Long-Range Transportation Planning in Gainesville, Florida

By Dom Nozzi

In January 2000, I submitted a draft of the long-range transportation plan I had written for the city of Gainesville, Florida to my supervisor. My plan was based on a thorough understanding I had developed over the years about effective, sustainable, smart transportation and land use planning, and won the praise of the state planning office.

My supervisor read me the riot act after reading through it. He told me he would need to chop about two-thirds of it out. His comments consisted of an angry tirade from a man who made it clear by his comments that he was a totally uninformed suburbanite. It was obvious that he had strong libertarian leanings, because he kept telling me that we cannot control what the marketplace wants, such as everyone driving everywhere, no one wanting to mix homes with stores and offices, and huge Big Box retailers being okay when they are located next to poor African Americans. I gave him several responses, such as, “Does this mean that we are wasting our time as public planners?”

He claimed the plan should be silent on the issue of what to do about roads outside the city in the urban area. I was stunned to hear that. Not only do roads have a regional impact far beyond city limits, but our city commissioners sit on a regional board and vote on road projects in the unincorporated urban area. Therefore, their votes have some meaning for roads outside the city (a majority vote is necessary for the regional board to take action). As a result, I said, it is highly legitimate for the City to take a stance on roads in the unincorporated urban area.

I went on to point out that “the market” was showing high and increasing property values in the historic, walkable, town center neighborhood in Gainesville (the “Duckpond”) that was faster than anywhere else in the county. Does this mean, I asked, that our plan should state that we agree with the market on how to design neighborhoods, and henceforth, all of them will have narrow streets, buildings close to the sidewalk, no snout houses, sidewalks, curbs, modest turning radii, on-street parking, higher residential densities, and within walking distance of a town center? Also, since “the market” does not find the ability to widen major arterials, should our plan state that local government will not widen either?

Because my draft transportation plan included effective strategies to build facilities that promote transportation choice, and because the plan does not mince words (but instead cites the overwhelming research literature on the subject), my supervisor — as a committed motorist and suburban advocate —became quite defensive. His life was being indicted. He started to defensively claim (using the tired old strawman) that I unrealistically wanted to get rid of all cars. That my plan was not balanced. That I unfairly attacked cars for most of our problems. Pedestrians are often to blame for being run over, he very oddly and embarrassingly pointed out. He told me the studies I cited were not applicable because they were not done in Gainesville and we are somehow “different” (which is a classic anti-scientific stance that exposes a biased, personal lifestyle belief).

The “conversation” with my supervisor supremely exemplified why I had originally declined to author transportation and land use plans for Gainesville after being asked to do so. I knew my views would be completely rejected. I knew we would continue our practice of not being serious about transportation choice and land use choice. That instead, we would continue to pay lip service to all those progressive ideas, and then flog ourselves in the future when we don’t achieve our objectives.

Of course, by only paying lip service to needed reform rather than actually implementing the reforms, we would find ourselves eventually bashing progressive transportation ideas I had called for in my draft plan. Because we opted not to reform transportation and land use patterns and policies to promote transportation choice, our future would be one where nearly all of us continued to drive our cars nearly everywhere. We’d then falsely claim that the marketplace proved we cannot get people out of cars. That people don’t want to live in walkable neighborhoods.

We would conveniently ignore, in other words, the fact that “the market” remained distorted by pro-car subsidies, policies and infrastructure design that made it highly likely that the status quo of car dependency would continue for the vast majority of us. We would wrongly conclude that there was nothing we could do about this unsustainable state of affairs.

It became clear to me that once my supervisor had my transportation plan utterly gutted and emasculated, that I would be completely embarrassed to present the plan at public meetings — because it would seem like such a meaningless, feel-good plan was my doing.

My supervisor was, without question, an anti-planner. And I was in the awful position of being seen as an ineffective, do-nothing planner who had written a do-nothing, feel-good plan.

The discussion made it clear that Gainesville was obviously going to stay on the road to becoming the car-crazed nightmare of South Florida, Part II. It was quite painful to watch the steps being taken by my community to unknowingly ruin itself, and my being helpless to change the course. As Andres Duany points out, the town drunk has more credibility than a public planner — even, at times, inside his own planning office…

 

 

 

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My latest 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

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:

A lifetime of Adventures…http://domnozziadventures.wordpress.com/

Urban Design… http://walkablestreets.wordpress.com/

Plan B… http://domz60.wordpress.com/

Best Ever… http://dombestlist.wordpress.com/

My FB profile… http://www.facebook.com/dom.nozzi

 

Allegedly Progressive Gainesville Loves Cul-De-Sacs

By Dom Nozzi

In 2001, my long list of shameful, spineless, reactionary actions by the Gainesville City Commission grew again due to a cul-de-sac cave-in.

City Commissioners went against its staff recommendation and its adopted long-range transportation plan by approving cul-de-sacs at a proposed planned development (Walnut Creek) in the city.

They did this despite all the lip service this supposedly “progressive,” “green,” “transportation choice-advocating” commission engages in. They did this despite the funny little story I just told them in my staff presentation for their new, long-range transportation plan (I told them about “Little Bobby and his friend Jeff” being unable to play with each other because they are trapped in cul-de-sacs). They did this despite opposition from their Public Works Department director. They did this despite opposition from their fire department (of all people).

To add insult to injury, even the planned development ordinance for Walnut Creek contained a clause that clearly stated that cul-de-sacs were not permitted — that connected streets are required. This required our city attorney to engage in “creative interpretation” of the language to allow the City Commission to cave in and allow cul-de-sacs.

I learned about this pathetic, embarrassing action by the Gainesville City Commission not because I was at the City Commission meeting, or because I watched the meeting on TV. In fact, it was decisions like this that compelled me to do everything I could to never go to meetings or watch on TV. I didn’t need ulcers or have my blood pressure raised. These inexcusable Commission actions sickened me.

No, I learned about the Commission vote from two fellow Gainesville planners who made it a point to forcefully and loudly fill me in on this atrocious Commission cave-in the first thing the next morning after the meeting, because they knew it would enrage me. They were incredulous.

And get this: I won’t mention names, but the planners who informed me were the two planners on our staff who were MOST pro-car and anti-transportation choice. Even they were outraged, and were throwing their hands up in disgust.

Again, the Commission was sending a clear message to staff: “We are conditioning you to be non-visionary, non-innovative, non-cutting edge, and weak negotiators (at least with site plans) because we will not back you up when push comes to shove at public meetings. Instead, we’ll pay a bunch of money to consultants to have them do the cutting edge regulations and plans. And we’ll then go ahead and ignore those as well.”

Progressive, New Urbanist, green City Commission in Gainesville? Hardly. Again, the Gainesville City Commission were quite clearly the Lip Service, Cave-in Commission Par Excellence.

My latest 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

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:

A lifetime of Adventures…http://domnozziadventures.wordpress.com/

Urban Design… http://walkablestreets.wordpress.com/

Plan B… http://domz60.wordpress.com/

Best Ever… http://dombestlist.wordpress.com/

My FB profile… http://www.facebook.com/dom.nozzi

 

The Carbon Tax and the Poor

By Dom Nozzi

A great many intelligent people have pointed out the obvious in recent years about our climate change – a change driven by carbon emissions – and our fiscal crisis: It is screamingly obvious that an extremely effective, fair way to reduce carbon emissions (and raise desperately needed govt revenue) is to enact a carbon tax. Increasing the price of carbon sends a much-needed price signal to people that products, actions and services that directly or indirectly use carbon have an embedded carbon cost. That cost is the climate change and environmental/societal woes hidden by a lack of a carbon tax.

Underpriced carbon is rapidly destroying our world and the future of our species.

An important reason why a carbon tax is equitable is that people using more carbon pay more tax. Such a tax would raise much-needed government revenue by charging people for societally unsustainable behavior.

One would therefore think that political liberals and environmentalists would be 100 percent in favor of a carbon tax. Such people, one would expect, would find such a tax a no-brainer.

But as I often point out, a very large number of desperately needed societal actions are squelched because of the red flag too often raised by liberals and environmentalists: “WE CAN’T DO THAT BECAUSE IT WILL HURT POOR PEOPLE!!!!”

We can’t raise the gas tax…because it will hurt poor people.

We can’t put this four-lane monster highway destroying our downtown on a road diet (taking it from four lanes to three, for example)…because poor people won’t be able to get to jobs.

We can’t ease our parking woes, make our town centers more compactly walkable, and substantially reduce the amount of off-street, gap-tooth dead zone parking lots…because charging people money for parking will hurt poor people.

We can’t raise the tax on cigarettes to reduce excessive smoking…because it will hurt poor people who smoke.

We can’t adjust electricity prices to promote energy conservation…because it will hurt poor people.

We can’t charge a tax on sugar…because poor people won’t be able to afford to buy a Pepsi.

We can’t charge a fee for a background check…because poor people won’t be able to afford to buy a gun.

We can’t charge an impact fee on sprawl residential development…because it will hurt poor people who buy sprawl homes.

[I’ve heard all of the above complaints more than once.]

At the Conference on World Affairs in Boulder Colorado yesterday, I attended a session on how we need to learn to live with global warming because we have passed the tipping point and there is no way we can avoid catastrophic warming in our lifetimes no matter what we do (session title: “Climate Change: Get Used To It”). A question came from someone in the audience: “If we establish a federal tax [like has been admirably done in Boulder and a few European nations] on carbon, won’t it be a very bad idea because the carbon tax would be unaffordable for poor people??”

As you can imagine, the question made my blood boil.

I wanted to leap to my feet and scream to her: “We are driving a car at a high rate of speed towards a fiscal and environmental cliff (given our huge government fiscal woes and our huge climate change woes). Do you mean to say that we should not step on the brakes?? That we instead go over the cliff because poor people cannot afford to brake?????”

 

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My latest 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

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:

A lifetime of Adventures…http://domnozziadventures.wordpress.com/

Run for Your Life! Dom’s Dangerous Opinions… http://domdangerous.wordpress.com/

Urban Design… http://walkablestreets.wordpress.com/

Best Ever… http://dombestlist.wordpress.com/

My FB profile… http://www.facebook.com/dom.nozzi

 

 

Some Reasons Why “Beltway” Roads are a Bad Idea

By Dom Nozzi

For several decades, cities throughout the nation have decided that a highly beneficial way to reduce town center traffic congestion, reduce truck traffic in the town center, and ease regional motor vehicle travel is to spend trillions to build a beltway highway at the periphery of the town center so that such traffic is diverted from the town center. While the idea is seductively a great idea, there are significant reasons why such beltways – or “ring” roads – are ruinous for a community.

First, it is unquestionably true, in my opinion, that trying to solve in-town congestion “problems” with a beltway highway system that by-passes the town center is extremely counterproductive. Such roads inevitably accelerate flight from — and therefore strongly contribute to the death of — a town center. This beltway destruction of town centers has occurred throughout the U.S., primarily because beltways remove vehicle trips (trips which provide life-giving potential customers) from a town center, and promote the construction of big box retail malls with big parking lots in outlying suburban locations that feed on regional customers and in-town customers. These potential customers diverted from the town center are now able to find easy car access to suburban shopping due to the beltway.

Second, beltway highways, in an urban area that already faces traffic congestion “problems,” will inevitably become congested themselves, almost overnight, due to the unavoidable Triple Convergence (see Anthony Downs book, Stuck in Traffic). This is now extremely well-documented. This problem happens primarily because added highway capacity attracts new car trips that would have not happened had the capacity not been added. As Walter Kulash says, widening roads [or in this case, adding a new highway] to solve traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to solve obesity problems.

Third, town centers need congestion to be healthy. I recall the old saying from Yogi Berra: “The place became so crowded that no one would go there anymore.” “Lots of cars” is not a problem for a town center — if car traffic is managed properly. Town centers need those customers arriving by car. What a town center needs is well-behaved cars. Tactics such as traffic calming, narrow streets, wide sidewalks, on-street parking, fee-based parking, good transit service, high residential density, and transportation choices all help deliver well-behaved cars.

When I see research concluding that road widenings or new highways do not determine the resulting development in the region, I assume the research is coming from people with vested interests, since it is blatantly obvious that transportation modifications such as road widening and new highways are, by far, the key driving force to land use development patterns and suburban sprawl. In other words, either the researcher has personal views or lifestyle that does not allow him or her to conclude that widenings drive land use, or has financial interests that dictate that this not be admitted.

In sum, I cannot think of a more wrong-headed, counterproductive way to use large amounts of public dollars than to widen roads or build new “beltway” highways.

We desperately need to escape the now discredited paradigm of “building our way out of congestion” before we ruin our cities even more.

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My latest 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

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:

A lifetime of Adventures…http://domnozziadventures.wordpress.com/

Urban Design… http://walkablestreets.wordpress.com/

Plan B… http://domz60.wordpress.com/

Best Ever… http://dombestlist.wordpress.com/

My FB profile… http://www.facebook.com/dom.nozzi

 

 

Questions to Ask When Hiring a New Fire Chief

By Dom Nozzi

What sorts of questions should be asked of candidates who are seeking to become the new fire chief in your community?

Despite the conventional wisdom, it is not asking whether the candidate is familiar with the latest fire trucks. Or whether the candidate is courageous in putting out fires.

No, the most essential questions center around whether the candidate has a philosophy that centers around the broader question of life safety, rather than the much more narrow question of fire safety.

As shown by a study done by Peter Swift, widening roads (or keeping existing roads excessively wide) is often justified to promote fire safety, because it is claimed that wider roads reduce fire truck response times. But the Swift study conclusively showed that such wider roads result in less overall public safety, because the increases in injuries and deaths due to wider roads far exceeds the reduction in injuries and deaths due to faster response times. A key for public safety, then, is to not narrowly focus on a subcategory of safety (in this case, fire safety), but to instead aim to improve overall life safety.

Given this, the most important questions that a community should ask fire chief candidates would be:

1. What are your thoughts about reducing the size of fire trucks?

This question is crucial because the now gargantuan size of trucks used in most cities means that our fire chief, perhaps more so than the traffic engineer, is profoundly dictating — every time she or he decides to purchase a big truck — that our neighborhood and arterial streets will be monstrous in width in order to “safely” allow passage by the big trucks at high velocities.

The (unintended?) result is more dangerous, high-speed community streets filled with reckless, inattentive drivers, and lower neighborhood quality of life. Why? Because motorists tend to drive at the highest speeds that can be driven while feeling safe and comfortable. And when streets are over-designed for excessive widths and other geometries, motorists are enabled to drive a higher speeds (as well as driving more inattentively).

2. What are your thoughts about reducing a bloated fire department budget?

A bloated department budget sub-optimizes the services of that department and starves other important community services such as recreation, social services, environmental protection, and street design.

3. What are your thoughts about minimizing the use of emergency vehicle sirens?

In nearly all cities, emergency vehicle sirens are out of control. Sirens are used excessively because of irrational fear of crashes with cars, a hysterical fear of lawsuits, and the endless drive to reduce vehicle response times, not to mention the psychological benefits of importance, excitement and power that some firemen feel when they sound the fire horns as much as possible. Given these factors over the course of the past century, excessive siren use escalates continuously in a never-ending race to have the loudest and most frequently used fire sirens.

Those of us who have experience living in a town center are more exposed than others to the jangled nerves associated with the 24/7 wailing of sirens, helicopters, flashing emergency lights, and racing emergency vehicles that bombard most all town centers. The experience of living in a town center, due to the out of control emergency vehicle problem, is one of feeling like you are living in a war zone. Due to the unpleasantness of such a state of affairs, many throw up their hands and flee to the expected peace and quiet of the suburbs, thereby undermining extremely important community objectives regarding the fight against sprawl. If communities (justifiably) strive to encourage more downtown residential development, why are we chasing folks out of downtown by creating a sleep depriving, frenzied, stressed ambience downtown?

True leadership means insisting that fire chiefs abide by over-arching community objectives such as public safety and quality of life. For fire chiefs, that means that the person a community hires must be someone who enthusiastically supports the need for smaller fire trucks, a more modest fire department budget, and a significant reduction in siren use.

 

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My latest book, The Car is the Enemy of the City (WalkableStreets, 2010), canhttp://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:

A lifetime of Adventures…http://domnozziadventures.wordpress.com/

Urban Design… http://walkablestreets.wordpress.com/

Plan B… http://domz60.wordpress.com/

Best Ever… http://dombestlist.wordpress.com/

My FB profile… http://www.facebook.com/dom.nozzi

 

 

How Gainesville Converted an Effective Transportation Plan into a Meaningless, Feel-Good Plan

By Dom Nozzi

In the late 1990s, I was asked to prepare the long-range transportation plan (the “Transportation Mobility” Element of the Comprehensive Plan) for the City of Gainesville. The Gainesville City Commission, after an enormous number of public meetings, finally approved transportation plan that I poured my heart and soul into preparing over a three to four year period.

Recent drafts of my plan, I am flattered to report, had elicited high praise from the state planning office (DCA), the state environmental office (DEP), the state/local Sierra Club, and a number of locally informed and active citizens. At the same time, the plan was subjected to brutal, angry attacks from the usual suspects:

Local suburbanites infected with car-happy, city-destroying motorist values, homebuilders, and hysterical, misinformed NIMBYs. This latter group was the reason why the former city commission majority was so terrified that, in their darkest hour, they failed to approve the plan before the reactionary new commission arrived (this failure will stand as one of the biggest failures of the former commission).

As I fully expected (and as the new commissioners promised), the transportation plan was completely gutted and made meaningless without, apparently, a peep of protest.

Here is my report, as coroner, of the deceased:

1. The first policy regarding the conversion and transformation of University Avenue by way of “road diet” was made completely meaningless.

2. Likewise, the second policy regarding the conversion and transformation of Main Street by way of “road diet” was made completely meaningless.

3. A policy that would end the local use of “biased” transportation terminology (i.e., using the word “enhancement” to describe something that, because it only “improves” conditions for cars — while worsening conditions for other forms of travel — actually creates great harm) was gutted.

4. A policy that would prevent the City from installing extremely detrimental turn lanes in locations that would harm bicycle travel and pedestrians was removed.

5. A policy which would make bicycle and pedestrian links to adjacent properties a condition for development approval (in other words, you could build a Wal-Mart only if you created a sidewalk or path to an adjacent Sam’s Club) was gutted.

6. A policy calling for modest, human-scaled development dimensions such as small setbacks, small street widths, buildings with a front door that faces the street, use of alleys, and parking in rear, was gutted.

7. A policy calling for the use of “low-speed” street design was gutted.

8. A policy calling for severe restrictions on the use of turn lanes was gutted.

9. A policy calling for no net increase in on-campus (University of Florida) or city government parking was removed.

10. A policy calling for the conversion of minimum parking requirements into maximum requirements was gutted.

11. A policy calling for the adoption of a transportation demand management ordinance (in other words, a business would be required to use effective strategies to discourage single-occupant car use) was gutted.

12. A policy calling for a five percent reduction in single-occupant vehicle trips in Gville by 2010 was removed.

13. A policy stating that the City shall not use road widening as a way to reduce congestion was gutted (I guess that means that Gainesville believes that we CAN build it’s way out of congestion…).

14. A policy stating that the City shall accept some levels of congestion as a way to promote travel choices and compact development was gutted.

Few, if any, of the above disembowelments were requested by the city commission. Instead, before the meeting, they were volunteered by my terrified supervisors, who were hoping to pre-empt expected objections from the suburban motorists on the commission.

The transportation plan is now a meaningless, empty-shelled skeleton of its former self. It barely pays lip service, let alone calls for anything meaningful, regarding transportation policies.

When I checked, it had no pulse, when I pronounced it dead.

I called on all those who have previously endorsed the plan to retract their endorsement publicly. I told friends and my supervisors that I was disowning the now toothless plan, and wished to not have my name associated with it.

May the transportation plan rest in peace. Gainesville had, with its eyes wide open, locked itself into a south Florida future.

 

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My latest 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

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:

A lifetime of Adventures…http://domnozziadventures.wordpress.com/

Urban Design… http://walkablestreets.wordpress.com/

Plan B… http://domz60.wordpress.com/

Best Ever… http://dombestlist.wordpress.com/

My FB profile… http://www.facebook.com/dom.nozzi

 

Collective Effervescence: The Lost Tradition of Ecstatic Dance

By Dom Nozzi

I just finished reading an extraordinary book called The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Haidt, 2012).

The author of this important book unveils the lost cultural tradition that so many societies practiced for centuries, yet has faded in recent centuries. “…in the late 15th Century…European travelers to every continent witnessed people coming together to dance with wild abandon around a fire, synchronized to the beat of drums, often to the point of exhaustion.”

While such collective behavior was essential to the health and bond strengthening of a community, the suppression of such joyful communal activity led Europeans to not only fail to recall their own traditions in this realm, but to look upon its continuation in other cultures as an abomination. “In Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, Barbara Ehrenreich describes how European explorers reacted to these dances: with disgust. The masks, body paints, and guttural shrieks made the dancers seem like animals. The rhythmically undulating bodies and occasional sexual pantomimes were, to most Europeans, degrading, grotesque, and thoroughly ‘savage.’”

Haidt points out that “[t]he Europeans were unprepared for what they were seeing. As Ehrenreich argues, collective and ecstatic dancing is a nearly universal ‘biotechnology’ for binding groups together…It fosters love, trust, and equality.”

Why had such a beneficial tradition been lost to Europeans? Haidt finds the explanation to be based on Christianity and the emergence of the drive for individual achievement in the Middle Ages, as noted by Ehrenreich. “It was common in ancient Greece…and in early Christianity (which she says was a ‘danced’ religion until dancing in church was suppressed in the Middle Ages)…But if ecstatic dancing is so beneficial and widespread, then why did Europeans give it up?…[Ehrenreich argues that it was due to] the rise of individualism and more refined notions of self in Europe, beginning in the sixteenth century…”

Haidt’s book describes the meaning and lost value of “collective effervescence.” “…[The scholar Emile Durkheim referred to activities such as ecstatic dancing as] higher-level sentiments [he called] ‘collective effervescence,’ which describes the passion and ecstasy that group rituals can generate. As Durkheim put it: ‘The very act of congregating is an exceptionally powerful stimulant. Once the individuals are gathered together, a sort of electricity is generated from their closeness and quickly launches them to an extraordinary height of exaltation.’”

In the spring of 1986, I attended a “rave” dance at a downtown Gainesville, Florida nightclub that gave me an unforgettable taste of collective effervescence. That night, the dance floor throbbed to the beat of high-energy, high-volume disco music, and the effervescence of a packed, feverish group of happy, exhilarated college-age dancers who danced synchronistically in a trance, as if we were one organism, to the music and the strobing colored lights. I felt as if time had ended. As if there was no shame. No paralyzing and fun-destroying self-consciousness. Or right or wrong. All that existed was that very moment of joy, shared euphorically with others at the nightclub at 3 a.m.

It was one of the most pleasant, enjoyable, unforgettable experiences of my life.

Haidt refers to Durkheim, who noted that “in such a state, the vital energies become hyperexcited, the passions more intense, the sensations more powerful.” “Durkheim,” says Haidt, “believed that these collective emotions pull humans fully but temporarily into the higher of our two realms, the realm of the sacred, where the self disappears and collective interests predominate. The realm of the profane, in contrast, is the ordinary day-to-day world where we live most of our lives, concerned about wealth, health, and reputation, but nagged by the sense that there is, somewhere, something higher and nobler…”

Haidt believes that “…[activities such as ecstatic dancing by a community] generally makes people less selfish and more loving.”

Haidt uses the metaphor of “turning on the switch” as a way to describe such ecstatic collective behavior, and provides these examples of this important behavior our culture has abandoned:

“Awe in Nature … [Ralph Waldo] Emerson argued that the deepest truths must be known by intuition, not reason, and that experiences of awe in nature were among the best ways to trigger such intuitions. He described the rejuvenation and joy he gained from looking at the stars, or at a vista of rolling farmland, or from a simple walk in the woods.”

The author notes that Darwin cited such an experience in his work. He quotes Darwin to say that ‘in my journal I wrote that whilst standing in midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind…’

Haidt also refers to the sort of rock dance experience that closely mimics what I experienced and described above when I lived in Gainesville, Florida.

“Raves…Rock music has always been associated with wild abandon and sexuality. American parents in the 1950s often shared the horror of those seventeenth-century Europeans faced with the ecstatic dancing of the ‘savages.’ But in the 1980s, British youth mixed together new technologies to create a new kind of dancing that replaced the individualism and sexuality of rock with more communal feelings….young people began converging by the thousands for all-night parties… There’s a description of a rave experience in Tony Hsieh’s autobiography…The first time Hsieh and his ‘tribe’…attended a rave, it flipped his hive switch…’What I experienced next changed my perspective forever…Yes, the decorations and lasers were pretty cool, and yes, this was the largest single room full of people dancing that I had ever seen. But neither of those things explained the feeling of awe that I was experiencing…As someone who is usually known as being the most logical and rational person in a group, I was surprised to find myself swept with an overwhelming sense of spirituality – not in the religious sense, but a sense of deep connection with everyone who was there as well as the rest of the universe. There was a feeling of no judgment…Here there was no sense of self-consciousness or feeling that anyone was dancing to be seen dancing…Everyone was facing the DJ, who was elevated up on a stage…The entire room felt like one massive, united tribe of thousands of people, and the DJ was the tribal leader of the group…The steady wordless electronic beats were the unifying hearbeats that synchronized the crowd. It was as if the existence of individual consciousness had disappeared and been replaced by a single unifying group consciousness.”

Again, the collective nature of such activity is essential to its importance for a society. “…The scene and the experience awed him, shut down his ‘I,’ and merged him into a giant ‘we.’”

Where does happiness come from, asks Haidt? “When I began…I believed that happiness came from within, as Buddha and the Stoic philosophers said thousands of years ago. You’ll never make the world conform to your wishes, so focus on changing yourself and your desires. But by the time I finished writing, I had changed my mind: Happiness comes from between. It comes from getting the right relationships between yourself and others, yourself and your work, and yourself and something larger than yourself…We evolved to live in groups…”

One of the great, tragic losses of our age is the loss of these forms of collective effervescence through such activities as ecstatic community dancing. If we are to bond or cooperate or be happy as a community, we must restore the tradition of such collective effervescence, and shed the religiously-inspired puritan attitudes that have diminished our joy and productiveness as a community for so long.

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My latest 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

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