Building a Better Base
June 27, 2017 4:28 PM Subscribe
Busy each day with thousands or tens of thousands of people, a military base is a mini-city. It has its own police, fire, and recreation departments, and even a “mayor” (the base commander). It has traffic, crime, and pollution, just like a regular city. And its residents are dealing with a major public health concern—obesity. Now the U.S. Department of Defense is looking to the environment of the base itself to get its forces into shape.
They are going to have to move some bases out of the sunny south if they want people to get out of their cars. Yuma, and Ft. Huachuca, Arizona. El Paso, and San Antonio, and Ft. Hood Texas.
About as many trips are made by walking as by driving in Singapore, where it's 90°F and 100% humidity every day of the year. Or is it too much to expect active duty military to be walking around in hot, desert-like conditions? Because if so, I've got bad news about 95% of the wars the US is currently fighting.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 5:33 PM on June 27, 2017 [26 favorites]
About as many trips are made by walking as by driving in Singapore, where it's 90°F and 100% humidity every day of the year. Or is it too much to expect active duty military to be walking around in hot, desert-like conditions? Because if so, I've got bad news about 95% of the wars the US is currently fighting.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 5:33 PM on June 27, 2017 [26 favorites]
The hilarious part of this is that it is yet another way they are actively working at creating a centrally planned mini-society in-order to defend the American way of life.
posted by srboisvert at 5:52 PM on June 27, 2017 [15 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 5:52 PM on June 27, 2017 [15 favorites]
It's moms and dads and kids on post, and >120° in Arizona this past week. I know that is a worst case scenario, but not many people are going to walk a mile to the PX when it's 90° and 90% humidity if they can take their car instead.
posted by Bee'sWing at 5:53 PM on June 27, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by Bee'sWing at 5:53 PM on June 27, 2017 [5 favorites]
The service has always been a centrally planned mini-society. It was racially integrated far earlier than society at large. Military bases are much safer places, you can let your kids run free. Health care is free. The military takes climate change seriously and has built solar arrays for electricity.
posted by Bee'sWing at 6:00 PM on June 27, 2017 [21 favorites]
posted by Bee'sWing at 6:00 PM on June 27, 2017 [21 favorites]
Or is it too much to expect active duty military to be walking around in hot, desert-like conditions?
The majority of residents of almost all bases in the U.S. are civilians (workers or family members).
posted by Etrigan at 6:05 PM on June 27, 2017 [10 favorites]
The majority of residents of almost all bases in the U.S. are civilians (workers or family members).
posted by Etrigan at 6:05 PM on June 27, 2017 [10 favorites]
I don't think it is a good idea to discuss whom the Military is doing planning business with, and display base maps at all. Military brat here. The company is more vulnerable to observation than the military, though everyone seems vulnerable these days.
posted by Oyéah at 6:23 PM on June 27, 2017
posted by Oyéah at 6:23 PM on June 27, 2017
I don't think it is a good idea to discuss whom the Military is doing planning business with...
Um, why not? This information is already public, how does a discussion of the matter endanger anything?
posted by el io at 6:26 PM on June 27, 2017 [2 favorites]
Um, why not? This information is already public, how does a discussion of the matter endanger anything?
posted by el io at 6:26 PM on June 27, 2017 [2 favorites]
It's moms and dads and kids on post, and >120° in Arizona this past week.
If you look at the year as a whole, though, I know it's late June and people are going to think about this as a current thing, but--I've lived in the El Paso area and a commute by bicycle or on foot was perfectly comfortable nine months out of the year and a bigger chunk than you'd think of days in the other three. I'm sure people will tend to prefer air conditioned cars for the worst chunk of the summer, but they're also talking about making things like fitness centers more convenient, so it's not like they're relying on walking to be 100% of the solution. The American Southwest is quite nice outside for most of the year. And even in the summer, if you're talking about bikes and not just walking, sometimes it makes as much sense to ride your bike because the wind going past you feels pretty good and it's going to take you as long for your car to cool down as you'd spend on the whole trip otherwise.
posted by Sequence at 6:41 PM on June 27, 2017 [2 favorites]
If you look at the year as a whole, though, I know it's late June and people are going to think about this as a current thing, but--I've lived in the El Paso area and a commute by bicycle or on foot was perfectly comfortable nine months out of the year and a bigger chunk than you'd think of days in the other three. I'm sure people will tend to prefer air conditioned cars for the worst chunk of the summer, but they're also talking about making things like fitness centers more convenient, so it's not like they're relying on walking to be 100% of the solution. The American Southwest is quite nice outside for most of the year. And even in the summer, if you're talking about bikes and not just walking, sometimes it makes as much sense to ride your bike because the wind going past you feels pretty good and it's going to take you as long for your car to cool down as you'd spend on the whole trip otherwise.
posted by Sequence at 6:41 PM on June 27, 2017 [2 favorites]
Bee'sWing: "They are going to have to move some bases out of the sunny south if they want people to get out of their cars. Yuma, and Ft. Huachuca, Arizona. El Paso, and San Antonio, and Ft. Hood Texas."
Installing +15s, while not as cheap as turning a road into a trail, would mitigate the heat somewhat. Obviously a long term mitigation but something worth considering.
Really a lot of large campuses in the increasingly crispy south should be considering enclosed walk ways, either elevated or subterranean.
posted by Mitheral at 6:57 PM on June 27, 2017 [3 favorites]
Installing +15s, while not as cheap as turning a road into a trail, would mitigate the heat somewhat. Obviously a long term mitigation but something worth considering.
Really a lot of large campuses in the increasingly crispy south should be considering enclosed walk ways, either elevated or subterranean.
posted by Mitheral at 6:57 PM on June 27, 2017 [3 favorites]
not many people are going to walk a mile to the PX when it's 90° and 90% humidity if they can take their car instead.
Yeahbut, it's the military. If they really want to, they can just remove that last option by simply forbidding it. I mean, obviously they have good reasons not to piss off everybody and their families if they can avoid it. But the whole concern is different for military installations given the much tighter degree of control they can exert if they really want to.
I don't think it is a good idea to discuss whom the Military is doing planning business with, and display base maps at all.
That might have made sense in the 60s or 70s but ubiquitous satellite surveillance has been a thing for decades. Just using shitty civilian imagery, I can go look up the building I lived in as a kid at Vogelweh and tell that since 1981 they've added balconies to the apartment blocks and made some drastic improvements to the playground/yard area between buildings.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:00 PM on June 27, 2017 [2 favorites]
Yeahbut, it's the military. If they really want to, they can just remove that last option by simply forbidding it. I mean, obviously they have good reasons not to piss off everybody and their families if they can avoid it. But the whole concern is different for military installations given the much tighter degree of control they can exert if they really want to.
I don't think it is a good idea to discuss whom the Military is doing planning business with, and display base maps at all.
That might have made sense in the 60s or 70s but ubiquitous satellite surveillance has been a thing for decades. Just using shitty civilian imagery, I can go look up the building I lived in as a kid at Vogelweh and tell that since 1981 they've added balconies to the apartment blocks and made some drastic improvements to the playground/yard area between buildings.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:00 PM on June 27, 2017 [2 favorites]
They better get some old castra maps and start repeating what Romans did.
posted by kadmilos at 8:30 PM on June 27, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by kadmilos at 8:30 PM on June 27, 2017 [1 favorite]
Eh, the three times I lived on base (in the American south, by the way), most people only drove if they were going off-base. At noon, when the national anthem played, everyone stopped moving. It always made me giggle. So if they are having to redesign the bases to make them walkable/bikeable, they must have changed a lot since I was a kid.
posted by crush at 8:38 PM on June 27, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by crush at 8:38 PM on June 27, 2017 [1 favorite]
Military bases are much safer places, you can let your kids run free.
When I was growing up, we used to say this sort of thing about the Catholic church.
Maybe it's actually true, but this kind of evidence-free elitism really bothers me. Any argument that hinges on "they're better people than the outside world" makes me wonder what's being swept under the rug.
posted by schmod at 8:58 PM on June 27, 2017 [13 favorites]
When I was growing up, we used to say this sort of thing about the Catholic church.
Maybe it's actually true, but this kind of evidence-free elitism really bothers me. Any argument that hinges on "they're better people than the outside world" makes me wonder what's being swept under the rug.
posted by schmod at 8:58 PM on June 27, 2017 [13 favorites]
And its residents are dealing with a major public health concern—obesity.
The government has been 'concerned' with this for a while.
1961 at least. Yet via a past Metafilter link to VOX has a different idea.
Fighting the last war with bad information - the US government and the pentagon.
posted by rough ashlar at 11:09 PM on June 27, 2017 [2 favorites]
The government has been 'concerned' with this for a while.
1961 at least. Yet via a past Metafilter link to VOX has a different idea.
Fighting the last war with bad information - the US government and the pentagon.
posted by rough ashlar at 11:09 PM on June 27, 2017 [2 favorites]
a military base is a mini-city
If only there was a word for something that was like a city, but smaller.
posted by biffa at 2:38 AM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]
If only there was a word for something that was like a city, but smaller.
posted by biffa at 2:38 AM on June 28, 2017 [2 favorites]
They better get some old castra maps and start repeating what Romans did.
posted by kadmilos at 8:30 PM on June 27 [1 favorite −] Favorite added! [!]
Seriously, they should study the ancients. What did people do before cars and AC, they walked under trees, or in colonnades, there were cooling water arrangements and maybe wind towers. The trees are the most important, because they do more than provide shade - they also change the micro-climate. Our ancestors knew this, and I think most of us know it as well on an intuitive level, the oasis is not just a place with a spring, it is a place with a different feeling altogether from the surrounding desert.
I've visited several Roman cities (ruins) all round the Mediterranean, and everywhere you see colonnades and different forms of water. And trees, though there aren't many hints of how the ancients managed trees.
posted by mumimor at 2:42 AM on June 28, 2017 [10 favorites]
posted by kadmilos at 8:30 PM on June 27 [1 favorite −] Favorite added! [!]
Seriously, they should study the ancients. What did people do before cars and AC, they walked under trees, or in colonnades, there were cooling water arrangements and maybe wind towers. The trees are the most important, because they do more than provide shade - they also change the micro-climate. Our ancestors knew this, and I think most of us know it as well on an intuitive level, the oasis is not just a place with a spring, it is a place with a different feeling altogether from the surrounding desert.
I've visited several Roman cities (ruins) all round the Mediterranean, and everywhere you see colonnades and different forms of water. And trees, though there aren't many hints of how the ancients managed trees.
posted by mumimor at 2:42 AM on June 28, 2017 [10 favorites]
There are a lot of services on a military base, the commissary and the PX/BX, libraries, hospitals, gas stations. Most of them are cheaper than outside and don't collect sales tax. As a consequence a large community of retirees, including many elderly and disabled people, commute onto the base from outside. And a lot of active duty people live off base. So you really can't just ban cars and force people to walk, it would cut off too many people.
posted by Bee'sWing at 3:46 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Bee'sWing at 3:46 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
Maybe it's actually true, but this kind of evidence-free elitism really bothers me. Any argument that hinges on "they're better people than the outside world" makes me wonder what's being swept under the rug.
It's not "they're better people than the outside world", it's a combination of multiple things. First, there are criminal screens for entrance to the military, which weeds out a good amount of people with impulse control. Secondly, it's a homogeneous population that identifies a lot with us vs them thinking, so people have less impulse to create directed-externally crime. Thirdly, it's a highly, highly policed population, where everyone feels willing to step in if stuff is going down, so if you have the impulse to commit a crime, you generally do it off base - the old "don't shit where you eat" principle. Fourth, there is controlled entrance to the base, where you routinely get searched and can't get on unless someone is willing to take responsibility for you. If certain kinds of crime are reported, they can lock down the entire base and prevent people from leaving until the situation is resolved. You see this for a missing rifle - I could only imagine for a missing kid.
So there's definitely crime (fights, sexual assault, public drunkenness stuff) but it's different kinds of crime, and so it really is safe for kids. I've never even heard of anything like that happening on a base, and I used to read the blotter (arrest list, publicly published in the newspaper) for fun.
posted by corb at 5:36 AM on June 28, 2017 [7 favorites]
It's not "they're better people than the outside world", it's a combination of multiple things. First, there are criminal screens for entrance to the military, which weeds out a good amount of people with impulse control. Secondly, it's a homogeneous population that identifies a lot with us vs them thinking, so people have less impulse to create directed-externally crime. Thirdly, it's a highly, highly policed population, where everyone feels willing to step in if stuff is going down, so if you have the impulse to commit a crime, you generally do it off base - the old "don't shit where you eat" principle. Fourth, there is controlled entrance to the base, where you routinely get searched and can't get on unless someone is willing to take responsibility for you. If certain kinds of crime are reported, they can lock down the entire base and prevent people from leaving until the situation is resolved. You see this for a missing rifle - I could only imagine for a missing kid.
So there's definitely crime (fights, sexual assault, public drunkenness stuff) but it's different kinds of crime, and so it really is safe for kids. I've never even heard of anything like that happening on a base, and I used to read the blotter (arrest list, publicly published in the newspaper) for fun.
posted by corb at 5:36 AM on June 28, 2017 [7 favorites]
Active transportation doesn't have to replace every single automobile trip for it to be a worthwhile investment for public health, environmental, and economic reasons. Every single person doesn't have to choose active transportation for every single trip for it to be beneficial to them for individual health and financial reasons.
Just as with non-military towns, what's needed (at the very least) is safe, comfortable, convenient ways to make any given trip without using a personal automobile. Just as with non-military towns, these policies save lives and livelihoods.
posted by asperity at 5:44 AM on June 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
Just as with non-military towns, what's needed (at the very least) is safe, comfortable, convenient ways to make any given trip without using a personal automobile. Just as with non-military towns, these policies save lives and livelihoods.
posted by asperity at 5:44 AM on June 28, 2017 [4 favorites]
The high rate of sexual assault in the military says otherwise re: safety. Kids might be safe, but women, not so much.
posted by Mavri at 5:46 AM on June 28, 2017
posted by Mavri at 5:46 AM on June 28, 2017
Military bases are much safer places, you can let your kids run free.
The largest segment of inmates in Leavenworth is child molesters, just for the record.
posted by Etrigan at 6:01 AM on June 28, 2017
The largest segment of inmates in Leavenworth is child molesters, just for the record.
posted by Etrigan at 6:01 AM on June 28, 2017
In addition to the aforementioned number of people who come in (retirees for medical/PX access), I thought most soldiers don't want to live on base in the first place. The BAH subsidizes off-base living, where you are a bit more free/less restrictive than living on base, and generally the housing is nicer than the on-base housing.
Though YMMV on the base. Some base housing is still 1940s or worse dorms/split-levels, and some off-base housing is barely above slum shanty towns. Active/growing bases that survived the last BRACC seem to have a ton of new developments springing up right outside the gates because of the easy money (BAH, regular tenants for known time frames, guaranteed pay from the gov't, and easy to file for garnishment if the soldier doesn't pay.. )
posted by k5.user at 9:22 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
Though YMMV on the base. Some base housing is still 1940s or worse dorms/split-levels, and some off-base housing is barely above slum shanty towns. Active/growing bases that survived the last BRACC seem to have a ton of new developments springing up right outside the gates because of the easy money (BAH, regular tenants for known time frames, guaranteed pay from the gov't, and easy to file for garnishment if the soldier doesn't pay.. )
posted by k5.user at 9:22 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
In addition to the aforementioned number of people who come in (retirees for medical/PX access), I thought most soldiers don't want to live on base in the first place.
Junior officers and NCOs generally want to live off-base because their housing is pretty crap (and also because they just spent some number of years in college dorms and barracks); after a decade or so, when they've moved in and out of half a dozen apartments and had to deal with predatory off-base landlords and commuted onto and off the base every day (especially in the post-9/11 military, where you have to show your ID every damn time), and the senior officer and NCO housing is better, they tend to move back on-base.
posted by Etrigan at 11:27 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
Junior officers and NCOs generally want to live off-base because their housing is pretty crap (and also because they just spent some number of years in college dorms and barracks); after a decade or so, when they've moved in and out of half a dozen apartments and had to deal with predatory off-base landlords and commuted onto and off the base every day (especially in the post-9/11 military, where you have to show your ID every damn time), and the senior officer and NCO housing is better, they tend to move back on-base.
posted by Etrigan at 11:27 AM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
Oh, this is interesting! Part of my work involves studying reports on health at army bases... in the 1870s. It's not a surprise that they're fundamentally different places now, but it is interesting to think about which differences in overall health might be due to changes in technology vs. changes in the social environment of the military. Health was a major issue back then, too, but for sort of the opposite reasons; lack of available food, strenuous work in hot climates, common diseases, and so on. The article describes modern posts as "relatively self-contained," which was always true more or less out of necessity, at least in the desert -- most of the forts and camps I've read about had 20 acre gardens and regular hunting parties because they were too remote to get or afford supplies from elsewhere.
Anyway, at this point, comparing army posts across time is sort of like comparing apples and oranges, but it is interesting to see how bases, especially the ones that have been around for 150 years or more, have been completely redesigned around 20th century technology and culture.
Or, the tl;dr version of my comment is "neat!"
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 1:17 PM on June 28, 2017 [6 favorites]
Anyway, at this point, comparing army posts across time is sort of like comparing apples and oranges, but it is interesting to see how bases, especially the ones that have been around for 150 years or more, have been completely redesigned around 20th century technology and culture.
Or, the tl;dr version of my comment is "neat!"
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 1:17 PM on June 28, 2017 [6 favorites]
Is it telling that there was no discussion of shuttering on-base fa(s)t food vendors? It's weird that is a tool of morale. Is there nothing more American, nothing better for morale than handing a kid a Whopper? Maybe we should close shop, then, because it's not worth it.
In a planned economy it's strange that walkability is the tip of the spear. There's no reason the military is incapable of applying tactics used by progressive cities along with straight-up propaganda to change hearts and minds. A sign reminding consumers that a Big Mac will cost you two and a half hours of run time and has a 200% unhealthy tax applied is totes doable?
posted by Ogre Lawless at 6:26 AM on June 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
In a planned economy it's strange that walkability is the tip of the spear. There's no reason the military is incapable of applying tactics used by progressive cities along with straight-up propaganda to change hearts and minds. A sign reminding consumers that a Big Mac will cost you two and a half hours of run time and has a 200% unhealthy tax applied is totes doable?
posted by Ogre Lawless at 6:26 AM on June 29, 2017 [1 favorite]
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posted by Bee'sWing at 4:41 PM on June 27, 2017 [2 favorites]