SMALL TOWN / BIG TOWN
Growing Pains on California’s Central Coast
by
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URBAN PYRAMID SCHEMES
The unraveling of the American economy because of the deflating housing bubble, deregulation of the marketplace and gross mismanagement at top levels of the banking, manufacturing, and financial empires is by now a well known story. It all amounts to a huge self-deception based on the fiction of an ever-expanding pie-- one that is half-baked in greed, myopic vision, and arrogance; together, they make fertile ground for the incredible pyramid schemes and untracked hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars that are making front page headlines.
There are strong parallels here to what has gone on under the name of urban “development”- a rosy-eyed view of a cloudless economic future, with each new development piggy-backed financially on the ones preceding it. That too is a variety of pyramid or ponzi scheme, although less obviously so.
Little thought has been given to the possibility of an economic downturn. Nor has the quality of life been a principal point of concern. Education, public health, safety and social services do get handouts from increasing sales tax revenue, but they are among the first to be cut in a slowing economy. The vast percentage of revenues gained from these projects are simply moved along to subsidize ever more schemes in the sales tax pipeline. Almost none of the development projects of recent years have made a significant inroad in the fast growing lack of reasonably priced housing. And energy considerations, while increasingly talked about, have not been integrated to make major impact on our extravagant way of suburban living and commuting. The economic pie in SLO county is continually sliced thinner as cities and towns copy and compete with each other for the same retail trade. Development eggs are almost all in one basket.
Is the only answer to local and national problems to send people back to the shopping malls? That is hardly a long-term solution because it would return us to a world of false priorities and tunnel vision. Wise planning requires balanced growth and real diversification with a careful eye out for both calm and stormy economic periods. We end up paying a terrible price for pyramid schemes, especially as it is now known that a huge wave of mall indebtedness is about to descend on the American shopping landscape.
Producing money managers at top-ranked colleges, who learn to churn money with nary a thought to creative production, is an economic fantasy. Producing multi-millionaires, even billionaires, while leaving behind a shrinking middle class and an outlandish system of rewards for failure is a formula for continuing decrepitude and social breakdown. It reflects in the obsessive behavior found in the malls, which have become a pseudo-religious experience.
We have to change our ways of doing business and our patterns of consumption and planning if we are to keep abreast of competition with countries that make investment in their people’s health, social security, and creative employment a top priority. It is the intelligent way to national security and the pursuit of happiness.
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About the Book
HOW DO WE CONFRONT OUR LOVE-HATE AFFAIR WITH CITIES?
A professor of urban studies retires and moves from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo, a university town on the central coast of California. New friends get him embroiled in local issues of city growth and development, and he becomes a contributor to a “Greenview” column in the main city/county newspaper. What began as a lark turns into a fourteen year broadside against rampant growth and environmental degradation, often serious, but sometimes bordering on the hilarious and the heretical.
Winn’s views and arguments favor sustainability, slower and more balanced growth, protection of the downtown, a greener view of life and planning and sensible paths to redevelopment -- that are not much appreciated by the powers that be. But even his critics have to admit that his arguments for more far-reaching thinking and truly innovative education of the public are usually intriguing and practical.
WHY DO WE LOVE THE CITY, BUT DO SO MANY THINGS TO BREAK ITS HEART?
SMALL TOWN/BIG TOWN: Growing Pains on California’s Central Coast aims at challenging your perspectives on a wide range of urban issues and environmental, political and educational topics, while needling the reader’s interests and sense of humor and outrage.
FROM JIM PATTERSON, SUPERVISOR, SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
“Ira Winn speaks authoritatively to the challenges and complexities of building livable communities. In SMALL TOWN / BIG TOWN, he exposes the falsehoods of big-box development being the panacea for revenue shortfalls plaguing cities and counties throughout the nation. Environmental degradation, loss of farmland, lack of affordable housing, urban sprawl and declining services are all symptoms of the business-as-usual growth model. Ira not only tells us why we must change this pattern, but offers insights on how to do it.
About the Author
Short Biography Ira Jay Winn is Professor (Emeritus) of Urban Studies and Education at California State University, Northridge. He is the author of two other books: THE EDUCATION MIRAGE (iUniverse, 2003) and BASIC ISSUES IN ENVIRONMENT (MERRILL, 1972). His writings on environmental topics and social themes have appeared in a variety of national and international journals and magazines. Over the course of Winn’s career, he served as educational planner in Brazil, training specialist with Peace Corps, environmental education fellow with the German Fulbright Commission and the Environmental Protection Service (Jerusalem), adult education specialist (southern Africa Fulbright) consultant to the Laramie Energy Technology Center, and National Endowment for the Humanities fellow in American federalism. He resides in San Luis Obispo, California where he serves as a volunteer mediator for Creative Mediation and the state Superior Court.