Americans Love Art

Americans love art. Adam Gopnik in the October 28 New Yorker points out that more Americans enter art museums each year than enter all their sports arenas combined. We care how art is housed. (Sonoma County has several thousand people living in tents along a bicycle trail.) Also we love basketball more than childhood education, which is why the highly skilled Draymond Green earns more than a junior high science teacher. 

But Gopnik was not focused on our values in general. The question he addressed is where do we want to live? And what should we do about the homeless?

In the last century well-intentioned progressives thought poor people wanted to live in huge towers of concrete surrounded by a brutal plaza. These projects failed. No one liked them.

Gopnik points out that what most (but not all) people want is to live in a local neighborhood. They want to be able to walk to small businesses, the bakery, the cafe, the movie theater. They want some big shade trees and a fountain. That is what people like. Not a secret.  I live in such a place.

We could build like that. The French restrict the size of small businesses in certain neighborhoods. It can be done. We could build the neighborhoods people seek.