“The automobile has not merely taken over the street, it has dissolved the living tissue of the city.  Its appetite for space is absolutely insatiable; moving and parked, it devours urban land, leaving the buildings as mere islands of habitable space in a sea of dangerous and ugly traffic.”

~James Marston Fitch, New York Times, 1 May 1960

     We have written about the “friction of distance”, explaining why travel was more challenging-and communities therefore more compact-in the time before humans discovered the enormous energy sequestered in ancient carbon sinks.  Alas, those sinks are not infinite so we must contemplate the return of the friction of distance to the level of the pre-oil days.  Fortunately, humans can look to past experiences to reduce the height of the learning curve.

The Age of Reptiles ended because it had gone on long enough and it was all a mistake in the first place. (Will Cuppy, How to Become Extinct, 1941)

What makes the town of Amherst what it is?  First, it is the presence of UMass and the two colleges. That is what makes the area the largest source of employment in western Massachusetts, bread and butter for many households, and that is what makes it a culturally stimulating life style desired by many-some fleeing urban anomie. Students clamoring for living space make it a landlord’s paradise.  Adding the bucolic remains of a previous agricultural setting has attracted gentrifying upper middle class families and retirees, turning it into a real-estate bonanza for banks, invested property owners and overrated Wall Street securities. Finally, the town’s well-regarded public schools attract many.  

Between 1790 and the Civil War (the early republic) the people of New England (and much of the US) lived mostly scattered about on small farms. The miles between town centers would increase with Western expansion. But what has been called the “friction of distance” was, from the start, a much greater challenge to travel, location and commerce than it is now-in the era of carbon-fueled vehicles.   In fact, hundreds of thousands of people traveled primarily by foot (“shank’s pony”), not horse and wagon, increasing this friction even more. In the 1840s, tax records and household inventories make it clear that horse ownership was then less equally distributed than automobiles are among Americans today.  

In our recent columns we questioned whether the historically inherited political structure of our existing towns with their existing borders remains relevant for addressing the looming energy and climate crises we face and suggested the benefits of a regional approach to economic production and services.  We also introduced the logic of relocalization, which would make towns more energy and food self-reliant and more carbon-conserving by shortening the distances of people to work and crops to market.  We now examine as case studies in relocalization two plans under review for Amherst: a corporate R&D project that has been proposed for land zoned “professional research park” or PRP in the very north of Amherst, and a redevelopment project that would bring a mix of housing and commercial/retail space to an area between the downtown and the UMass campus called the Gateway District.  

The historical roots of Amherst go back to the 17th century with the founding of Hadley. It would seem odd, therefore, to ask: “Does Amherst exist?”  Quite clearly it does. Wind the tape of history back to the beginning, however, to discover that Amherst did not have to come into being as a town.  The district of Amherst, for example, split apart from Hadley as a result of a petition to the General Court in Boston, which did not necessarily have to assent. Both Amherst and Hadley were the products of political deals that did not have to occur. Why, then, should any particular town exist?  Is the existence of a Town necessary for the sustainable future of its people?  These questions must now be contemplated.  

In support of the recent adoption of a master plan by the Town of Amherst, the Pioneer Valley Relocalization Project submitted this essay to the Amherst Planning Board to highlight a critical issue confronting community planners and town executives everywhere: the looming crisis of peak oil and climate change.  These are civilization-threatening processes caused by human action and must be confronted now – not later – by all planners sharing the goal of a sustainable economic and social future.  Scientists throughout the world, including James Hansen of NASA and Rajendra Pachauri of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have reached fundamental consensus regarding the climate threat while Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute and others in the academy and in the oil industry have articulated the same with regard to peak oil. Because the crisis is imminent, far-reaching, and human-caused, it can be avoided only through planned action, and must be a first-order objective at every government level – municipal, state, and nation.