5 ms·

While I might not want to live in Arden, I love the experimental approach to self-organization. I feel like a dozen of similar experimental communities allowed

While I might not want to live in Arden, I love the experimental approach to self-organization. I feel like a dozen of similar experimental communities allowed to succeed or fail, and they might bubble up some useful heuristics for how cities/towns organize themselves. I feel like the dominant model of town organization in the USA leaves much to be desired.

mlinksva 9y ago
There are many. Success among them seems to mean longevity, not scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Intentional_communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Intentional_communiti... (on English Wikipedia, the article about Arden is in a sub-sub-category of this one). Reading the Strong Towns site for awhile about the "traditional development pattern" https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/?tag=traditional+development+pattern https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/?tag=traditional+develop... ie cities and towns wordwide pre-car makes me think that whatever idiosyncratic motivations for various intentional communities, in form they're just following the traditional development pattern. There's no need for idiosyncratic experimentation to take and apply everywhere lessons from millennia of human settlements that we've strayed from in the car era. I'm a fan of idiosyncratic experimentation but see zero evidence of potential (because of tiny scale) or need (above) for bubbling up of heuristics from them.
gumby 9y ago
> I feel like the dominant model of town organization in the USA leaves much to be desired. What is that dominant model? I've lived in Massachusetts and California. In both states what's common is that the town decides (pretty much "has decided" at this point, esp in Mass) to organize itself, writes a local charter, and has local folks run a council. Town hall meetings are open to everyone. The council members are amateurs. School districts and utility self govern and are rarely completely coextensional with towns. This can go wrong, of course, for example in Palo Alto the city managers weren't given enough oversight and overstaffed with middle managers; also real estate interests can take over the council for a while. But by an large it's not that different in principle. In California, in fact, most of the state isn't part of organized towns; most "towns" are just vaguely defined areas under the county rules; various groups do things like run a water utility, manage the local park, etc. In fact barely a quarter of the counties have charters; most themselves run under default state rules. So that's much closer to the Arden idea.
- mlinksva 9y ago
  I'm with you right up to the last sentence. Isn't minimizing private rents from land ownership central to the "Arden idea"? I don't see that anywhere in the organization of California jurisdictions.
- KGIII 9y ago
  Indeed, it's quite a rarity to find an unincorporated township in New England. Mine is just a letter. The rules are pretty minimal, the municipal services do not exist, and the large animals vastly outnumber the people. I read this article and was fascinated. I will visit there in my next expression of wanderlust. What a curious place.
- wonder_er 9y ago
  While I'm not too familiar with "the dominant model", I guess I should have clarified: > The results of the dominant model of town organization in the USA leaves much to be desired Way over-priced homes, auto-oriented urban/rural design, an excessive love for parking lots, houses all look the same... Towns across the US share way too much in common for it to be something that spontaneously arose out of millions of tiny decisions. The developed parts of California cannot be anywhere close to the Arden idea - there's endless rules, zoning restrictions, boards and commissions to try to sway, etc.
  - majormajor 9y ago
    The dominant model in the US has downright cheap homes. Partly because of the parking lots and auto-oriented organization (if you can keep building out, you have a lot less upwards pressure on price). CA/NY is not representative of home prices in most of the country. It's not perfect, but neither is the NY model, the London model, the Tokyo model, the Beijing model...
    - TimJYoung 9y ago
      Just to clarify: most of NY state has inexpensive housing (at least compared to NYC). Also, much of it is turn-of-the-century houses, not necessarily the 50s+ auto-oriented suburban tract houses, although it does have its share of those, also.
52-6F-62 9y ago
I imagine its population-dependent to some extent. I had never heard of Arden before this post and by god it looks beautiful. It seems important to note that it's population is ~439-450 people. I'm not in disagreement, though. I grew up in a small town (~4500-6000 people throughout my life there) and it had a mixed population between hardline skilled and unskilled labour in the steel and fishing industries, bikers, and aging hippies - as well as a small subsection of Government of Canada and University of Guelph environmental scientists. There was a notable difference in opinions for that reason. I imagine its simpler at this point in time to run a village society in that way with a group of like-minded, read people. Other kinds of lives lived by people tend to inform other kinds of opinions: I work hard all day, I don't want to think about that kind of thing, I understand a hierarchy with firm structure, I like to know who the boss is, etc. I'm oversimplifying it for the sake of being concise, and I hope my point is coming across. Hopefully when the political temper settles a little, those kinds of conversations about how life can be better can resume.

mlinksva 9y ago

There are many. Success among them seems to mean longevity, not scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Intentional_communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Intentional_communiti... (on English Wikipedia, the article about Arden is in a sub-sub-category of this one). Reading the Strong Towns site for awhile about the "traditional development pattern" https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/?tag=traditional+development+pattern https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/?tag=traditional+develop... ie cities and towns wordwide pre-car makes me think that whatever idiosyncratic motivations for various intentional communities, in form they're just following the traditional development pattern. There's no need for idiosyncratic experimentation to take and apply everywhere lessons from millennia of human settlements that we've strayed from in the car era. I'm a fan of idiosyncratic experimentation but see zero evidence of potential (because of tiny scale) or need (above) for bubbling up of heuristics from them.

gumby 9y ago

> I feel like the dominant model of town organization in the USA leaves much to be desired. What is that dominant model? I've lived in Massachusetts and California. In both states what's common is that the town decides (pretty much "has decided" at this point, esp in Mass) to organize itself, writes a local charter, and has local folks run a council. Town hall meetings are open to everyone. The council members are amateurs. School districts and utility self govern and are rarely completely coextensional with towns. This can go wrong, of course, for example in Palo Alto the city managers weren't given enough oversight and overstaffed with middle managers; also real estate interests can take over the council for a while. But by an large it's not that different in principle. In California, in fact, most of the state isn't part of organized towns; most "towns" are just vaguely defined areas under the county rules; various groups do things like run a water utility, manage the local park, etc. In fact barely a quarter of the counties have charters; most themselves run under default state rules. So that's much closer to the Arden idea.

mlinksva 9y ago
I'm with you right up to the last sentence. Isn't minimizing private rents from land ownership central to the "Arden idea"? I don't see that anywhere in the organization of California jurisdictions.
KGIII 9y ago
Indeed, it's quite a rarity to find an unincorporated township in New England. Mine is just a letter. The rules are pretty minimal, the municipal services do not exist, and the large animals vastly outnumber the people. I read this article and was fascinated. I will visit there in my next expression of wanderlust. What a curious place.
wonder_er 9y ago
While I'm not too familiar with "the dominant model", I guess I should have clarified: > The results of the dominant model of town organization in the USA leaves much to be desired Way over-priced homes, auto-oriented urban/rural design, an excessive love for parking lots, houses all look the same... Towns across the US share way too much in common for it to be something that spontaneously arose out of millions of tiny decisions. The developed parts of California cannot be anywhere close to the Arden idea - there's endless rules, zoning restrictions, boards and commissions to try to sway, etc.
- majormajor 9y ago
  The dominant model in the US has downright cheap homes. Partly because of the parking lots and auto-oriented organization (if you can keep building out, you have a lot less upwards pressure on price). CA/NY is not representative of home prices in most of the country. It's not perfect, but neither is the NY model, the London model, the Tokyo model, the Beijing model...
  - TimJYoung 9y ago
    Just to clarify: most of NY state has inexpensive housing (at least compared to NYC). Also, much of it is turn-of-the-century houses, not necessarily the 50s+ auto-oriented suburban tract houses, although it does have its share of those, also.

52-6F-62 9y ago

I imagine its population-dependent to some extent. I had never heard of Arden before this post and by god it looks beautiful. It seems important to note that it's population is ~439-450 people. I'm not in disagreement, though. I grew up in a small town (~4500-6000 people throughout my life there) and it had a mixed population between hardline skilled and unskilled labour in the steel and fishing industries, bikers, and aging hippies - as well as a small subsection of Government of Canada and University of Guelph environmental scientists. There was a notable difference in opinions for that reason. I imagine its simpler at this point in time to run a village society in that way with a group of like-minded, read people. Other kinds of lives lived by people tend to inform other kinds of opinions: I work hard all day, I don't want to think about that kind of thing, I understand a hierarchy with firm structure, I like to know who the boss is, etc. I'm oversimplifying it for the sake of being concise, and I hope my point is coming across. Hopefully when the political temper settles a little, those kinds of conversations about how life can be better can resume.