Another post from our friend, designer Nathan Felde:
These times do call for big, bright ideas.
We
not only need to repair the damage we have done to our immigration
policies and thereby to immigrants, legal and illegal, but we need a
renaissance of our nation's concept of immigration. In the larger sweep
of our history, immigration, not war, has been the primary fuel for
long term sustainable economic growth.
With
a land mass nearly equal to China and far superior infrastructure we
can obviously support twice our current population and there are plenty
of people all over the world who would love to help build our country
and economy as they always have in the past.
This
can be done by dramatically opening and promoting a logical gateway and
path to citizenship through our colleges and universities, something we
have already realized we can do through our military services. This
would immediately revitalize the currently threatened enrollments and
financial viability of all of our colleges and universities and would
provide a wonderful qualifying, moderating acculturation and
assimilation experience. The infrastructure for that experience and
valuable education that our schools of higher learning are known
throughout the world for, are in place. The applicants are ready in
vast numbers, creating an endless pool of valuable and qualified
emigrants.
Of
course we would have to establish and tighten the regulation of land
use, water and air quality and other elements of rapid growth, to avoid
expanding our recent and wasteful suburban sprawl, but all of our
cities and towns actually look like their civic and architectural
aspirations, established in the latter 19th century were abandoned to
go to war in the mid 20th century.
The
gaps between buildings in every town and city are the framework into
which towns and cities with a dense and pleasant residential, public
and commercial mix of use could be made as charming as the old world
cities we jet to when we want relief from cities and suburbs
made unpleasant and/or boring by designing them around the automobile.
(You could not that long ago take trolleys from Bangor, Maine to New
York City, if that example helps.)
Let's
look at the numbers and get back on track to greatness in our new
global circumstances with the old principles of our founding
Constitution and new creative ideas that improve upon our present
urban-suburban-rural-wilderness social and ecological balance. We
have our treasure of classic architectural models in small cities and
our real human economic history to inform us.
And, as ever, an education in the liberal arts, those things that a free person should know to be of most benefit to others can guide us all, as it did our founding immigrants.
Nathan Felde
Chair, Design Department
The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University
Boston, MA 02215
nfelde@lesley.edu
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