The Heat is On

"Sprawl is good." That's the essence of Robert Bruegmann's July 9 editorial in the L.A. Times, justly ridiculed by fellow valley blogger Andrew. Yet Bruegmann's assessment of L.A. history is dead on. Drivers universally embraced plans for a freeway city, imagining it would transform their cars into personal jet planes. It is no coincidence the Jetsons emerged when Interstate construction was at its peak.

(Image from Van Eaton Galleries)

Back in '99 when I lived in a deep frier called Tempe, Arizona, I saw Bruegmann speak at the Phoenix Public Library--an architectural jewel amid a downtown of shattered forty ouncers and crushed potato chip bags. Jaws dropped in the audience of architecture students, as if they had come to church and heard a sermon explaining how Jesus taught "Greed is good" and "If your enemy slaps you, kick him back hard in the balls."

His slideshow contrasted postwar housing in Europe--drab modernist apartment buildings--with postwar housing in the United States--single family homes with attached garages. The point was simple: sprawl is good because any normal person would choose postwar U.S.A. If you could choose between a McDonald's "premium" chicken salad and an Outback Steakhouse Steak, naturally you would choose the steak.

Americans love their beef, even if it means our flabby beef eating bodies consume more than a third of the world's resources and per capita more than three times the global average. Of course the apartment living losers in NYC, the ones who somehow survive outside suburbatopia, are not responsible for this piggishness. As pointed out in the beautifully photographed new series from PBS, design e2, the dense transit dominated city makes its residents the skinflints of America.

I was reminded of this recently as temperatures in the valley topped 100, causing peak rates of consumption and scattered blackouts in the L.A. area. I wondered how we lived without air conditioning? So I try. By using a thermometer measuring indoor and outdoor temperature, I keep track of when it is warmer inside than out and vice versa. In the morning, as soon as I notice the temperature is warmer outside, I shut all windows and close all the blinds. At night, when the temperature becomes cooler outside, I open all the windows and turn on the fan, repeating the process each day.

Of course, the real alternative to cranking the AC is relaxing in the park under the canopy of trees or having an espresso at the local café--but that sounds so European--why don't we just grab a Frappuccino® and head down to Zuma in your new Honda Element?
--Yeah, just like in that TV ad, man those chicks are hot!
--Yeah, just like the baby chicks dad fed the hogs when Tyson killed the independent chicken farmer and raising fryers became an economic loss.
--What?
--Yeah, just like that.