April 30, 2008, 12:23 pm
American Liberators?
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Americans like to think of democracy as one of the nation’s fundamental pillars. So it is tempting for us to understand the United States’ long history of intervention overseas as an effort to expand this superior form of government.

This belief was exploited by the Bush administration to sell the war in Iraq as a “liberating” mission once its initial story line, that it was striking against Al-Qaeda, was proven to be a lie.

There is scant evidence to support this conviction, however. Indeed, a recent study published by the Brookings Institution about American and Soviet interventions in other countries during the Cold War suggests that Washington’s interventions did not have the much-heralded effect of spreading democracy around.

Based on recently declassified information from the CIA and the KGB, the Brookings analysis of dozens of efforts to topple and prop up foreign governments throughout the cold war finds interventions by both Moscow and Washington led to similar declines in democracy in the country on the receiving end.

The driving force in intervention for both countries appears to have generally been the same: installing a crony in power. Notably, the study found that when the country that intervened was a democracy it was not significantly more likely to produce democracy than when the country that intervened was a dictatorship. More precisely, the study found that both American and Soviet interventions decreased democracy by about 33 percent.

Something to remember next time we’re told our armed forces will be greeted with flowers

Kabul Attack: Afghani Security Woes or Taliban Incompetence?

April 30, 2008

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

The Taliban’s April 27 attack against a ceremony commemorating Afghanistan’s independence has gotten a lot of media attention. One reason driving the coverage is that the attack took place during an event broadcast on live television that was attended by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and an array of local and foreign dignitaries, including the U.S. and British ambassadors and the NATO commander in Afghanistan.
The strike, which left three people dead, has also resulted in severe criticism of Afghan intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak and Interior Minister Zarar Ahmad Moqbel, with some Afghan lawmakers calling for their resignations.
Clearly, the attack underscores the Karzai regime’s continuing struggle to achieve stability in Afghanistan: the attack was the third assassination attempt against him in his four-year presidency. It is also a reminder — like the massive suicide bombing that occurred in Baghlan province Nov. 6, 2007, and the Jan. 14 attack against the Serena Hotel in Kabul — that Taliban militants have expanded beyond their traditional operational strongholds in Afghanistan’s South.
In retrospect however, perhaps the most interesting facet of this attack was not how it drew attention to security problems in Afghanistan, that it happened at a high-profile event, or even that the attack was launched in Kabul. Like the suicide bombing at Bagram Air Base during U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s February 2007 visit, those things have all happened before.
Rather, the truly interesting factor in this case, and one that has received little focus from most observers, is that the Taliban proved incapable of capitalizing on a golden opportunity to stage a dramatic and effective operation even though they were given many weeks to prepare for the attack.
Security Problems
Planning security for a high-profile outdoor event is a difficult endeavor — especially when the attendees include much of a nation’s leadership and VIPs from the foreign diplomatic corps. This difficulty is compounded exponentially when the event is publicized in advance, scheduled to occur in a third-world country, and when that country is in the midst of fighting an active insurgency.
Historically, militants have taken advantage of such events to launch assassination attempts. Cases that come readily to mind include the Oct. 6, 1981, assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat during the a victory celebration parade, or the May 9, 2004, assassination of Chechen President Akhmed Kadyrov at the Dynamo Stadium in Grozny during a celebration of his country’s Victory Day.
Given the high-profile nature of this particular event, Afghan security forces and their coalition allies appear to have increased their intelligence-collection efforts prior to game day. According to testimony given by Amrullah Saleh to the Afghan parliament, those increased intelligence efforts successfully managed to uncover information indicating that an attack against the event was in the works.
On April 26, coalition forces conducted an operation in the Tagab district of Kapisa province that targeted a Taliban militant who allegedly was planning to attack during the event. As coalition troops attempted to search the compound, a major fight ensued. Close air support called in by the coalition forces resulted in the deaths of several Taliban militants, including the man targeted by the operation.
The intelligence also led to heightened security for the event, in the form of increased perimeter security and random vehicle checks. However, in the real world, especially the third world, hermetically sealing an area off from any threat of attack is very difficult especially when that attack is planned in advance. The challenge is compounded when the aggressor’s weapons and resources are positioned long before that security perimeter has been established.
This was the case in the aforementioned Kadyrov assassination, where months before the attack, Chechen militants hid improvised explosive devices in the structure of the stadium as the concrete was being poured during a renovation project.
In last week’s Kabul attack, the Taliban team opened fire with light weapons from a room they had rented in a building located several hundred meters from where the main dignitaries were positioned during the ceremony. The room sat on the top floor of a dilapidated three-story building heavily damaged years ago during the Afghan civil war. Apparently, they rented the space some 45 days before launching their attack. The assault team did not reportedly leave the room for 36 hours prior to the attack, ensuring evasion of the security perimeter and scrutiny by security personnel. They also avoided being randomly stopped by security forces patrolling the area (though in a place like Afghanistan, where there are few surviving public records and ample fraudulent identification documents, name checks conducted on random pedestrians and drivers are dubious at best).

MASSOUD HOSSAINI/AFP/Getty Images
The building from which militants opened fire on Afghan President Hamid Karzai on April 27

In another operational flourish, the attackers began to fire during the 21-gun salute. This provided them with momentary cover for their gunfire. It also created a slight delay in the realization that an attack was under way while causing some confusion. Reports indicate that the attackers also were able to release at least one RPG round in the attack.
Security forces quickly located the room and the three Taliban assailants were killed. The Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for the attack. They also noted that they had sent six militants to form the team, three of whom had been killed. A Taliban spokesman also claimed the group was not attempting to hit anyone directly but wanted to demonstrate to the world that it can attack anywhere. Their claim rings hollow. It is difficult to believe the Taliban would invest so much time and effort in a plan not intended to kill people. The propaganda point the Taliban were allegedly trying to make could have been made with far less effort and fewer casualties, and could have been dramatically emphasized with a spectacular attack.
Taliban Ineffectiveness
Over the past few years, we have seen a dramatic increase in the Taliban’s use of suicide bombers. Attacks like the one that occurred April 29 in Khogyani in Nangarhar province, killing 15 people, demonstrate the group’s improvement at executing that dark art.
Certainly thoughts of a vehicle-borne or pedestrian-borne suicide bomb attack occurred to Afghan and coalition forces when they obtained intelligence indicating a planned attack against the event. This concept would also seem to explain the noticeably increased efforts to randomly stop and search vehicles before the event. The fact that a suicide attack directed against the event did not take place either demonstrates that the Taliban believed security was too tight to attempt such an attack or perhaps that the April 26 raids in Tagab pre-empted one. In the end, however, concerns about suicide bombers on the part of the security forces caused them to focus too narrowly on the suicide bomber threat and therefore not place much emphasis on countering the small-arms threat.
In fact, recent reports indicated that the attack element in the building may have been only one portion of a larger plot that included a suicide car bomb and a mortar attack. Reportedly these two other elements were neutralized prior to the attack (perhaps by the operation in Tagab). This information underscores that the Afghan and coalition security forces are not totally ineffective and that the Taliban are not omnipotent.

(Click image to enlarge)

In any event, the measures put in place by Afghan security were not as terrible as some would claim. These measures did serve to keep the Taliban assault team at a distance where the weapons they employed in the attack would not prove to be terribly effective –- in an urban environment, anything over a couple hundred meters is very difficult to engage with an RPG-7. In any environment, a militant armed with an AK-47 can do little more than “spray and pray” at that distance. Had they been able to get their attack team closer to the target, the Taliban attackers could have caused far more bloodshed.
Like the ineffective attacks against the Cheney visit and the Serena Hotel, the Taliban expended a significant amount of time and resources planning and executing this attack. However, like those other two assaults, the impact of the latest incident has been far greater in the media than it was in terms of lives lost.
In fact, when one considers the time spent by the Taliban planning the attack, it becomes clear that this was not some hastily improvised operation cobbled together at the last minute. In addition to allowing them to secure their attack position, the advance notice also provided them with a lot of time to plan, train their operatives, pre-position weapons, and ultimately stage the attack. Considering this, it is remarkable that they were only able to kill three people out of a potential target pool of hundreds.
One reason for the ineffectiveness by the Taliban was that their weapons proved poorly chosen for this attack. They knew in advance the distance from the room to the review stand and could have chosen weapons better suited to attacks from that distance. For example, unlike an AK-47, most sniper rifles are capable of easily engaging a target at 500 meters. It is what they are designed for. A trained sniper or two could have unleashed some very effective fire during the duration of that 21-gun salute – taking out several VIPs before anyone even realized that an attack was under way.
In the broader context, many will see this as a tactical victory for the Taliban, even without having killed Karzai. The attackers were able to disrupt the event and cause the international media to label the Afghan security forces as woefully incompetent. However, a closer examination reveals that the Afghan security forces are not the only ones battling incompetence. The Taliban have shown themselves unable to capitalize on a golden opportunity.

10 Fixes For the Planet
Scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs are focusing on ways to help the environment. Some of our favorite ideas.

Anne Underwood
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 4:43 PM ET Apr 5, 2008
If Wes Jackson, founder and president of the Land Institute in Salina, Kans., has one complaint, it's what he calls "our deficit spending of the Earth's ecological capital," from oil and minerals to water and trees. NEWSWEEK asked dozens of thinkers for their solutions, from 300mpg cars to using enormous kites to help pull ships.

1. Zero waste: Recycling paper, plastic and aluminum is a start, but, oh, so 20th century.

Eric Lombardi hates waste. "Landfills are like black holes, where resources go in and never come out," says the executive director of Eco-Cycle, a nonprofit recycler in Boulder, Colo. "As the world's population explodes and its resource base shrinks, we can't afford that." Instead, Lombardi wants manufacturers to make most or all of their products fully recyclable, using materials

designed to be recaptured rather than ending up in junkyards. It's not impossible, as companies like Shaw Carpets and office-furniture maker Steelcase are showing. Both make products with stringent C2C Certification, indicating total recyclability—and 40 other other companies, tapping into the green building trend, are doing the same. "Waste is expensive and inefficient," says Lombardi. "It only appears cheap because the market doesn't send bills to industry for groundwater pollution and resource depletion."

2. LED light bulbs: Never mind the cliché, they really might be a better idea.

Now that we've all dutifully stocked up on compact fluorescents, guess what? A new generation of even better bulbs may be on its way. LED bulbs burn just half the energy, last eight times longer and contain no traces of mercury, as CFLs do. The best of the fledgling bulbs is the Pharox from Lemnis Lighting. While LEDs have long been used for colored digital readouts and traffic signals, manufacturers have had trouble making white LED bulbs that are as strong as incandescents. Truthfully, the Pharox isn't there yet. It produces only as much light as a standard 40-watt bulb, and it's hugely expensive ($39.95 per bulb). On the other hand, it consumes a meager four watts, and a more powerful 60-watt equivalent is coming soon. In November, Lemnis partnered with the Clinton Climate Initiative to help bring the bulb to 40 major cities worldwide.

3. Greener fairways: Not all golf courses are bad for the environment.

When Mark Kuhns arrives at work early in the morning, he is greeted by what he calls "my wildlife symphony"—the chirps and squawks of red-winged blackbirds, bluebirds, tree swallows, goldfinches and red-tailed hawks. That might be normal if he worked in a wildlife reserve, but he doesn't. He's director of grounds at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J. Golf courses are infamous for high use of pesticides and water. But Baltusrol is one of 516 U.S. courses (4 percent of the nation's total) that are certified by Audubon International as Audubon sanctuaries. "It takes one to three years to go through the process," says Joellen Zeh, manager of the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program. Courses convert an average of 22 acres of turf grass into wildlife habitat along out-of-play and shoreline areas. "That's 22 acres that don't need to be watered, irrigated, fertilized or mowed on a daily or weekly basis," she says. A survey a few years ago found that 82 percent of sanctuary courses reduced their pesticide use, and when they did have to spray, 92 percent used gentler chemicals. At the same time, 99 percent of managers said playing quality was maintained or improved. Now, if Kuhns hears a complaint about, say, the weedy-looking thistles near hole number seven, he points out the goldfinches clinging to the stalks and eating the seeds. He usually makes a convert.

4. Kite sails: The world's oldest form of propulsion may soon return to shipping.

Any idea how far the largest container ships can go on a gallon of fuel? Try 37 feet. That adds up to 2 billion barrels of petroleum a year. "If the shipping industry were a country, it would be No. 7 in carbon emissions," says Michael Hirshfield, chief scientist for Oceana.

That's why some major shippers are hoping to tap wind energy to help pull their vessels along. They're not talking about traditional sails, which would require rebuilding ships' hulls to withstand forces from a mast. Instead, they're thinking of giant kites—as big as 20,000 square feet in area—that could be attached to the bow of a ship. "They look like parasails," says Hirshfield. "They could be a relatively cheap add-on, without designing a whole new ship." Not that industrial-size kites are simple, either. "When you launch a kite in a park, somebody holds the string and someone else launches the kite," says Dave Culp, CEO of KiteShip in Alameda, Calif. "For a giant kite, you need a robotic arm to pick it up in the wind and let go of it. That sounds trivial until you consider the kite is the size of a football field." And if the wind dies suddenly, you can't have the kite crashing into the sea. A German company called SkySails has developed a fully automated system that appears to have solved these problems without requiring skilled sailors to manipulate the kites. SkySails recently completed a test run on a 10,000-ton ship from Germany to Venezuela and back, saving roughly 20 percent on engine power.

5. Plastic solar cells: Lightweight and inexpensive, they could be very practical.

Alan Heeger, professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, loves the traditional solar panels on his roof. "Every day, when the sun comes up, my electricity meter runs backwards, as I sell electricity to the grid," he says. But a system as large as his can cost upwards of $60,000. That's why Heeger is developing so-called plastic solar cells—inexpensive photovoltaic nanochips, 500 times thinner than a human hair. Unlike standard silicon chips, which are synthesized at high temperatures, these cells can self-assemble at room temperature on a flexible plastic film. The film can be bonded to almost any surface, forming a thin coating of solar cells that can be tapped for energy.

Heeger won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing such materials. He went on to co-found a company called Konarka Technologies, which will bring the first small-scale applications to market later this year. Think of handbags coated with flexible solar cells ("as you walk around, it could charge your cell phone") or tents painted with solar cells, for electricity while camping. "The fact that you can fold it or roll it up shows the cells are very lightweight," says Heeger.

But there's a catch. His chips at present convert only about 5 percent of sunlight (versus 15 to 18 percent for standard solar panels)—and only from the visible part of the spectrum. Ted Sargent at the University of Toronto is developing chips that can harvest an additional 4 percent from the infrared portion. With a combination of plastic cells like these, you could start to get close to useful strengths of 10 to 15 percent. When that happens, the impact could be widespread. "There are a billion or more people with no electricity," Heeger says. "A small system, producing less than 100 watts of electricity, would change their lives, giving them light to read and study or power for a radio and a small TV." And there would be no harmful emissions or moving parts to break down.

6. Climate counts: You can vote with your dollars to support green companies.

Gary Hirshberg is constantly looking for ways to make his organic-yogurt company, Stonyfield Farm, even cleaner. He uses no toxic chemicals, has the largest solar array in New Hampshire and converts yogurt waste into a bio-gas that can be burned rather than turning it into sludge. Now Hirshberg is encouraging others to follow his lead.

Last year he launched a nonprofit and Web site called ClimateCounts.org to rank major corporations, from PepsiCo to Microsoft, on the basis of 22 criteria, including measuring their carbon footprint, reducing emissions and supporting progressive climate legislation. The scores, updated annually, are revealing. Stonyfield Farm itself rated only 63 out of a possible 100 points—and it was one of the top scorers. Apple Inc., despite its hip image, pulled a grade of just 2. "We all have a long way to go," says Hirshberg. But he hopes that consumers will put their dollars behind companies that are trying hard to help the environment. "We have to stop treating the Earth as if it were a wholly-owned subsidiary of our economy," he says.

7. The Aptera: A funky new hybrid-electric car gets 300 miles per gallon of gas.

The dirty secret of automakers, says Jib Ellison, CEO of BluSkye Sustainability Consulting, is that most of the energy used by a car comes from moving the vehicle itself, not the people in it. "That's because cars aren't designed to be as aerodynamic as they could be, and because we have this obsession with heavy vehicles, even though there are now lighter materials that are just as safe," he says. But a prototype car from upstart Aptera Motors in Carlsbad, Calif., could help change all that.

The Aptera is not like any vehicle on the road today. It's made with ultra-light (but superstrong) composites, and it has just three wheels to reduce its weight still further. It also has a funky shape—a cross between an insect and a flying saucer—that was designed in the computerized equivalent of a wind tunnel to minimize drag. By next year the car will be available in two models—one hybrid electric and the other purely electric, which can be plugged into any outlet—"even a solar carport," says cofounder Steven Fambro.

Not that a $30,000 two-seater that requires eight hours of recharging will be everyone's ideal car. But Fambro isn't worried. He's presold 1,300 Apteras without spending a dollar on advertising (although he's selling only in California at first to minimize distribution and repair issues). "It's selling itself," he says. "And $100-a-barrel oil doesn't hurt." Are you listening, GM?

8. Stoves for the masses: Inefficient cooking methods are not a trivial problem.

Some 2 billion people in the developing world cook in rudimentary stoves or over open fires. Either way, most of the heat escapes into the air rather than warming the food. Efficient stoves could slash the amount of fuel they use, decreasing emissions and deforestation, too. "A family of five can use three tons of wood a year for cooking," says Columbia University engineer Vijay Modi. "If that family saves one ton of wood per year, that can translate into more than a ton of CO2 saved every year for that family alone." But such stoves have to be cheap, durable and attractive, as well as efficient. A Colorado company called Envirofit International has three new stoves that fit the bill, and the Shell Foundation is investing $25 million to help send 10 million of them to India, Africa and Latin America.

9. New roots for old crops: Perennials could have advantages over annuals.

Modern agriculture, with its nitrogen-based fertilizers, has enabled the Earth's population to swell from 3 billion in 1960 to 6.6 billion today. But agricultural chemicals are contaminating groundwater, and with each plowing and reaping, the world loses millions of tons of fragile topsoil. That's why Wes Jackson's staff at the Land Institute is crossbreeding important crops like corn, wheat, sorghum and sunflowers with wild relatives to create perennials instead of annuals. They are hardier, requiring fewer chemicals, and with the elimination of tilling, he says, "we could take agricultural soil erosion to near zero."

10. Democratize green: Ecofriendly products need to go mainstream.

As long as green products are the exclusive domain of the wealthy, the benefits will be limited. That's why Adam Werbach, global CEO for Saatchi & Saatchi S, is working with major corporations to green their mainstream brands. Take Tide Coldwater, which is formulated to wash clothes best in, well, cold water. "It's a breakthrough product," says Werbach. "If everyone changed from washing laundry in hot water to cold, that alone would meet nearly 8 percent of the United States' Kyoto targets"—that is, if we'd actually signed the protocol.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/130625

Modern suburbia not just in America anymore
By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY

A Chinese delegation from Beijing arrived in Phoenix last month and headed west to the Sonoran Desert, deep into suburbia. Its destination: a quintessential American residential development in Buckeye, one of the many suburbs dotting the sprawling metropolitan area.

Members of the group studied the streetscape, the golf course, the spa, the cybercafé, the health care amenities and the design of the single-family homes at Sun City Festival, a 3,000-acre, planned community for people over 55. They commented on the cleanliness and orderliness of it all.

The 25 Chinese who toured the Del Webb development were not seniors planning their retirement but government officials and their spouses, a couple of architects and a banker. Their mission: study American suburbia with an eye toward replicating it back home.

For good or bad, the USA's suburbs have become a living laboratory for the world. Developing countries contending with explosive population growth and economic expansion are looking here for hints about how to manage growing cities. For many, modern suburbia — a largely American concept and lifestyle for more than 50 years — is a nirvana worth emulating. Others want to avoid it.

"They both admire and fear it," says Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. "There are two lessons they take out of the U.S.: (1) unfettered development or sprawl and an (2) appreciation for well-done, master-planned communities."

Copied for years on a smaller scale and adapted to deal with more stringent environmental standards and limited land in Western Europe, American suburbs now have gone truly global:

•Affluent gated communities are sprouting up next to shantytowns outside Buenos Aires.

•On the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan, new single-family homes are a testament to that country's rising middle class.

•Across China, entire suburban cities are being built at a dizzying speed to keep up with population growth. Outside Beijing and Shanghai, tract-home developments designed to mimic Spanish or Italian architecture have all-American names: Yosemite and Napa Valley.

Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe have unleashed such a development boom that they have turned to the USA for lessons on how to do it — and how not to.

The push is on to inspire developing countries to do what more American communities are doing: steer away from sprawling, cookie-cutter subdivisions popularized after World War II and create sustainable communities that will not deplete natural resources.

That includes developments built around mass-transit stations to reduce reliance on cars and projects that mix homes and businesses so that people can walk from home to stores and other services.

The global discussion has begun:

•Virginia Tech hosted a conference last week on the "Suburban World." It attracted 135 people — including more than 40 planners and scholars from 19 countries and every continent except Antarctica. Participants toured Washington's Northern Virginia suburbs and saw examples of an "edge city" — a huge business district outside a traditional urban center (Tysons Corner) — and town centers (Reston). They discussed the environmental, social and economic impacts of suburbia in many countries, from Italy and Germany to Nigeria and Brazil.

"The conference is an effort to address the question of whether or not American-style suburbia is spreading," says Lang, who will be a Fulbright scholar at the Sorbonne University in Paris next month to lecture on European and American suburbs.

"The fact that we are all coming to the (United) States … shows that there are concerns," says Dirk Heinrichs, urban planning research associate at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ in Leipzig, Germany.

After touring Tysons Corner, he said: "I'm overwhelmed by the lack of coherent design. … It's 'build where you want.' "

•The University of Michigan's A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning last month put on a conference entitled "Global Suburbs." The conference's program called suburbanization "no longer solely the province of developed Western countries."

•The Urban Land Institute (ULI), a research and education group for developers, is promoting its best industry practices in emerging markets worldwide and is taking foreign groups on "study tours" of the USA.

"They contact organizations like ULI in an effort to learn from past mistakes made in the U.S., not to repeat them," says John Fitzgerald, managing director of ULI Asia, in an e-mail.

•The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, based in Cambridge, Mass., and Peking University are opening a Center for Urban Development and Land Policy at the Chinese university this month.

"The lesson that can be learned from the U.S. is to mimic some good ideas and avoid some wrong principles," says Saeed Ahmed Saeed, CEO of Limitless, a Dubai-based development company that is building cities and waterfront projects from Saudi Arabia to India, Russia and Vietnam.

"Most of the developers (worldwide) are not doing it the right way. … We have a professional responsibility. Future generations will not forgive us if we don't do it right."

Spreading outward

The first true suburb was born in the 1830s outside Manchester, England, Lang says. It was Victoria Park, a gated community of luxury homes that now is part of Manchester. About 20 years later came the first U.S. suburb — gated Llewellyn Park in West Orange, N.J., about 12 miles from Manhattan. Streetcar suburbs followed, first along the route of horse-drawn streetcars and later along rail corridors such as Philadelphia's Main Line.

After World War I, pedestrian-oriented suburbs flourished, including the Country Club Plaza district in Kansas City and Beverly Hills. Suburban expansion came to a standstill during the Great Depression and "the great burst comes after World War II," Lang says.

Tract-style subdivisions dependent on the automobile flourished. The most famous is Levittown, on New York's Long Island. Then came larger, 1960s-era split-levels and colonials on cul-de-sacs.

Within 20 years, suburbs exploded in the booming Sun Belt around Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix and other fast-growing cities.

Then the craze for large luxury homes — dubbed McMansions — pushed development to the farthest fringes of metropolitan areas, where land was still cheap and plentiful. That helped spark an anti-sprawl fervor still alive today that has the backing of many environmentalists, preservationists, health professionals, farmers and big-city mayors.

Suburban sensibilities began to change.

Town centers designed to mimic small cities sprouted in suburbia. New light-rail lines were built and transit-oriented developments along the tracks followed. More people embraced "new urbanism," a movement that strives to capture the essence of turn-of-the-century communities. Central cities enjoyed a renaissance as young professionals and empty-nesters embraced the urban lifestyle.

Today, the dialogue about suburbs among urban thinkers around the world is intensifying largely because of universal concern over global warming. There is worry about traffic congestion and air pollution. That's why designing suburbs that require residents to drive to get anywhere is losing relevance.

"The energy crisis, climate change. Nobody can overlook that today," says Kiril Stanilov, associate professor of planning at the University of Cincinnati.

Exporting the American dream

As more Third World countries' economies develop, their middle class grows. So does the draw of traditional, U.S.-style suburbia.

"The suburbs represent, almost like a cliché, the American dream," says New York architect Kevin Kennon, who has worked in China and Pakistan and is the executive director of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Study. "I can own a piece of land, I can have my house on that land. … It allows people to point to something that they own and distinguish it from other houses, even if they look the same."

The Chinese delegation that visited Phoenix suburbs last month "had a keen interest in finding out what is this Petri dish of Del Webb communities they've been hearing about for many years," says Jacque Petroulakis, a Del Webb spokeswoman. She says hundreds of foreign architects, planners, developers and private investors from Japan, China, Germany and South America have visited the company's developments in recent years.

The rise of the middle class in developing nations is happening as more of the world's population shifts from rural to urban areas. More than half of the world's population and about 80% of the U.S. population live in urban areas.

"Every year, we add 60 million urban residents on Earth," Stanilov says. "The countries most susceptible to embracing the American model are particularly those with a booming economy and an emerging class of affluent residents and consumers really eager to embrace the American lifestyles. They don't want just the house but the whole package, the three-car garage, the mall, all of that."

For many developing nations, however, the suburban ideal is stuck in circa 1980: a sea of lookalike single-family homes and shopping malls on the edge of the city. It's a model that many Americans increasingly are rejecting.

"Most intellectuals say it's horrible. Most environmentalists say the same thing," says Nora Libertun de Duren, urban planning professor at Columbia University and an expert on suburbs in developing countries. "But developers say it's good business, and architects say it's good business."

Developers adapt their projects to fit the local culture. In respect for strict Muslim tenets about privacy, for example, Kennon has built high walls around every home in a subdivision he's working on in Lahore. Some of his homes in China have two kitchens — a regular kitchen and one with natural ventilation to allow fresh air to circulate while cooking fried foods.

In Argentina, developers are building gated communities in poor neighborhoods. Shantytowns pepper the outskirts of Buenos Aires, areas that had no roads and other infrastructure until a major upgrade in the 1990s, Libertun de Duren says. Once highways were built, gated developments went up and lured commuters who worked in the city. The developments provided employment to the residents of shantytowns, she says.

Personal safety, a concern that has driven Americans out of cities and into suburbia, plays an even greater role in Latin America.

"You have the gated community phenomenon across the classes," Heinrichs says. "In principle, Latin American cities follow the U.S. model. The idea of living somewhere green outside the hustle and bustle of cities and all the contamination is pretty much the same."

A hit in Eastern Europe

Stanilov sees it firsthand every summer when he returns to Bulgaria. Driven by a flood of foreign investment, big-box retailers, industrial parks, malls and subdivisions are going up throughout Eastern Europe, he says. There are few building restrictions in former communist countries, where the population is sensitive to the specter of government control.

"Of course government doesn't have that much money to service all these new developments," he says. "So you have little roads with lots of automobile traffic. … Wisdom doesn't transfer from country to country easily."

China, where major cities are choking on stifling pollution, is striving to build the world's first sustainable city — Dongtan, which broke ground last summer. Designed by a London-based global consulting company and built on an island outside Shanghai, Dongtan, ultimately to house 50,000, will ban cars that pollute (even hybrids), grow its own food, recycle almost everything — including wastewater — and create its own energy from wind, the sun and human and animal waste.

"The Chinese are very interested in doing the latest and most interesting things," says Paul Lukez, an architect from Somerville, Mass., and author of Suburban Transformations. "There's a recognition by the government that something needs to be done. … If something is cutting edge, whether it comes from the United States or Europe, they want it."

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Turkey's Uncertain Future

by Michael Rubin
The American
April 30, 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1888
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The legal case against the AKP is an affirmation of democracy rather than an assault upon it. Democracy rests upon the rule of law and constitutionalism. Neither plurality support nor a majority in parliament should place any politician or party above the law.

The AKP deserves credit for the economic growth that has occurred under its stewardship and for supporting Turkey's accession into the European Union. There is no doubt that the AKP has revolutionized Turkish politics. In the 2002 election, it trounced the more established parties by out-campaigning them. The AKP has earned its reputation for serving its constituents.

Popularity and democracy are not synonymous, though. Turkish constitutionalism separates religion from party politics in order to preserve democracy. Prime Minister Erdoğan has abused this separation. He has eroded the distinction between religious and public education, sought to retire forcibly several thousand secular judges who questioned his party's interpretations of the constitution, and then moved to replace those judges with AKP apparatchiks. He also has instituted an interview process — controlled by party loyalists — designed to evaluate government technocrats on the basis of religiosity rather than merit. Turkish Air employees have even been quizzed on their belief in the Koran.

No party or prime minister in Turkey's history has been so hostile to the press. Erdoğan has sued dozens of journalists and editors. In a strategy borrowed from Iran, he has confiscated newspapers — such as Sabah, the national daily — which he deemed too critical or independent, and transferred their control to political allies. Journalists such as Vatan's Can Ataklı and Reha Muhtar, television commentator Nihat Genç, Sky Turk's Serdar Akinan, and Kanal Türk's Tuncay Özkan are now under fire either for their own criticism or, in the case of the television announcers, for their guests' criticism of the ruling party.

Erdoğan has treated courts, both international and domestic, with disdain. After the European Court of Human Rights decided against permitting headscarves in Turkish universities, he declared that "only ulama [Islamic religious scholars] could" issue such a judgment. In several instances, Erdoğan has refused to uphold the Supreme Court's decisions when it ruled against the AKP's confiscation of political opponents' property. In a moment reminiscent of Henry II, a follower gunned down a justice after the prime minister launched a fusillade against the Court.

Both AKP supporters and Western officials unfamiliar with the AKP's record paint the Court's actions as undemocratic. AKP supporters argue that the party represents democracy, and they seek to equate any opposition — be it secular, nationalist, or judicial — as fascist. This is unfair. Ultra-nationalists who do not abide by the law find themselves in court, just as the AKP now does. The military has stayed on the sideline, as it should. Declaring its support for the constitution in a written statement is not a coup.

Turkey is not alone in holding politicians legally accountable. In April 2000, the European Parliament suspended French demagogue Jean-Marie Le Pen; soon afterward, Austrian politician Jörg Haider also faced sanction. The global community does not allow Hamas's popularity among the Palestinians to absolve it of responsibilities under international law.

True democracy requires respect for the judicial process. Let Erdoğan have his day in court. We should respect the results as a sign that Turkey's democracy has matured.

Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is editor of the Middle East Quarterly.