A New Way, or an Old Way?
Dean Gunderson
The Problem
What do we do with the failed American Town? Are there examples of successful and
sustainable communities that can demonstrate how to avoid catastrophic failures?
Firstly, you may question the premise of “failure” -- and this critical attribution to
American towns. Indeed, America is one of the most prosperous nations in the history of
mankind, and its towns (with their commercial conveniences, parks, schools, and public
amenities) are the very embodiment of that success. Yet, there are some failures if you
take into account certain isolated economic troubles. There has been a recent spate of
municipal bankruptcies, and some examples of towns undergoing massive population
contractions -- Detroit, Michigan appearing to be the lead contender as the poster child
for both phenomena. Also, the 2007 collapse of the home mortgage industry seems to
have caught most everyone by surprise -- especially the 20-25% of American
homeowners who still, by 2013, owed more on their mortgages than their property was
worth (Pew Research, Housing and Jobs). Yet surely these problems are isolated and
few in number, and cannot be taken as an indictment of the whole concept of the
American Town.
Perhaps a better way to express the damning question is to rephrase it as the pending
failure of the American Town. Why “pending”? We see examples all around us of
economic prosperity, perhaps no greater example than that of the personal automobile.
And, aren’t our towns perfectly suited for this modern contrivance? Haven’t they, in fact,
been perfectly tuned to accommodate the automobile -- in the way that our land use
patterns are segregated & dispersed, and the way our land is intersected by
causeways, freeways, overpasses, frontage roads, highways, and the dendritic pattern
of local streets? How could anyone say that a nation so intertwined with the
technological needs of modern transportation be categorized as a pending failure?
Haven’t we, as a nation, managed to leverage-up the technology of the personal
automobile to such heights as to make the tiresome activity of walking not only virtually
obsolete, actually inimical to the proper functioning of our towns?
Yet, upon what presumption is automobile technology most firmly based -- except that
of the notion of cheap, perpetually available, and plentiful petroleum fuel (gasoline or
diesel)? Given that the average American family now expends 19 percent of its income
on transportation alone, a figure that is growing with each year and is now the second
highest household expense (more than the cost of food and only slightly less than the
cost of securing shelter) (Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditures Survey),
does anyone really believe that in 25 or 30 years we will continue to be able to support
such a technology? Is there anything in the past 25 or 30 years (or 50 or 60 years) that
would lead one to believe that either our manufacturing industries will shift their fuel
sources -- or that we, ourselves, will change our habits?
So, as our costs to “use” our towns (in the form of transportation expenditures) increase
with each year, at what point will we simply no longer be able to live in our current
towns? Isn’t it more accurate to state that our towns, your’s and mine, are based on a
piece of technology whose demise is imminent? Isn’t it fairer to assert that this collapse
will occur well within the lifetime of the mortgages on the homes built within our auto-
dependent subdivisions and use-segregated communities?
So yes, within the next 20 to 30 years the American Town will likely undergo a
catastrophic economic failure. Our suburbs, and our far-flung communities, will shudder
through a long economic blight as we struggle to retrofit our existing development
patterns to resist our over-dependence on automobile travel. And, many of these
communities will simply cease to exist -- crushed under mounting debt as their tax-
bases diminish and their populations decline.
A New/Old Hope
But there is hope. Not too long ago we built towns that were self-reliant and whose
citizens had no need for personal automobiles -- not for getting to work, getting to
school, securing access to quality food, or to participate in the democratic governance
of their towns. People walked, could actually choose to only walk, and still lead
productive, prosperous and happy lives.
Prior to the advent of the automobile we were building new towns, even rebuilding
portions of existing cities -- and under adverse technological and economic
circumstances. Perhaps the greatest of those adversities being the settlement of the
arid American West, with its desert-like conditions appearing to guarantee the
importation of all food-stuff -- an economic overhead that would seem to doom any long-
term settlement of over one-half of the nation’s land mass. This appeared to leave
frontier town creation doomed to no greater sophistication than the carving out of crude
mining and timber harvest camps from the wilds -- or the construction of cities along rail
corridors or navigable rivers. Yet, with the development of a vast network of gravity-fed
surface irrigation improvements water could be brought to the desert, permitting the
flourishing of both crops and towns -- neither of which required the technological
innovation of the automobile.
An Example from the Past
One of the most intriguing of these towns is New Plymouth, Idaho. The formation of this
community in 1895 is unlike most towns in the American West, in that it was not formed
as a speculative venture in the conventional sense. That is, it was not a village formed
around any type of extraction industry -- mining or timber -- nor, despite its name, was it
a settlement formed to avoid the religious persecution of its inhabitants -- akin to the
contemporary efforts of Mormons in the Utah territory. Neither was the town located on
a principal rail line or a river over which one could travel or transport goods. Further, the
village (or colony, as it was called) was first conceived of, and settled, by middle-class
urbanites from the city of Chicago who worked in a number of professional fields. These
“colonists” weren’t hardscrabble pioneering settlers who were searching for a chance to
trade their sweat equity for a small plot of arable land, they were people seeking a
different life than what they could find in the large cities of 19th Century America. And,
they were helped along the way with the guidance of some of the most notable social
leaders and authors in America at the time. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that New
Plymouth was a vessel formed by the confluence of a number of social movements in
the latter half of the 19th Century, and populated by people who had a firm belief in
those causes.
To fully understand the creation and settlement of New Plymouth it’s best to place it
within its proper social context, an economic and political milieu strikingly similar to our
own. Towards the end of the 19th Century, a growing social unrest had been creeping
throughout America, a general dissatisfaction with the economic status quo which
appeared to favor the monopolistic exploits of industrial giants at the expense of the
hardworking middle- and lower-classes. While Washington, D.C. seemed to be filled
with politicians more intent on lining their own pockets with lucrative business deals, or
preserving their political alliances, than with addressing the needs of the American
public. Though this frustration had been growing since the 1850’s, it reached a peak
during the economic depression of 1894. This recession fueled the exploration of both
new forms of communities and new forms of governance.
It’s Founding in Literary Works
In the twenty-five years before the founding of New Plymouth a number of prominent
thinkers in America were dedicating themselves to the re-creation of the American
metropolis. Some of these exploits took the form of fictional novels -- like the 1869
utopian book Sybaris and Other Homes by Edward Everett Hale (a Boston
Transcendentalist Unitarian minister and social theosophist). In his book, Hale
expounded upon the idea of quality housing for the working classes and the poor. The
most notable author from this period was Edward Bellamy. In his 1888 science fiction
novel Looking Backwards: 2000-1887, Bellamy recounted the travels of a long-lived
man who looks back across 113 years of American progress. Specifically, the novel
highlights the contemporary economic and social flaws in America while mapping out a
utopian future that had solved these seemingly intractable problems.
Here, the principal character of Looking Backwards, Julian West, attempts to explain the
economic and social conditions of late 19th Century America.
“ … perhaps I cannot do better than to compare society as it was then to a
prodigious coach which the masses of humanity were harnessed to and dragged
toilsomely along a very hilly and sandy road. The driver was hunger, and
permitted no lagging, though the pace was necessarily very slow. Despite the
difficulty of drawing the coach at all along so hard a road, the top was covered
with passengers who never got down, even at the steepest ascents. The seats
on top were very breezy and comfortable. Well up out of the dust, their occupants
could enjoy the scenery at their leisure, and critically discuss the merits of the
straining team.” (Bellamy, Looking Backwards)
The fans of this book (who took to calling themselves Bellamyites) took it upon
themselves to form social-improvement clubs dedicated to the realization of the novel’s
predictions. At Bellamy’s urging, these associations, originally named after himself,
were re-organized as Nationalist Clubs -- since their focus was upon the improvement
of the American nation and to advocate for the nationalization of industry. Since their
beginnings, these clubs attracted the interest of Christian Socialists who saw in
Bellamy’s novel a way to realign American culture and impart a stronger Christian
ethos. Many of these members were also proponents of women’s suffrage and
participated in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WTCU). The WTCU
preached against the evils of alcohol and took the efforts of passing a constitutional
amendment that would prohibit the production, sale and consumption of inebriants in
the U.S as a moral imperative for the health of the nation. One of the more engaged
members in the first Nationalist Club in Boston was Edward Everett Hale, a personal
friend of Edward Bellamy’s. While in the city of Chicago, the National Club’s
membership included many of the participants of the already extant Collectivist League,
a socialist political organization strongly aligned with the interest of Trade Unionists. The
League would eventually change its name to the Nationalist Club of Illinois, and by the
early nineteen hundreds the politically progressive attorney Clarence Darrow was
serving as the club’s president.
Looking Forwards
By the early 1890’s, the Nationalist Clubs had engaged in the American political process
by contributing to the formation of a strong third political party, the progressive Populist
(or People’s) Party. The party enjoyed so much success that it would field its own
presidential candidate in the 1892 national election, James B. Weaver. This People’s
Party candidate would would garner all the electoral votes from the four western states
of Kansas, Colorado, Nevada, and Idaho (while receiving a portion of the electoral votes
from both Oregon and North Dakota). Until the early 1960’s, Looking Backwards would
be considered one of the most socially influential of American novels, with more copies
being sold than any other U.S. novel, except Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s
Cabin.
Looking Backwards also had an impact in Great Britain. In fact, the London publication
of the novel was personally underwritten by the writer and British parliamentary civil
servant, Ebenezer Howard. Howard reserved the first 100 copies of the novel, and over
the next few years passed out the book as gifts to his closest friends. Many of the
cultural and social improvements mentioned in Looking Backwards would eventually be
included by Howard in his own 1902 publication, Garden Cities of To-morrow; which
proposed a radical new way to design and layout new communities. Those of Howard’s
friends influenced by Looking Backwards (many of whom were British politicians),
formed the corpus of the British Garden City Movement; which influences the
development of towns and villages in Great Britain to this very day.
To Cooperate, or Not?
In 1894, the same year that New Plymouth was being formed by the Chicago collective,
William Dean Howells wrote the novel, A Traveler from Altruria, where he explored the
ideals of the utopic foreign nation of Altruria -- a country based on the notion of the
“cooperative commonwealth”. The traveler from this novel, Mr. Homos, is from a
country that we, today, would refer to as a communist utopia -- a place where
distinctions between workers and owners are non-existent, and where almost every
citizen is engaged in small-scale farming. Mr. Homos’ country of Altruria is a perfect
embodiment of a cooperative commonwealth, where all resources are shared and all
benefits of work are shared amongst those who actually labor. Howells uses his novel to
critique contemporary America, and highlight the dystopic inequities found in embedded
in American society.
During the episodic economic downturns in America during the latter half of the 19th
Century there were surges in socialist community building. Over 25 such communities
arose between 1843 and 1900, fifteen of them just in the seven year after 1893. Many
of the members of these new communities were Bellamyites, intent on re-casting
America as a coast-to-coast cooperative commonwealth. These were communities
whose memberships were often restricted to those who pledged to engage in socialist
political reform, and further, where private property ownership was strictly limited. Many
of these communities began to fail within a few years (or decades) due to internal
conflicts between members and poor community leadership. Disagreements ranged
over issues such as the ownership of homes, to the admission of non-skilled laborers
into the commonwealth.
Although there is some discussion as to whether the colony of New Plymouth was
intended to be a cooperative commonwealth -- a number of the original documents from
the formation of the colony corporation refer to it as a commonwealth, and William
Smythe often referred to co-operation in his writings about the village -- it is clear that
only the parks, school, roads, and community hall were to be owned collectively by the
membership. The colonists homes, their “home acres” (located in the village), and the
farm tracts themselves were privately owned by the individual members.
The settlers of New Plymouth -- self-styled as colonists -- placed upon themselves a
number of larger social expectations. They did feel that their village, by example, would
help usher in a new type of American town. And, although private property ownership
was lauded as a panacea for many social ills (and political participation was not
mandated, as was the case in mainline cooperative commonwealths), there were a
number of legal restrictions placed upon membership in the colony -- not the least of
which was the prohibition on alcohol sales. Many of the colonists were members in the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union, an affiliation that contributed to the addition of a
morality clause written into the land deeds of all the colonist. If it were discovered that
alcohol were being sold on any parcel of land within the colony, the parcel’s owner
would forfeit his or her title to the land -- ownership reverting back to the colony
company. Though perhaps more peculiarly, actual deed ownership could rest with an
unmarried woman -- a condition that was legally prohibited in most American states at
the time.
Women formed a large contingent of the early colonists, not only as the wives and
relatives of male landowners/farmers, but as equals -- some of whom also owned and
operated their own farms, using the Colony corporation as the middleman to legally
secure the deeds to their property. One of the most active social organization in the
colony was the all-female Portia Club whose purpose, most amazingly, was to establish
and oversee the physical improvements of the new village.
The Village as Template
The village’s layout is a sterling example of the soon-to-be-formed Garden City
Movement -- and, strangely enough, the village’s street pattern mimics many of the
features written about and illustrated by Ebenezer Howard in his book Garden Cities of
To-morrow, though Howard’s book would not be published in England until seven years
after the village’s formation.
An illustration from Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities of To-morrow (1902), note the
similarities between the Grand Boulevard and and the radial streets, and New
Plymouth’s nearly identical street layout.
The frontpiece illustration from the New Plymouth Colony Co. (Ltd.) pamphlet.
This pamphlet was published in 1896, a year after the first colonist had arrived -- notice
the radial streets and the parklike circular boulevard, with industrial factory land being
relegated to the railroad frontage at the north of the town (the rail itself would not be
extended to New Plymouth for another 15 years). Also, note the central park containing
the public school and the Village Hall -- all features replicated by Howard in his Garden
Cities book some seven years later.
Perhaps closer to the founding of the New Plymouth village was the 1896 publication of
Theodor Fritsch’s book, The City of the Future in Germany. Although like Howard,
Fritsch also advocated for a return to the land through the creation of rural agrarian
villages, as an anti-Semite he did so with a specific racial “cleansing” purpose. As
radically left as the socialist commonwealths were in America, Fritsche’s new “Garden
Cities” were radically reactionary to be used as a way to liberate the Aryan people from
what he saw as a Jewish oligarchical control of the Stock Market and farm-based food
production.
(QTD in Schubert 11), originally illustrated in Theodor Fritsch’s The City of Future:
Garden City
(QTD in Schubert 12) originally illustrated in Theodor Fritsch’s The City of the Future:
Garden City
Note the striking similarities between Fritsch’s 1896 illustrations, and the illustration of
New Plymouth (from its own 1896 pamphlet). Fritsch though, still held to the notion of
collective ownership of the village’s surrounding farms -- and though he would go on to
publish a great number of Neo-Socialist political tracts, forming the backbone of Nazi
Germany’s literary heritage, this publication on Garden Cities was his only book on
urban design and theory.
Imaginary Flights
During the years right after the formation of the village of New Plymouth, it sparked the
imagination of a number of writers and theorists, most of whom appeared to have more
interest in promoting their own agenda than those of the actual colonists.
In 1898 the Oregon-based writer Francis H. Clarke penned a science fiction novel that
exactly mimicked the initial formation of the colony. Ms. Clarke authored her novel
under the male pen-name Zebina Forbush (a quirky nom de plume derived from old
New England family names) and saw it published by a Chicago-based company that
specialized in socialist and communist literature. In her novel Ms. Clarke envisions a
nation-wide cultural revolution based on the idea of a nationalized industrial army --
itself first finding expression in the small fictional town of Co-opolis (modeled after the
New Plymouth colony). Here, the narrator of the story (Mr. Braden), while residing in
Chicago, recounts his first conversation with the leader of the co-operative colonization
effort (Mr. Thompson)
“The project which my new acquaintance outlined was one which I at once
pronounced as visionary. It was, he said, the design of certain gentlemen, some
of whom lived in Chicago, to organize what they called the Co-operative
Commonwealth. These gentlemen had decided to induce laboring men and other
persons who might be willing to associate themselves in the work to form co-
operative societies and to colonize them in some one state, so that, in process of
time, they would outvote the devotees of the old system. When this desired result
was achieved, they made no doubt that the Co-operative Commonwealth would
be established and present to the entire world an example of prosperity which
would rouse an unquenchable spirit of emulation. (Clarke, The Co-Opolitan)
It was the character of Mr. Braden that convinced the Co-operative Commonwealth to
strike out for Idaho and to build their first village in the Payette Valley (renamed Deer
Valley in the novel).
The Colonists
Ultimately though, it was the simple lives of the early colonists that hold the greatest
interest to a contemporary reader and urban theorist. They felt that, by example alone,
their village would encourage others to lead similar lives. They also did not shy away
from the difficulties presented by the building of a village out of a sage-brushed valley, a
day’s travel from the nearest town.
“I cannot conceive of a more cheerless prospect than that which confronts the
man who settles the west on a farm, distant from neighbors and without friends
with whom he can share a common interest.” (Shawhan, Statesman)
In fact, it was with a mixture of pride and stubborn determinism that they stuck to their
original plan -- while facing the myriad unplanned occurrences with a loving and
neighborly attitude.
“The history of the Plymouth colony is by no means made as yet. It is too early by
5 or 10 years to say what its influence will be for the life of this state. The period
of struggle is not over, but the day of doubt as to its permanence and as to its
exceptionally high character is past. It will live and will be a source of pride to all
the people of Idaho.” (Women of New Plymouth, A New Baby, Statesman).
Perhaps no better summation of the early colonists’ motivations can be found in Meta
Louis Ingalls’ 1912 recollection:
“It is just fourteen years since I left Chicago to come to sunny southern Idaho. It
was like pulling things up by the roots and transplanting myself in this small
village. However, all’s well that ends well. My experiences here have given me a
larger outlook on Life, and increased my vision beyond the streets, parks, and
boulevards of a great and busy city which was my home for twenty-eight years.
In other words, I have learned what it means to be in sympathy with my neighbor
and to keep close touch with community life. “You dear people who live in large
cities and apartment houses, scarcely have time or a desire to know your next-
door-neighbor. There is that eternal mad rush for business and pleasure that one
don’t (sic) take time to think in terms of love, or “kindly fellowship”. Love, as you
know is but another name for the unseen presence by which the Soul is
connected with humanity.” (Ingalls, 1912)
Can we gather a better means towards sustainability from the story of this small, and
still extant, Idaho town? I believe there are valuable lessons to learn, not only about our
personal motivations regarding the recent “green” movement -- but also in regards to
the primacy the land, and simple agricultural pursuits, plays in any true sustainable
effort. Certainly, there are urban design methods that can be extrapolated from the town
layout of New Plymouth -- a village that seemed to ride the wave of late 19th Century
international enthusiasm in urban planning. But, perhaps there’s something deeper --
more significant -- that led to the town’s formation, and its long-term sustainability.
Lessons that we have yet to learn.
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