Regional and Urban Design Committee

the next vision has always been right around the corner. The alternative hippy lifestyle was born in the USA in response to consumerism, the student movement the response to a frozen suburban utopia, the environmental movement to burning rivers, the computer revolution to fading manufacturing, the acceptance of the other followed the racial and sexual stigmatization. New Urbanism followed sprawl. Social media and virtual empires have conquered the world starting out in Silicon Valley. All those movements were born in the USA. That is not to say that some other country was eventually  better in actual implementation. 

The country reinvented itself, always a leader and an instigator. It invented the restrictive covenant and the civil rights, the pollution and the clean air act and the clean water act.  There was the discovery of space and the invention of GIS, the Internet and e-mail, social media and online shopping. The world speaks English, uses Microsoft or Apple devices and software and aspires to cities styled after the US. Film, entertainment and games, pesticides, genomics and medications, there is hardly a field that the US doesn't lead or dominate. Hardly a wave the country doesn't embrace with much more enthusiasm and much less trepidation than some others. Agriculture shrinking? No problem we have manufacturing. Manufacturing shrinking? No problem, we have the service industry. Services not affordable? Don't worry, we have the digital revolution. Dull and function separated metro areas? Even Houston and Fort Worth have now mixed-use downtowns and excellent public spaces.

Read full article