Quality of Life vs. More, Part 1

David Crossley, Apr 30, 07.

Tagged with quality of life

In American cities, including Houston, the central topic of civic discussion is the tension between Quality and More. People who are excited about the way Houston is growing are busily gathering numbers to prove that More is happening here than in almost any other place. Forecasts tell us that we will add 3.5 million more people in the next three decades, not to mention 5 billion more square feet of buildings that, together with car facilities, will use up between 1,000 and 1,500 square miles of currently undeveloped land.

On the other hand, people who want Houston to be Better are increasingly frustrated, particularly in the City of Houston, because all the More numbers appear to point to Worse, and Worse is getting pretty tiresome. In Stephen Klineberg's 2007 Houston Area Survey, although most Houstonians think this is a pretty great place to live, 50.3 think all this growth will make living conditions worse, while only 19.7 percent think it will make them better. (Thirty percent don't know what to think yet.)

The notion of a high quality of life is - or should be - at the center of human self-interest. Yet in a recent survey we conducted online, asking people to choose their top three most important values from a list of eight, only 67% chose quality of life as one of those.

Perhaps this is not surprising, since the idea of quality of life has only been a powerful civic force in Houston for a relatively short time, less than a decade. People have staked out different areas of meaning about the term, but it seems clear it's becoming the central goal, in spite of attempts to cheapen it or brush it aside in the interest of More.

The urbanist architect Andres Duany likes to say that anybody in America has a higher standard of living than anybody in some Italian hill town, but anybody in some Italian hill town has a higher quality of life than anybody in America.

That's the fundamental struggle, particularly in Houston. It pits the proponents of More Stuff against the proponents of Quality of Life. The More polemicist Joel Kotkin has captivated the imaginations of many of Houston's business and political leaders with his call for squelching the efforts of "elites" to bring quality of life to America's cities in the interest of high-speed, inexpensive (cheap) growth.

The other side is perhaps best represented by the writer Bill McKibben, whose latest book "Deep Economy" contains the assertion that More hasn't made us happier, and calls for more attention to the things that actually improve our wellbeing and sense of satisfaction.

I have been astonished at the success of the books by Frances Mayes, who wrote "Under the Tuscan Sun," and now has a handful of other books about this topic. As you read her, you hear her talking about how two sophisticated San Francisco intellectuals gravitated to a place where they work with their hands all day, digging and fixing and building and collapsing in bed exhausted each night. But along the way, they've spent time with neighbors, exchanged vegetables and recipes, shared wine and olive oil, and delved into what she calls the Italian "genius for living." What could that mean?

This web journal will explore the Quality vs More struggle, as it captures the whole world's attention. Next: The Meaning of the Term Quality of Life.

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