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> "The question should have been "how do we prevent rural flight?", that is, "how do we keep rural and small town residents from moving to likely targets?" Tha

> "The question should have been "how do we prevent rural flight?", that is, "how do we keep rural and small town residents from moving to likely targets?" That had already been addressed by dust-bowl era ag policies. Until the 90s, farmers were subsidized even harder than housing. So, money already flowing to keep the rurals in-place, an interstate highway system under way, cheap money for residential, and preexisting racial tensions. Without the benefit of hindsight, that looks like a fairly sound recipe for migrating people to the periphery. > "If you want people to survive a nuclear exchange, the you should set up the infrastructure so it has a dual-purpose use once things like gas and groceries are more dreams than anything else." In a nuclear exchange, job #1 is to not get vaporized. Gas and groceries are much further down on the list. As for why there wasn't a more coordinated plan instead of cheap money, it's the USA during the red scare. Getting too specific looks too much like a "five year plan". > ...Instead of subsidizing the existing distributed population, we subsidized living in more centralized target zones that were less robust to even pre-nuclear fire bombing. That is not the pattern I've seen in any major US city. Until the end of the cold war, and especially in the southeast, there were tree-rings of suburban pushes radiating from the city centers. Rural became suburban, wilderness became rural, city centers decayed. Then, with the fall of the USSR and the "peace dividend", one huge reason for suffering suburbia had been removed. Guess when urban renewal started taking off? As for racism and capitalism, that's your biz man. I'm not disagreeing with it, just not particularly impressed with it as a cause. It's like if I had a headache, and my doctor told me it was because I have a pulse.

eesmith 8y ago
I note that you still have not presented any evidence for your statement that the post-war subsidization of suburban growth was driven in part by a deliberate plan for decentralization. I have presented much evidence pointing out that it was explicit coordinated government plan to boost the building, auto, and furniture industries, among others, and explicit policy to promote racial segregation. Yet despite the evidence that these long-term plans existed, you say that the government doesn't do coordinated plans because 'Getting too specific looks too much like a "five year plan".'? Let me quote from the Wikipedia article on the FHA: > In the 1930s, the Federal Housing Authority established mortgage underwriting standards that significantly discriminated against minority neighborhoods.[13] Between 1945 and 1959, African Americans received only 2 percent of all federally insured home loans.[14] As the significance of subsidized mortgage insurance on the housing market grew, home values in inner-city minority neighborhoods plummeted. Also, the approval rates for minorities were equally low. After 1935, the FHA established guidelines to steer private mortgage investors away from minority areas. How is that simply "cheap money" being available, and not something like a coordinated plan across far more than five years? You wrote: "Until the 90s, farmers were subsidized even harder than housing. So, money already flowing to keep the rurals in-place" The second part of that sentence - 'keep the rurals in-place' - is not correct. Quoting the Wikipedia page on "Rural flight": > Post-World War II rural flight has been caused primarily by the spread of industrialized agriculture. Small, labor-intensive family farms have grown into, or have been replaced by, heavily mechanized and specialized industrial farms. While a small family farm typically produced a wide range of crop, garden, and animal products—all requiring substantial labor—large industrial farms typically specialize in just a few crop or livestock varieties, using large machinery and high-density livestock containment systems that require a fraction of the labor per unit produced. For example, Iowa State University reports the number of hog farmers in Iowa dropped from 65,000 in 1980 to 10,000 in 2002, while the number of hogs per farm increased from 200 to 1,400. Where does the money from farm subsidies go? Quoting https://theweek.com/articles/461227/farm-subsidies-welfare-program-agribusiness https://theweek.com/articles/461227/farm-subsidies-welfare-p... : > In practice, the program keeps food prices high, costing consumers billions, while funneling most of its aid to giant agribusinesses and wealthy farmers. About 75 percent of total subsidies go to the biggest 10 percent of farming companies, ... You wrote: "Then, with the fall of the USSR and the "peace dividend", one huge reason for suffering suburbia had been removed. Guess when urban renewal started taking off?" People are only listening now because the old ways, which started in the post-war years, are no longer affordable. It was a "Growth Ponzi Scheme" - https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ - and we reached the end of the scam and discovered we've dug ourselves into a hole. The new urban movement offers a way out of that hole. (Another is to raise taxes on the rich, but our system is set up to keep that from happening.) As that link points out, growth in America slowed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, so before the end of the Cold War. Instead, "one significant factor was that our suburban cities were now starting to experience cash outflows for infrastructure maintenance." I keep on pointing to standard references about the origins of suburbanization as a way to promote long-term business and racial policies. It would be nice to see what your evidence is that your nuclear war hypothesis has any justification beyond your personal beliefs.
- jstewartmobile 8y ago
  My original point was that putting all of our eggs in the same basket is not a good idea, and that our urban cheerleaders have quality-of-life tunnel-vision. I do not believe it is necessary to quote chapter and verse to make that point. Where 75% of farm subsidies go or don't go, or what FHA claims as their goal, or the yield and quantity of soviet armaments, is just extraneous information. Playing with Google earth, or just being old enough to remember, will show that there's hardly a piece of dry land in this country that hasn't had a house, a road, or a gas station put on it. As for intention, perhaps I am giving the government too much credit? I read a lot of these 20th century memoirs and anthologies where some technocrat--like a von Neumann or a Kennan--writes a missive, and a thousand wheels are set into motion. Looking back on it, the sheer efficacy of it all looks more like a missive than a popular movement. The popular movements, like prohibition or Iraq, are often far uglier.

eesmith 8y ago

I note that you still have not presented any evidence for your statement that the post-war subsidization of suburban growth was driven in part by a deliberate plan for decentralization. I have presented much evidence pointing out that it was explicit coordinated government plan to boost the building, auto, and furniture industries, among others, and explicit policy to promote racial segregation. Yet despite the evidence that these long-term plans existed, you say that the government doesn't do coordinated plans because 'Getting too specific looks too much like a "five year plan".'? Let me quote from the Wikipedia article on the FHA: > In the 1930s, the Federal Housing Authority established mortgage underwriting standards that significantly discriminated against minority neighborhoods.[13] Between 1945 and 1959, African Americans received only 2 percent of all federally insured home loans.[14] As the significance of subsidized mortgage insurance on the housing market grew, home values in inner-city minority neighborhoods plummeted. Also, the approval rates for minorities were equally low. After 1935, the FHA established guidelines to steer private mortgage investors away from minority areas. How is that simply "cheap money" being available, and not something like a coordinated plan across far more than five years? You wrote: "Until the 90s, farmers were subsidized even harder than housing. So, money already flowing to keep the rurals in-place" The second part of that sentence - 'keep the rurals in-place' - is not correct. Quoting the Wikipedia page on "Rural flight": > Post-World War II rural flight has been caused primarily by the spread of industrialized agriculture. Small, labor-intensive family farms have grown into, or have been replaced by, heavily mechanized and specialized industrial farms. While a small family farm typically produced a wide range of crop, garden, and animal products—all requiring substantial labor—large industrial farms typically specialize in just a few crop or livestock varieties, using large machinery and high-density livestock containment systems that require a fraction of the labor per unit produced. For example, Iowa State University reports the number of hog farmers in Iowa dropped from 65,000 in 1980 to 10,000 in 2002, while the number of hogs per farm increased from 200 to 1,400. Where does the money from farm subsidies go? Quoting https://theweek.com/articles/461227/farm-subsidies-welfare-program-agribusiness https://theweek.com/articles/461227/farm-subsidies-welfare-p... : > In practice, the program keeps food prices high, costing consumers billions, while funneling most of its aid to giant agribusinesses and wealthy farmers. About 75 percent of total subsidies go to the biggest 10 percent of farming companies, ... You wrote: "Then, with the fall of the USSR and the "peace dividend", one huge reason for suffering suburbia had been removed. Guess when urban renewal started taking off?" People are only listening now because the old ways, which started in the post-war years, are no longer affordable. It was a "Growth Ponzi Scheme" - https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ - and we reached the end of the scam and discovered we've dug ourselves into a hole. The new urban movement offers a way out of that hole. (Another is to raise taxes on the rich, but our system is set up to keep that from happening.) As that link points out, growth in America slowed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, so before the end of the Cold War. Instead, "one significant factor was that our suburban cities were now starting to experience cash outflows for infrastructure maintenance." I keep on pointing to standard references about the origins of suburbanization as a way to promote long-term business and racial policies. It would be nice to see what your evidence is that your nuclear war hypothesis has any justification beyond your personal beliefs.

jstewartmobile 8y ago
My original point was that putting all of our eggs in the same basket is not a good idea, and that our urban cheerleaders have quality-of-life tunnel-vision. I do not believe it is necessary to quote chapter and verse to make that point. Where 75% of farm subsidies go or don't go, or what FHA claims as their goal, or the yield and quantity of soviet armaments, is just extraneous information. Playing with Google earth, or just being old enough to remember, will show that there's hardly a piece of dry land in this country that hasn't had a house, a road, or a gas station put on it. As for intention, perhaps I am giving the government too much credit? I read a lot of these 20th century memoirs and anthologies where some technocrat--like a von Neumann or a Kennan--writes a missive, and a thousand wheels are set into motion. Looking back on it, the sheer efficacy of it all looks more like a missive than a popular movement. The popular movements, like prohibition or Iraq, are often far uglier.