Urban Worrier: Making Politics Personal
ROBERT STEUTEVILLE OCT. 1, 2009
By Frank J Gruber
City Image Press, 2009, 326 pp., $16.95 paperback
Urban Worrier is a collection of Frank Gruber’s columns spanning the four years from the Bush/Gore campaign in 2000 to George W. Bush’s victory over John Kerry in 2004. While Gruber occasionally dips into national politics, most of his columns dive into the details of the local politics, planning, and development in Santa Monica, California.
Because so much of what the Planning Commission and the City Council of Santa Monica wrestle with is familiar, this book will strike a chord with readers throughout the US. All the classics are there: NIMBYism, hysteria over traffic and parking, conditional use permits, architectural review, granny flats, sidewalk dining. Gruber maintains that the little decisions are important; they make our cities work or not.
As the skirmishes play out, you begin to assemble a group of Santa Monica characters to root for and against. This makes it all the more satisfying when Gruber lays into the chairman of the Planning Commission or pillories a prominent NIMBY spokesman. Larger controversies, like the prospect of a Target store in downtown Santa Monica, play out with all of the gravity and drama you expect from such conflicts. While you might think that you have seen this movie before, you still really want to see how things turn out for the good people of Santa Monica.
The book is mercifully free of planning jargon. Gruber produces a number of those gems you sometimes hear in the diner the day after a heated city council meeting, such as: “Bad traffic never killed a downtown, but many were murdered in the name of fixing parking.” And “If you want to achieve something, you have to be able to leave something on the table for the other guy.”
Gruber’s columns take some quirky twist and turns. You will find an excellent recipe for cannelloni beans imbedded in the tale of how Trader Joe’s was denied a conditional use permit to occupy a vacant space in a beloved building. The epic saga of a fence and hedge taller than the 48-inch maximum height gets more play than the downtown Target. The owners of the offending fence and hedge were the perennial opponents of everything. The ensuing stream of variances and appeals embodies every frustration the locals had with the planning process in Santa Monica.
Gruber lets you in on just how myopic and silly some of the daily items facing a planning commission can be. He makes the obvious argument that a corner store is not a paper mill. He lets you listen in on the folks who are convinced that arriving on foot to purchase a six-pack of beer will bring the end of civilization.
Frank writes about the town he knows, Santa Monica. The narrative that emerges could be about your town or mine.
R. John Anderson is a principal with Anderson Kim Architecture + Urban Design in Chico, California.
City Image Press, 2009, 326 pp., $16.95 paperback
Urban Worrier is a collection of Frank Gruber’s columns spanning the four years from the Bush/Gore campaign in 2000 to George W. Bush’s victory over John Kerry in 2004. While Gruber occasionally dips into national politics, most of his columns dive into the details of the local politics, planning, and development in Santa Monica, California.
Because so much of what the Planning Commission and the City Council of Santa Monica wrestle with is familiar, this book will strike a chord with readers throughout the US. All the classics are there: NIMBYism, hysteria over traffic and parking, conditional use permits, architectural review, granny flats, sidewalk dining. Gruber maintains that the little decisions are important; they make our cities work or not.
As the skirmishes play out, you begin to assemble a group of Santa Monica characters to root for and against. This makes it all the more satisfying when Gruber lays into the chairman of the Planning Commission or pillories a prominent NIMBY spokesman. Larger controversies, like the prospect of a Target store in downtown Santa Monica, play out with all of the gravity and drama you expect from such conflicts. While you might think that you have seen this movie before, you still really want to see how things turn out for the good people of Santa Monica.
The book is mercifully free of planning jargon. Gruber produces a number of those gems you sometimes hear in the diner the day after a heated city council meeting, such as: “Bad traffic never killed a downtown, but many were murdered in the name of fixing parking.” And “If you want to achieve something, you have to be able to leave something on the table for the other guy.”
Gruber’s columns take some quirky twist and turns. You will find an excellent recipe for cannelloni beans imbedded in the tale of how Trader Joe’s was denied a conditional use permit to occupy a vacant space in a beloved building. The epic saga of a fence and hedge taller than the 48-inch maximum height gets more play than the downtown Target. The owners of the offending fence and hedge were the perennial opponents of everything. The ensuing stream of variances and appeals embodies every frustration the locals had with the planning process in Santa Monica.
Gruber lets you in on just how myopic and silly some of the daily items facing a planning commission can be. He makes the obvious argument that a corner store is not a paper mill. He lets you listen in on the folks who are convinced that arriving on foot to purchase a six-pack of beer will bring the end of civilization.
Frank writes about the town he knows, Santa Monica. The narrative that emerges could be about your town or mine.
R. John Anderson is a principal with Anderson Kim Architecture + Urban Design in Chico, California.
