Here’s my latest column from Governing, where I explore how you add more homes in a city neighborhood, without having to swallow tall buildings when you don’t want to.

I was bothered by yesterday’s Sunday editorial in the New York Times about not letting fear of foreign hackers erode the move to reign in and put safeguards on the massive government spying program run largely by the National Security Agency. This is the one that Edward Snowden revealed with such success (although not for his own personal fortunes. He remains, sadly, in exile in Moscow.) What bothered me was not the overall sentiments or political viewpoint – yes, we need to reign in, a lot, the NSA – but the reasons the Times gives for doing so. It named respecting or not violating our privacy, twice, as the principal reason, along with unnamed other “civil liberties.” It’s not my privacy I worry so much about. I don’t really give a rat’s ass if the government is watching me watch porn, or whatever. What I worry is about is my democracy. A government cannot long endure, at least not one that is a government by and for the people, that has a situation where a small portion of the governed are spying routinely and massively on the governed. What you get at best is a kind of paternalistic managing class. At worst you get a semi or not so semi police state. Let’s not talk so much about privacy when we talk about how and whether these internal spying programs continue. Let’s talk about our democracy, and the right rules for a vibrant democracy.

This is an interesting story about Singapore’s planned strategy of developing more underground spaces and tunnels, and I’m quoted a few paragraphs into it. I was sought out for the quote because I’m the author of a book about cities and their underground environments. It’s called Beneath the Metropolis: The Secret Lives of Cities, and it’s still available at Amazon.

Which is counter productive. Here’s the op-ed I had in this morning’s New York Daily News. 

An interesting new book arrived on my desk: “Roads Were Not Built For Cars”, published by Island Press and authored by Carlton Reid. He details the history which I have known in general terms, which is that the early roads in the late 19^th century were built primarily for and because of the lobbying efforts of bicyclists, which had grown dramatically in number and influence in that era. The book is a comeback to those who say that roads were made for cars, and that cyclists and pedestrians should depart from them.

The history I have cited in my talks and my books is that the League of American Wheelmen lobbied for the feds to get involved in road construction. This resulted in the creation of the Agency of Public Roads under the Federal Agricultural Department in the 1880s. This little agency grew into the Bureau of Public Roads, which eventually grew into the Federal Highway Administration, and the Federal Transportation Department. So the old bicyclists can take credit for planting a fertile seed.

Carlton Reid goes into this history as well as much, much more. Reid tells of how some of the early early auto inventors, like Henry Ford, were big cyclists, and their time on two wheels influenced their car designs and plans.  Reid talks of how the earliest roads were constructed for foot traffic, of course, and of some rather large early battles between drivers and other traffic, like cyclists, pedestrians and animal-powered vehicles, that are now mostly forgotten but were big deals in their day. The book has a ton of really nice illustrations and reprints of old posters. The Ipad edition has hundreds of additional illustrations which I bet are really cool.

You can find out more about the book and get info about the digital editions here: http://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/

Great story this morning by my old colleague Denise Watson, in The Virginian-Pilot, where I used to be a staff writer. It was about what the story says is the oldest “British built brick building” in the new world, Bacon’s Castle in Virginia, not too far from where I grew up. It’s celebrating its 350th anniversary. The “castle” was named for Nathaniel Bacon, who didn’t own it or build it, but briefly took it over when he and a bunch of other malcontents, including indentured servants and slaves of various colors, took it over in the late 1600s.

Denise’s story illustrates the moral complexity of this history. At this time, slavery and coerced labor in general was not entirely or perhaps even mostly race-based. There were white slaves, although not many in the New World. The line between an indentured servant and a slave was a gray one. And indentured servants and some slaves did become free people.

In her story, Denise notes how Bacon’s Rebellion, something I studied as a school boy in Virginia, prompted planters to begin instituting race-based slavery. The planters didn’t like that white and black laborers were uniting to rebel against the lords of the colony. So the lords begin putting in place laws that made it difficult or forbid black slaves and indentured servants from being freed or freeing themselves. Racial logic began justifying slavery more.

This is sad. In some alternate universe, perhaps this could have been avoided. It would have made it easier to phase out slavery in the coming centuries if there were no myths of white superiority to lean on.

But I also note how it’s not so simple as concluding the rich white guys in the 1600s were the bad guys. Just from reading Denise Watson’s story, it appears that those who rebelled under Bacon were no saints either. One of the big things they were rebelling for was the freedom to be more aggressive in pushing the Indians off the land. This would be a constant tension for the next two and a half centuries.

My own ancestor were mostly the slave owners. This in part has prompted me to look more into the history of slavery. We’ll see if anything comes of that.

I do discuss slavery briefly in my last book, The Surprising Design of Market Economies, in a chapter about Law. I point out that the Rule of Law is not necessarily the same as the Rule of Positive Morality. Then I pointed out that slavery was set up by law, and maintained by law. There was a whole body of law concerning slavery, that was finally made a dead letter when slavery was abolished after the Civil War.

When I was a reporter at The Virginian-Pilot, I frequently noticed that people are really thin-skinned about anything written about a friend or relative, particularly one who has departed. Of course, this is normal but people seemed inordinately thin-skinned.

I seem to be rare – famous last words – in realizing that a story written about someone is not that person, and can never be. At best, it’s a tiny sliver of the reality of someone.

I was quoted and written about a lot during our unsuccessful Brooklyn Cohousing venture. In general, I was far more accepting of the stories that came out than many of the other members. Here is one among many. The exception or two were those that seemed mean-spirited, but those were rare.

I’m reminded all this in the news in the New York Times this morning that Apple executives are applauding a new biography of Steve Jobs, and coming out about not liking Walter Isaacson’s best seller about Jobs.

I’m tempted to say I’m more sanguine about what is written about myself and friends because of being a journalist. But here’s the thing: I’ve noticed journalists are even thinner skinned than the average civilian, when being written about.

Getting back to the Jobs books: I can understand that the Steve Jobs that Walter Isaacson portrays is not the Steve Jobs that Jonathan Ives or Tim Cook knew. Of course he isn’t. No biographer is going to have the same relationship with Jobs that they did. But it doesn’t mean the Jobs that Isaacson portrayed is invalid.

I really liked Walter’s book, in part for its willingness to dive deeply into design. At the time, that was daring. Who wants to read about minutia of how something is designed, I bet Walter’s editors told him. Design is a bigger deal now, in part because of Jobs, and in part because of Walter’s book about him.

I wonder if the Jobs in Isaacson’s book is portrayed in a harsher light overall than the new book because Jobs gave so many interviews to Walter Isaacson. I bet Jobs was harsher on himself than anyone else.

The new book on Jobs may be perfectly valid as well, and show a side of him that Walter Isaacson didn’t capture as well. Nothing wrong with that.

This is great news. Perhaps the corporate titans really can be challenged – and successfully. Perhaps the people and the politicians really can work together for the broad public interest.

The steps in that direction is President Barack Obama coming out yesterday in favor of publicly-owned fiber networks for broadband and other services. He spoke at Cedar Falls, Iowa within the headquarters of the town’s public utility, which gives its residents a gigabyte a second cheap. Here’s a story about it: http://www.kcrg.com/subject/news/president-barack-obama-pushing-expanded-broadband-in-cedar-falls-today-20150114

My main emotion when I read Pamela Druckerman is envy, because she is saying things, good things, that I have been saying and sometimes writing about, for years. Yet she is a New York Times columnist! And I’m not. Get over it, Alex. We can’t all be Times columnists. Good for her.

My envy bone was struck this week with her column about becoming a French citizen, and what that entails. She notes, with apparent surprise, that being French has always meant learning or adopting a set of common practices and cultural knowledge, from how you hold a fork, to poems you cite.

In short, French people have what E.D. Hirsch called “Cultural Literacy,” something I highlight and endorse in my chapter on education and language in my latest book, The Surprising Design of Market Economies.

This is not such a strange thing for a country to have. In fact, many would say it’s essential.

Both language and culture are far more constructed things than most people realize. Druckerman highlights how France created not only a national culture, but French as a national language, by wiping out or pushing aside regional languages and dialects, through a strong national education system. While there were losses here that I don’t want to paper over, having a common language and culture made France more democratic, both politically and economically.

She may not realize that this is also true with The United States. In the first half century of the nation, in a public private partnership with folks like Noah Webster, there was an effort both to create and standardize a new American version of English, and to create a culture that we could all learn, which included tales like George Washington chopping down a cherry tree, and basic civics about how our government works. The sense that this common education was essential for a democracy helped fuel the common school movements in the first half of the 19^th century.

The Common Core movement in public schools, speaking from a mountain top perspective, is a good thing because there is some recognition that we need a common body of knowledge to function well as a country. Of course when it comes to specifics of how the Common Core is being carried out, I have as much criticism as anyone else.

To continue this discussion read my book!

If you’re in the New York area and a fan of bridges, great journalism and interesting discussion, come see me converse with the masterful Gay Talese, about the 50th anniversary re-publication of his classic, The Bridge, about the construction of the Verrazano. It’s Monday, Nov. 6, at 6:30 pm, in Greenwich Village. Click here for info.