Media Hysteria!

By Dom Nozzi

To survive the loss of advertising to the Internet, the US media has ramped up its use of words designed to make people crazed with hysteria, paralyzed with fear, apoplectic with outrage, and staggered with tantrums. The media is engaged, in other words, in an obsessive effort to maximize what is, in the Internet age, euphemistically called the proliferation of “clickbait” or “viewership.”

The more clicks and views the media gets with its terrifying, outraging headlines, the more money the media makes.

Tragically for those of us on the political left, fear-mongering is known to move a society toward the political right because fear is the mother of right-wing thinking.

Here are some examples of headlines we see on a daily basis.

SNOWPOCALYSE IN NEW YORK!

TRUMP TO MAKE DEAL WITH RUSSIA! UKRAINE! NORTH KOREA!

TRUMP USES A BAD WORD!

KILLER FLEES! STILL AT LARGE IN SAN DIEGO!

BOMB CYCLONE HITS NEBRASKA!

SNOWMAGEDDON BURIES IOWA!

HURRICAN WINDS CAUSE POWER OUTTAGES IN 349 CITIES!

ALL-TIME LOW TEMPERATURES SET IN 4,366 TOWNS!

KILLER BEES FOUND IN MEXICO!

16,000 STRANDED AT AIRPORTS DUE TO FLIGHT CANCELLATIONS COAST TO COAST!

GREAT WHITE SHARK SPOTTED OFF COASTLINE!

HEROIN OVERDOSES AT RECORD LEVELS AS HEROIN KINGPINS TIGHTEN THEIR GRIP IN DETROIT!

FLESH-EATING BACTERIA SPREADS IN AFRICA!

UNPRECEDENTED FLOODING IN THE MIDWEST!

MAN CAUGHT VIEWING CHILD PORNOGRAPHY IN TOLEDO!

RACISTS AND FASCISTS INCITE VIOLENCE IN DALLAS!

SEXUALLY VIOLENT PREDATOR TO BE HOUSED IN NORTHRIDGE NEIGHBORHOOD!

CHILD MOLESTER RELEASED FROM PRISON IN OKLAHOMA!

GLACIERS MELTING AT UNPRECEDENTED RATE IN GREENLAND!

LEADING SCIENTISTS FIND SPECIES EXTINCTION AT ALL-TIME RECORD RATES!

WITCHES SEEN FLYING ON BROOMS IN OHIO!

What is the underlying, rightwing-breeding message of all of this fear-baiting? HIDE UNDER YOUR BED BECAUSE THE COMMUNISTS ARE COMING! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE BECAUSE DEPLORABLE BAD PEOPLE ARE AFTER YOU! SUPPORT MORE TRILLIONS FOR MILITARY AND POLICE SPENDING! I’M SO AFRAID OF DEATH THAT YOU MUST SAVE ME, JESUS! FAVOR MORE EXECUTIONS FOR DRUG PUSHERS AND RAPISTS! CUT GOVERNMENT SPENDING FOR LOW-PRIORITY SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAMS!

The end result of all this is an increasingly dysfunctional, reactionary, irrational society. I don’t see any way our society can divert itself from this downward path in my lifetime.

The Homeless Problem in Gainesville FL

By Dom Nozzi

July 19, 2005

Dear Neighborhood Association President,

A few thoughts about the homeless (that you are free to incorporate into a neighborhood newsletter article, and are not free to attribute to me):

As I mentioned yesterday, our bloated police department (which gets more city money, per capita, than any comparable city in the nation) is canvassing our neighborhood due to a recent increase in crime activity in our part of the city. I notice that they are not suggesting more police. Or arming citizens in their homes. Or using guard dogs. Or security alarms. Or arresting burglars and throwing away the key.

No, they understand there are more effective tools for reducing neighborhood crime problems, one that is significantly more effective than the conventional tools. As Jane Jacobs pointed out 40 years ago in The Death & Life of Great American Cities, the best crime control technique, by far, is citizen surveillance. Putting “eyes on the street” by having lots of neighbors be neighborly out on sidewalks and streets, or looking out windows, or working in the yard, is a profoundly useful way to control crime.

So what does our wise city commission do? It decides to reduce that citizen surveillance indirectly by providing more money to “help” the homeless panhandlers. This is sure to increase homeless activity in our neighborhood. The homeless flock here from out of town to take advantage of our homeless generosity, and since homeless activity makes most people feel so uncomfortable, this will reduce the number of residents walking our sidewalks. Therefore, citizen surveillance will go down. And our crime rate will go up (and our property values will suffer).

An anecdote: Yesterday, while walking my dog at Roper Park, a homeless panhandler approached me and asked for money. I told him I had none. He asked where the downtown plaza was. There is a decent possibility, therefore, that this guy had heard through the grapevine that Gainesville’s downtown plaza was a veritable paradise for the homeless, and he was coming to Gainesville to enjoy it.

And Gainesville is rated a “mean city for the homeless”?

Please.

If anything, the homeless flock here from all over the US because they have heard we are a great choice for a homeless person looking for handouts.

Has it occurred to anyone that Gainesville never has an elected commissioner who actually lives in or near downtown? Does that perhaps explain why so many downtown problems go uncorrected for so long? Why the commission is able to turn the other way when downtown homeless problems worsen?

Why should they care, since they are safely living in places remote from downtown?

In sum, does our out-of-touch, bleeding heart city commission care about the fact that the heart of the city — downtown and the Duckpond neighborhood — is suffering due to homeless panhandlers? That the body suffers if the heart suffers? That the heart is becoming a dumping ground for urban dysfunction that the lily white suburbs keep themselves insulated from?

Fear by the Political Left

By Dom Nozzi

November 6, 2016

One of the things that most strongly disappoints me in this election season is how aggressively many on the left have shamelessly adopted a very ugly, counterproductive tactic:

FEAR.

Fear has been mostly used by reactionaries for the past several decades because it shuts down thinking. It enables even intelligent, good-hearted people to be buffaloed into supporting awful, evil, terrible things.

Fear COMMUNISTS! Fear DRUGS! Fear IMMIGRANTS! Fear BLACK PEOPLE! Fear TERRORISTS! Each of those fear campaigns has stopped brains from thinking, and created enough of a political consensus to cause much that is terrible in our world.

Today, many Democrats shamelessly leverage this right-wing, anti-intellectual, manipulative tactic when they scream FEAR TRUMP!!!

It is creating reactionary mob mentality and is very toxic for our future.

Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War

By Mark Danner, published 2016

Review by Dom Nozzi

January 30, 2017

I just finished reading a powerful, highly disturbing, infuriating and depressing book. Spiral, by Mark Danner, lays out the criminal and exceptionally self-perpetuating downward spiral of the so-called American War on Terror. Danner shows how the “war” continuously induces more and more fear amongst Americans. And how fear is the most effective means that elected officials have to convince voters that our corrupt, militarized government is justified in ramping up, without end, a global forever war. The “war” moves us further and further away from the publicly alleged objective of “making us safer” by endlessly recruiting countless new “terrorists” who have made a lifetime vow to engage in violence in retribution for American violence (even the hawkish Donald Rumsfeld asked if “we [are]…killing… more terrorists…than…the radical clerics are recruiting…”). The fear so sharply escalated by the “war” has led large numbers of Americans to passively accept things now routinely engaged in by the US that throughout history have been considered barbaric: torture, starting wars of aggression, indiscriminately killing countless civilians, spending way more than the next several world military powers combined, and engaging in invasive domestic surveillance of all Americans. There is no end in sight for American forever wars being conducted in so many places today. Neither major party in the US seems to have any interest in ending the murderous boondoggle.

The self-perpetuating nature of these forever wars reminds one of the bursting-at-the-seams US prison system, which is so harsh and retributive that it has become a crime factory ensuring that upon release, prisoners will soon re-offend and be imprisoned again.

In my view, all of us alive today will live for the rest of our lives with a much greater fear of violent extremism (such as domestic lone-wolf bombings and mass shootings) than any previous generation. The great irony is that this increased fear and increased number of terrorist incidents domestically and internationally is the direct result of America engaging in what is now a 14-year (and counting) “war on terror” to make us “safer.” Another irony in all of this: Noam Chomsky is correct when he notes that the US has become the most prolific terrorist nation the world has ever seen. Had we not engaged in this shockingly counterproductive “war,” our future would have been significantly safer.  Instead of making us less safe and substantially increasing the incidence of worldwide terrorism, our nation could have had spent those trillions of war dollars to actually improve our lives rather than worsen it. Money that instead of being used to kill a huge number of mostly innocent people, could have been used to create a national passenger rail system, provide free college education, create much cheaper or free national health care, fund a lot more scientific and medical research, repair infrastructure, and so on.

Excerpts from this sobering book:

“…nearly 33,000 people worldwide died from terrorism in 2014, an increase of 35 percent over the year before – and of 4,000 percent since 2002.”

“Turns out I’m really good at killing people. Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.” – President Barrack Obama, [Nobel Peace Prize winner] September 30, 2011

“[America now routinely engages in] warrantless wiretapping…Extraordinary rendition. Unlawful combatants. Indefinite detention. Targeted assassination. Extrajudicial killing. Enhanced interrogation techniques. Torture. …once unthinkable [these tactics have become] quietly accepted weapons in an endless war.”

“…the reality of [Obama’s] years in office have turned out to be more complicated. Guantanamo remains open. The military commissions go on. Torture goes unpunished [“We must look forward, not backward”]…he sent drones to kill thousands, including many civilians. Americans, believing themselves to stand proudly for the rule of law and human rights, have become for the rest of the world a symbol of something quite opposite: a society that imprisons people indefinitely without trial, kills thousands without due process, and leaves unpunished lawbreaking approved by its highest officials…Even as ‘core’ al Qaeda has been battered and reduced, al Qaedism, the ideology, has thrived…powered by the outrage of young Muslims over Western imperialism, torture, drone attacks…this very plentitude means the odds against those charged with stopping attacks grow ever longer…successful lone-wolf attacks [in the US are] increasingly likely.”

Ordinarily, I’d advise everyone to read this essential book as soon as possible, but as the author notes in his concluding remarks, it seems today that most Americans would hardly bat an eye if they were to learn a lot more about American atrocities and self-defeating actions in the “war on terror.” Indeed, Americans became so apathetic, cynical and callous during Obama’s two terms of office that I suspect most Americans these days would, if anything, applaud upon learning that the US behavior was now similar to the North Koreans, the Chinese, the former Soviet Union, or Nazi Germany. After observing how both major parties seemed to want to aggressively step up the “war on terror” in the 2016 presidential campaign — despite the enormous number of books, essays, investigations, and news reports showing its failures — the author asks “[w]hat if you tear off the veil and no one gasps, no one cringes, no one even blinks? What if, apart from a handful, the public mostly yawns and turns the channel?”

 

 

City Police Militarization as a Way to Keep the Cash Flowing

For decades, the elected city commissioners in the city I worked for in Florida rubber-stamped nearly all of the often very expensive budget requests by the city police department. An excellent example of an utter lack of elected leadership. Why? Because most all of these requests typically had nothing whatsoever to do with reducing crime problems. Indeed, many requested programs or new facilities actually INCREASED community crime problems, in part because many of these budget requests starved several other important city funding needs. In addition, many tactics employed by the city police department, when funding is requested, used scare tactics and programs that created a downwardly spiraling, self-perpetuating vicious cycle. “IF YOU DON’T GIVE THE POLICE $5 MILLION MORE DOLLARS THIS YEAR, BURGLARIES WILL ESCALATE!!” Saying this over and over again creates the false perception that the rate of crime is higher than it actually is. The related part of this downward spiral is the militarization of the police. By buying armored vehicles, assault weapons, and other military props (such as militarized police uniforms or gear), the police create a community perception that the city is under assault by an invasion of criminals. The only solution, of course, is to provide the police with an endless blank check of millions of additional public dollars in each annual budget cycle. What exemplified this self-perpetuating militarization and budget increases for the police in the city I worked for was the acquisition of a military attack helicopter. While I was a city planner for that city in the 1990s, the police department was able to acquire a military helicopter. In the several years since the police department obtained the chopper, I saw red. I called the police department several times in the wee hours of the morning after being unable to sleep late at night. Why? Because the police helicopter would repeatedly circle at low elevations over my neighborhood. Over and over again. At absurd hours. The perception? I’m living in Lebanon. Or  Saigon. And my neighborhood is under attack. Not once did I see a report in the newspaper the next day indicating that a band of insurgent terrorists had invaded my neighborhood. But the loud, aggressive, incessant chopper flights certainly made it seem that way. “GIVE THE COPS MORE MILLIONS!! WE ARE UNDER ATTACK!!!!” One night I demanded, without success, to get the officer in charge of the chopper on the phone with me so that I could read him the riot act. At times, I was so enraged that I have vowed, jokingly, to get a gun and shoot the chopper down. One of the most frightening experiences I ever had in my life was when I was in college in Arizona. I was visiting a friend who lived in Phoenix, and at the time, the city had a police chopper. Late at night, in his front yard, the chopper trained a powerful spotlight down on us while we were in the front yard just talking. I felt like a ground trooper about to be strafed in Vietnam. In general, police helicopters are terribly invasive, are probably often used to intimidate, and are an enormous noise pollution source. I strongly question the need for one, especially in a relatively small community. The chopper breeds hysteria, fear mongering, and attacks against those who oppose it (for being “soft on crime”). It also has significant potential to be a huge drain on a community budget. Probably the only thing that can lead a community to opt not to continue to employ a police chopper once the terrible idea of it is initiated is if it ever crashes due to such things as mechanical failure or operator error. Again, a police helicopter creates an impression that the community is under siege. In my city, it was apparently part of the police chief’s effort to militarize the police department. Maybe also to burnish the reputation of the chief and his department as macho and tough on crime. As I indicated above, the beauty of such things as military police equipment is once it is part of the police department, it is nearly impossible to get rid of. Doing so would seem like being in favor of riots and mayhem. That the community is caving in to criminals. Studies have shown that there is no correlation between number of cops (or increasing funding for the police department) on crime. See Sense and Nonsense About Crime and Drugs: A Policy Guide (1985), by Samuel Walker. Part of the self-perpetuating downward spiral here is that the police department becomes the local government equivalent of the Pentagon. Every year, they get pretty much everything they ask for, and this is driven by exaggerated fears and lack of elected leadership. Instead of communism or the “war on terror,” local police departments ramp up drug or burglary or murder hysteria to keep their budgets rising by significant amounts nearly every year. In the city I resided in, city police budget increments in the 1980s greatly exceeded the rate of inflation and were much higher than the budget increments for any other city department. When I first moved to the city in 1986, the police department funding consumed about 19 percent of the total city budget. By the 1990s, the police department was consuming about 36 percent of the total budget. Would the crime rates in that city be significantly higher had the city not poured those hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into their police department?? I seriously doubt it. Would the community quality of life been much higher had the city instead devoted those dollars to other city needs? Almost certainly. Despite relentless messages from the media that tell us of dramatic yearly increases in the crime rate, victimization studies indicate the crime rate in the U.S. has remained fairly stable over the past few decades, according to a University of Florida professor. Dr. Richard Hollinger, an associate professor of sociology, points out that although police chiefs and sheriffs use emotional appeals (such as waving confiscated uzi’s at PTA meetings) to win increases in their budgets from city and county commissioners, increased spending for law enforcement has no significant impact on the crime rate. Cops driving around in their patrol cars see almost no crimes while doing so, and they are just wasting gas as they travel from doughnut shop to doughnut shop, according to Hollinger. Rattling off a list of statistics regarding crime, Hollinger pointed out that most of what the media tells us about crime is sensationalistic, exaggerated, biased, and false. Real solutions, according to Hollinger, are either unacceptable in a free society, or are simply not even being discussed. For example, we COULD reduce the crime rate by increasing the size of our police forces, but only at the cost of impoverishing our government budgets and creating a totalitarian, police-state society. Instead, Hollinger would call for the following: First, we need to improve neo-natal care (in order to improve the IQ of our population). Second, we need to improve our pre-school and elementary school education programs well beyond their current dismal state. We now have, according to Hollinger, a 40-percent high school drop-out rate in Florida (the highest in the nation), and it is little wonder: Our priorities are skewed toward hopeless and counter-productive crime control tactics such as more police helicopters and more high-tech prisons. Real solutions are “politically unacceptable.” We therefore continue our march of folly. The rich, noted Hollinger, get richer, and the poor go to prison.

Overthrow: A Review

By Dom Nozzi

I just finished reading a book written in 2006 called Overthrow, by Stephen Kinzer.

I highly recommend it.

How many of us know of the shameful, sordid history of our US government overthrowing leaders in Hawaii, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, Grenada, Iraq, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Vietnam, Iran, and Afghanistan? How in nearly all cases, we did so to secure access to resources, or were doing the bidding of multi-national corporations which desired continued easy access to such resources? How in each case, we cloaked our attack not on such exploitative reasons, but based on the false claim that we are doing so to “liberate oppressed people,” to “bring democracy and freedom,” to “stop a dangerous tyrant,” or to “help people who could not govern themselves”? How most all of the nations we overthrew became much worse off during and after our “regime change” actions?

Many of us, the author points out, believe such fairy tales of our “bringing democracy and freedom” because of the common belief in “exceptionalism,” where the US is seen to be inherently more moral, godly and just than all other nations, and therefore a country that can only do right and never do wrong.”

A friend responded to the above by saying, “Don’t we already know this?” To which I replied with the following…

In The New American Militarism, Andrew Bacevich notes the terrifying reality that America has now reached a political consensus: The vast majority of Republicans and Democrats are now flag-waving supporters of ramped up and never-ending US militarism, which clearly shows that the majority does NOT already know this (unless most of us are barbarians, and support such aggression even though it is in support of multi-national corporations rather than our security).

In Morality Wars, Charles Derber finds that cloaking barbaric “gunboat diplomacy” as bringing “democracy and freedom” has been in existence for many centuries for nearly all empires, and few, if any, societies were able to see through the hysteria and deception. I see no evidence, to this day, that the vast majority of Americans (including most Democrats) oppose wars of aggression by the US. The majority of Democrats and Republicans have cheered Obama adopting the largest military budgets in US history, as well as his many wars of aggression, and there seems to be a near political consensus that US aggression is justifiable.  Where, for example, is the outrage about Obama’s drone war, his on-going war of aggression in Afghanistan (which a HUGE number of liberals and feminists heartily support as a way to bring “democracy” and “women’s rights” to that ravaged nation), his saber rattling over the Ukraine, and his military action in Libya (which most Democrats supported)?

If “we” Americans already knew this, why did we re-elect one of the most warlike presidents in our history (Obama)?

Or maybe by “we” you mean you and me?

PS – I’m one of the most well-read people I know, and I knew only a tiny amount about the awful US history since 1898 of orchestrating regime change. I would say over 99 percent of Americans know nothing about that history. Most of the Overthrow book was news to me. Maybe I’m a moron, but maybe not. The book sickened me to the point where I am both utterly ashamed to be an American, and startled that educated citizens continue to vote for major party US presidential candidates, given how many wars of aggression presidents of both parties have called for over the past century.

 

Light Pollution

By Dom Nozzi

There is an “invisible” — yet nevertheless important — quality-of-life issue that communities neglect at their peril. Invisible because it is rarely discussed as a problem.

Light pollution.

Light pollution hides the glorious, romantic stars in the night sky. Such pollution degrades wildlife habitat, and creates a frenzied, “anywhere USA” ambiance that kills the authentic, quiet and sleepy charm of a community. Light pollution disrupts sleep for countless people in residential areas.

In my opinion, light pollution has become an epidemic in our county because, increasingly, retailers discover that excessive lighting is a handy way to attract the attention of the 40,000 motorists driving by each day on roadways. It is also a convenient way to evade those pesky local sign ordinances. Sign regulations are evaded in this case because excessive lighting allows the retailer to make her/his entire building a sign at night. It is the “building as sign” problem that we often see — especially with chain retailers.

For example, a retailer lights up their building to make the structural elements on the property are so screamingly visible that we are compelled to look.

The result of this is that light pollution problem often worsens when the city engages in more effective enforcement of the city sign ordinance. An unintended consequence.

A number of newer gas stations will use a high canopy over the fueling stations. The bright, glaring lights underneath the canopy makes the place look, in the words of Jim Kunstler, like a “UFO Landing Strip” which can be seen from miles around. Other retailers like to line their exterior walls or parking lots with lights that spill upward and across property lines.

Of course, retailers who are cited for light pollution are usually indignant, and commonly defend their ability to continue polluting. A frequent ploy is to grab the moral high ground on this issue by claiming that the sole purpose of all this excessive lighting is for “public safety,” or the “safety of customers.” It is claimed that excessive lighting keeps women and children safe from predators (despite the inconvenient fact that it has been shown that bright lights will create darker shadows where predators can more easily hide, and that glaring lights can cause traffic accidents).

The result is that citizens and decision-makers often look upon those concerned about light pollution as people who are insensitive to public safety.

We are asked to believe it is only a coincidence for the retailer that this “safety” lighting happens to make the entire building a glaring billboard to attract customers. Surely the only reason for the bright lights by our safety-minded retailers is to promote public safety.

Please.

Controlling light pollution is an important element in retaining a pleasant ambiance for our towns, not to mention the needs of our wildlife and star-gazing public.

_________________________________

Gainesville Amends its Charter to Prohibit Bike and Pedestrian Paths

By Dom Nozzi

In March 1998, I wrote about thinking back to Gainesville, Florida’s political past. It was a black, tragic day for Gainesville’s future. A landslide 59 percent voted to oppose a paved bicycle and pedestrian greenway trail along the Hogtown Creek in Gainesville.

The city charter, it was decided by voters, would be amended to forever prohibit Gainesville from building a paved bicycle and pedestrian path along that creek.

This happened despite the fact that it was an incredibly confusing ballot (usually fatal for a ballot referendum), and probably prevents the city from building ANY recreation facilities in west Gainesville. This unintended (?) outcome was apparently due to voters who thought that the prohibition on ALL recreation facilities near the creek was a lie by the City to try to scare voters into not voting for the amendment. It turned out that the sloppily written ballot measure did, in fact, prohibit any recreation facilities from being built in the creek watershed. Surely not a desirable outcome for most who voted against a bicycle and pedestrian path.

I gloomily expected that the ballot measure would pass. And I was astounded when I learned that while the City Law Department wisely recommended that the commissioners challenge the ballot in court, the City Commission went against the recommendation because they felt no one would vote for it!

Why was I pessimistic? Because it is so damn easy for people to ease their guilty conscience about the environment by voting against paving — especially since it is no skin off their nose to oppose a path they never expected to use. In addition, it just seemed intuitively obvious to naïve armchair environmentalists that paving near a creek was harmful to the environment. It takes real knowledge and research to realize opposing such a path is wrong-headed. Finally, for environmentalists, this was a fight they could finally win. They can never win on a REALLY destructive project like a road widening (not that most environmentalists would actually oppose a road widening, since so many are happy motorists).

But, damn it, at least they can win on a bike path.

Perhaps that blunderous vote will end up being a lesson to us that direct democracy does not work in a large, complex society. That we must realize that only a representative democracy can work. After all, what is next? Will we ask citizens to vote to amend the city charter to prevent the city from ever using, say, titanium, to build a bridge? Absurd, but the analogy fits.

How sad that Gainesville voters voted in the 1990s to create a more grim future for their city. The permanent prohibition on building a path near the creek has condemned the creek to continued neglect and therefore a perpetuation of its degradation due to neglect.

Who needs enemies when we have ourselves?

___________________________

My book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

My memoir can be purchased here: Paperback = http://goo.gl/9S2Uab Hardcover = http://goo.gl/S5ldyF

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

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The War Zone

By Dom Nozzi

THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA!!!!!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEiiiiii!!!!

These assaulting, incessant, head-rattling sounds occur 24 hours a day. Seven days a week. They are the sounds of living in the middle of a war zone.

Is it Saigon in 1970?

Beirut in 1980?

Baghdad in 2007?

No.

It is the ambience that those who reside in and near downtowns throughout America have had to endure now for several years.

Over the years, when I lived in Gainesville FL, friends and family who visited from out of town invariably told me how astonished they were by the frequent, alarming sounds of low-flying helicopters and emergency vehicle sirens in Gainesville. How it seems much louder and much more frequent than what they experience in cities such as Washington DC or Miami.

For me, it led to sleep deprivation. Frayed nerves. Tension.

And rage.

I called the Gainesville Police Department on a regular basis between midnight and 6 am to complain, and beg the police to stop circling the helicopter in downtown neighborhoods so I could get some sleep.

Of course, they ignored me.

How many who live downtown verge on a nervous breakdown due to this unrelenting, screaming, troubling noise?

How many have resigned themselves to what seems like a constant state of emergency, and have decided to somehow tough it out by taking sleeping pills or wearing ear muffs in bed?

How many have given up on downtown living and have vowed to move to the “peace and quiet” of a suburban home?

How many have vowed to never live in downtown — unable to stand the siege-like atmosphere?

Many assaulted citizens simply don’t know who to complain to. Or that it is even possible or appropriate to complain.

Others are (inaccurately) convinced that constantly circling helicopters and incessant, 24/7 convoys of shrieking emergency vehicle sirens are necessary to capture dangerous criminals or put out raging fires.

Some simply have lowered their expectations of the amount of quiet they can expect at night. They have given up on having a serene, calm, peaceful city.

I’m not one of them.

News flash: there are NOT dangerous murderers running around downtown who must be apprehended several times a night by a helicopter. The constantly circling police helicopters are circling not because they MUST, but because they CAN. It is too easy for the police to go after a petty burglar with a helicopter.

On balance, does tracking shoplifters with helicopters at 3 am result in a net benefit for our quality of life, despite the Baghdad tone it creates?

It is NOT necessary to use fire truck and police car emergency sirens as promiscuously as does the City of Gainesville (and many, many other cities – the list grows every month). A friend tells me his (much larger) city has a policy whereby emergency vehicle sirens are used significantly less between 11 pm and 6 am. And that when the station is near a neighborhood, the siren is not activated until a major road is reached. After all, there are significantly less cars on the road at that time, or on neighborhood streets. And a great many citizens are trying to sleep.

It is possible for a city to tone down its sirens.

At 6 am one morning in 2009, for example, I noticed (silently) flashing police car lights while living in Richmond VA. Which reminded me that I’ve heard significantly fewer sirens in this city than while living in Gainesville. Richmond is much larger than Gainesville. And it led the nation in murders in 1994. If Richmond can have quiet nights, why not other cities?

Are cities truly interested in promoting quality of life? In promoting an increase in the number of people who live in or near downtown?

If so, it is imperative that city-induced noise pollution be reduced.

First, the police helicopter needs to be permanently grounded or employed significantly less. I’m not convinced that helicopters reduce crime.

Let’s assume, though, that the chopper is useful when pursuing dangerous criminals (we can all agree that choppers are not needed to capture a teenager who has shoplifted candy at a grocery store). How often do we have dangerous murderers running around in our cities? Maybe once every 5 years? Certainly not three times a night.

City police and fire departments need to follow the lead of the small handful of cities showing wise leadership on this issue. Significantly reduce siren use in the early morning. Especially on neighborhood streets.

To be truly serious about quality of life and increasing the desirability of living in or visiting the town center, cities must show the leadership that it takes to rein in excessive emergency vehicle sirens and helicopters.

The world will not come to an end if this step is taken. It might even be a better world.

_______________________________________________________________________________

My memoir can be purchased here:

Paperback = http://goo.gl/9S2Uab Hardcover =  http://goo.gl/S5ldyF

The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), can be purchased here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-car-is-the-enemy-of-the-city/10905607

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.wordpress.com

Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Visit my other sites:

Road to Ruin can be purchased here:

http://www.amazon.com/Road-Ruin-Introduction-Sprawl-Cure/dp/0275981290

My Adventures blog

http://domnozziadventures.wordpress.com/

My Best-Ever Lists blog

http://dombestlist.wordpress.com/

My Town & Transportation Planning website

http://walkablestreets.wordpress.com/

My Plan B blog

http://domz60.wordpress.com/

My Facebook profile

http://www.facebook.com/dom.nozzi

My YouTube video library

http://www.youtube.com/user/dnozzi

My Picasa Photo library

https://picasaweb.google.com/105049746337657914534

My Author spotlight

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/domatwalkablestreetsdotcom