Streets Are Rooms

The first step toward creating pedestrian friendly spaces is to treat each street as if it was a room in a house. By first, making sure all buildings have walls tight to the sidewalks, these buildings will form walls on either side of the street. The street then becomes an outdoor room. Whether the neighborhood is low rent or high rent, the outdoor space can be beautiful through city efforts.

On designated shopping streets, the first floors should have glass with shops or businesses visible. This makes for safe streets and active one's. One long blank first floor on a street can ruin the feeling of an area. 

Lights and wide sidewalks of brick and trees creating shade and buffer for childs safety can all be done by the city. 

In Portland, new buildings in the Bayside neighborhood have and have not been placed tight to the sidewalks. The DSS building sets back behind a parking lot in a suburban layout, destroying any hope for Marginal way to feel like a room there. The new university housing however, forms a wonderful outdoor street space and has a nice bus stop of glass in front. This simple rule can have dramatic positive results.

Streets are public space and have much potential for safety, and the pursuit of happiness!

(Originally posted 9/17/2008)

Original Cumberland County Civic Center by architect Catalano

The original building was designed by Eduardo Catalano who I had the fortune to work for years ago. Catalano was a modernist from Argentina who taught at MIT. He worked in the popular brutalist style which lost favor due to cold abstract concrete but was actually a very good style in section (looking at design as if you cut it open like a cake so you saw the layers). Latin architects are trained with structure just as important and landscape and we can see this in his work. He drove a 450SL Mercedes and his office was a plain clapboard house in Central Square in Cambridge Mass. with a 6 foot tall wood stockade fence all around denying all views in from the street. I would walk down the sidewalk from the 'T' (subway) and open the fence door and POW! a lush garden of color greeted you. Then a short walk through this to the glass entry (a small add on to the original small wood house).

His first claim to fame was his own small house built in 1954 in NC where he was teaching. It was simply a roof of wood in form of hyperbolic parabola. This was a popular area of interest in architecture at the time. In 1956 the house won House and Home Magazine's "House of the Decade" award. Frank Lloyd Wright praised it openly.

Together with fellow Argentinian modernist Pietro Belluschi, Catalano designed the Julliard School of Music. When Diller Scofidio and Renfro renovated that building and Lincoln Center you can see how they paid tribute to Catalano by making the restaurant in center of plaza with grass roof mimic the house Catalano built back in 1954.

With the Cumberland County Civic Center he managed to cram a large program in a small urban site with great finesse.

Program requirements were tough: seating requirements on small site; truck access requirements somewhat unrealistic; etc. The seating views are all great; the egress in emergency is fantastic with plenty of doors; the glass lets outside view in to see what is going on. The hill town solution to the corner egress gets a lot of flack but his heart was in the right place. Glass corners allowed those inside to be in touch with the outdoors- not isolated- and they framed the sculptural pillars.

And, as was his South American custom, he integrated a garden of local plants (pine trees). And the budget was reduced to the point he could just put flat metal siding on it and he had to reduce a nicer structure to the minimum. Classic Catalano is the use of only four large concrete pillars to support the whole roof as structure was one of his great interests. In this promotional rendering showing a possible renovation idea you can see how the building managed to place all that space between two streets and not excavate down to magma:

When it opened in 1977, it was considered the, "toast of the town", according to a PPH article in 1999. Catalano said at the time:

"(This) is why architecture is a temporal art. While our sight focuses on one
area of space, the image is vivid . . . like a direct sound in music. But that
image is enriched by the reverberation from other images perceived earlier,
all overlapped in a fulfilling experience of space and time."


When Postmodernism arrived he was ushered over to emeritus. Although not in favor now, he did a good job for the times.

From ZZ Top to Cindy Blodgett and the quintuple overtime state championship game between So Po and Bangor, we've all had great experiences there and enjoyed great intimate views from every seat.

Replacing the dark gray of the metal siding with a bright orange or green or yellow, etc. would be a great start. Integrating the new renovations with the existing building is always a challenge but I believe the original has good bones and a good heart.

Here's more on Catalano from the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/feb/15/eduardo-catalano-obituary

Portland Waterfront Discussion at Maine Historical Society

Nice discussion Tuesday night on Portland's waterfront. Mayor Brennan gave a good outline of the potential for the area; Ann Pringle discussed the history of the zoning and how we should allow for things like fishing to come back as railroads are coming back as well as trying to avoid the pretend waterfronts like Baltimore; Bill Needleman gave a good discussion of the urban fabric noting the piers used to be extensions of Portland streets (as noted in my article 'Portland's Piers Are Streets' ); and Steve DiMillo gave a great history of growing up working for his father's restaurant, how his dad developed Long Wharf on an burned coal storage site, and how the area was once filled with little shops, etc.

The city is aware of the potential to use form based code to promote the sort of pedestrian fabric we crave but are not in a position to move forward with this according to Mr. Needleman.

The pedestrian wharf edge walk from Commercial Street to DiMillo's restaurant is one of the city's gems and whatever we can do to promote this sort of place is in public and private interests. One key is having restaurants or other public places to go to on wharf that naturally has pier owners creating public paths down pier for access.

As an architect who has worked since 1992 on Portland's waterfront urban design issues and lives here and who was once a commercial fisherman working on a dragger similar to one's shown above, I am grateful for what we have. People come here for the site of working boats and fish markets and seafood.

Together, private and public we can find a way as Ms. Pringle noted, we have already created an environment for a partnership that other cities envy.

Congress Square redesign

Last night the city of Portland held a meeting to gather public input regarding redesigning Congress Square. Congress Square currently is a sunken empty tar covered space filled often with vagrants. This situation is not unique to Portland and follows closely the history of Copley Square in Boston. In the sixties, Sasaki Associates won a competition to design Copley Square and responded with the trendy sunken plaza with angles and steps. Back at turn of last century, the plaza had been home to all of Boston's cultural stars such as MIT, Trinity Church, Museum of Natural History, Library, etc. Some of these institutions left and the 60's design was supposed to make this a jewel to celebrate the great location. Here's a shot of a proposal for Copley in mid 1800's:

Unfortunately, the sunken plaza became a great place for vagrants and drug dealers. Sound familiar? So Boston held another competition in the early 80's to redesign Copley Square and the result is a very successful flat park with a big lawn, trees, benches, lighting and a signature fountain. 

Copley Square also hosts a farmer's market:

Portland can learn a lesson from Boston in this regard.

Proposals suggested at the workshop last night included: Andy Graham's wonderful idea of a winter garden, useable year round to be with plants; a suggestion of a major water feature and a major sculpture; a suggestion of a flat plane filled with large trees with their branches removed up to a fairly high height as seen in St. Petersburg, Russia; and to make the place nice enough that restaurants would put tables there or street vendors would set up.

All were in favor of making sure some kind of authority would care for the upkeep and cleanliness of the  space as the Portland Downtown District does for Tommy's Park.

By eliminating the sunken plaza and making a flat-like surface at level of Congress St. sidewalk and putting in plenty of trees, we can only succeed.

Subtle Interventions In East Bayside Neighborhood

I was fortunate enough to help out during last weeks workshop on moving the East Bayside neighborhood of Portland toward a more sustainable future. The Muskie School of Public Service led by Alan Holt with the support of the city of Portland and the East Bayside Neighborhood Association applied for and received a highly desirable grant from the American Institute of Architects. Only 6 or so places a year receive this award which consists of sending a team of national experts in various specialties to a place for a few days to develop a vision and report to make a place more sustainable from a sociological, town planning, and environmental viewpoint.

The Sustainable Design Assessment Team (SDAT) arrived on a Monday night and left on Friday morning. The team met with neighborhood leaders and residents, had a 225 person multicultural meal, worked hard on concepts and strategies, fleshed those out in drawings and positions and presented a preliminary powerpoint report at the Portland High School auditorium on Thursday night.

The team focused on interventions which are completely practical and can be accomplished quickly without years of bureaucracy or high costs. This meant leaving a remade Franklin Arterial out of the equation as a far in future reality to make suggestions such as pedestrian crossing bermed up path with crossing warning lights over Franklin where kids already cross often. Something as simple as extending the curbs at intersections where parallel parking is not allowed anyway makes a HUGE difference as the crossing distance becomes 10 feet shorter and vehicles slow to turn the intended proper radius. Street trees also make a huge difference.

Other members of the SDAT team were experts in community relations and they presented ways of developing inter-resident relations and youth development which challenged people to step out of their comfort zone and interact. Youth who are given short tasks to allow them to take ownership of the neighborhood mature rather than remain outsiders. Another aspect of inter-relations is working from a 'cloud' model of forming groups around common interests that draw from uncommon cultural groupings rather than a 'clock' model that uses fixed parts to move in a linear fashion.

For info: http://www.eastbayside.org/

In some ways this is our future- one that forgoes the urge for grand gestures from above for small interventions that grow from within.

The Other Portland

Last night The Trust For Public Land presented a movie about the other Portland (Oregon) and it's urban growth boundary. Clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avNmiHnSXns

Even the most progressive planning can run into hurdles as Portland did when their land owners outside the boundary led and passed a referendum to get rid of the boundary and let them maximize their profit on their land.

The key is to build in mechanisms when drafting growth boundaries which automatically diffuses tensions which build up from time to time. Just like catastrophe theory, when grains of sand are allowed to build up, a tiny avalanche eventually happens.

Portland Piers Are Streets

Recently the city of Portland Maine held an information gathering public workshop focused on the desire of central waterfront pier owners to alter the marine-only code requirements of their property. As noted in my earlier posts, a form based code based on the history of Portland can solve our use oriented questions.

The history of the city provides us with the necessary information to move forward. Portland began as a series of piers or streets out into the water that extended up to a perpendicular street along the ridge of the peninsula (Congress St.). Fore street ran along the waterfront but when the railroad from Montreal crossed all of the piers towards the city, the water areas between the railroad and Fore St. were filled in. Much of the delicate fabric of many buildings conducting business along the streets that began on the land and then became piers were slowly erased as industrialization fed highway transportation of goods.

The key to development of our piers is to keep a building height of 2 to 4 stories which fits with our Old Port and to maintain a street down the middle of each pier. If the city can cooperate with the pier owners to cover liability or swap tax break for city ownership of the street in middle of piers, the city will flourish forever.

Use can be handled as waterfront at first level and other above. Buildings along Commercial Street can be the size of 100 Commercial St. building and the same depth of that to enhance the Commercial St. hallway-like street experience with visual corridors down each street out through the piers to the end of the pier.

Sometimes common sense can help our city grow in a way that benefits all.

New Portland Vet Bridge Needs Wide People Lane

The new design for replacing the Veteran's Memorial Bridge presented last night at city hall was very thoughtful when dealing with the flow of vehicles. However, the bike and pedestrian path is tacked on as an afterthought and appears a bit convoluted. The designers put the path on the south side of the bridge because if the put it on the north side, they would have had to do environmental impact submittals that would have driven their bid up, possibly leading to losing.

We are still operating under the old gas-forever auto paradigm instead of the new holistic cities paradigm. Right now the bridge has carefully crafted a big 'A' poppa bear path for cars but a little 'Z' path for people walking, jogging, or biking to work, etc. The new bridge needs to have a big 'A' path for cars and an equal (not equal width but almost equal importance) partner 'B' path for pedestrians and bicycles. In places like Copenhagen enormous numbers of people bike to work at little cost. Reed and Reed need to present the bridge as a link in a bicycle & pedestrian trails network as well as road network. Bicycles will be the next big commuting story in this country.

And again, it's easy to forget that walking IS transportation.

Moses parts the urban fabric

I just finished reading Anthony Flint's excellent account of the battle between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses for the urban fabric of NYC. Post war America saw the existing urban fabric of cities as stale garbage compared to the huge infrastructure going up based on the automobile as the primary mode of transportation and the utopian life the commuting world would bring. The impulse to "clean" up areas of "decay" is a natural instinct but of course, we ended up destroying large pieces of neighborhood fabric and making gettos of under and around elevated expressway areas.

Thanks to people like Jacobs who saw the world from a human perspective, communities banded together to save the human based streetscape as a working prototype thousands of years old. Moses, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, built many models where he could look down from the detached view of an airplane and admire the sweeping forms of concrete and tar slithering through the city, raised high above the ordinary human on foot. Riding in a chauffeur driven limo since he was a boy, his view of a better world was one in which he yielded ultimate power and could use his superior education and personality to help the simple little people who knew nothing. Feeling superior was natural for him and he never failed to feed his ego to the point where real harm to society began to take place.

Jacobs owned a home she liked and wanted her neighborhood to stay personable and friendly and bubbling with activity based on the movement of the human body through space and the one to one conversations possible in these circumstances. Her view was one of a mother with a home in a humanistic environment enmeshed in the people around her. She was very assertive and this helped propel her to the foreground of community leadership. She formed the perfect foil to Moses' assertive bureaucrat.

Now that we are looking for new infrastructure projects to revitalize our cities it is important to stop categorizing forces into pro-neighborhood and pro-development. We must simply acknowledge that we are happiest in human environments that are safe and allow us the maximum interaction with others and to grow old in our homes, and thus, walk to everything. And that we need to continue to build and modify and tear down things to make a more wonderful series of neighborhoods.

There is no rule that says we have to build more than 4 stories high or have any elevators. There is no rule that says we can't tear down some buildings to make a nice park or community space.

When we put ourselves as humans above ourselves as consumers, we all win.

The Roseto Stone

I just read Gladwell's 'Outliers' and loved it. I like the part about the town of Roseto, a town in Pennsylvania where everyone had come from the Italian town of Roseto. In 1950's the healthiest people in country lived there even though they were chubby, ate fat instead of olive oil, and smoked. After looking at every conceivable reason (genes, diet, work,

etc.) they stumbled on answer..........'Community'! Once again we find that what we want to call 'holistic', or now find a way to call, 'sustainable', are just ways for us to avoid the word, 'community'. Community means a thriving organism of people involved in and sustaining all aspects of

life.

I don't mean to be all Confuscius-like with the emphasis on collective over individual as I am not implying sacrifice of individual for community. Rather, it is the simple daily interactions between community members and the need to obtain food and shelter which, if examined, are linked to ecology, mental health, physical health, town planning, etc.

Here's to Roseto! (top pic is Roseto, Italy; bottom is Roseto, Penn.)

Leon Krier lecture at Brown.

Great talk last night at Brown by the man who spawned new urbanism, or traditional town planning world wide, Leon Krier. He has been promoting human scaled common sense planning for over 30 years. His diagrams are always a model of clarity and purpose, helping us see the path to environments we can live comfortably in. The irony is his common sense, practical, planning suggestions are thousands of years old in the making and so self-evident; and yet, now we are calling traditional town planning 'sustainable' and this is what grabs the nation's attention.

It's time to stop classifying our lives into pieces just as we broke up use into different zones and just look at life as a journey of minds and bodies through space and time, with endings and beginnings constantly flowing. We don't need to use the name, 'sustainable'. We can just use the word, 'LIFE'.

Form-based code puts power in public's hands

The Congress for New Urbanism, New England chapter recently held a council on form-based codes. Several examples of municipalities implementing a form-based code were presented. Now, form-based code just means that the growth and eventual physical space and atmosphere of a place is thought about and prescribed in a code format. Instead of the post war zoning of placing all the businesses in one spot and houses in another and all the workshops in another, the old fashioned Main street we all love is described in drawings and zoning law.

The best way to look at this is to imagine that you have no say in what your town will look like and feel like. Instead, that over time, your town is just a mess of boxes and parking lots, a place you and your children no longer like. That is the current zoning model we have.

When a town takes the time to draw a map describing their goal of the most wonderful town possible, everyone wins. This plan would show where they want tree lined sidewalks with stores and offices and apartments; where they want tree lined streets with houses; where and how many parks they want; how to place elementary schools so that most children can walk to school and similarly with sports fields so that children can all walk to a field and play after school.

A form-based code describes how the street will look and how tall the buildings are to make this plan develop over time. The use of the spaces is less important as the place itself. It is an empowering tool and must be presented as such- not a scary change. The amount of freedom increases to the public, not decreases as we all will take charge of our future.

Don't let the government and out-of-towners let your town turn into a sprawling hell. Take charge and demand a form-based code!

Post-utopian planning entertainment...

Here's a music video by architects in Finland with summary of current state of post-utopian planning: http://vimeo.com/6621826

Damariscotta Charrette

Congratulations to Damariscotta for engaging planner Bill Dennis to do a planning exercise with citizen input. The results (to be posted on town site soon) will provide the town with direction to move into the future, directing growth in such a way as to make a more pedestrian friendly and village-like town such as exists now. This is crucial to the state's keeping Maine, Maine.

Close Encounters of the Real Kind

Whenever we walk through space, we encounter objects and degrees of enclosure which we then negotiate both physically and mentally. When my kids are playing video games they are negotiating space (sports space) as discorporate players in simulated 3 dimensions on a 2 dimensional screen.

When municipalities focus on property tax revenues instead of form when buildings are proposed, we get a 2 dimensional result: money. Instead, with a form based code coupled with an experiential goal, we get real 3 dimensional results which all can appreciate. Real experience can be replicated by returning to the town square or covered walk. Real spatial delight can be discussed with each generation and new events can be negotiated whilst traversing a real spatial experience.

Lack of community spatial design in public space leads to retreating to the couch and the monitor where we can find more delight than outside. When we have no playing fields we shall all play simulation games.

So, it's up to us: Are we REAL players? Or just Pretenders.

Paris from within or above?

The recent proposals for tackling Paris' urban blighted suburbs requested by Sarkozy reveal the lingering dualism in today's urban design. The success of Haussmann gave Le Corbusier intellectual permission to propose Plan Voisin and led to the destruction of large swaths of delicate urban fabric all over the world. This can be called, "planning from above". This kind of planning takes a neoplatonic view of civilization; one in which big brother knows best and can organize life into neat sets which usually do not overlap. It is top down.

The new old fashioned planning method can be described as, "planning from within". This kind of planning uses the self organizing principles of hill towns and other village layouts to create places that arise from users actual movements. The set theory involved here is multiple

overlapping and always changing. It's taoistic in accepting an existing flow. It is bottom up.

The proposals for Paris are straddled between these two approaches. On the one had we see a new urbanist before and after sketch showing how reinstalling village fabric can restore an area:

On the other hand we have a new raised monorail to bypass the world below on the way to Tomorrowland like Robert Moses would love:

Then too, we have sinking rail lines and covering them with parks to restore links between neighborhoods by foot, which is restorative and looks at connecting. Also, there is a proposal to use the canals as places to invest so as to create places just as beautiful as those in the old city such that people will want to be in these new beautiful spots and wonderful living areas will grow from this.

Then again we're back to models with towers- just can't stop these from appearing:

And then, another green leafy urban new urbanist like sketch from the Rogers' office (long way from 70's for sure):

It appears as though the tide has turned against endless consumption though as sound practices such as establishing an urban limit as cities like Portland OR have done was proposed for Paris around the suburbs. As mentioned, removing industrial scars in the fabric and paying attention to neighborhoods and how they work- both proven strategies- were present.

The answer seems to be a dash of this and a dash of that with focus on enabling citizens to grow and adapt and change whilst every new piece creates a greater whole. The old city is a product of a bit of massive destruction of buildings for large boulevards that we enjoy. The setting of city limits is top down and limiting in a way but can free up the filling in with more attention to quality and infrastructure limits. The restoration of pedestrian play areas and movement can bring people out of their fortresses and cars to experience life more fully.

It's clear that the old city started as a few nice buildings and squares and a lot of slums which are now millionaire housing. This means it's all about creating great spaces for people to walk through and they will be filled with poor and then rich and new spaces can be created. It is only the constant attention to linking great existing spaces with new great spaces that will ensure a greater environment with the passage of time. Paris is this in the old center and can be this from inside out forever!

The End of Utopia

I participated in the public workshop for the potential reworking of the Franklin Arterial in Portland last month along with other architects, planners and community members. The city did a wonderful job of organizing a slide show depicting the way the street was before being ripped apart and destroyed to get a mini highway installed. The general consensus among all was to knit the streets that once flowed across Franklin back together and to bring back the wonderful city fabric that once existed whilst allowing smooth high volume traffic to get from 295 to Congress.

As we and others across the country stitch up the wounds caused by 60's urban renewal we must act not with nostalgia after a time that was rough and not ideal. Nor, must we hasten toward a new utopia which will never arrive. It is the molding of idealism in each of our minds in the form of projected wish fulfillment which must be addressed as mature citizens. Utopia is a violent concept which skips reality for a neoplatonic construct- always denigrating us all. We must let go of the urge for grand gestures. 

Each of us is a small animal moving through space gathering food, protecting our families, and seeking shelter. From this beginning, sustainable questions can be dealt with while creating space and light.

The end of utopia is the beginning of infinity

Form-based code puts power in public's hands

The city of Portland recently held a community design workshop to get ideas for how the public would like the Maine State Pier developed. While many great ideas came forward, I suspect an underlying issue is the lack of a form based code for our city.

A form based code might simply state that in the area of the Maine State Pier perhaps all building on Commercial Street would front the sidewalk with no setback and a height of 4-6 stories like 100 Commercial Street such that no elevator would be necessary. A form based code might also add that public access to all pier edges and ends is mandatory; that all buildings on piers be a 4 story maximum; that all piers have public streets down the middle; and that all streets perpendicular to Commercial continue across to the water with potentially future piers built for them (India Street).

In this way, the city can be filled with buildings as developers see opportunity and all public access and enjoyment is pre-guaranteed. Most important, that no matter what use, the city ends up more interesting and wonderful as time goes on. 

The final piece to the puzzle is to keep public ownership of the land/piers owned now, so that the building values are never tied to the land and it's value- a great way to keep marine related uses able to afford such prime spots.

We can still specify a particular spot for future public opera house or aquarium but a form based code would really provide a blueprint for such a great city without getting bogged down in each square foot.

Kunstler's Odds

J. H. Kunstler gave an energetic, fun, keynote lecture full of predictions at the Gas Light restaurant in Portsmouth April 2nd as part of CNU NE Sustainable Urbanism Summit.

Mr. Kunstler began by pointing our that peak oil has occurred and we will have to make due with fewer barrels while demand grows. Because of this, there will be no more boom and bust cycles of 3-7% growth and we can no longer service our debt. Oil producing countries- most of which have nationalized oil- will keep more to themselves. Places like Mexico will lose the money generated by it's 2nd largest oil field which could potentially lead to revolution.

He sees 2 trends of thought emerging among those concerned: One group envisions technical solutions to everything (the internet geeks). Another group sees organizing as a means of solving the problems (the volunteers). Kunstler says neither group understands the complexity of the problem.

With industrial food production dependent on oil for machines and transport, the key to survival will be growing our own food locally.

Walmart is currently the largest grocery store chain and as all the big box stores go under, their strategy is to close all huge stores and keep only the megastores open. They want to be the last big box standing. But the model they use to operate is NOT sustainable and they will go down soon as well.

99% of all development is suburban sprawl and builders are just waiting for the cycle to come back so they can continue to sprawl but it's not coming back- it's OVER. Kunstler convincingly shows us how the suburban commercial strip was the biggest WASTE of human potential. All that effort could have gone into creating wonderful urban environments.

Kunstler's big point is that: WISHING WILL NOT WORK! We are now a society of gamblers and all want something for nothing. We will now have to make due with less. We will be in a contracting society as the economy contracts and our urban areas contract. We will have to spend less and live in urban walking environments. We will have to do business differently, build smaller schools, rebuild the railroad system and boat transport system (use trucks only for last leg of journey).

The middle class will be pissed off about losing the easy way of life.

Car centered cities like Phoenix will disappear and older pedestrian founded cities like those in northeast will grow. More rental units and more 6 story walk ups. No more new urbanist mega developments on green field sites, it's all in-fill from now on.

Finally, he quotes the, "Law of perverse outcomes: people get what they deserve, not what they expect.", and urges us face reality- NO WISHING.

Global warming

A recent NYTimes article on scientist Freeman Dyson's questioning the urgency surrounding global warming may cause some to back off any commitment to lowering our carbon footprint but the issue of sustainability is much more far reaching than just quantity of CO2.

Sustainability has been around since the beginning of time with early man discovering farming as a way to sustain life. Our dependence on foreign imports of energy clearly disengages us from our local environment. The Industrial Revolution solved many problems of production but has disengaged us from who we are in the places that we live. We have come to expect all of our needs to be created and sent to our front door.

Now we are industrial voyeurs, accepting visual entertainment as a substitute for engagement with our neighbors. We go to the gym to attempt to reclaim our bodies as part of our selves instead of walking, gardening, etc. as natural ways of using our bodies in the natural course of feeding and entertaining ourselves. High School graduates cannot fix the cars they will be driving everyday of their lives. They cannot grow their own food. We are all trained to do one specialist task for a paycheck and heaven help us if we ever had to make our own food and energy supply. 

The big picture is that the Industrial Revolution is over. The information era is certainly important from a political, war-and-peace standpoint, but it's time to live within our means and within our neighborhoods.