My Redacted Life: Chapter 34 (Cont._4)

Things moved smoothly in the summer of 1972. I was to be married soon. Brenda was working on her wedding gown. I couldn't see it, though. No problem. I would see it soon enough.

I was learning new things every day, like if we just built enough traffic arteries, and they were wide enough, one day there would be no traffic congestion. Population projections proved our existing cities would grow forever. They all possessed the same opportunity. The federal government would maintain a fiduciary relationship with cities and counties in order to make sure that the important inner workings of our country would remain strong. The head and body would function in harmony. Reason would rule if we only planned carefully enough.

Well, yeah, not everything I was learning would prove out to be true. What would prove true was that our country’s role in the Vietnam War would end eventually, not “with a bang, but a whimper,” along with the bodies of students on the campus of Kent State University. Had war not proven so profitable to some, it might have ended our forays into civil wars halfway around the world. That was all in the future, though. For the time being, I was safe away from it all.

Right now, I had to get ready for the wedding. I knew my role by heart, and I had the money to get our wedding rings out of layaway. My bride-to-be was growing more beautiful every day, although she seemed to spend a great deal of time with her two co-conspirators. Sometimes, before knocking on her door, I could hear them inside laughing. They always stopped when I came and never let me in on the jokes. They were being nicer to me, though. I suppose they had come to realize that they couldn’t have this wedding without me. They even let me in on some of the planning.

Things were looking great. We would stay in my apartment until we had enough money to purchase a house. I would be able to get financing through the GI bill. Currently, that meant no down payment and a 7.5 percent interest rate, lower than the market. Our combined incomes suggested a home in the $20,000 to $25,000 range. (I found out later that housing purchases were best based on a single income, but that was in the future.) That seemed fairly grandiose and was enough to attract the interest of real estate sales people, all men. Later, women would come to dominate the profession. We weren’t ready yet, but give us time to study things. Things were running on a fast track. All we had to do was to hang on.

The bosses at work were already looking at a purchase of land for our next private development. It lay in the southwestern part of the county, just outside the city limits at the time. They had set the boundaries and Jack was already on the job, flourishing his magic markers over thin, semi-transparent sheets of thin paper known as “yellow-flimsy.” This development would include a community center, tennis courts, and a swimming pool. We planned for it to be the pride of central Arkansas. Who better to plan future developments than a group of talented urban planners? Indeed. It mattered little that the oldest of us was about to turn 30. All things would come to pass as planned.

 Those were glorious days. I’m glad we had them, Brenda and I. We would have others, many others, but there is something about the joy of living during times when you haven’t yet had to face reality.

I'd come a long ways.

My Redacted Life: Chapter Fourteen (Cont._2)

Things were simpler for an urban planner back in 1972. In some ways, that is. For example, there were still youngsters who didn’t get a new car upon turning 16. Thus, there weren’t too many families with five or six vehicles and no place to park them. There were even interurban bus systems still operating between most cities.

Transportation, as a concept, was changing, though. Cities were captives of a transportation planning mania that eschewed the traditional grid system of streets, blocks and lots. While it was true that this method of street layout often failed to respect topographical conditions, it was a marvel of handling traffic efficiently in many cases.

It also provided multiple routes for both motorists and emergency service providers. Oh, and it came in handy during evacuation needs created by natural disaster. In all, it worked pretty well, if fitted to the lay of the land.

But we had developed an obsession with crooked streets, the crookeder the better. The Urban Planning Bible said it best, “Blessed is the crooked way, but evil abounds in the straight.” If a person knew her or his way around their subdivision, the planners had failed. In later years, there would be longtime residents of large developments that still carried street maps of their community while driving.

Then we developed that most insidious traffic monster, the so-called “one-way” couplet. This involved three parallel streets. The middle would remain open to two-way traffic. The outer two would allow one-way traffic moving in opposite directions.

The thought processes that created them has been lost in the dustbins of urban history.

It had something to do with the personal vehicle. That was becoming the ultimate ruler of urban planning. No neighborhood, historic district, commercial district, or park system was safe as long as the efficiency of automobile movement was suffering the slightest impairment. And, of course, the ultimate goal of the transportation planners was to allow interurban commuting by personal vehicle.

The provision of new commuter lanes would become the raison d'être not only of our highway department, but those of many other states as well. So, we built them, commuter lanes that is.

And lo, the effect this would have on the cities of our country. Remember the mention of a case, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, that had wound its way through the Supreme Court in 1971? In 1972, few were thinking of it. What effect could an order effecting the busing of school kids in North Carolina have on the urban development patterns of America?

Stay tuned.

Why would you not want
to live where you work?

My Redacted Life: Chapter Three (Cont_5)

 Jim Vines picked me up about 8:30 next morning and we headed for my first day of field work in my new job as urban planner. He filled the car with talk. I was happy for that, as I didn’t have to risk sounding stupid.

We turned west on what is now Interstate-30 and headed out of Little Rock. There wasn’t much to see, just some large industrial buildings and a lot of vacant land. We passed a large office tower that Jim said was where the Arkansas Highway Department had located itself. It seemed a bit detached from civilization to me, isolated and unconnected to the complexities of urban transportation, but I was just a novice.

We passed a small village that had been formed around a sawmill, and then a blue-collar “union” town that had grown to serve a large Bauxite mining operation. Then we crossed the Saline River, not far from the site of the Battle of Jenkins Ferry where an African-American regiment from Kansas had helped fight off a frantic attack by Confederate forces that included my great-grandfather’s unit. I knew nothing about this at the time.

From there, the land grew vacant and rolling, peaceful to the eye and comforting. Jim filled the silence with all sorts of information, including a brief autobiography. He had graduated from high school the same year as I, after a strange year away during the so-called “Central High Crisis” in Little Rock. He then headed for Fayetteville, where, by his own admission, he promptly began matriculating in fun and frivolity.

After a semester of such fun, Marvin yanked him home and he completed his bachelor’s work at a small commuter college in Little Rock, now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock where, years later, I was to earn a Master’s Degree.

Along the way, he met his future wife Linda, one of the finest people our state has ever produced. I’ll have more on her later. They headed to Norman, Oklahoma following their marriage, where Jim would receive a Master’s Degree in Urban and Regional planning from the U of O. He landed a job afterwards with the state of Missouri in “Jeff-City” as he called it.

The rest, of course, is history that involved me. Tom Hodges lured him into returning to Arkansas with his wife and young child, and there we were, headed to the tiny mill town of Dierks, Arkansas to practice urban planning on a mini-scale.

Ahead of us on I-30 were three cities that I still call “The Triplets.” These three are of the same size and population, and share many of the same urban characteristics. Fine cities with fine folks. On that day, they were vibrant and thriving, having been fortunate enough to border the newly emerging interstate highway system, in this case, one connecting Little Rock to Dallas/Fort Worth.

Had I been able to look into the future, I would have seen looming the Supreme Court case, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1 (1971). It would hold that busing was an appropriate remedy for the problem of racial imbalance in schools, even when the imbalance resulted from the selection of students based on geographic proximity to the school.

Perhaps America would feel the earth tremble on the day of the judgement. No matter what one feels about the decision, there is no argument that it would change urban America forever. Vibrant cities such as the Triplets would sense the rush of an exodus of white families.

Hitherto undistinguished and unheard-of communities with all-white school districts would hear a stampede approaching. The concept of urban neighborhoods based around neighborhood schools, the basis of Jim and Tom’s graduate education in urban planning, would begin to fade into history.

That was in the future, though. Today, we just drifted along, very happy with the present.

What would the future hold?