Blog #8 - Urbanized

When I started watching Urbanized, the latest film from Gary Hustwit of Helvetica and Objectified fame, I expected to be interested on an intellectual level. I didn't expect to cry, which is not something I frequently experience while watching a movie in the middle of the afternoon. We'll get to that, but first, the film is about the design of cities, which is such a complex subject because of the multitude of people and forces that come into play. Architects, politicians, zoning, public opinion… there are more factors in the formation of a city than I can hold in my head. That's why it was so interesting to see places where good ideas had been implemented well and were improving the quality of life. There were also examples of good intentions gone wrong, usually to the detriment of landscape preservation.

One of the cities featured in the movie was Phoenix, Arizona, a place I visited once a couple summers ago. Urbanized cites Phoenix as the worst offender of what has been called "sprawl." While visiting, we found it was impossible to get anywhere without a car, most trips requiring a short drive on one of the highways. Residential areas are winding streets lined with squat, cookie-cutter homes painted in southwestern desert colors with palm trees and cacti out front. In the movie, a representative of Phoenix laments the fact that the growing city is eating up the beautiful desert, but he defends Phoenix against being labelled "sprawl." He insists that Phoenix is maintaining the population density it has always had. This happens, of course, at the cost of destroying the landscape. Toward the end of the interview, the man says frankly that he likes having a house, yard, pool, and car, and that's what it comes down to. His preferred lifestyle simply comes at the expense of destroying the desert.

Later, the movie moves to the city of Stuttgart, Germany. We are introduced to two warring sides on the issue of a project called Stuttgart 21, which includes the construction of a high-speed rail system. The mayor explains the project as a necessary step for the city, replacing the aging and largely unusable tangle of older tracks and the crumbling station with a futuristic, eco-friendly underground railway. He had a beautiful model, and honestly, I was sold. Next we were introduced to the protesting members of the public, who were numerous. It turns out some of them quite like their crumbling old station. More than that, though, they like the beautiful park full of humongous and irreplaceable ancient trees that would have to be removed in order for construction on the railway to begin. One resident speaks of how important these gorgeous trees are, telling the story of the townspeople during Germany's great depression searching for any scrap of wood to burn for warmth, but leaving the trees untouched. Just as I came around to the anti-Stuttgart 21 side, the scene changed to a recording of workers with chainsaws slicing through the ancient trees while riot police beat back screaming townspeople. As I said, I didn't expect to cry during this movie, especially not because of Germans cutting down trees, but watching these powerless people cry out in despair as corporate-backed politicians literally uprooted their past really got to me. Some things are worth more than "development." There are more important ideas in this world than "progress." I was so sold on the idea of a high-speed train, but in the end, I was reminded of this excerpt from Douglas Adams' classic book, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, which takes place after the complete demolition of the Earth by alien bureaucrats.

The trouble with most forms of transport, he thought, is basically one of them not being worth all the bother. On Earth—when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass—the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another—particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish.