying regional cities into the tens of billions of dollars.) The small midwestern cities are champing at the bit to get those corridors which will spur development in smaller regional cities (like I live in), especially as our passenger rail networks have died off since the 1970s. We clearly understand the importance of transit networks since small cities out here live and die by the interstate; small towns thrive or die by connection to regional transit networks (state highways, rail spurs, river ports).
We're not morons. Many of us even have college educations! We understand the economics of living in non-urban areas, and lots of us support smart big-city urban development initiatives because they're good for us in the hinterlands. Especially when they're tied to regional transit and infrastructure improvements. What's good for Chicago is usually also good for Peoria and Decatur and Moline and Chambana, and all the little farming towns that depend on those regional cities. When downstate is set in competition against Chicago for a limited pool of dollars for health or education, that's not so good. But economic growth in Chicago is typically very good for us downstate. We're not dumb. We know Chicago is the beating heart of Illinois and its strength feeds all us arterial locations downstate and helps us grow. It's be pretty freaking awesome if growth in St. Louis could more directly help East St. Louis (Illinois) and if growth in Indianapolis could provide a more direct boost to Danville and so on.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:38 PM on April 16, 2016 [26 favorites]
We're not morons. Many of us even have college educations! We understand the economics of living in non-urban areas, and lots of us support smart big-city urban development initiatives because they're good for us in the hinterlands. Especially when they're tied to regional transit and infrastructure improvements. What's good for Chicago is usually also good for Peoria and Decatur and Moline and Chambana, and all the little farming towns that depend on those regional cities. When downstate is set in competition against Chicago for a limited pool of dollars for health or education, that's not so good. But economic growth in Chicago is typically very good for us downstate. We're not dumb. We know Chicago is the beating heart of Illinois and its strength feeds all us arterial locations downstate and helps us grow. It's be pretty freaking awesome if growth in St. Louis could more directly help East St. Louis (Illinois) and if growth in Indianapolis could provide a more direct boost to Danville and so on.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:38 PM on April 16, 2016 [26 favorites]
The direct expression of coastal elitism and hatred/misunderstanding of non-megalopolis America expressed in this thread and then supported by others immediately thereafter in this thread is horrific, and I thought that MetaFilter was better than this.
posted by hippybear at 4:15 PM on April 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 4:15 PM on April 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
The US benefits from being a multi-polar nation, where it's just as easy to have major corporations in Des Moines or Cincinnati as in New York or LA. Deregulation of a variety of industries has already led to centralization of the economy in just a handful of 'winner' metropolitan areas; this proposal would only increase that process. It's not just bad for the hinterlands, but it's also bad for Detroit and Omaha.
And what's the deal with the 'Gulf Coast' region? Does this guy really just want to make sure each stretch of coastland is its own region?
posted by crazy with stars at 4:30 PM on April 16, 2016
And what's the deal with the 'Gulf Coast' region? Does this guy really just want to make sure each stretch of coastland is its own region?
posted by crazy with stars at 4:30 PM on April 16, 2016
The Gulf Coast identified themselves as a region in the discussion around Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill.
He's drawing these lines based on infrastructure, economics, geography, and - least important - demographics. Not culture.
But see, there's only one region where those all line up, and that's the Northeast Corridor, which is why this looks like it was written by a New Englander with blinders on. The Northeast is unique in that it's always been a cohesive region, ever since we were colonies. It's not just the rest of the country lumping us together as "Northeast liberals". We are a cohesive region bound together by a shared economy, infrastructure, and culture, we've always been treated as such, and we've gotten the benefit of "regional solutions". (Why yes, we would like a highway/rail line/high-speed train from Boston to DC, because politicians have been making that commute since before DC existed.) And these regional solutions really, really work for us.
It's so odd to me to see: "I'd rather my small city of 100,000 people not have to compete with San Francisco, for god's sake, for allocation of resources."
Because it's not a competition here - that is the opposite of what's happening. The only reason New Jersey has railways is because New York and Philadelphia wanted them too.
But I'm pretty sure you don't have to, like, forcibly group places together as a region. These connections emerge naturally, in quirks of history and geography. If Denver and Las Vegas have common interests, they would already be pursuing them .... probably.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 4:57 PM on April 16, 2016 [5 favorites]
He's drawing these lines based on infrastructure, economics, geography, and - least important - demographics. Not culture.
But see, there's only one region where those all line up, and that's the Northeast Corridor, which is why this looks like it was written by a New Englander with blinders on. The Northeast is unique in that it's always been a cohesive region, ever since we were colonies. It's not just the rest of the country lumping us together as "Northeast liberals". We are a cohesive region bound together by a shared economy, infrastructure, and culture, we've always been treated as such, and we've gotten the benefit of "regional solutions". (Why yes, we would like a highway/rail line/high-speed train from Boston to DC, because politicians have been making that commute since before DC existed.) And these regional solutions really, really work for us.
It's so odd to me to see: "I'd rather my small city of 100,000 people not have to compete with San Francisco, for god's sake, for allocation of resources."
Because it's not a competition here - that is the opposite of what's happening. The only reason New Jersey has railways is because New York and Philadelphia wanted them too.
But I'm pretty sure you don't have to, like, forcibly group places together as a region. These connections emerge naturally, in quirks of history and geography. If Denver and Las Vegas have common interests, they would already be pursuing them .... probably.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 4:57 PM on April 16, 2016 [5 favorites]
The direct expression of coastal elitism and hatred/misunderstanding of non-megalopolis America--
Um. I hear the repeated whacking of straw men.
The United States was set up as an anti-urban nation, because big European-style cities were not to be trusted at both ends of the class scale: they empowered the elites, but they also potentially empowered the mob. The French Revolution made all this very obvious. So you get state capitals that are often set aside from the biggest city, and a federal capital that's its own entity. The US is still culturally Jeffersonian even if the economy is Hamiltonian.
If Denver and Las Vegas have common interests, they would already be pursuing them .... probably.
Well... maybe. But anti-urbanism is baked into the system on so many levels. It shapes the political rhetoric in which cities and "politicians in [city]" are the problem. Cities are structurally disempowered -- not just the big cities, but any city of any decent size -- by restrictions on annexation, and by the carving out of white-flight municipal hinterlands. That itself is a problem when it's describing where most people actually live. It is a problem when coalitions of loudly anti-urban politicians gerrymander themselves into power and govern with spite, treating cities like restive foreign provinces. It is a problem when people moving to cities from other states are seen as a threat because they bring their [elsewhere] values, whatever that might mean. It is a problem when cities in different states attempt to collaborate and their respective state governments decide to slam the door.
Clearly there are flaws in this particular map and regional model. But there are also areas outside those regional zones -- deep rural Appalachia, for instance -- that assert pride in being disconnected, which forces young people growing up in those areas to choose whether to stay within a world of narrow limits or GTFO.
(Eyebrows McGee: I think you're right that the Northwest Ordinance and the grid system had a huge influence on setting up the hierarchies and networks that you identify in the midwest. It's different where the roads are twisty.)
posted by holgate at 6:35 PM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
Um. I hear the repeated whacking of straw men.
The United States was set up as an anti-urban nation, because big European-style cities were not to be trusted at both ends of the class scale: they empowered the elites, but they also potentially empowered the mob. The French Revolution made all this very obvious. So you get state capitals that are often set aside from the biggest city, and a federal capital that's its own entity. The US is still culturally Jeffersonian even if the economy is Hamiltonian.
If Denver and Las Vegas have common interests, they would already be pursuing them .... probably.
Well... maybe. But anti-urbanism is baked into the system on so many levels. It shapes the political rhetoric in which cities and "politicians in [city]" are the problem. Cities are structurally disempowered -- not just the big cities, but any city of any decent size -- by restrictions on annexation, and by the carving out of white-flight municipal hinterlands. That itself is a problem when it's describing where most people actually live. It is a problem when coalitions of loudly anti-urban politicians gerrymander themselves into power and govern with spite, treating cities like restive foreign provinces. It is a problem when people moving to cities from other states are seen as a threat because they bring their [elsewhere] values, whatever that might mean. It is a problem when cities in different states attempt to collaborate and their respective state governments decide to slam the door.
Clearly there are flaws in this particular map and regional model. But there are also areas outside those regional zones -- deep rural Appalachia, for instance -- that assert pride in being disconnected, which forces young people growing up in those areas to choose whether to stay within a world of narrow limits or GTFO.
(Eyebrows McGee: I think you're right that the Northwest Ordinance and the grid system had a huge influence on setting up the hierarchies and networks that you identify in the midwest. It's different where the roads are twisty.)
posted by holgate at 6:35 PM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
"It's different where the roads are twisty."
Oh, I don't go to those places, there be dragons there. ;)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:36 PM on April 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
Oh, I don't go to those places, there be dragons there. ;)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:36 PM on April 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
Oh, I don't go to those places, there be dragons there. ;)
The Dragoons left a while ago.
posted by srboisvert at 7:11 PM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
The Dragoons left a while ago.
posted by srboisvert at 7:11 PM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
But anti-urbanism is baked into the system on so many levels.
Okay, get serious. Talk to me when literally every politician of note is not from an 'Urban' area (and get real, ~100,000 is a serious urban area, despite how desperate you are to be 'rural'. Talk to me when you're <30,000, <10,000, anything bigger is truly urban and cannot talk at all to rural issues. I've lived in 30,000+, 5,000, 15,000 and towns of less than 60.) Talk to me when the nearest hospital is an hour away, and still lacks basic scans like a mammogram or serious heart care. Talk to me when NE, SD, ND, WY and MO are not amoung the most ignored states in the union, except when we can draw funds for big state DNC candidates to laugh at us after the national abandons us to the GOP. My friends in SD fought more than one trans-phobic bill to death, a bathroom bill like NC, fucking hard-nosed bastards that argued its irrelevance to the people who would have voted for it, who put themselves in the way of physical violence I have also faced, who fight on the exact same grounds as a comfortable liberal in Berkeley with far more actual threat, and with far less chance of success. They will get no credit. People said it was the boycott against traveling to the Black Hills that did it. I am incredibly sick of taking crap off of big city folks, especially when urban centers are amoung the strongest Trump areas. Deal with your own bigots before decrying me for mine.
Talk to me when screwing over my friends and family in the ranching industry didn't draw laughs and condemnation over food stamps in the Mefi community when a blizzard in '13 ruined many of my conservative beef ranchers friend's lives, and some liberals too, caught up in an industry mefi doesn't like.
posted by neonrev at 7:34 PM on April 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
Okay, get serious. Talk to me when literally every politician of note is not from an 'Urban' area (and get real, ~100,000 is a serious urban area, despite how desperate you are to be 'rural'. Talk to me when you're <30,000, <10,000, anything bigger is truly urban and cannot talk at all to rural issues. I've lived in 30,000+, 5,000, 15,000 and towns of less than 60.) Talk to me when the nearest hospital is an hour away, and still lacks basic scans like a mammogram or serious heart care. Talk to me when NE, SD, ND, WY and MO are not amoung the most ignored states in the union, except when we can draw funds for big state DNC candidates to laugh at us after the national abandons us to the GOP. My friends in SD fought more than one trans-phobic bill to death, a bathroom bill like NC, fucking hard-nosed bastards that argued its irrelevance to the people who would have voted for it, who put themselves in the way of physical violence I have also faced, who fight on the exact same grounds as a comfortable liberal in Berkeley with far more actual threat, and with far less chance of success. They will get no credit. People said it was the boycott against traveling to the Black Hills that did it. I am incredibly sick of taking crap off of big city folks, especially when urban centers are amoung the strongest Trump areas. Deal with your own bigots before decrying me for mine.
Talk to me when screwing over my friends and family in the ranching industry didn't draw laughs and condemnation over food stamps in the Mefi community when a blizzard in '13 ruined many of my conservative beef ranchers friend's lives, and some liberals too, caught up in an industry mefi doesn't like.
posted by neonrev at 7:34 PM on April 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
I think there are 11 regions in American Nations, which I recommend a lot but its a pretty helpful way to figure out so much about American politics.
Alternatively, here 50 states redrawn with equal population.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 9:02 PM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
Alternatively, here 50 states redrawn with equal population.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 9:02 PM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
No, it's stupid to have "regions" go north and south across most of a continent.
posted by Docrailgun at 9:49 PM on April 16, 2016
posted by Docrailgun at 9:49 PM on April 16, 2016
That American Nations map is hilarious. How'd you like to govern New France? I wonder how they decided where to split First Nation and Far West. The Midlands seems to be there just to keep everyone else from fighting.
posted by Mitheral at 10:00 PM on April 16, 2016
posted by Mitheral at 10:00 PM on April 16, 2016
crazy with stars: "The US benefits from being a multi-polar nation, where it's just as easy to have major corporations in Des Moines or Cincinnati as in New York or LA. Deregulation of a variety of industries has already led to centralization of the economy in just a handful of 'winner' metropolitan areas; this proposal would only increase that process."
Yes. London's domination of the UK (and especially England) is considered to be rather a problem, I believe.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:33 PM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
Yes. London's domination of the UK (and especially England) is considered to be rather a problem, I believe.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:33 PM on April 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
The "lol rubes" comments are gross and, worse, uninformed. It had seemed like I was seeing less of those for a while but maybe that was selective reading on my part.
I like the map a lot, in terms of highlighting both regional infrastructure and economic activity, but it seems to downplay east-west connections over creating north-south linkages, which is why the regions are pretty much all elongated on the north-south axis. Some of that must reflect that our east-west infrastructure is already pretty good, and was put in place a long time ago, while the north-south connections (especially to Mexico and Canada) never captured the national imagination in the same way.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:13 AM on April 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
I like the map a lot, in terms of highlighting both regional infrastructure and economic activity, but it seems to downplay east-west connections over creating north-south linkages, which is why the regions are pretty much all elongated on the north-south axis. Some of that must reflect that our east-west infrastructure is already pretty good, and was put in place a long time ago, while the north-south connections (especially to Mexico and Canada) never captured the national imagination in the same way.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:13 AM on April 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Eastern Iowa is more like Illinois.
You take that back!
posted by the christopher hundreds at 4:27 AM on April 17, 2016
You take that back!
posted by the christopher hundreds at 4:27 AM on April 17, 2016
You can tell that this article was written by someone who hasn't thought much about the American West, because he talks about combining infrastructure without mentioning water at all. Among other things, his districts in the West separate Denver and L.A. from their major water sources, and they separate Seattle and Portland from their major sources of hydroelectric power.
He also seems to think that it's not worth going north-south in most of the mountain West. It's true that all of the railroads in that part of the West currently run along the same east-west lines that were built in the 1800's (when it was most important to the railroad builders to transport goods in and out of the West), but that doesn't mean that it should stay that way forever.
posted by colfax at 5:25 AM on April 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
He also seems to think that it's not worth going north-south in most of the mountain West. It's true that all of the railroads in that part of the West currently run along the same east-west lines that were built in the 1800's (when it was most important to the railroad builders to transport goods in and out of the West), but that doesn't mean that it should stay that way forever.
posted by colfax at 5:25 AM on April 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
Cities get their way until they do something the state doesn't like, e.g. raising the minimum wage, or municipal fiber, or banning fracking. I still fail to see any roadmap to super-powerful metropolitan regions.
posted by Monochrome at 6:08 AM on April 17, 2016
posted by Monochrome at 6:08 AM on April 17, 2016
I was going to post about """High Speed Rail Lines!!1!""" that seem to have stops every half hour to every hour in the NE, west coast, and some internal regions.
But really, it doesn't matter how it looks. They're all about as likely to happen under a GOP controlled house and senate.
posted by Slackermagee at 6:25 AM on April 17, 2016
But really, it doesn't matter how it looks. They're all about as likely to happen under a GOP controlled house and senate.
posted by Slackermagee at 6:25 AM on April 17, 2016
Among other things, his districts in the West separate Denver and L.A. from their major water sources, and they separate Seattle and Portland from their major sources of hydroelectric power.
I think he is looking mostly at economic activity to derive his zones, and hence water (which we don't price or value in market terms) doesn't show up, nor does the political power of industries like farming or mining. And, as you note, it elides the extent to which resource extraction (like upstream watersheds) from inland hinterlands contributes to urban economic activity and should be considered when drawing up maps of regions.
It's a funny omission, because the big hydro projects (including the Bonneville Power Administration out west and the TVA in the east) and the huge federal irrigation projects implemented by the BOR like the Columbia Basin Project are picture-perfect examples of regional planning across state and even national boundaries. (The TVA is mentioned in the article in passing.)
I guess he is mostly talking about high speed rail as a way to better connect major economic centers and that would be a great thing, but like the early twentieth century water projects suggest there are other boundaries besides economic zones that matter, and key constituencies that need to be on board to get big infrastructure implemented.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:32 AM on April 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
I think he is looking mostly at economic activity to derive his zones, and hence water (which we don't price or value in market terms) doesn't show up, nor does the political power of industries like farming or mining. And, as you note, it elides the extent to which resource extraction (like upstream watersheds) from inland hinterlands contributes to urban economic activity and should be considered when drawing up maps of regions.
It's a funny omission, because the big hydro projects (including the Bonneville Power Administration out west and the TVA in the east) and the huge federal irrigation projects implemented by the BOR like the Columbia Basin Project are picture-perfect examples of regional planning across state and even national boundaries. (The TVA is mentioned in the article in passing.)
I guess he is mostly talking about high speed rail as a way to better connect major economic centers and that would be a great thing, but like the early twentieth century water projects suggest there are other boundaries besides economic zones that matter, and key constituencies that need to be on board to get big infrastructure implemented.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:32 AM on April 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
My favorite part is how the article is all, "this will totally help Appalachia, too, because . . . uh, wineries? And a transportation corridor!" And then you look at the map and not only is there no such transportation corridor, the actual territory of Appalachia sits on the borderlands of 3 different regions, thus perpetuating all of the problems this is trying to solve.
It's especially glaring when he doesn't even bother running a line down the Shenandoah Valley to Roanoke to Bristol to Eastern Tennessee.
The problem also arises with the Ozarks which are weirdly cut off from the 'Southern' region and stuck at the very bottom of the Mid-West/Great Plains region, when the Ozarks have much stronger ties to the South.
posted by Atreides at 7:21 AM on April 17, 2016
It's especially glaring when he doesn't even bother running a line down the Shenandoah Valley to Roanoke to Bristol to Eastern Tennessee.
The problem also arises with the Ozarks which are weirdly cut off from the 'Southern' region and stuck at the very bottom of the Mid-West/Great Plains region, when the Ozarks have much stronger ties to the South.
posted by Atreides at 7:21 AM on April 17, 2016
Talk to me when the nearest hospital is an hour away, and still lacks basic scans like a mammogram or serious heart care.
Talk to me when you finally accept that parts of the continental US are not just "rural" but "remote", and similar in character to the Australian Outback, and that "remote" inevitably means a different provision of services to that found where people live in some degree of density.
I am incredibly sick of taking crap off of big city folks, especially when urban centers are amoung the strongest Trump areas. Deal with your own bigots before decrying me for mine.
You're still whacking away at straw men.
And how exactly are, say, the residents of NC's more urban areas meant to "deal with" a majority in the legislature that draws its support from gerrymandered exurban and rural districts? You can't vote out people who don't represent you. Are they meant to relocate en masse in order to change the electoral demographics? Engage in selective assassination?
If you don't see the structural anti-urbanism that gives South Dakota two senators for a population the size of municipal Charlotte, or if you think the Dakotas and backwoods Minnesota are "ignored" when the federal government heavily underwrites the cost of flights there, I can't really help you. There is a huge amount of infrastructure investment simply to make life in the remotest corners of the US liveable by modern expectations, and at least some of that is done because the US still regards itself as a pioneer homesteading nation and extends certain privileges to those taming the land.
posted by holgate at 8:57 AM on April 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Talk to me when you finally accept that parts of the continental US are not just "rural" but "remote", and similar in character to the Australian Outback, and that "remote" inevitably means a different provision of services to that found where people live in some degree of density.
I am incredibly sick of taking crap off of big city folks, especially when urban centers are amoung the strongest Trump areas. Deal with your own bigots before decrying me for mine.
You're still whacking away at straw men.
And how exactly are, say, the residents of NC's more urban areas meant to "deal with" a majority in the legislature that draws its support from gerrymandered exurban and rural districts? You can't vote out people who don't represent you. Are they meant to relocate en masse in order to change the electoral demographics? Engage in selective assassination?
If you don't see the structural anti-urbanism that gives South Dakota two senators for a population the size of municipal Charlotte, or if you think the Dakotas and backwoods Minnesota are "ignored" when the federal government heavily underwrites the cost of flights there, I can't really help you. There is a huge amount of infrastructure investment simply to make life in the remotest corners of the US liveable by modern expectations, and at least some of that is done because the US still regards itself as a pioneer homesteading nation and extends certain privileges to those taming the land.
posted by holgate at 8:57 AM on April 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Parag Khanna is a senior fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.
Yeah, Parag Khanna can be interesting most of the time, but sometimes comes across as a city-state fetishist of sorts, partly influenced by Singapore's success (in whatever way you may define it). There's a case to be made for regional planning and productivity boost from urban centers, but this somehow feels lacking to me; why that's the case is an interesting question to ask, and one that I'm too sleepy to answer.
posted by the cydonian at 9:15 AM on April 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
Yeah, Parag Khanna can be interesting most of the time, but sometimes comes across as a city-state fetishist of sorts, partly influenced by Singapore's success (in whatever way you may define it). There's a case to be made for regional planning and productivity boost from urban centers, but this somehow feels lacking to me; why that's the case is an interesting question to ask, and one that I'm too sleepy to answer.
posted by the cydonian at 9:15 AM on April 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
I read Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America, by Patrick J. Carr & Maria J. Kefalas, this past weekend. The central premise of the book is simple: Two sociologists lived in a small northwestern Iowa town for a year or two, interviewed both present and past residents, then tried to answer the question "Who stays and who goes?"
The "Let's answer these questions" chapter points out that if rural communities are to survive, much less thrive, in the 21st century, they need access to better infrastructure:
I think the op-ed in the FPP certainly handles the former in its proposal. I would love to see a related follow-up discussing how to prepare people for a future in which the composition and character of their communities changes.*
* (And this isn't just a "oh, those small towns!" thing. Some of the most provincial and resistant-to-changing-times-and-different-people folks I've run across are longtime San Franciscans, New Yorkers or DC residents. An urban zip code is no guarantee of a cosmopolitan state of mind.)
posted by sobell at 10:43 AM on April 17, 2016 [5 favorites]
The "Let's answer these questions" chapter points out that if rural communities are to survive, much less thrive, in the 21st century, they need access to better infrastructure:
Simply put, globalization readiness -- without human- and digital-capital investments in the countryside's labor forces -- means that better-equipped metropolitan areas will always have the upper hand in attracting and developing new industries.What is striking about Hollowing Out the Middle is how it separates out the discussion of practical infrastructure in the age of globalization from the discussion of social infrastructure -- i.e. some rural communities' challeges in living with a heterogenous population.
I think the op-ed in the FPP certainly handles the former in its proposal. I would love to see a related follow-up discussing how to prepare people for a future in which the composition and character of their communities changes.*
* (And this isn't just a "oh, those small towns!" thing. Some of the most provincial and resistant-to-changing-times-and-different-people folks I've run across are longtime San Franciscans, New Yorkers or DC residents. An urban zip code is no guarantee of a cosmopolitan state of mind.)
posted by sobell at 10:43 AM on April 17, 2016 [5 favorites]
Yeah, Parag Khanna can be interesting most of the time, but sometimes comes across as a city-state fetishist of sorts, partly influenced by Singapore's success (in whatever way you may define it). There's a case to be made for regional planning and productivity boost from urban centers, but this somehow feels lacking to me; why that's the case is an interesting question to ask, and one that I'm too sleepy to answer.
Is the new market urbanism overrated? - "Singapore should inspire more social science. Pararg Khanna, who lives in Singapore, also has a new book out on cities and the value of interconnectivity: Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civiliation. I haven't read it yet but here is his TED talk on the same."
For me there are two major sections of our nation: those states paying more in taxes than they get back in various services from the federal govt.; and those states paying less and getting more back from the govt.
-America's fiscal union
-Which States Rely the Most on Federal Aid?
-Who's the fiscally conservative party, again?
posted by kliuless at 11:07 AM on April 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
Is the new market urbanism overrated? - "Singapore should inspire more social science. Pararg Khanna, who lives in Singapore, also has a new book out on cities and the value of interconnectivity: Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civiliation. I haven't read it yet but here is his TED talk on the same."
- Birth rates in cities are too low, so highly urbanized countries such as Singapore and South Korea will have difficulty sustaining themselves. Making cities nice, while it brings human benefits, does not solve this problem and in some ways makes it worse.
- Lots of high-density, vertical building doesn't really make cities cheaper. In fact it sucks more talent in, and more business activity, and in the longer run makes cities more expensive. Just look at Seoul and Singapore, which have built plenty but are nonetheless considered some of the most expensive cities to live in. After all, isn’t that the increasing returns to scale story?
- Half of all Americans live in the red counties, half live in the orange counties
- US Map Re-sized Based on Local GDP Contributions
- Proportionate Property Value Animation
For me there are two major sections of our nation: those states paying more in taxes than they get back in various services from the federal govt.; and those states paying less and getting more back from the govt.
-America's fiscal union
-Which States Rely the Most on Federal Aid?
-Who's the fiscally conservative party, again?
posted by kliuless at 11:07 AM on April 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
Any map that has a skinny "Left Coast" state that still includes Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley makes no sense to me. (I spent a year of my life living and working south of Fresno... it WAS Another Country)
I spent 18+ years in Modesto (does that make me MeFi's designated San Joaquin Correspondent?) and while I think the Coast Ranges definitely mark a profound cultural barrier (especially compared to the Continental Divide that separates the orange and blue regions), the economic connection is pretty tight. There were tons of people when I was growing up who commuted two or three hours each way from the Valley, because the Bay Area is where the jobs are. There are still commuter rails that take people all the way from Stockton to San Jose.
Talk to me when literally every politician of note is not from an 'Urban' area (and get real, ~100,000 is a serious urban area, despite how desperate you are to be 'rural'.
Harry Reid is from Searchlight, NV (pop <1,000).
Paul Ryan is from Janesville, OH (pop ~60,000).
Joe Biden represented a state where the biggest city has 70,000 people.
posted by psoas at 11:26 AM on April 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
I spent 18+ years in Modesto (does that make me MeFi's designated San Joaquin Correspondent?) and while I think the Coast Ranges definitely mark a profound cultural barrier (especially compared to the Continental Divide that separates the orange and blue regions), the economic connection is pretty tight. There were tons of people when I was growing up who commuted two or three hours each way from the Valley, because the Bay Area is where the jobs are. There are still commuter rails that take people all the way from Stockton to San Jose.
Talk to me when literally every politician of note is not from an 'Urban' area (and get real, ~100,000 is a serious urban area, despite how desperate you are to be 'rural'.
Harry Reid is from Searchlight, NV (pop <1,000).
Paul Ryan is from Janesville, OH (pop ~60,000).
Joe Biden represented a state where the biggest city has 70,000 people.
posted by psoas at 11:26 AM on April 17, 2016 [4 favorites]
But see, there's only one region where those all line up, and that's the Northeast Corridor, which is why this looks like it was written by a New Englander with blinders on. The Northeast is unique in that it's always been a cohesive region, ever since we were colonies.
Uhh, the 'Northeast' as a region is a 20th century development. Before that New England and New York were at one another's throats.
But way to confirm our suspicions that the author is out to get everyone not in the Northeast. If regional solutions work well for the Northeast but not elsewhere, reorienting the government around metropolitan regions would benefit the Northeast at the expense of everyone else.
posted by crazy with stars at 2:26 PM on April 17, 2016
Uhh, the 'Northeast' as a region is a 20th century development. Before that New England and New York were at one another's throats.
But way to confirm our suspicions that the author is out to get everyone not in the Northeast. If regional solutions work well for the Northeast but not elsewhere, reorienting the government around metropolitan regions would benefit the Northeast at the expense of everyone else.
posted by crazy with stars at 2:26 PM on April 17, 2016
Paul Ryan is from Janesville, OH (pop ~60,000).
Paul Ryan is from Janesville, Wisconsin...which is about an hour or less from three major urban centers (Rockford, IL, Madison, WI, and Milwaukee, WI) each with metro areas between 300,000 and 1 mil people. It's more or less a lesser populated city within a matrix of urban areas and would not be categorized as rural, by any reach, for all but the most weathered urbanite Wisconsinites. It's also part of the Wisconsin Metropolitan Statistical Area, so the region of Wisconsin with the highest population density. While obviously differing compared to other areas of the country, in the midwest, a city with a population of 60,000 is still considered to be a respectable size...not really rural, but also not urban...especially when it's in close proximity to other cities. But this is coming from a Wisconsinite from a town of less than a thousand in the least populated part of the state.
If you don't see the structural anti-urbanism that gives South Dakota two senators for a population the size of municipal Charlotte
...and one Representative, so literally the minimum amount of representation that the Constitution will allow in both the House and the Senate, the House being the only part of Congress that's supposed to take population into account when assigning representation. Every state gets two Senators, regardless of population, to help ensure areas with larger populations aren't running the show all the time at the expense of the rest of the country and the Representatives are proportionally allocated to help balance it all out. It's not perfect, but I don't exactly see another system that'll work reasonably well for the needs of both urban and rural areas.
Honestly, I don't even understand why conversations over rural areas always tend to head in this direction, as if we can just stop caring about them and they will "inevitably" just crumble away or something? Rural areas will exist as long as agriculture, forestry, natural resources, and energy production are major industries needed for the rest of the country. That and there are real, legitimate reasons people stay in rural areas, even despite the real problems they face. Many of us value these places and want to fix these problems, for one. Many of us also have strong connections to the land. My family is from a very rural Native American reservation and they aren't leaving ancestral homelands for urban centers anytime soon. We've tried that before (instead of actually investing in communities) back in the 50's and it was a bit of a disaster, to put it lightly.
We can definitely talk about how resources are allocated federally, but treating rural areas like they deserve less representation than they already have (as if that will actually solve anything) is just mind-bogglingly absurd to me.
posted by giizhik at 2:41 PM on April 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
Paul Ryan is from Janesville, Wisconsin...which is about an hour or less from three major urban centers (Rockford, IL, Madison, WI, and Milwaukee, WI) each with metro areas between 300,000 and 1 mil people. It's more or less a lesser populated city within a matrix of urban areas and would not be categorized as rural, by any reach, for all but the most weathered urbanite Wisconsinites. It's also part of the Wisconsin Metropolitan Statistical Area, so the region of Wisconsin with the highest population density. While obviously differing compared to other areas of the country, in the midwest, a city with a population of 60,000 is still considered to be a respectable size...not really rural, but also not urban...especially when it's in close proximity to other cities. But this is coming from a Wisconsinite from a town of less than a thousand in the least populated part of the state.
If you don't see the structural anti-urbanism that gives South Dakota two senators for a population the size of municipal Charlotte
...and one Representative, so literally the minimum amount of representation that the Constitution will allow in both the House and the Senate, the House being the only part of Congress that's supposed to take population into account when assigning representation. Every state gets two Senators, regardless of population, to help ensure areas with larger populations aren't running the show all the time at the expense of the rest of the country and the Representatives are proportionally allocated to help balance it all out. It's not perfect, but I don't exactly see another system that'll work reasonably well for the needs of both urban and rural areas.
Honestly, I don't even understand why conversations over rural areas always tend to head in this direction, as if we can just stop caring about them and they will "inevitably" just crumble away or something? Rural areas will exist as long as agriculture, forestry, natural resources, and energy production are major industries needed for the rest of the country. That and there are real, legitimate reasons people stay in rural areas, even despite the real problems they face. Many of us value these places and want to fix these problems, for one. Many of us also have strong connections to the land. My family is from a very rural Native American reservation and they aren't leaving ancestral homelands for urban centers anytime soon. We've tried that before (instead of actually investing in communities) back in the 50's and it was a bit of a disaster, to put it lightly.
We can definitely talk about how resources are allocated federally, but treating rural areas like they deserve less representation than they already have (as if that will actually solve anything) is just mind-bogglingly absurd to me.
posted by giizhik at 2:41 PM on April 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
Every state gets two Senators, regardless of population, to help ensure areas with larger populations aren't running the show all the time
Yes, that would be the 'structural anti-urbanism' thing.
In Canada and Australia, the states/provinces/territories with much smaller populations don't get the same Senate representation; in Germany, the smaller Länder don't get the same representation in the Bundesrat. I'd argue that that all three of those countries do federal government better than the US, and regional development much better, because they learned from American mistakes and don't have the same anti-urban cultural underpinning. After all, most Australians and Canadians live in conurbations, and while they prize and cherish the rural and remote in their large countries, they aren't governed merely on sentiment.
So other systems clearly do exist in other federal nations that work reasonably well to balance the demands of urban and rural, and large-population and small-population across sub-national entities. Lots of nations have followed the US into federal structures; few have embraced the Great Compromise.
at the expense of the rest of the country
Define 'expense' here: is it economic expense, for which the GDP and net expenditure maps provide an answer, or do you mean something more like 'cultural expense'?
Resetting things here: the holy concept of hard-edged state sovereignty ("South Dakota! Land of usurious interest rates!") plus the Jefferson/Hamilton push-pull between landed wealth and urban industry means that we end up with these kinds of either/or conversations instead of joined-up thinking about wider regional development, and this lack of joined-up thinking is in turn often treated as an American-exceptionalist feature, not a bug.
posted by holgate at 6:32 PM on April 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
Yes, that would be the 'structural anti-urbanism' thing.
In Canada and Australia, the states/provinces/territories with much smaller populations don't get the same Senate representation; in Germany, the smaller Länder don't get the same representation in the Bundesrat. I'd argue that that all three of those countries do federal government better than the US, and regional development much better, because they learned from American mistakes and don't have the same anti-urban cultural underpinning. After all, most Australians and Canadians live in conurbations, and while they prize and cherish the rural and remote in their large countries, they aren't governed merely on sentiment.
So other systems clearly do exist in other federal nations that work reasonably well to balance the demands of urban and rural, and large-population and small-population across sub-national entities. Lots of nations have followed the US into federal structures; few have embraced the Great Compromise.
at the expense of the rest of the country
Define 'expense' here: is it economic expense, for which the GDP and net expenditure maps provide an answer, or do you mean something more like 'cultural expense'?
Resetting things here: the holy concept of hard-edged state sovereignty ("South Dakota! Land of usurious interest rates!") plus the Jefferson/Hamilton push-pull between landed wealth and urban industry means that we end up with these kinds of either/or conversations instead of joined-up thinking about wider regional development, and this lack of joined-up thinking is in turn often treated as an American-exceptionalist feature, not a bug.
posted by holgate at 6:32 PM on April 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
Your right: Each BC senator represents ~800K people; the Nunavut senator represents ~35K. So Canada may not be the best counter example to the US system.
The apportionment system still divides the country into four regions plus the smaller guys who pick up the scraps. And two of those regions are pretty urban (Ontraio and Quebec) and the other two are much more rural (Western Provinces and Maritimes). The leftovers are assigned to Newfoundland and Labrador, the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut, and you can't much more rural than the latter three. Plus senators are appointed not elected, they serve until age 75, and they rubber stamp practically everything. To top it all off the Harper government stopped appointing senators because they wanted to abolish the senate and the new government hasn't yet filled the 22 vacancies that accumulated though they are moving ahead with the process.
posted by Mitheral at 7:11 PM on April 17, 2016
The apportionment system still divides the country into four regions plus the smaller guys who pick up the scraps. And two of those regions are pretty urban (Ontraio and Quebec) and the other two are much more rural (Western Provinces and Maritimes). The leftovers are assigned to Newfoundland and Labrador, the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut, and you can't much more rural than the latter three. Plus senators are appointed not elected, they serve until age 75, and they rubber stamp practically everything. To top it all off the Harper government stopped appointing senators because they wanted to abolish the senate and the new government hasn't yet filled the 22 vacancies that accumulated though they are moving ahead with the process.
posted by Mitheral at 7:11 PM on April 17, 2016
Uhh, the 'Northeast' as a region is a 20th century development. Before that New England and New York were at one another's throats.
Um, they had common interests against the southern colonies. That was kind of a big deal. But also, being connected doesn't mean you get along - quite the opposite; New Jersey and New York generate no end of conflict over our shared transit systems. If you want fancy trains, you have to argue a lot over who keeps 'em running. But everybody here wants trains.
But way to confirm our suspicions that the author is out to get everyone not in the Northeast.
This is so not what anyone was saying I can't even.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 9:23 PM on April 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
Um, they had common interests against the southern colonies. That was kind of a big deal. But also, being connected doesn't mean you get along - quite the opposite; New Jersey and New York generate no end of conflict over our shared transit systems. If you want fancy trains, you have to argue a lot over who keeps 'em running. But everybody here wants trains.
But way to confirm our suspicions that the author is out to get everyone not in the Northeast.
This is so not what anyone was saying I can't even.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 9:23 PM on April 17, 2016 [2 favorites]
holgate: "In ... Australia, the states/provinces/territories with much smaller populations don't get the same Senate representation;"
Yes they do. All Australian states are represented by 12 senators, regardless of population. The territories get 2 senators each. Possibly you are confusing the Senate with the House of Representatives?
posted by langtonsant at 10:18 PM on April 17, 2016
Yes they do. All Australian states are represented by 12 senators, regardless of population. The territories get 2 senators each. Possibly you are confusing the Senate with the House of Representatives?
posted by langtonsant at 10:18 PM on April 17, 2016
langtonsant: I was thinking partly of ACT / NT, but I stand corrected about the states.
Mitheral: I think NWT / YT / NV cross from 'rural' to 'remote', and infrastructure for remote places is different in kind from that in rural places, not just in degree: it's often a Cessna instead of a truck or SUV. That's my point: there are parts of the continental US (not just Alaska) that are genuinely remote (often proudly so) and an infrastructure map that leaves them off the grid reflects that remoteness.
posted by holgate at 7:53 AM on April 18, 2016
Mitheral: I think NWT / YT / NV cross from 'rural' to 'remote', and infrastructure for remote places is different in kind from that in rural places, not just in degree: it's often a Cessna instead of a truck or SUV. That's my point: there are parts of the continental US (not just Alaska) that are genuinely remote (often proudly so) and an infrastructure map that leaves them off the grid reflects that remoteness.
posted by holgate at 7:53 AM on April 18, 2016
We're not just talking about rural or remote places, though. For instance, take Cedar Rapids, the second biggest city in Iowa. It's hardly a major metropolitan area, but it's not rural or remote. It's a city of about 130,000 people. By a lot of measures, it's thriving: unemployment is low, the population is growing, and the economy is pretty strong. There's a Fortune 500 company, Rockwell Collins, that has its corporate headquarters there. One of the problems that the city faces is a shortage of skilled workers: civic leaders are trying to lure back people who grew up in Iowa and moved to other states to take tech jobs.
Right now, Cedar Rapids is pretty centrally located. It's not far off of I-80, which is a big highway that connects Chicago to Des Moines to Omaha. But it wouldn't be on the high-speed rail proposed in this article, which would connect all those cities in a big circle but bypass a lot of the stuff in between them. And I think that what would happen to Cedar Rapids is that Rockwell Collins and Transamerica and the other big employers in town would move to Des Moines, and Cedar Rapids would become the post-post-industrial wasteland that people probably imagine that it already is. But it's not that right now. Right now it's a nice little city that is doing pretty well for itself.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:09 AM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
Right now, Cedar Rapids is pretty centrally located. It's not far off of I-80, which is a big highway that connects Chicago to Des Moines to Omaha. But it wouldn't be on the high-speed rail proposed in this article, which would connect all those cities in a big circle but bypass a lot of the stuff in between them. And I think that what would happen to Cedar Rapids is that Rockwell Collins and Transamerica and the other big employers in town would move to Des Moines, and Cedar Rapids would become the post-post-industrial wasteland that people probably imagine that it already is. But it's not that right now. Right now it's a nice little city that is doing pretty well for itself.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:09 AM on April 18, 2016 [2 favorites]
Paul Ryan is from Janesville, Wisconsin
Ugh, I was thinking "Speaker of the House" and still had Boehner on the brain. My bad.
Every state gets two Senators, regardless of population, to help ensure areas with larger populations aren't running the show all the time
It doesn't strike you as anti-democratic on a Federal scale, though, that state borders are privileged over population? The government is primarily the servant of the people; that includes being a steward of the land. I come from the agricultural belt of California, so I definitely get the urban-rural tension, but (to analogize) if every county in my state had the same representation in our state Senate, then tiny Alpine (with a little over 1,000 people) would get the same say in resource decisions as massive Los Angeles County and that's incredibly unfair for the latter.
posted by psoas at 8:36 AM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
Ugh, I was thinking "Speaker of the House" and still had Boehner on the brain. My bad.
Every state gets two Senators, regardless of population, to help ensure areas with larger populations aren't running the show all the time
It doesn't strike you as anti-democratic on a Federal scale, though, that state borders are privileged over population? The government is primarily the servant of the people; that includes being a steward of the land. I come from the agricultural belt of California, so I definitely get the urban-rural tension, but (to analogize) if every county in my state had the same representation in our state Senate, then tiny Alpine (with a little over 1,000 people) would get the same say in resource decisions as massive Los Angeles County and that's incredibly unfair for the latter.
posted by psoas at 8:36 AM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
"Right now, Cedar Rapids is pretty centrally located. It's not far off of I-80, which is a big highway that connects Chicago to Des Moines to Omaha. But it wouldn't be on the high-speed rail proposed in this article, which would connect all those cities in a big circle but bypass a lot of the stuff in between them. And I think that what would happen to Cedar Rapids is that Rockwell Collins and Transamerica and the other big employers in town would move to Des Moines, and Cedar Rapids would become the post-post-industrial wasteland that people probably imagine that it already is."
Yeah, one of the things that's pretty clear about high-speed rail in Illinois, whenever an Chicago-St. Louis line is discussed, is that it will EITHER go through Peoria, Bloomington/Normal, or Champaign/Urbana, and the other two cities will get left out. Such a powerful piece of new infrastructure is definitely going to have to choose winners and losers, and the losers are probably going to face further hollowing-out. Which is one of the reasons that while everybody wants high-speed midwest rail, there isn't a really coherent coalition pushing to overcome the cost and permissions issues. Nobody wants to fully commit their political capital until they're sure they won't be the loser.
Which isn't a reason not to build the powerful new infrastructure, IMO; the aggregate gain will likely be greater than the aggregate losses to bypassed areas, and we can buffer at least some of it with smart knock-on infrastructure. (Like, if you put the passenger line through B/N, Peoria could sure use some updated freight rail serving its river port that does major shipping in grain and steel barges and is a big truck/rail/barge interchange.) But it is an understandable obstacle to getting any of these projects off the ground.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:38 AM on April 18, 2016 [5 favorites]
Yeah, one of the things that's pretty clear about high-speed rail in Illinois, whenever an Chicago-St. Louis line is discussed, is that it will EITHER go through Peoria, Bloomington/Normal, or Champaign/Urbana, and the other two cities will get left out. Such a powerful piece of new infrastructure is definitely going to have to choose winners and losers, and the losers are probably going to face further hollowing-out. Which is one of the reasons that while everybody wants high-speed midwest rail, there isn't a really coherent coalition pushing to overcome the cost and permissions issues. Nobody wants to fully commit their political capital until they're sure they won't be the loser.
Which isn't a reason not to build the powerful new infrastructure, IMO; the aggregate gain will likely be greater than the aggregate losses to bypassed areas, and we can buffer at least some of it with smart knock-on infrastructure. (Like, if you put the passenger line through B/N, Peoria could sure use some updated freight rail serving its river port that does major shipping in grain and steel barges and is a big truck/rail/barge interchange.) But it is an understandable obstacle to getting any of these projects off the ground.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:38 AM on April 18, 2016 [5 favorites]
I think that what would happen to Cedar Rapids is that Rockwell Collins and Transamerica and the other big employers in town would move to Des Moines, and Cedar Rapids would become the post-post-industrial wasteland that people probably imagine that it already is.
Fair points. I'd ask whether it's really a zero-sum argument, but as Eyebrows McGee rightly notes, the perception that it's zero-sum will be enough to encourage resistance to change. The fate of cities that expanded in the era of US highways but then got bypassed by the interstate system looms large here, even if the aggregate gains of the interstates are undeniable.
posted by holgate at 9:48 AM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
Fair points. I'd ask whether it's really a zero-sum argument, but as Eyebrows McGee rightly notes, the perception that it's zero-sum will be enough to encourage resistance to change. The fate of cities that expanded in the era of US highways but then got bypassed by the interstate system looms large here, even if the aggregate gains of the interstates are undeniable.
posted by holgate at 9:48 AM on April 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
psoas: "It doesn't strike you as anti-democratic on a Federal scale, though, that state borders are privileged over population? The government is primarily the servant of the people; that includes being a steward of the land. "
Not especially, no. I think it serves as a sensible check against majoritarianism. The government is formed in the lower house (House of Representatives), and the three most populous states (NSW, VIC and QLD) dominate there. In practice, Australia is governed from the eastern seaboard. The overrepresentation of smaller states like SA and TAS in the Senate has a moderating effect on this, but the effect isn't all that strong. Every election the national conversation tends to focus much more heavily on marginal constituencies in western Sydney (lower house) than on who will win the last senate seat in SA (upper house), and for a good reason: losing a senate seat in SA might make it harder for the government to control the upper house, but losing lower house seats in western Sydney will lose you the election completely.
In practice, a senator from SA represents both their state and their party, and party discipline is strong enough that it's not like the interests of SA have much chance of overriding those of NSW in any serious disagreement. All it does is reduce the extent to which the bigger states can dominate smaller ones.
posted by langtonsant at 7:01 PM on April 18, 2016
Not especially, no. I think it serves as a sensible check against majoritarianism. The government is formed in the lower house (House of Representatives), and the three most populous states (NSW, VIC and QLD) dominate there. In practice, Australia is governed from the eastern seaboard. The overrepresentation of smaller states like SA and TAS in the Senate has a moderating effect on this, but the effect isn't all that strong. Every election the national conversation tends to focus much more heavily on marginal constituencies in western Sydney (lower house) than on who will win the last senate seat in SA (upper house), and for a good reason: losing a senate seat in SA might make it harder for the government to control the upper house, but losing lower house seats in western Sydney will lose you the election completely.
In practice, a senator from SA represents both their state and their party, and party discipline is strong enough that it's not like the interests of SA have much chance of overriding those of NSW in any serious disagreement. All it does is reduce the extent to which the bigger states can dominate smaller ones.
posted by langtonsant at 7:01 PM on April 18, 2016
Sigh. I was thinking about the Australian side discussion. Brain fade. Never mind me
posted by langtonsant at 7:06 PM on April 18, 2016
posted by langtonsant at 7:06 PM on April 18, 2016
If All Those State Secession Movements Got Their Way, America Would Look Like This Map
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:36 AM on April 21, 2016
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:36 AM on April 21, 2016
Megacities, not nations, are the world’s dominant, enduring social structures
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:27 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:27 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by jonmc at 9:22 AM on April 16, 2016 [13 favorites]