Slave New World?

One could view the finalists in Dwell Magazine's "Reburbia" competition as creative, light-hearted, largely harmless exercises in techno-dweeb future-think. And on that level, the top entries do offer some clever (if inadvertently humorous) scenarios for the urban and suburban landscape of the future. But there's a darker side to the contest that commands our attention.

That most of the finalists slavishly bow to the "sustainability" mania, and take predictable swipes at evil "sprawl" -- as if those who choose to dwell in a tract development are soulless wretches whose lives can't be worth living, for want of "walkability" -- isn't surprising, given the suburbia-non-grata snobbishness that runs in planning and design circles. This wasn't just a design exercise, after all; it was a political exercise, inviting architects and professional planners to have a little fun, while heaping requisite scorn on the environmentally-incorrect lifestyle choices of Homo Suburbanis.

Strolling the streets of Reburbia isn't just an imaginative adventure. It also offers a revealing glimpse into the mind of the modern eco-Utopian, which melds dark apocalyptic forebodings with naive flights of fancy. It's a mirror held up to the tortured psyches of "new urbanists," where all the predictable bogeymen can be found: Big box stores, freeways, parking garages, strip malls and, of course, "McMansions." There, too, is the fear of looming economic and ecological calamity -- the sense that we'll all have to resort to farming freeway medians in the dark days ahead. Tossed in for good measure are the energy policy panaceas of the moment.

You have wind-powered freeway systems, "big box agriculture," parking lot agriculture, big box biofuel plants, swimming pools that double as water purification systems, abandoned McMansions devolving into frog-friendly wetlands. Pessimism and misanthropy permeate the scenes. The future is not an earthly paradise, where human ingenuity and intelligence have triumphed -- the sort of Jetsonsesque future Americans were promised in the 1950s -- but a place where farmers scratch out a subsistence living (growing "organic" produce I'm sure) in empty parking garages and on former freeways -- in the wasteland that was suburbia.

The future of suburbia looks desolate and dark. Something terrible has happened there. Parking lots and big box stores no longer are needed, apparently. Where have all the people gone? Have they all moved -- or been moved? -- back into the urban core, to become bicycle commuters? Have they been loaded into boxcars and taken off to fenced camps just beyond the tree line, in a "final solution" to America's over-sized "carbon footprint"? Few hints of what happened to suburbia, and suburbians, can be found in the designs.

Where have all the cars gone, since parking lots seen superfluous and there's so little traffic that the medians can safely be farmed? Have cars become unnecessary? Have cars become illegal? Have cars been taken away?

Were the vacant McMansions that have become wetlands abandoned, as embarrassing extravagances, or were they banned by authorities for having an over-sized "carbon footprint" -- something Boulder, Colorado, is in the process of doing right now? Did their former owners go willingly, or through force? Maybe they've been indicted for environmental crimes and forced to wander through abandoned strip malls (those that haven't been transformed into organic farmers markets, that is) with a scarlet "E" emblazoned on their pajamas.

Reburbia contestants weren't charged with telling the story of how we get from here to there. All they were interested in was conjuring up clever "solutions" to the problem that is (in their frame of reference) suburbia. Yet the question hangs over the contest like acid smog.

Are these just the brain farts of naive Utopians -- harmless dreamers with a fashionably pessimistic outlook? Or are these draft planning documents for the "coercive Utopians" (in Thomas Sowell's phrase) -- those "planners" that intend to use the levers of power, and the force of government, to impose their environmentally- and socially-correct visions on those who won't go willingly?

The problem with such exercises is that the people who organize and participate in them actually take these ideas seriously. The danger is that they'll attempt to impose these visions by force, if given the opportunity. And the reality is that that opportunity is there, thanks to the power granted government planners through the mania for "smart growth," new urbanism and other social engineering fads, combined with the totalitarian tendencies of those trying to "save the planet" from climate change.

Americans have gradually been conditioned into going along like sheep with the planning thing. The broad acceptance of zoning rules -- and the notion that chaos will reign if there isn't some order imposed on things by planning "experts" -- laid the predicate for ever more radical concepts, like urban growth boundaries, new urbanism, historic preservation districts and so-called "smart growth." We've gradually become a nation of control freaks. We've learned that we don't actually have to own a piece of property in order to control it, because zoning laws have collectivized private property rights. The table has been set for even greater tyrannies.

In "global warming" the coercive Utopians have found the ultimate justification for using government force to achieve their goals, since anything can be justified in the name of "saving the planet." Property rights can be trampled. People can be displaced. Extravagances can be banned, or regulated away. Consumer choice can be curtailed. Environmentally-incorrect lifestyles can be made war upon. Energy policy can be dictated by central planners, and the economy can be micromanaged, in the interest of safeguarding the planet.

An alarmist view? Perhaps. But some of what I just described was worming its way into American society even before the battle cry of "save the planet" gave coercive Utopians the green light they need to impose their "Reburbian" values and visions on the rest of us.

The Horrors of Prosperity

One county official called the scene "absolutely disgusting," and said laws must be changed to put a stop to it. Another, stunned by what she saw, called it "way out of character" with community norms. All gawked in amazement as they toured the area by bus.

What was it that evoked such a reaction? A ride through the tenderloin district? The growth of an open-air crack market? A messy sewage plant mishap, maybe? No. This was the reaction to that scourge of middle class suburbs everywhere, the "McMansion," which are springing up like garish eyesores in the "once-modest" Millcreek neighborhood outside Salt Lake City, according to this story in yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune.

"It was a sightseeing tour of the stars -- not of the sprawling estates of Hollywood celebrities, but of the practically palatial living that has crept into once-modest Millcreek neighborhoods and prompted a political movement to stop the spread of so-called monster homes.

Several Salt Lake County Council members boarded a miniature school bus Wednesday for a guided tour through this township torn by an ongoing debate over oversized homes. They wanted to see for themselves the two- and three-story McMansions that critics say have squeezed up to property lines, obstructed views and disrupted the character of this unincorporated burb of 65,000 people.

"That is absolutely disgusting," said Councilman Joe Hatch as the bus rumbled to a stop beside a 6,500-square-foot home that dwarfed its single-story neighbors. "We should have a zoning change to prevent that."

The Millcreek Township Planning Commission has proposed a change that includes black-and-white restrictions on home heights and masses along with grayer provisions that would allow bigger homes as long as they are compatible with the neighborhood."

Homes that are incompatible with the neighborhood? A lack of uniformity and conformity? Overt displays of income disparity? What is Millcreek coming to? It's not the Millcreek I knew as a youngster! And these county commissioners aren't going to stand for it, I tell you.

Three council members -- Jani Iwamoto, Jim Bradley and Hatch -- spent two hours Wednesday surveying neighborhoods interrupted by 4,000-, 5,000- and even 6,000-square-foot homes.

They paused at a more-modest house that offered 3,100 square feet and a second floor but fit under the proposed standards. They snaked through an upper-scale neighborhood in east Millcreek that would accommodate bigger homes, based on the plan's more flexible sections.

"I can't even see the top from here," said Diane Angus, a west Millcreek community councilwoman who accompanied the council tour, as the bus stopped beside an enormous pair of red-brick homes.

"You have to use the periscope," quipped county planner Tom Schafer.

Iwamoto stepped off the bus without a staked position on the proposed building ordinance. What was clear, she said, is that something needs to be done. "What is allowed in some of those areas is way out of character with the community."

It's a debate that has proven particularly sensitive in Millcreek, where residents are split over the rights of property owners to build and the rights of neighbors to protect themselves from oversized homes that erode privacy and reshape skylines."

Can you really "reshape the skyline" in suburbia? Manhattan has a skyline. Chicago has a skyline. But does Millcreek have a skyline, that can be thrown out of kilter by a two-story home? And aren't so-called invasions of private a two-way street? If you build a house next door with windows looking into my yard, you must not mind me looking in your windows. And how much privacy does anyone really expect, and is someone entitled to, in such a neighborhood? If you want to live in seclusion, build a cabin on Walden Pond. If you hate having neighbors, buy that rat hole next door and tear it down.

But why reason the issue through. It's not about skylines or privacy. The hatred of "McMansions" is mostly about envy, on the part of the offended and insecure neighbors, and about pandering to envy and exercising control, on the part of local officials. I mean, just imagine the anxiety and disharmony it creates in Millcreek when the modest people living there, modestly, in their modest middle class homes, suddenly find their house looking rather dingy and dumpy, next to the stately McMansion some nuevo riche yuppie (probably an escapee from Wall Street) slaps up right next door! Imagine the shame. Imagine the humiliation. Imagine the envy this is generating in once-modest Millcreek.

This disparity in domiciles is humbling to some, and ego-gratifying to others, depending on which side of the fence you stand -- a visual reminder that we remain a nation of "haves" and "have-nots." But there's no escaping it, unless you live in a glass tower in the city, or some cookie-cutter Levittown where every home is exactly the same (not that there's anything wrong with that).

And there's nothing wrong with it, and no need for local officials to correct it, since wanting a slightly bigger and better house than the dump next door is part and parcel of the American dream, at least as many Americans define it. And it's that American dream which has made it possible for so many of us to live in "McMansions" that they've become a "problem."

Other countries should have such problems.

Would "Washington Motors" Do Better?

An excellent piece in today's Washington Post poses the question: Can the know-it-alls in Washington do a better job of building an innovative and profitable car company than can the panhandlers in pinstripes from Detroit? Washington seems to think so, judging from all the critiques auto company execs endured when they came grovelling, and all the conditions politicians want attached to any bailout money.

The short answer, of course, is that any car or car company designed according to Washington's specifications would be an Edsel -- just as everything else Washington touches becomes an Edsel. Hasn't anyone in Washington ever heard of the GAZ-M20 Pobeda, which was just one clunky and archaic result of Soviet central planning? And an argument might even be made that the meddling Washington's already done in the industry, in terms of the regulatory burdens and fuel economy and safety mandates it's imposed, contributed mightily to the uncompetitiveness of this American industry (a point made by Holman Jenkins in The Wall Street Journal).

But the long answer, for those who want it, is as follows:

The Car of the Future -- but at What Cost?

Hybrid Vehicles Are Popular, but Making Them Profitable Is a Challenge

By Steven Mufson

Many members of Congress believe they know what the car company of the future should look like.

"A business model based on gas -- a gas-guzzling past -- is unacceptable," Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said last week. "We need a business model based on cars of the future, and we already know what that future is: the plug-in hybrid electric car."

But the car company Schumer and other lawmakers envision for the future could turn out to be a money-losing operation, not part of a "sustainable U.S. auto industry" that President-elect Barack Obama and most members of Congress say they want to create.

That's because car manufacturers still haven't figured out how to produce hybrid and plug-in vehicles cheaply enough to make money on them. After a decade of relative success with its hybrid Prius, Toyota has sold about a million of the cars and is still widely believed by analysts to be losing money on each one sold. General Motors has touted plans for a plug-in hybrid vehicle called the Volt, but the costly battery will prevent it from turning a profit on the vehicle for several years, at least.

"In 10 years are they [at GM] going to solve the technological problems with respect to the Volt? Sure," says Maryann Keller, an automotive analyst and author of a book on GM. "But are they going to be able to stake their survival, which is really more of a now to five-year proposition, on it? I'd say they can't. They have to stake their future on Malibus, the Chevy Cruze, and much more conventional technologies."

U.S. automakers faced a barrage of demands last week that they provide evidence and assurance that they would use federal bailout money to transform their companies to produce automobiles of the future, using advanced technologies and featuring hybrid or plug-in vehicles. And in his "60 Minutes" interview on Nov. 16, Obama said that before backing a big loan package he wanted to be sure "that we are creating a bridge loan to somewhere as opposed to a bridge loan to nowhere."

But there's no guarantee that the new business model would be any more viable than the current one. Automobile experts estimate that the battery in a plug-in vehicle could add at least $8,000 to the cost of a car, maybe considerably more. Most Americans will be unwilling to pay the extra price, especially if gasoline prices languish around $2 a gallon.

That's why one of the mysteries about GM's plans to introduce the Volt in 2010 is how much it will cost to buy one. "What's the Volt going to cost? I would be happy to answer that if you can tell me the price of oil in 2010," said Robert A. Kruse, GM's executive director of global vehicle engineering for hybrids, electric vehicles and batteries. "I can tell you to the penny what it will cost GM, but pricing is much more related to market conditions."

The hurdles ahead for the Volt and other cars with new technologies pose dilemmas for automakers trying to gauge a market that is still very young for cars that don't exist while trying to stay in business during a downturn.

"These are hard choices," said Toyota chief technology officer Bill Reinert, part of the Prius design team. "Do you bet on lighter, smaller, more fuel efficient but ultimately less profitable cars or do you hold back a little on technology development and look at new versions of existing cars."

Many experts say that gas guzzlers will not fade away as long as Congress fails to impose higher taxes on gasoline to steer people toward fuel-efficient cars.

"You'd think from reading the media that we have had a burial ceremony at Arlington cemetery for the last pickup truck," said James Womack, a management expert who has written about the automobile industry. "I can easily imagine three years from now when public is focused on a new set of priorities . . . that this whole thing would go poof."

Eager to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, Obama proposed a $7,500-a-vehicle tax credit for plug-in vehicles during his presidential campaign. Roughly half of Americans don't earn enough to take advantage of such a big tax credit. (A head of household would need to earn almost $50,000 to have a federal tax liability that large.) Many others don't have the cash to purchase an expensive vehicle then wait for a federal refund. To spur sales of new vehicles, the price must be reasonable at the point of sale, say many industry experts.

Womack warned that it takes time to design a new vehicle, change assembly lines and then turn a new product into a profitable one. "For anything that's really new it's still about four years," he said. "To get your money back, you need to make that product for eight to 10 years with only cosmetic changes."

Helping automakers over that hump may take more money and patience than Congress or its taxpaying constituents have.

The experience of Tesla Motors, a Silicon Valley sports car maker, illustrates the challenges of making a radically new automobile. Founded by a group of high-tech multimillionaires, Tesla has been trying to become the first new successful American car company since Chrysler, which was founded in 1925.

Tesla's founders set out to make all-electric vehicles. The company's first: an all-electric sports car with a price tag of $109,000 that can go from zero to 60 mph in a bracing 3.9 seconds. As of a week ago, only 63 had been delivered to customers; a couple of dozen were nearly ready and the company has about 1,200 back orders.

"The reason we started with a $100,000 sports car is that when technology is new it tends to be expensive," says Elon Musk, the co-founder of PayPal who is the chief executive of and a big investor in Tesla. "It just takes time to optimize the right design and work up to economies of scale. . . . Why we didn't start with a Honda Civic is that it would be a $70,000 to $80,000 Honda Civic."

With a chassis made by Lotus in England, body parts made by a French carbon fiber firm Sotira and battery parts from Taiwan, Tesla has had supply-chain problems ranging from customs delays to a fire in the tunnel that goes under the English Channel. Initially a two-speed vehicle, the early Teslas were rough on transmissions, which have been eliminated in new single-speed versions. Recently Musk has hired some veterans from the Detroit automakers to smooth out production problems.

"For sure, this game looks a lot easier than it really is," said Jon Lauckner, GM's vice president of global program management. "You've got to get 3,000 parts all together in one place to assemble a vehicle."

Tesla isn't any different from the Detroit Three in one regard: It too is looking for government assistance. Eager to make a luxury sedan as the next in what it hopes eventually will be a full line of electric vehicles, Tesla Motors has applied for $400 million in low-interest federal loans under the $25 billion loan package approved by Congress a year ago.

But GM and other car companies, while preparing plug-in vehicles, are more likely to live or die based on the sales of conventional cars that get better fuel efficiency through improved transmissions, reduced weight or hybrid technology. GM says it will offer nine hybrids for sale by the middle of next year. Reinert says that Toyota will eventually offer hybrid versions of all its car models.

Still, production of the new cars will be limited. GM, for instance, plans to produce only a little more than 10,000 Volts in the model's first year.

"People ask us when will we produce not just 10,000 but 50,000," said Frank Weber, GM's global vehicle line executive and chief engineer for E-flex systems. "I say when the battery and power train costs have come down significantly." Weber added: "We never said this program in the first generation was there to make money. You cannot expect this type of technology to make money from day one."

The economic downturn has also changed the equation.

"Will the U.S. auto industry ever be as profitable as it was from mid-90s to the early part of this decade?" asks automobile expert Keller. Those days were "magic. It was like printing money for everybody. Everybody from Toyota and GM to Ford and Nissan were feasting on our desire to drive around in those giant vehicles."

But the industry has gone from feast to famine. Auto industry experts say that the basic problem is that the U.S. industry geared up to make 18 million cars and light trucks a year and that it will be lucky to sell 11 million this year. How far sales will climb back -- and when -- is anybody's guess.

"There's fluff and there's reality," Keller said. "The fluff is the Chevy Volt . . . That's not going to save GM in the next five years. What will save GM is more small sedans and more crossovers. That's what people are going to be buying."