Paleo Places - Chapter 2

Chapter 2:  By Way of Background

Before I explain my epiphany, a few  definitions are probably in order…  First, Neo-traditional towns.  This trend is also referred to as “New Urbanism.”  One of the leaders of this movement, Andres Duany, was actually the designer of Celebration, Florida.  

These New Urbanists believe that the land use patterns that developed after WWII are not sustainable.  When the soldiers came home from the war and spawned what was to become the Baby Boom, America needed a place to house all those new families. Developers started buying and sub-dividing big tracts of land outside of the cities. Once the roof tops were in place, commercial developers started to build shopping centers, and later shopping malls, to meet the consumer demands of this new population. 

This type of spread-out development would not have been possible at earlier points in history because the land uses were so geographically separated.  Dads were commuting into the cities for work; the shopping centers were miles away from the homes. But, the economic boom that followed World War II had made auto ownership available to many families.

Over time, it started to become apparent that these new land use patterns were not the panacea that they had first seemed to be. Traffic had become a nightmare. The abandoned city centers began to die. Childhood obesity even became a problem, in part because American children were driven everywhere!

Enter, the New Urbanists. They espoused the idea that tighter Pre-World War II development patterns had been better. And, they set about trying to re-create them. 

Some characteristics of a New Urbanist, or Neo-traditional, development include: 

• Streets in a grid pattern, including alleys for garbage cans etc. - as opposed to the meandering streets of suburban subdivisions.

• Old-fashioned front porches on houses.

• A “walkable” downtown area that pedestrians can reach from their homes, and that is dense, so pedestrians can easily walk from shop to shop.

This movement is sweeping the country – and beyond.  Prince Charles has actually been involved in a Neo-Traditional development – Poundsbury – in the United Kingdom.  Everyone is jumping on the New Urbanism bandwagon.  But, is it a good idea?   I do not think that it has been studied nearly enough given both the financial costs involved with constructing entire towns, and the long-term social implications associated with where we live and raise our kids.

To me, New Urbanism smacks of “casting about.”  Post World War II sprawl was “bad,” so we “cast about” for something better.  Pieces of pre-war cities were, of course, still around to serve as examples.  They seemed better than the new parts of town – the sprawling new ‘burbs..  Also people have a tendency to mythologize their own childhoods, which were likely spent in a more Mayberry-esque place than they are now lining.  And so, “BOOM” New Urbanism was born, and Neo-traditional towns came on the scene.

Then, almost immediately, the muttering started.  My son, Josh, was not the first person to call Celebration “creepy” or “scary.”  As a planner, I was always intensely interested when I heard this kind of talk.  In an old Tampa weekly, I had once seen Celebration described as Marie Antoinette’s court, where rich people were playing at being shepherds and milkmaids.  I took this criticism as a hint of a problem; a piece of a puzzle…  The article was pointing at a certain “fakeness” about the place.  But, I wondered when I got Josh’s impressions – why did “fakeness” beget “creepiness” and “scariness”?

Again, as a planner, I really wanted to understand why these emotions were coming up for people in relationship to these urban environments.  Creepy and scary are, of course, words associated with the primal emotion FEAR.

As I said earlier, my son and his friends certainly did not running screaming out of Celebration, Florida.  The place is not overtly terrifying.  It evokes more of a not-quite-tangible under-current of something...disturbing.

Andres Duany and company, the designers of Celebration also designed Seaside, Florida.  Not at all coincidentally, Seaside was chosen as the set for the movie, “The Truman Show.”  

 Caption:  Seaside, Florida...the perfect setting for the dystopian movie, 'The Truman Show.'

Caption:  The Post Office at Seaside.

“The Truman Show” is a movie about a man who is being tricked.  Unbeknownst to him, he is living on a television sound set in a fake town – Seaside.  His friends and family are all fake, and nothing is as it appears to be.  Seaside is creepy.

These were the concepts that I was pondering on that fateful dog walk with Jazzy.  I could certainly understand why people associated new towns like Celebration and Seaside with fakeness.  But, what was the connection between fakeness and those feelings of creepiness, apprehension, and, yes, fear that I had repeatedly seen and heard with reference to Neo-traditionalism?

Here's what I figured out.  Fear is a primal emotion.  It was hard-wired into man - and actually into his evolutionary ancestors - at the dawn of time.  As I mentioned earlier, I had been collecting old site plans and pictures of old cities - Roman, Medieval, etc. - trying to distill a set of elements common to all civilizations.  But, part of my epiphany was that I was not looking far enough back in time!  Not nearly far enough!

I suddenly realized that in order to find out what type of environment man was hard-wired for, I had to go back to the time of his hard-wiring in the Pleistocene Period.  (Note that I use the terms Pleistocene and Paleo relatively interchangeably in this book, but that the distinction is explained in the next chapter.)

The second part of my epiphany was a hypothesis about the how to connect the dots between the fakeness of Neo-Traditional developments and the creepiness/fear/apprehension that people often describe in relation to them.  As I walked my dog, I imagined very early humans walking - maybe with a dog that looked similar to our wolf-like Jasmine(!) - and coming upon the encampment of another group of people.  

Imagine you are part of the group too.  We come upon this little settlement, and something seems "off" about it.  Something does not look right.  You cannot put your finger on exactly what the problem is.  Things seem to be staged;  there seems to be some kind of trickery afoot...

And, we are walking right into the middle of it.

In this century, and in North America and Western Europe, most of us can move pretty blithely through our days - walking through cities, towns, shopping malls or subdivision without the fear of ambush by other groups of people or of animal attack.  But, that has not always been the case.  For our distant ancestors, walking into a settlement where things seemed unnatural or as though there was some deliberate attempt at trickery could have been the prelude to an attack!  

And, my thesis is that walking into these types of environments today sets off the same alarm bells that would have sounded for our "Paleo" ancestors - albeit the bells are now muffled and much quieter and faded by time.  So, that now what we feel is something...creepy, or vaguely unsettling.

Our response to our environment is Paleo.  And, in the case of an overly staged or deceptive-looking environment, our response is anxiety, uneasiness or fear.   I ran Jasmine back from the park and tossed her leash onto the floor of the laundry room and started to read everything that I could find about our Paleo roots!