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I want to flag two much-discussed items in the Times today that one might best read as companion pieces. First: this item, which asks why America’s cities need cars … https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/opinion/ban-cars-manhattan-cities.html
… then this op-ed from former Minneapolis mayor @BetsyHodges, the headline of which speaks well for itself. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/opinion/minneapolis-hodges-racism.html
I touched on a theme in a thread I referred people to earlier this week: there is a strain in progressive suburban politics, as practiced, that lashes back at any attempt to achieve equity for historically marginalized communities. https://twitter.com/ggreeneva/status/1214204017267691521
I’ve seen that play out in my environs here, as a DC suburbanite, in Montgomery County — where just last year, the hint of efforts to provide lower-income students and kids of color better access to a quality education set some parents aflame: https://twitter.com/brianrkramer/status/1204976593581608961
Along a whole swath of issues on which progress has remained gridlocked for years — housing, transportation, schooling — affluent voters who call themselves progressive have been a stubborn roadblock to progress toward equity.
Another example from Montgomery Co., Md.: https://twitter.com/ggreeneva/status/1050809170814005249
Another example from Montgomery Co., Md.: https://twitter.com/ggreeneva/status/1050809170814005249
One can read further examples in the thread I linked just up above. Or in this one: https://twitter.com/ggreeneva/status/1129763565366403080
So when Hodges writes that “illusions of change … make us feel better about racism, but fundamentally change little for the communities of color whose disadvantages often come from the hoarding of advantage by mostly white neighborhoods,” she’s onto something important.
What urbanist Jarrett Walker says below about making our cities work for the car-free — that equity in urban planning and policy *is* antiracist — hits the mark, too. https://twitter.com/humantransit/status/1281270550271164416
Anyway, just offering food for thought.
Further reading:
- freeways as a form of structural racism
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-06-24/bulldoze-la-freeways-racism-monument?_amp=true
Further reading:
- freeways as a form of structural racism
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-06-24/bulldoze-la-freeways-racism-monument?_amp=true
- @KevinMKruse for the 1619 Project, zeroing in on the inequities etched in concrete by freeways in Atlanta: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/traffic-atlanta-segregation.html
- this old thread of mine, about the increasing unaffordability of cars to America’s working class … https://twitter.com/ggreeneva/status/1179197795028410369
https://twitter.com/ggreeneva/status/1179197795028410369
… and this recent thread from @mateosfo, about the equity implication of building cities for cars when we live in a society where growing numbers can’t afford them. https://twitter.com/mateosfo/status/1279482314255466496
https://twitter.com/mateosfo/status/1279482314255466496
- @awalkerinLA on how even the weird recent gun-brandishing incident on a St. Louis street reflected decades of inequitable urban policy … https://www.curbed.com/2020/6/29/21306868/st-louis-gun-couple-protest-street
… https://www.curbed.com/2020/6/29/21306868/st-louis-gun-couple-protest-street
- … last for now, the time one Chuck Schumer and his wife fought, with hammer and tong, to have a bike lane stripped from Brooklyn’s Prospect Park West.
(What does Schumer do nowadays, anyway?) https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/battle-of-the-bike-lanes
(What does Schumer do nowadays, anyway?) https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/battle-of-the-bike-lanes
