Interesting: This is neither a right- nor a left-wing position. There is agreement.
Timothy P. Carney is a conservative investigative reporter, editor at the Washington Examiner, visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “Alienated America.” Carney’s conservative credentials are as impeccable as are the liberal credentials of James Howard Kunstler, author of “Geography of Nowhere.” Both agree: People need community. Community nurtures, compensates and supports. There is also agreement that, to our detriment, our communities are disintegrating.
In “Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse,” Carney hypothesizes Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” resonated because “community is dead.” Since 1993, in “The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape,” Kunstler warned our communities are dying.
Carney spent a year studying the plight of the working class. “It is impossible to deny that the suffering is real,” Carney said.
However, Carney contends, the people who believed Trump’s campaign slogan were statistically more likely to be “living in crumbling communities.” When communities crumble, institutions, families and neighborhoods collapse. In his studies, Carney found Trump beat Clinton 2–1 in communities where the number of married-couple households was well below the national average. Finally, Carney compares Trump rallies with religious revival meetings. As community collapses, so do its institutions; Trump created a substitute if not a new community. Carney concludes, “Trump did well with voters living among social ruin.”
Kunstler hypothesizes that current angst and dysfunction are products of our modern built environment. At the other end of the spectrum, he posits how we build shapes character. Kunstler equates how we build to how we think and how we act. He equates open space, town squares, narrower streets (building for people not cars), and eschewing homogeneous buildings with democracy and community.
Kunstler writes that community develops from “people and buildings actively relating to each other, and to whatever public space exists, be it the street, or the courthouse or the village green.” Carney agrees and mentions strong churches and locally owned shops where people meet and greet one another to catch up.
They are both writing about the power of place. Do they agree on how we are losing something so important? Not exactly. Writing 25 years earlier, Kunstler focused on the built environment: the need to preserve old structures that tell the communal story; avoid homogenous buildings that make one space indistinguishable from another; preserve communal spaces to meet; and be very careful to build for people not cars.
Twenty-five years later, Carney found whole areas of American towns and cities shut down, so economics play a role. Picking up where Kunstler left off, Carney goes beyond the automobile and touches on more modern inventions—the Internet and cell phone—that appear to connect us but actually isolate us, causing us to spend more time removed and alone.
Aren’t we lucky? As communities (apparently) crumble around us, our Berkshire community thrives.
Is erosion of physical attributes concomitant with erosion of the character of place? Is homogeneous architecture (chain restaurants, stores and gas stations) synonymous with the erosion of a sense of place? If so, we are okay. The Berkshires always fought to retain the old and limit the intrusion of chains. If they came, we asked for architecture more consistent with Berkshire buildings.
When community crumbles, does government weaken? Some Berkshire towns have paid town managers but by and large, we are governed by our citizens, who willingly take on a huge obligation for a pittance. They do it for love of place.
Does building for the automobile undermine people socializing? Well, wait a minute, let’s be cautious and not let the Commonwealth throw traffic circles here and there in Great Barrington and Stockbridge. They may or may not smooth or speed up the flow of traffic, but they assuredly would spoil the lovely look of our small town centers and definitely would make walking and crossing the street harder for people. The Commonwealth represents Boston and Worcester and may not, maybe never did, understand the Berkshires
Is the beauty of a place related to the safety of a place? If we continue to be vigilant, we can maintain the beauty and reap the benefits, whatever they may be.
Does weakening of the local economy destroy community? The Berkshires is thriving. The basis of our economy is as it always was. From the 18th century onward, we are innkeepers to the outlanders. They come because we know how to preserve community and that which community supports. Always that was interspersed with pockets of industry, and still is.
Are modern inventions alienating? Are cell phones, cars and computers separating us even as we sit together? Perhaps, but the Berkshires values its uniqueness and resists the parts of this modern world that would destroy that unique character.
At lunch, an outlander asked, “What is wrong with Stockbridge?”
Nothing. Some folks disagree on if or when to put chemicals in the lake. There was an unfortunate to-do caused by an out-of-state scammer. The issues will be resolved, and the underpinnings will hold. The citizens will be involved, the institutions will function throughout and, from long experience, we will remember relationships are more important than where anyone stands on any one issue. We can and will disagree with humility and comity.
So if liberal Kunstler and conservative Carney in their agreement have found truth, by all measures, we are okay. The Berkshires has not lost community; we merely have to be alert to preserve what we have, what our predecessors were wise enough to protect and provide.
