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PART I   The Difficulty Finding Home

CHAPTER 1. History’s Relevance to Finding Home
Notes that what we consider “history” is closer and more relevant to us than we acknowledge. After a two-decade search for home, I came to understand that there was a way of living that I valued highly; one that does not exist in the United States for the broad middle class but exists elsewhere. My inability to find this way of living had much to do with my country’s unique history. I note that I am raising a family in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

CHAPTER 2. Two Central Problems with Finding Home
Introduces the central theme, namely that feedback loops put into play by slavery and suburban sprawl fundamentally undermine quality of life in the United States. Just as the United States is the only OECD nation in which mainstream middle-class families are not found living in cities, it is also the only such nation to have practiced domestic slavery inside its borders for more than three centuries, through 1942. As a result, middle-class families do not consider traditional American cities viable options, and the vast majority of new places constructed are built around the automobile rather than the human being. 

CHAPTER 3. A Definition for Home and Why It Matters

Defines two key terms used throughout the book: quality of life and home. The degree to which a city or town offers a high quality of life is the degree to which such a place is:

  • Built at the human scale, allowing one to walk to everything needed over a week
  • Able to provide convenient access to nature
  • Governed by people who sustain the human scale
  • Populated by a functional middle class that allows one to take advantage of everything the human scale offers

Home is the psychological state established when these four conditions are in place. Notions of quality of life and home matter because 62% of millennials (51 million people) have expressed a preference for the same thing, yet they struggle to find it. This book explains why.

CHAPTER 4. American Cities as Receptacles of Trauma
Introduces the idea that the Great Migration transformed American cities into receptacles of trauma. Trauma and the dysfunction it produces are products of slavery’s feedback loops which impact one’s ability to find home. They undermine quality of life and make it difficult for middle-class Americans to raise children in cities. This chapter begins the exploration regarding why. I reference my own experiences in American cities, with and without children.

CHAPTER 5. Barriers to Building at The Human Scale
Introduces the idea that developers face significant barriers when attempting to build the kinds of walkable places a majority of young people value. These barriers are central to perpetuating problems associated with sprawl’s feedback loops, which impact one’s ability to find home. I explain why, as an urban planner, I became interested in the seemingly insurmountable problem of shifting predominant development patterns from auto-dependency to walkable, human-scale design.

CHAPTER 6. Greater Levels of Freedom Outside America

Argues that slavery and sprawl’s feedback loops degrade what we hold most dear, namely freedom. The two greatest freedoms a child can experience are freedom of mobility and freedom from fear. My daughter’s experience in Halifax, Nova Scotia, illustrates the point. I also introduce my first cousin (four generations removed), U.S. Senator Lewis Cass. He is a central figure in this book who has done much to erode freedom in the present day. Notably, he was the first to articulate a racial doctrine designed to accommodate enslavement as the nation grew westward. Considering implications today, I reference organizations that compile freedom rankings and note that the U.S. is not the freest country by any measure. This relative absence of freedom is a key element of what makes finding home so difficult.

CHAPTER 7. The Sunlit Prison’s Endgame

Describes the Sunlit Prison of the American Dream’s centrality to the book. I note that my search for home was about finding a way out of this prison. I clarify that two principal lessons regarding the prison’s endgame stand out. The first is that the production of bad human habitat will remain the norm in America; endlessly pursuing development that fractures us socially, harms our health, and is disastrous environmentally. Bad human habit is the product of sprawl’s feedback loops and is the focus of Part III. The second lesson is that the United States is politically polarized today, just as it was in 1854, and, as a result, the nation cannot address the biggest issues of our time. Political polarization is the product of slavery’s feedback loops and is the focus of Part IV. Before considering these two lessons, I describe the impact of our slaveholding past today through the lens of my family history in Part II.

PART II   The Slaveholding Republic’s Legacy

CHAPTER 8. Core Values Shaped During the Slaveholding Republic

Clarifies that during America’s first eighty-five years as a nation, we were a slaveholding republic and that fundamental values shaped by enslavement never disappeared. I explain Lewis Cass’s relevance to the slaveholding republic by looking at an 1856 Harper’s Weekly political cartoon titled, “Forcing Slavery Down the Throat of a Freesoiler.” The image depicts my cousin’s central role in triggering the first of two periods of political polarization in America. The first was triggered in 1854, produced a civil war in 1861, and faded by 1877. The second was triggered in 1964, produced a Donald Trump in 2016, and shows no signs of diminishing.    

CHAPTER 9. The Continuity of American Life

Describes the cultural continuity experienced by black Americans when transitioning from the slaveholding republic to what came after in terms of debasement, social exclusion, and violence (i.e., trauma). This cultural continuity persisted into the 1950s when black Americans were flooding into cities north and west during the Great Migration. Over the next few chapters, I focus on one such city, Toledo, Ohio.

CHAPTER 10. Family Connections to Place, War, and Trauma
Introduces my father’s side of the family within Toledo. I describe why the city newspaper repeatedly wrote about my family. I tell of my grandmother Nellie christening the U.S.S. Toledo, on account of my father’s status as a war hero. Mindful of my assertion that not all black Americans have been able to move beyond their trauma, I describe my father’s trauma as a carrier pilot, and more generally, all World War II combat veterans. Understanding my father’s trauma is a part of my understanding of trauma more generally, and black trauma in particular. What happens to us matters, regardless of race.

CHAPTER 11. We Have Toledo They Have Wolfsburg

Describes what’s been lost in Toledo, and compares the outcome with Wolfsburg, Germany, which is home to Volkswagen. I describe a Toledo that once manufactured everything under the sun (Libbey Glass, American Bicycle Company, Jeep) and gave us Art Tatum, one of the greatest jazz pianists of the twentieth century. Streetcar lines moved my family through a city whose architecture rivaled anything Europe could offer. I ask why Toledo imploded when comparable manufacturing cities in Europe serve as tourist destinations. Providing you with an answer is the central point of the book.

CHAPTER 12. Might Have Been My Bedford Falls
Ties me to Toledo; a city I might have called home had we not been a slaveholding republic. I describe magical times in Nellie’s backyard during the summer of 1967, which is the period I return to in the next chapter. I introduce you to Uncle Glenn, whom I visited for years after we moved away. I explain Nellie and Glenn’s importance to me, Toledo’s importance to me, and my father’s importance to me by looking at the central conflict of It’s a Wonderful Life. This chapter conveys a sense of loss. The next chapter explains why.

CHAPTER 13. From Operettas to Molotov Cocktails
Focuses on changes that took place in my father’s high school between 1931 and 1967 and describes how three 4-year-olds experienced the 1967 riots in very different ways. In Detroit, four-year-old Tanya Blanding is killed as fifty-caliber bullets fired by the National Guard penetrate the walls of her second-floor apartment. Four-year-old Dwayne Smith loses his father, a Detroit firefighter when a black sniper shoots him in the head. I am in Nellie’s backyard in Toledo, blissfully unaware that Molotov cocktails are being thrown through plate-glass windows near my father’s high school. The slaveholding republic’s consequences remained hidden from me until I try to find home in America years later.

CHAPTER 14. Blind to Consequences, Blind To Their Origins
Illustrates how powerful men like Lewis Cass possessed little insight into the America they were creating while expanding slavery.  Mindful of urban pathology, I note that we live with the consequences, yet are blind to their origins. Here I consider those origins, looking at how Lewis Cass—as Andrew Jackson’s Secretary of War—cleared native peoples of land east of the Mississippi to facilitate slavery’s expansion. I discuss key aspects of this expansion such as forced migration and new methods of financing.  I note that, far from being a sideshow, the story of enslavement that played out over 322 years (80% of the time American culture has been forming) is the drama playing out on center stage in our lives whether we acknowledge it or not. We remain indifferent to the past at our peril.

CHAPTER 15.  Maps That Charted the Downfall

Returns to consequences, clarifying that the implosion of American cities in the 1960s was something our federal government effectively planned for in the 1930s. I examine the mindset behind the creation of Residential Security Maps (a.k.a., redlining maps), and consider racist axioms laid out in two influential government publications that planned for the demise of cities and the rise of suburbia. I consider how all this impacted specific sections of Toledo in relation to my family.  Finally, I return to Toledo in 2004, visit the street my father grew up on, take stock of what’s changed, and note that the downfall was complete.

CHAPTER 16. Lynching as a Form of Cultural Expression

Looks at the specter of lynching postcards and related newspaper articles to consider the depth of hatred and callousness in the mainstream strain of white supremacy that succeeded the slaveholding republic (note, no illustrations or reproductions are provided). I note that the scope and intensity of American crimes exceed the barbarity of Islamic State atrocities in the 21st century. I ask about the degree to which the cultural decedents of those that participated in the atrocities have changed. I close by noting that what’s revealed by the postcards and articles is the tip of an iceberg; a part of something more massive that I can see with my eyes. When living in Philadelphia, my first American city, I could feel the weight of the slaveholding republic’s legacy but did not understand it.         

PART III The Endless Production of Bad Human Habitat

CHAPTER 17. Out of the Mouths of Babes

Introduces the first lesson of the sunlit prison of the American Dream: the endless production of bad human habitat. It reaffirms the book’s relevance to the reader by recounting an American teen’s insights after a student exchange in France regarding her sense of loss at giving up two freedoms I consider key parts of a healthy childhood. She speaks of a peace born of these freedoms; born of good human habitat.

CHAPTER 18. Good Human Habitat by Way of Example

Clarifies what good human habitat entails by taking a tour of our surroundings in Halifax. This sets up a contrast with the bad human habitat that is the norm across most of the U.S. I begin by asking what good human habitat entails and tying it directly to the four-part definition for quality of life. Before the start of the tour, I provide the reader with a reality check regarding a Canadian public sector that degrades precisely what I find so compelling in Halifax. The tour itself covers aspects of our habitat presented in four subsections. 

The Neighborhood and a Dinner Date
Describes the physical qualities of our neighborhood and the experience of eating in a favorite restaurant in which I’m conscious of being surrounded by middle-class Canadians who, importantly, all have access to health care.

The Lynchpin of Good Human Habitat
Explains how our children’s public high school is really what makes it possible for the broad middle class to live in Halifax. I focus on black students in the school because their circumstances are central to why our family can experience good human habitat in Halifax.

Destinations for Monthly Needs
Clarifies that the habitat we inhabit is urban, and the full range of a family’s needs can be accessed conveniently by foot or bike. I take you around and show you a science museum, a 6200-seat soccer stadium, stage theater, pub, wine bar, a dentist, library, and more.

The Blessings of Convenient Access to Naturecompletes the tour by taking you through a public garden, a forest park, and a forested urban cemetery. Looking at a Japanese study on forest bathing, I note the immense importance of having sustained contact with nature. 

CHAPTER 19. The Advantages of the Human Scale
Provides a clear rationale for building at the human scale. Referencing a sizeable body of research, I clarify the human scale’s financial, physical, mental, and environmental benefits. In subsequent chapters in Part III, I focus on bad human habitat, and understanding the advantages of the human scale helps clarify what’s lost.

CHAPTER 20. Bad Human Habitat’s DNA: Single-Use Zoning
Explains zoning by way of comparison with Germany. Zoning itself isn’t what produces bad human habitat. In Germany, residential zones are better understood to be “living zones” and allow a mixture of uses. The problem is single-use zoning.   

CHAPTER 21. Racial Hatred Births the Single-Family Zone

Describes the racist origins of the single-family zone. I begin with my own experience as an urban planner working in a municipality the Civil Rights Commission described as a “white noose” around the neck of Baltimore City. I then tell how, in 1916, Berkley, California invented the single-family zone to exclude blacks and Asians from specific sections of the city. A key point made is that as early as 1931, it was understood that single-family zoning was rooted in “racial hatred.”

CHAPTER 22. How and Why the Federal Government Declared War on Walking
Debunks the myth that suburbia’s ubiquitousness is a function of market forces. I describe the outsized influence of legislation few know about called the National Housing Act which created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). I explain how the FHA effectively made it impossible to build the kind of walkable, mixed-use neighborhood in which we’ve raised our children. The chapter concludes by elaborating on a mindset that conceived of the flawed idea we should reject a way of living that stretches back to the dawn of human civilization.

CHAPTER 23. Speak of Design Not Density

Introduces Gaithersburg, MD as an exception to the rule of perpetual sprawl. Shows how Gaithersburg used an inclusive public process called a design charrette to elevate concern for design over density, abandon ill-conceived FHA development standards, and produce better human habitat. I introduce the “walk score” metric as an imperfect, but important measurement of walkability.  

CHAPTER 24. Why Local Governments Still Create Bad Human Habitat

Describes four key accomplishments made in Gaithersburg that make this municipality an exception to the rule of perpetual auto-dependency. Using walk scores, I then contrast Gaithersburg to my experience working in two different municipalities to show how municipal planners operate as little more than cogs in a sprawl machine.  

CHAPTER 25. Rhetoric Versus Reality

Illustrates the gap between rhetoric and reality in the two municipalities in which I’ve worked concerning sustainable development and mitigating climate change. After showing how little has changed from a development perspective in Baltimore County in 20 years, I turn to Halifax to offer up a cautionary tale relating to rhetoric, development, and climate change.

CHAPTER 26. Toledo’s Potential

Closing out Part III, I consider a plausible future in which post-industrial cities like Toledo provide America’s middle class with the quality of life my family has experienced in Halifax. I call attention to a significant change in Toledo regarding civic and business leadership regarding development. With best practices from Gaithersburg in mind, I note what they need to do and how to do it. Mindful that Toledo remains a receptacle of trauma, I ask whether these things can be done.  I conclude with a hope that Toledo, in time, rivals well-regarded cities such as Vienna and Munich.

PART IV   Polarized as If It’s 1854

CHAPTER 27. When a Family Buries the Truth
Explores the stories that families tell themselves, obscuring the truth and creating lasting consequences that bleed through generations. The same can hold true for a nation. I introduce Nellie’s four uncles who all fought in our civil war and call out a stunning erasure in the written family history regarding Lewis Robert Barnard Cass, who enlisted in the Union Army at age 14 and died shortly after the war. This same family history praises the elder Senator Cass but does not mention his central role in triggering political polarization in 1854 that produced our civil war. 

Chapter 28. Lincoln’s Unfinished Work
Builds upon my family connection to the Civil War, focusing on how Lincoln redefined the war’s meaning with his Gettysburg Address.  The “unfinished work” he speaks of asks us to see the formerly enslaved as equals. Our subsequent inability to do so would advance the nation’s spiritual death. I note the work Lincoln assigned Americans remains unfinished. I ask what it means to me in the context of my two great-granduncles who fought less than 500 feet from where Lincoln spoke.

CHAPTER 29. Fundamental Dynamics Remain Unchanged
Describes how on January 6, 2020, Trump produced an outcome that lay beyond General Lee’s grasp in 1863. For the first time, the Confederate battle flag was unfurled inside the Capitol building. Our unresolved past and the legacy of the slaveholding republic were on display. A comparison of two incumbent senators to their equivalents in the 1860s illustrates how dynamics in American society remain unchanged from what they were in 1854.

CHAPTER 30. Policies Racial Animosity Shaped
Considers ways in which political polarization of the sort on display on January 6th, degrades quality of life in the present day. Differences between Canada and the United States regarding the response to Covid are striking. To a large degree, racial animosity shapes policy differences as evidenced by Reagan’s welfare queen campaign, which blamed pathologies on the traumatized and isolated in cities as a matter of policy.

CHAPTER 31. Convergence at Sporting Hill
Illustrates how slavery and sprawl’s feedback loops can intersect in unexpected ways. Sporting Hill was the northernmost conflict during the Civil War. It’s also precisely (and unexpectedly) the same alienating place I routinely experienced as a child and describe at the outset of the book.

CHAPTER 32. The Birth of Alternate Reality and Its Unifying Properties
Examines the origins of the nation-shaping lie called the Lost Cause and considers the premier Lost Cause monument which stands near my father’s grave in Arlington cemetery. Our Civil War is not over. History looms over the present.

CHAPTER 33. A Responsibility for Understanding Our Past

Examines newspaper reports covering lynchings across the South and the epic Lost Cause movie, Birth of a Nation. I measure the gap between reality and myth, arguing there is tremendous benefit in taking collective responsibility for understanding national crimes in the way Germany has come to terms with Nazism.

CHAPTER 34. Life in a Receptacle of Trauma
Chronicles our efforts to raise our young children in a violent, traumatized, predominantly black Washington, DC neighborhood. I note the chasm between the urban life our children inhabit in Halifax, and what we left behind. I set the stage for a discussion about a favorite topic of the far right, namely personal responsibility.

CHAPTER 35. The Personal Responsibility Myth vs. Trauma’s Reality
Introduces a myth that’s an extension of the Lost Cause myth, packaged for the modern age in which none of us are racist. I show how the most important public health study that you may have never heard of proved this myth utterly false. What happens to us matters.

CHAPTER 36. Prelude to Polarization

Explains how social changes put in motion by World War II gave birth to the civil rights movement, establishing the groundwork for understanding contemporary polarization, and how the Democratic and Republican parties had switched roles by 1964 in relation to where they were in 1854. 

CHAPTER 37. Two Intertwined Narratives Fueling Polarization
Introduces two prominent, intertwined narratives that largely replaced the raw expressions of racism that were routine before the 1964 Civil Rights Act triggered political polarization for a second time in 1964. These two narratives do much to sustain polarization in the present day, and I debunk them in subsequent chapters.

CHAPTER 38. Veil of Time
Is the heart of the book. It’s about the nexus between the attachment I have to our two university-age sons, and Lewis, the fourteen-year-old boy (my great-grand-uncle) who ran away from home in August 1861 to follow his older brother to war. I ask whether the cost of political polarization triggered in 1854 was worth the price to my great-great grandfather, who lost three sons.

CHAPTER 39. Polarization’s Unexpected Dimensions
Explains why a former Chicago gang member named Nkosi (who’s connected to my sons, and understands me better than anyone outside my own family) might buy into the aforementioned intertwined narratives that contain half-truths which make them a powerful agent to fuel political polarization. Racial animosity is multi-dimensional.

CHAPTER 40. The Imagined Golden Age of the Negro Family
Establishes the foundation of an argument debunking the claim that there was some “golden age of the American negro family” that liberal welfare policies destroyed. This false claim ties into the aforementioned dual narrative fueling political polarization. A discussion with Nkosi regarding his murderous, imprisoned father sparks the formation of my argument.

CHAPTER 41. Origins of Black Criminality
Clarifies that levels of black criminality are higher relative to whites, but I ask you to consider how and why it originated by looking at WEB Dubois’s landmark 1899 study, A Philadelphia Negro.  Looking at racist comments from Fox News articles celebrating black criminality, I ask about Dubois’s unheeded warnings to white Americans and implications for both polarization and quality of life. I unexpectedly discover that Dubois was living in and studying in the same neighborhood my mother’s grandparents inhabited in 1899.

CHAPTER 42. The Short-Lived Illusion of Shared Purpose
Looks at the first six months of 1964, which were the last six months of our existence as an unvarnished white supremacist nation; a brief period pregnant with the potential to solidify a sense of shared purpose, addressing our tragic past. I end by noting that early in the second half of 1964, three poisons coursing through the veins of the American body politic begin to visibly overwhelm and destroy that potential, further cementing polarization.

CHAPTER 43. Civil War, Slavery, and Torture in Living Memory
Further clarifies that the enslavement and degradation that set the stage for pathology in American cities is not some distant past. I link Nellie’s uncles’ experiences of war to living memories of civil war, slavery, and torture recorded when my father was studying at the U.S. Naval Academy in the late 1930s. Although this is a little more than two decades before my birth, the past is close at hand and relevant to my life.

CHAPTER 44. Caste, Defected Rage, and Violence in the Black Community
Clarifies that the elevated level of violence in black American communities is real, but pathologies predate the oft-demonized social programs of the 1960s. I look at research conducted in the 1930s showing violence is a product of the American caste system. I continue to refute the notion there was some “golden age” for black Americans that social democratic policies undermine. Nkosi’s experience as a teen visiting family in Mississippi is recounted, illustrating how the dynamics of caste persist long after the civil rights movement ended.

CHAPTER 45.  All the Barbed Wire Fence Entailed
Describes the first of the three poisons that began to overwhelm the American body politic in the 1960s, namely urban decline driven by the pressures of migration. Nkosi has a vivid memory of me staring for a long time at the barbed wire surrounding my mother’s Philadelphia high school. I explain why it’s there, going beyond the 6 homicides and 16 rapes committed within seven blocks of the school in recent months. I describe how the neo-slavery practiced through 1941 was more brutal than the slavery it replaced. The duration, numbers involved, and level of brutality characterize a neoslavery serving a singularly important role in sustaining a caste system underpinning the violence and dysfunction that degrades our cities.

CHAPTER 46. The Tacit Agreement Underpinning Polarization
Describes the second of the three poisons that began to overwhelm the body politic in the 1960s, namely the emergence of the far right. I describe how conservatives Republicans reached out to Southern Democrats in the 1950s to form a conservative-racist alliance; a movement that reshaped the Republican Party, and eventually produced the Capitol insurrection. 

CHAPTER 47. Freedomspeak
Elaborates further on the emergence of the far right (i.e., the second poison). I describe the origins and significance of Conscience of a Conservative, the bible of American conservatism in which the personal responsibility myth is presented for mass consumption. I describe how, starting in 1964, a Republican Party controlled by the conservative-racist alliance uses a new vocabulary (i.e., Freedomspeak) to begin winning races in the deep South. In time the political map would look much as it did after the Cass Doctrine’s implementation in 1854, except Democrat and Republican roles are reversed.

CHAPTER 48. The War That Killed Healing
Describes how the third poison- the Vietnam War – finished the job of overwhelming the body politic and locking in polarization by 1968. I begin with a memory of my father (then a professor at the Naval Post Graduate School) and a lieutenant colonel who commanded the 1st Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment (in Vietnam) screaming into each other’s faces regarding the merits of the war. I describe the war’s dubious origins and show how it came at precisely the time American cities began reaching critical mass concerning serving as receptacles of trauma and imploding under the weight of history. I measure the psychological distance traveled between 1964, and 1968, noting that Vietnam killed the healing potential. We needed Bobby Kennedy and a Marshall Plan for our cities. Instead, we got Richard Nixon and the rejection of the Kerner Report.

CODA: SHARED FATE

To be refined.

I ask about a future in which we remain locked in the sunlight prison of the American Dream, denying our past, diminished by violence, living in fear of one another, and building bad human habitat. I describe sitting at the kitchen table in Halifax, discovering King’s April 1967 Riverside speech. I realized that he’d accurately predicted my future regarding my “difficulty finding home in America.” I describe the feeling of being understood by a black man who I no longer saw as black. He simply became human, and I realized that we—black and white—have a shared fate. Say what you will about America. It’s an experiment that the world cannot afford to fail. We need to get it sorted.

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