Decentralization Would Be a Mess

Frank Lloyd Wright says we need to decentralize--we need to get to the "good ground," make the country and city "one," move out and drive in and live "free" and "independent" and "far apart." Well, that's a bad idea.

For one thing, not everybody can move out and live free and independent. Wright would have us build our houses a quarter of a mile apart--go far out "much farther than [we] think [we] can afford"--but how far is that for day laborers, people who work in big office buildings and hotels as service workers cleaning, buffing, changing linens, people who run little mom and pop grocery stores down near First Avenue? And if some of us could go out far and build our little houses with our double car garages and little picket fences and our little rural mailboxes, how would we make sure some Bozo family of five or six wouldn't escape from Los Angeles or Houston and rent a plot of land fifty feet from ours and cut down our view with their double wide mobile home and pollute the air with their dogs and kids and rockola music and weedeater and twin-bagged mulching mower?

And even if each of us did have the money to buy up enough land to keep the creeps away from our idyllic, wonderful plot of good ground, what good ground would we buy up? Would we drive out into the wheat fields and stake out our own claims to Farmer Brown's good ground? And when enough of us got out in the wheat fields, could we beat up Farmer Brown enough to strip him of his land at cheapo prices--or would Farmer Brown hire a lawyer and accountant and take us to the cleaners and give us twenty five year mortgages with abominable interest? If I were Farmer Brown, I would do that. And then I would head to the city and buy up land cheap and start investing in wheat and soybean options and sit back and wait for the price of wheat and soybeans to start rising and rising and the price of white bread to shoot right out of this century.

And even if we all could (and as I say, I doubt it) live free and independent and commune with Bambi out on the good ground, thanking green plants and soaking up the wonderful sweetness of cowshit on our boots, we'd have to go someplace to get enough money to pay our bills-- maybe to the city. I imagine funtime on the freeway as millions of us fine country folk drive downtown to our offices and manufacturing plants and small businesses--our pickup trucks and vans and BMWs all chugging along at thirty miles an hour in five and six-lanes of traffic while we hum little country tunes and tap our country boots to songs of the open road and cool cool water, and I imagine more funtime on the freeway as millions of us fine country folk drive back to our good ground at the end of the day once again all lined up in five and six-lanes of traffic, humming more little truck driving ditties about love in the cantina and hot times on Saturday night and listening to the traffic congestion reports local smog conditions broadcast from Channel Three's little eye in the sky on the six o'clock news.

I'm not so sure I can picture much else, and I'm not sure that's enough to make me take Wright very seriously.

Got questions?
Hashimoto's Homepage