“When I read this book, it altered my perception on a lot of things.. I hope you enjoy it as I did. And if you do enjoy it, then please pass it on to people close to you.
An Awesome book by Dallas Clayton.“

I was caught off guard by the left to right scrolling, but the initial disorientation was well worth it. The narrator begins:

“There are places in the world where people do not dream…of rocket powered unicorns…instead they dream of furniture…of buying a new hat….” (read the whole story)

Simple words, but they resonated with me. Dallas Clayton makes me remember my days in high school; when I was stressed out, I would visit the local library that always had its air on blast while it was so hot outside that the trees would sweat, sit on one of the wooden benches, bully the little 6-year-old kids for their diaper money, and hog all the children’s books in a neat little jenga-like stack.

For cereal, it’s about asking questions, wondering, and doodling. The key to this is to have Dug’s childlike appreciation of others. I can never forget his line: “I just met you, and I love you.”

If you like the book, check these out:

• Sigur Rós: Hoppipola

• Sigur Ros: Glósóli

• Shugo Tokumaru: Parachute

• Adem – Loro Cover

And, if you’ve never seen them, check out any of Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli’s work and Where the Wild Things Are.

God, I love nostalgia.

A couple of goals:

• Easy Goals: climb some trees, watch some clouds, bully some little kids (keeps me young), doodle my thoughts in my journal, laugh as hard as I can whenever I can
• Distant Goal: make a colorful children’s book.
• Life goal: never stop dreaming big.
• If you actually read this, feel free to post some of your own goals

I'm Paris Hilton. Vote, dammit.

We must face the facts. What we consider the bedrock of democracy in the US—our institution of voting—is far from equal. People of color are drastically underrepresented in the voting booths, even when measured across the voting-age citizen population. The 2000 US Census Bureau reported that 62% of voting-age Whites voted, while only 57%, 43%, and 45% of the same groups of Blacks, Asian Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics voted, respectively. One of the starkest indicators is age. About 70% of those between 55-74 years old voted, while only 36% of those been 18-24 years old voted. Nearly 50% of 25-34 year olds voted.

There are also troubling differences by class indicators such as income and educational attainment. In 2000, 75-80% of the two highest income quintiles voted, while the only 52-55% of the two lowest income quintiles voted. We see similar rates by educational attainment. 75-82% of those with bachelors and advanced degrees voted in 2000, while only 53% of high school graduates voted, and, even starker, only 38% of high school dropouts voted. Both of these differences have been robust since the 1960s. In contrast to the US, Powell Jr. (1986) found that in his study of seven European nations and Canada, there was at most a difference of 10 percentage points between the highest and lowest levels of education. In the US, the difference is 40 percentage points. And it’s not only voting. A classic study by Verba, Nie, and Kim (1978) found that this class bias also applies to those participating in more intensive forms of political activity, such as working in election campaigns, contacting government officials, or contributing money to parties.

We cannot ignore these trends. Many studies make the empirical connection between a decline in voter turnout with an increase in policies that favor privileged voters and intensify class inequalities (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993, 238, 241; see also Burnham 1980, 1987, Hicks and Swank 1992; Hill and Leighley 1992; Leighley 1995, 195-6; Mebane 1994). Harvard researchers have even drawn the connection between socioeconomic inequalities in voter turnout with poor self-rated health of the population (Blakely 2001). Turnout levels also affect the political lean of an entire country. A seminal study by Pacek and Radcliff (1995) of 19 industrial democracies from 1950 to 1990 found that the “left” share of the vote increased by almost 1/3 of a percentage point for every percentage point increase in turnout.

Significantly, comparative studies of voter turnout strengthen the idea that a country’s institutional context is of overriding importance. As Franklin (1996) argues, “the most striking message is that turnout varies much more from country to country than it does between different types of individuals.” We see that, especially, class differences remain, but the intensity of those class differences depend on public policies and institutional designs that help create a more just political system.

These trends don’t just exist for any reason. The effect of public policies on our neighborhoods, for example, plays a role in the political opportunities one receives. As I’ve mentioned continuously in this blog, public policies have shaped the class, racial, and spatial divide between the city and the suburbs. Though they may be in the past, the effects of discriminatory policies, such as the redlining and racial covenants, that have limited opportunities based on one’s class, race, and location have supported economic and racial segregation, concentrated poverty in certain communities, and created an unequal landscape of opportunity. Cohen and Dawson (1993) found that the “devastation of poverty”, the lack of economic and educational opportunities, and social alienation of those living in these communities limit political participation. If you are working hourly for a minimum wage and long hours to make ends meet, or even if you weren’t given quality education in civics or English, for example, it will be harder for you to wait long lines to participate in the polling booths to vote on policies that may be difficult to understand. King (1998), in his exploration on this subject, found citizens saying, “A lot of people are holding down two jobs and both people work in the family and are too tired… [from] trying to survive a day at a time.”

The same goes for community design. Typical sprawl design is characterized by:

“the reliance on cars,  few public meeting places, no downtowns, no sidewalks and no porches encourages people to retreat to their private space and social capital suffers as a result (Putnam 2000). Community design can emphasize private space over public space and much of the sprawl that took shape in the 1980s has had a negative impact on the quality and quantity of civic engagement and community involvement. Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead, the designer of Central Park, argued that public space, in particular urban parks, are a necessity of democracy because parks are a place where people from different social and economic backgrounds share open space, common ground and establish trust (Macedo 2005, 80).”

The design goes past the creation of communities and social bonds. High degrees of segregation and community fragmentation into races and economic class ““narrows civic identities, polarizes political interests, and dampens important forms of civic engagement” (Macedo 2005).

Related to the effects of place on political opportunity is the management and design of our political institutions. Administrators often control the agenda, venue, and procedure to discuss an issue, which can dramatically influence how the public participates and who participates. A simple issue as the location of a polling both, its ease of access to public transportation, when that polling booth is open, the availability of childcare, how voting registration is handled, the language of the voting materials, and a slew of other administrative details, and rituals can exclude or include large segments of the population. Administrators may be “blind” to the privileges of their race, immigration, class, or even age status and their effect on political participation. Callahan (2007) discusses the way administrators systematically exclude or minimize public participation due to its expensive and time-consuming nature. Many ask for public input after important decisions have been made, which reduces participation to mere formality. Indeed, tackling institutional barriers created by uncritically examined privilege is a crucial step that can enhance political equality – to truly fulfill democratic ideals.

As usual, I will continue the second post with a discussion on institutional reforms that can address these issues!

]]> http://theurbanbriefcase.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/vote-dammit/feed/ 3 theurbanbriefcase paris_narrowweb__200x237 http://theurbanbriefcase.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/254/ http://theurbanbriefcase.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/254/#comments Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:26:37 +0000 theurbanbriefcase http://theurbanbriefcase.wordpress.com/?p=254 ]]> Here’s some food for thought:

World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day (FAO 2002, p.9).

Yet 1.02 billion people go hungry everday (FAO 2009).

These points urge us to think critically about our food system and reassess how “hunger” is created. Indeed, the environmental, social, and economic harm our current food system creates urges us to rethink food (see my previous post). We must rethink not only what we eat, but how larger systems in place also influence the prioritization, production, and transportation of certain kinds of food. The way this system influences food has major impacts on all facets of our lives. We must lay the groundwork for a food system that can continuously innovate, sustain the environment, and ensure access and equity across all communities, especially those historically left behind. We can do this by creating an institution (you might notice by now that institution-building is a strong part of my thinking) that can not only bring together multiple stakeholders that operate our food system but also plan and re-tool it to meet a triple-bottom line.

A network of national and regional food policy councils (FPC), as these institutions can be called, can reinvigorate systems—from its production, distribution, transportation, processing, sale, waste, and even education—coordinate government agencies that shape this food system (such as the transportation and planning departments), genuinely involve grassroots communities, shape and research new innovative policies and initiatives, and collect data that can continuously improve the system.

Toronto’s innovative Food Policy Council, established in 1991, is a good model. Its explicit mission is to establish “a food system that fosters equitable food access, nutrition, community development and environmental health.” The food policy council, formed out of citizen and scholar participation and activism, has catalyzed local and regional food policies, despite lacking formal authority to pass laws. The council has been influential in establishing zoning laws that helped preserve local farmland, “Buy Ontario” programs, such as an institutional purchasing program between local farmers and local hospitals, and a Toronto Food Charter, which championed citizen rights and municipal responsibilities to promote regional food security.

Both the national and regional scales are important. A national level FPC can coordinate policy across states and negotiate in global forums because of the way the food system operates in both an interstate and international manner. Regional FPCs can influence the way food operates across metropolitan areas, connecting the city, its suburbs, and its rural communities. As a local institution, Regional FPCs can facilitate food security by re-grounding food systems through local and regional relationships, such as supporting and connecting community- and regionally-based businesses, such as small and medium-sized restaurants, cooperatives, retailers, distributors, and farmers. This re-grounding not only reduces transportation costs across long distances, reducing CO2 emissions, but also utilizes local and regional “social networks to realize greater control and power over the flows of capital that play such an important role in shaping and producing American cities” (DeFilippis 2001). It is thus an empowering model to engage longstanding inequalities.

From this institutional base, two food policy themes highly important to metropolitan areas might be explored:

Organic agriculture.

• Even Monsanto’s CEO Robert Shapiro told a green business conference that contemporary industrial techniques “have not worked well to promote either self-sufficiency or food security in developing countries” (quoted in Vasilikiotis 2002). In light of the previous post’s critique of heavily industrialized and commodified agriculture, innovations in organic agricultural practices should be fostered through FPCs. Organic agriculture, according to the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) is the “holistic production management system which promotes and enhances agro-ecosystem health, including biodiversity, biological cycles, and soil biological activity.” Instead of relying on oil- and water-intensive industrial methods such as using genetically modified organisms and synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, organic farming practices use time-tested methods such as crop rotations, green manure, compost, biological pest control, and mechanical cultivation to maintain soil productivity and prevent pests. Importantly, organic agricultural isn’t about going back to pre-industrial farming methods and solutions and a fear of technology. If technological innovations can empower and educate farmers and communities, bolster continuous innovation and cooperation, and care for the earth, then we can also embrace technology.
  

• In contrast to subsidies for large corporate farms seen in the recent Farm Bill, the FPC can support policies that bolster organic farming methods for small and medium-sized farms and cooperatives. A major critique of organic food is that it is more expensive. However, we must realize institutions and policies influence the market in not-so-apparent ways and thus shape market prices. Subsidies to convention farming practices, for example, make the price of extremely energy intensive foods more abundant and artificially cheaper. The World Resources Institute demonstrated that with “traditional cost analysis methods, the average farm shows an $80/acre profit…[but] after accounting for all the external costs of soil loss, water contamination, and environmental degradation caused by farming practices, the average farm shows a $29/acre loss instead” (Vasilikiotis 2002).

• Another major concern is that organic agriculture cannot produce enough output to feed the world. We must remember that our current world food production already is more than enough to feed everyone on the planet, yet more than 1 billion people around the world suffer from hunger (think: the grape bonfires in The Grapes of Wrath). Hunger is not simply about the production of food. It’s much broader than that. It’s about how systems in place distribute that food, often inequitably, and how those systems impact our environments and communities. In contrast to claims often pushed by thinkers funded by the existing food industry (most notably, researchers in the Hudson Institute), small farms who employ organic agriculture often produce far more per acre than large farms, utilizing crop diversity, maximizing the use of land, and employing livestock that can also help with soil fertility (Perfecto 2007). The 1992 US Agricultural Census, for example, showed that even the smallest farms with less than 27 acres have more than 10 times the greater dollar output per acre than larger farms (US Agricultural Census 1992). It is not about who can feed the world. It is about how we can create systems and institutions that allow people to feed themselves sustainably and humanely for generations to come.

Urban Agriculture (UA)

• With rapid, global urbanization in which 70% of the population will live in cities by 2050 and by 2015, the need to import nearly 6000 tons of food per day for every city of 10 million, the current separation between the rural and the urban will be severely challenged by the increased need for food. Urban agriculture can bridge existing dichotomies between the rural and the urban often implicit in our discussions about food. As the name suggests, UA refers to food, and its integrated design systems, that sustainably reuse human and material resources produced in cities and grow organic food for communities in metropolitan areas. Because of the inherent space limitations in urban areas and its use by working class residents, UA cannot depend on industrial agricultural techniques that require large amounts of capital, economies of scale, energy and water. UA urges design and technique innovations in organic farming (for example, UA in Cairo involves the utilization of rooftop farms and in India the use of urban waste such as tires to build UA designs). The movement toward UA is ultimately not about replacing rural agriculture, but rather about forming regional complementarities that can bolster the livelihood of both urban and rural residents.

• The literature on the benefits of UA, often seen in innovative projects around the world, is immense, especially by bolstering the economic, social, and environmental security of urban communities. The economic base of cities, for example, will grow due to increased entrepreneurial opportunities that will allow denizens to play a role in sustaining the food system (for example, in production, processing, packaging, and marketing). The direct economic value of this food is tremendous. As mentioned, food costs are often regressive and pinch the pockets of the poor more so than wealthier residents (for example, low-income city dwellers around the world spending 40%-60% of their income on food). Community garden plots can not only save a family significant portion of their income on food costs, but, as seen in Waterloo, can also produce a market yield equivalent of up to $4 million annually, depending on the size of the plot. Socially, UA has been shown to bolster health and nutrition by increasing access to healthy, organic food, beautify community spaces, and increase interaction in otherwise isolated urban environments. Environmentally, UA reduces the high-energy costs of the current food system of which transportation plays a huge part (for example, 127 calories of energy are needed to transport 1 calorie of lettuce across the Atlantic and millions of tons of carbon emissions).

• FPC’s can bolster these local and regional efforts by supporting innovative community-based institutions. Community-based farming models can utilize undeveloped land that serves as physical space for local residents to cooperate, educate each other, and grow food. For example, the South Central Farm allotted plot spaces to community farmers who then cared for individual plots, often sharing community resources such as a tool shed or processing facilities that can allow food to be marketed or shared for local consumption. These farmers also came together to form farmers’ markets where farmers could reliably sell their products to consumers.

• UA isn’t just a pipe dream. Urban growers in India, for example, produced 5 kilograms of fruits and vegetables daily for 300 days year. In Cuba, having to deal with massive energy deficiencies after its diplomatic isolation, Havana produces 90% of its fresh produce in local urban farms and gardens.

Importantly, I must emphasize that these institutions are not silver bullets. The FPC requires a coalition of diversity of actors who can work toward the common good. The story of food goes beyond food itself. It goes to the livelihood, the dreams, and hunger of communities.

Diego taught me that.

You were the first president I let show his face on my t-shirt next to my heart; I framed your promises in colorful posters above my bed and looked at them before I fell asleep; you serenaded me with Will.i.am after dinner. To me, you vowed to achieve social justice, economic opportunity, and the American dream for all. You captured my heart with your vision. But now that you are president, and got my vote, I feel your vows are wearing thin.

In a recent speech at a meeting of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, you yet again called for “bold innovative action.” You called for a three-part economic strategy to create millions of jobs for America: increasing exports, expanding environmentally friendly technology, and spending on infrastructure. Laudable, but they were similar to political pick-up lines I’ve heard before. I trust, only to be betrayed. In a new economy, we need new jobs. To create new jobs, we need renewed governance.

Peering into our past, we find that increasing exports and spending on infrastructure, for example, are not new strategies, and have caused both considerable good and considerable harm in the past. Export production has often exploited natural resources, and hiring practices to fill jobs created by exports have excluded many. Spending on infrastructure that intensified suburban sprawl (think: our highway and sewage systems) has harmed working-class, middle-income communities. To this day, we still struggle with the destruction of natural habitat, suffocating air pollution, and disinvestment in inner-city communities caused by these patterns of development. And the promise of jobs is questionable. Too often, we find many of those jobs are inaccessible to a large majority of Americans or are low-wage and vanish quickly in the stormy global economy. These strategies, if not done right, harm both people and the environment.

We must renew our job descriptions. I’ll start here: We must seek the creation of millions of sustainable, living-wage jobs with career ladders that also provide opportunity to those historically left behind in our cities, suburbs, and rural communities. And the jobs we create must positively impact society innovatively, environmentally, and socioeconomically.

To achieve this new job description, we need guidance and leadership. We need institutions that can encourage our economies and policies across states and cities to create these jobs.  In many ways, this is the harder, more politically challenging work that must be done to create sustainable progress. And, to do that, we need smart governance.

You aren’t new to this. You have done a great job by initiating the Office of Urban Affairs.  But you swept me up in your vision; you can’t blame me for expecting the perfect president.

Smart governance not only is flexible and dynamic, but also will take the lead in ensuring our economy upholds a “triple bottom line” of innovation, sustainability, and equity in our cities and regions. One major governance institution that could promote this vision is a national innovation foundation (NIF).

The NIF’s main purpose would be to promote innovation and ideas. And ideas, as the legendary urban critic Jane Jacobs once said, create jobs. When countries like Japan and Finland, only a quarter of our size, are spending hundreds of millions more on innovation and research than the U.S., we know we’re trailing behind. As the Brookings Institution suggests in 2008, the NIF can propel and inject dynamism into the U.S. economy through a three-part mission:

• supporting promising entrepreneurs and collaboration (by helping with commercialization, promoting university-industry partnerships, and revitalizing industry clusters in a region);
• incentivizing hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development in not only promising, triple-bottom-line industries, but also the application of ideas in organizations and in the market;
• encouraging innovation spillovers as a clearinghouse of ideas for other industries and institutions;
• and all the while connecting ideas to jobs, especially for historically underserved entrepreneurs, through inter-sectoral partnerships that create  high-school-to-job pipelines, career ladders, and urban amenities that provide accessible transit and housing in job-rich areas.

And importantly, the structure and culture of the NIF must be dynamic and inclusive. Partnerships cannot be rule-bound and hierarchical, but rather outcome-oriented and flexible. Partnerships must empower localities and states to collaborate and synergize on policies and ideas, rather than compete for scarce resources. And the process must be inclusive. The NIF, unlike your Economic Recovery Advisor Board, cannot be dominated by business interests. The economy is much more than numbers and profit—and must thus include organizations representing communities, labor, and the environment.

Finland, for example, has shown tremendous success with its national innovation and technology agency Tekes. Instrumental in restructuring Finland’s economy from one dependent on natural resources to one that leads in technological innovation, Tekes commands a budget of $560 million with 300 staff members. By working with leaders in both business and academia, Tekes identified key sectors to focus its financial resources and promotes innovation spillovers through collaboration and networking strategies with both domestic and international partners. The payoffs have been huge: since 2005, for example, Finland has increased its high tech exports by 30% and leads the European Union in technological innovation. With this institutional infrastructure, Finland has also been able to serve a social mission by capturing green tech markets and earning 4 billion euro in 2007.

To succeed in this new economy, we need a new approach. It may seem trite to say that to promote innovation, we need institutions responsible for it. But we can expect nothing less.

Mr. Obama, we need to talk about our future.

South Central Farms: Green Space amidst an urban desert

One of the major ways our food system hurts our world is through its global, oil-dependent linkages. Much of our food is processed industrially through chemical intensive methods, made primarily for export, and sold in global commodity markets (ISEC 2004). The average meal, as a result, travels 1,550 miles; the farming, processing, and transporting of our food accounts for 17% of US oil consumption (ISEC 2004). Mainstream industrial, chemically-intensive farming process also use significantly more energy for each calorie of food, nearly 13 more fossil fuel calories for each calorie of food, compared to organic techniques (Pollan 2006). The food system’s reliance on oil is unsustainable. Social critic James Howard Kunstler in The Long Emergency argues that peak oil has been reached, meaning the world’s reservations of oil are near depleted. The impact of a world linked to a harmful and depleted energy source has drastic consequences for our economy and working class people dependent on energy all over the world (Kunstler 2005).

Fertilizers

Our food system is also influenced by government policies that affect the organization of the domestic food industry. This organization negatively affects working class farmers and businesses. The 2007 Farm Bill, for example, has provided a subsidy for established farms, in certain commodities, that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually. As the Kellog Foundation argues, this subsidy contributes to the consolidation of farms as well as firms involved infood manufacturing and distribution-harming local farmers and hurting the environment through large scale farming techniques. Proponents argued that the incentive would increase economies of scale, which would make the US’ food production and distribution industry more competitive in the world market. The bill has exacerbated existing monopoly trends, however. Walmart, for example, now owns one in five food dollars. Since the 1950s, the nation’s top 20 food manufacturers have doubled their share of the market to more than 50% (ISEC 2004). In California, three corporations control 57% of the agricultural retail market (ISEC 2004). The impact of industry consolidation has hurt the livelihoods of local farmers and businesses. From 1986 to 1999, for example, while prices went up 3%, farmers lost their share of the food dollar by 36%, earning less than they did in 1969 (ISEC 2004).

The Farm Bill: A 'Bipartisan' Issue

These policies also have global affects on the livelihood of residents and farmers living thousands of miles away. Human rights groups, such as Oxfam, criticize US’ trade policies, which protect large domestic agricultural producers specializing monocultural farming in few (often genetically modified and energy intensive) crops, while urging developing countries to open up their borders for US food exports. Oxfam argues that US’ heavily subsidized food industry, and its access to better technology, will outcompete local food producers in developing countries, “threatening the livelihoods of small and medium-scale farmers who produce food for the domestic market, deepening poverty and inequality among the country’s 12 million rural inhabitants” (Oxfam 2008).

The negative impacts of food policies don’t stop there. Intellectual property institutions have helped the genetically modified food industry gain patent monopolies on seeds often indigenous to local areas. International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programs forced developing countries to open up their markets to commodified seeds produced by the likes of Monsanto. Many local farmers were forced to buy and become dependent on genetically modified seeds, which require energy- and water-intensive farming practices that increase drought, monoculturalism that make crops vulnerable to instablility, extreme debt, and the destruction of farming traditions (Monsanto, for example, bioengineered a seed that would self-destruct to prevent seed saving from harvest to harvest). As Vandana Shiva, the celebrated global food activist argues, the psychological impacts have been enormous: “from 1997 to 2007, more than 182,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide due to crop failures and excessive debt from purchasing expensive pesticides and genetically modified cotton seed” (Roseboro 2009).

Food thus has important political consequences, much like the conflict commodities of diamonds and cocoa in Africa (Pauwels 2003). Progressive food policy thus has tremendous implications for not only socioeconomic opportunities in developing countries, but also stabilizing and building institutions that can promote the livelihoods of people all around the world.

Conflict Diamonds

Locally, inequalities are also perpetuated in urban environments, where a majority of working class, communities of color live. Described so far, the food system is linked globally, oil-dependent, and heavily consolidated. The industry’s unrelenting focus on increasing quantity, yet decreasing cost, has flooded the market with cheap, but nutritionally empty food (Sonntag 2008). In neighborhoods that also suffer from disinvestment and economic and racial segregation, working class residents suffer from the lack of fresh and healthy food, contributing to public health crises in obesity and heart disease. In Los Angeles, for example, a neighborhood in East and South LA of 100,000 residents only had access to 3.6 fresh produce store in the area, while wealthier (and more anglo) neighborhoods in West LA, such as Pacific Palisades and Malibu, had access to 12.4 stores per 100,000 residents.

Food Desert Skyline: Look Familiar?

The economic importance of the global food system cannot be ignored. In 2002, California’s agricultural industry produced more than $27.5 billion in net value. Additionally, California’s food retailing industry accounts for tens of billions of dollars (ISEC 2004). But behind these numbers exists a much more sober reality. Although the US grows enough food to meet its calorie needs nearly two times over, 36.2 million Americans worry about when they will eat next (Lappé and Terry) – and 20% of Black and Latino households experience food insecurity higher than the national average. In order to overcome inequalities caused by the current organization of the food industry, and the policies that support it, we must reorient our local and regional food systems that can utilize community relationships and invest locally. Stay tuned: a vision for a reinvigorated system will be elaborated in the next post.

As a fellow democrats (and Americans), eight years of Dubya have forced us to endure a lot together: $970 million dollar tax cuts for the richest 5%, a $236 billion surplus squandered down to a $490 billion deficit, the cost of oil skyrocketing to $100 a barrel, and, of course, the worst drop in our Stock Market since the Great Depression.

I think this makes us friends.

I recently read, however, that you were working on extending tax credits for first-time homebuyers. I thought that was great—until I started reading the fine print.  The proposals would fund the same old developments, extending the same benefits, to the same people. Let’s get ourselves out of an American Delusion and into a genuine American Dream. I’ll let you use my money, but only if you use it smarter. I’ll let you use my money, but only if you extend opportunities to all Americans.

If not, I’m asking for my friendship ring back.

The $8,000 tax credit as it stands is the same old story with the same tragic ending. The money, proponents say, would stimulate consumption, fuel home construction, and create jobs.  But as it stands, the credit, without any kind of overall vision, would only fan the crumbling housing patterns the industry has promoted for the past forty years: sprawling tract developments. In many ways, as the Brookings Institute’s Jennifer Vey argues in her 2007 report “Restoring Prosperity”, this sprawl harms opportunity for all Americans. Sprawl sucks investment and jobs away from the city—intensifying racial and economic segregation—and encourages unhealthy and unsustainable lifestyles chained to the automobile and the freeway.

We need a new kind of tax credit that will strengthen metropolitan prosperity by inspiring innovation, environmental sustainability, and socioeconomic equity. Why not prioritize credits to fuel civic-minded industries that not only seek to make a profit, but also innovate and uplift the entire region’s health?

We must grow smart by aiding housing developments that build near public transit and promote green, walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods. We must utilize brownfields and vacant properties, and preserve historic architecture in the city to reinvest in neglected communities. We must collaborate with local community residents and leaders to ensure that developments are context-friendly and can truly extend opportunity for new and old alike. We must build for a mix of income ranges in opportunity-rich neighborhoods to ensure that all Americans can access quality education and a safe environment, and stabilize tax bases while we’re at it. We must encourage a diversity of housing and ownership models, such as co-housing and limited-equity cooperatives, suitable for all Americans—not only for baby boomers, but also for single-parent families and the millennial generation. And we must develop quality education and rewarding career ladders targeted to local communities to insure our investment not only improves the physical landscape but also builds local human capital. There’s a lot in there, I know—but what can I say? There’s a lot of opportunity for innovation.

So let’s start now.

This is a key moment. Our demographics are becoming more diverse. We have an opportunity after a crisis that erupted out of greedy thinking. More people are embracing our cities. More are embracing the environment. More are embracing the link between social equity and sustainable growth. It’s a key moment to uplift a new generation of civic-minded businesses. We must ensure that those that build diverse coalitions, invest in their workers, and embrace communities will win out.  It’s a key moment to promote a new home tax credit, an economic symbol of a sustainable and equitable metropolitan vision—a 21st Century New Deal, a 21st Century American Dream centered around communities.

Think about it.

If you try hard enough, I’ll let you keep my friendship ring.

Your friend,
Dan

L.A. Red Car System

This said, romanticization of these cars is far too common. Urban historian Robert Fogelson notes that the streetcars suffered from overcrowding, congestion, and inefficient pricing systems. But with the US government’s multi-billion dollar investment in suburbs, freeways, and the automobile industry, the public grew into a new way of life, wishing to escape ‘racialized’, ‘crowded’, and ‘dirty’ urban neighborhoods—and the red streetcars that connected them (of course, General Motors had something to do with this too). Instead, due to the sprawl and the freeways that connected our neighborhoods, many favored the speed, freedom, and the ‘cleanliness’ of post-war American suburbs and the automobile that connected this new American Dream.  But as the previous post illustrated, much of this speed, freedom, and cleanliness is illusory.  We require a vision for 21st century transit linked to opportunity, innovation, sustainability, and equity within our regions, cities, and neighborhoods.

Speed and the Automobile

We can rethink our transportation systems along several lines to develop a new transit framework.

Many policymakers evaluate transit policies on a standard of mobility and speed. What policies can we enact to allow the average individual to travel the largest area, the quickest? In many ways, these criteria ignore a fundamental fact illustrated in the previous post: access to transportation is supremely uneven, especially by race, class, and gender, and the by-products of our current transit system create unhealthy and unsustainable environments. In a more holistic sense, only evaluating mobility and speed is missing much—maybe too much—to our nation’s, and our world’s, detriment.

More innovative transit policy criteria will think about accessibility, not simply mobility, and about communities, not simply individuals. We must link transportation to those left behind; it can become a powerful means to bolster opportunity for all Americans. And, thus, we must also think about communities. Transit must provide access by expanding the way we think about transportation beyond the car: to link the sidewalk, the bike, the van, the bus, and the train. But access is not simply about the act of traveling itself, but, as Policylink explains, also about environmental sustainability, socio-economic equity, cost-effectiveness, rewarding jobs, quality schools, healthy food, affordable housing, vibrant amenities, and to democracy itself. The way transportation investment decisions become made must include not only experts and technocrats, but also community residents and leaders, in all stages of the policy process. Democratic participation and opportunity go hand in hand.

Transit Oriented Development

Realistically, creating and evaluating policies on more holistic criteria is not easy. Our existing bureaucratic organizations, which foster departmental silos and functionalism, won’t cut it. More innovative organizational structures and behaviors are required to implement a 21st century vision for transportation. Thinking about and strengthening communities require community, especially in our bureaucratic apparatus. To link health, housing, jobs, food, and schools, for examples, requires a similar linking to the Department of Transportation, of Health and Human Services, of Housing and Urban Development, of Labor, of Agriculture, and of Education. This does not mean we should simplistically combine all our governmental agencies. Instead, we require new models of flexible and process-oriented organization that can coalesce around a common national vision for transportation, understand its fundamental link in metropolitan systems, and together remove perverse incentives that make our neighborhoods unhealthier, impoverished, and unsustainable.

New Flexible Organizations

In the public’s mind, especially those of suburbanites (and their college children living in the city for the first time- me included), public transit is an anathema. Unsafe, dirty, unreliable, inconvenient, uncomfortable, and inefficient, the overcrowded bus system in L.A., for example, has been ridiculed into a tearful state of self-pity. The design of our public transit system (which includes variations on the sidewalk, bicycle, bus, rail, and car) must be revamped.

An unwelcoming bus stop

In the system’s physical design, several factors must be considered: universal accessibility, public life, and efficiency. Universal acessibility refers to the creation of environments that can accommodate all possible users, such as people with disabilities and baby strollers, bolstering truly accessible transit in our cities and creating more comfortable urban experiences. In the case for design that strengthens the ‘public setting’, urban designer Darrin Nordahl argues that “the transparency of the vehicle, allowing passengers to see out and be a part of the environment as they pass through it, makes [public transit] so enjoyable” (Halbur 2009). Flexible and interactive design that give riders control over their environment (for example, Nordhahl cites New Orleans’ famous streetcars that feature seats that can face backwards or forwards) and systems that are unique, historical, and tailor-made to their locations can provide experiences that are not only efficient, but also the most pleasurable and worth the time and effort.

Iconic New Orleans Streetcar

Efficiency can bolster reliability and convenience for the average pedestrian. Notably, Public Rapid Transit frameworks can expedite and increase the quality of public transit by, for example, integrating bus-only lanes that give buses exclusive right of way, utilizing renewable energy vehicles, providing high-frequency all day service, creating off-bus fare collection, constructing well-lit and comfortable station stops (such as those seen in Bogota’s TransMilenio), and transmitting up-to-date vehicle locations for the average customer.

Bogota's Innovative and Sustainable Rapid Bus Transit

Finally, the design of our public transit funding structure must diversify from just the gas tax. While increasing the gas tax can solve public transit’s short-term financial woes, diversifying funding sources through a Regional Transportation Trust Fund can buttress financial sustainability by, for example, collecting revenue from carbon emission, motor fuel, and heavy vehicles taxes. Additionally, public policies can incentivize investment in sustainable industries that support this new public transit vision (read: new jobs and career ladders), develop targeted congestion pricing to discourage automobile use in periods of peak demand, and require “fix-it-first” and “smart growth” investments to recycle and reuse existing infrastructure, rather than inequitably and wastefully subsidizing harmful sprawl.

Historic Preservation and Recycling Infrastructure can eliminate wasteful spending and illuminate neighborhood charm.

We need new solutions for our generation. To create a more fair, sustainable, and vibrant nation, a 21st century transit system, rooted in our metropolises, must shore up opportunities for a 21st century American Dream of Communities.

L.A. Traffic

Though we joked about it, in the privilege of my friend’s car, transportation was, in fact, a serious issue, connected to people’s ability to function, to get to work, to friends, and to school. I didn’t bring it up then in the fear of being exiled as a policy geek, but I knew that the House and Senate had just passed an extension of the current transportation program. This year lawmakers could shape a new, sustainable and equitable 21st century transportation system for our 21st century cities and regions.

Pondering Senators

It doesn’t take a Wall Street Journalist to travel on the bus in L.A. for five days to realize that the transportation system (that includes cars) here in the car capital of the U.S. is broken. Even in the city where the car is supposedly king, simple trips become hair-tearing journeys, parking becomes a mental-health-hazard, and the smog in our grayish air decreases our life expectancy, if not the world’s, through our friend climate change (Automobiles contribute 40% of CA’s CO2 emissions). Not to mention auto usage’s inconvenience to older Americans and people with disabilities, its link to obesity and trade-offs in physical activity, as well as the startling fact that traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for individuals aged 1 to 34, costing $230.6 billion in 2000. Despite this, the automobile has been so well crafted to symbolize individual freedom, speed, status, and masculinity.

Beautiful, beautiful car smog

Unfortunately, the effects of our current transportation system, and auto-dominance, go immediately beyond our roads and into the pockets of our families and neighborhoods. Working class, communities of color often shoulder the environmental health hazards of transportation much more intensely, when poor children in Phoenix, for example, live in dilapidated houses near polluted freeways. Transportation is interlinked with environmental justice.  Working class minorities also have less access to the car (19% of African Americans and 13.7% of Latinos do not have access, compared to 4.6% of whites), while more and more jobs, due to suburban sprawl, are  accessible through the car. And we all spend more on transportation when we’re less connected. Low-wage households living in job-scarce neighborhoods spend 37% of their incomes on transportation, while the average household still spends a hefty 18% of their income on the same expense. In contrast, in communities well connected by transit, families only spend an average of 9% of their incomes.

Empty Pockets

The fact that we’re so dependent on our cars is not by any mistake. Our urban policies post-World War II subsidized our sprawled-out development patterns through housing, tax, transit, and infrastructure policies.  Those biases continue today. Policylink’s VP for Research, Victor Rubin, reports that “about 80 percent of federal transportation expenditure goes toward highways, while the infrastructure for all other modes of travel competes for the remaining 20 percent” (Rubin 2009).

Roads and Suburbs

And there are serious issues of equity at stake in funding and governance. In 2004, the Environmental Working Group found that commuters in 176 metropolitan areas paid $20 billion more in federal gas taxes than they received in money for both transit and highways from 1998 through 2003 (Environmental Working Group 2004).  Los Angeles and Riverside was one of the top money losers, with a $1.16 billion shortfall, and with much of the money subsidizing highways and roads out of the urban core and into the suburbs and edge cities of our regions.

Interchange between the 5 and 110

A 2008 survey of the 50 largest metropolitan policy organizations (MPOs), many of which govern transit investment with money allocated from the state and from the federal government, showed dramatic racial disparities. 88% were white, while 7% were African American, 3% Latino, and 1% Asian Pacific Islander, while the metropolitan areas they represented showed starkly different numbers (Sanchez 2008). Additionally, most boards have a 1-area, 1-vote policy, with dense urban areas underrepresented. Indeed, for each suburban voter on the board, boards allocated 1% to 7% fewer funds to public transit (Sanchez 2008).

All of these issues require a vision for 21st century transportation linked to opportunity, innovation, sustainability, and equity within our regions, cities, and communities.  Transportation is a vital key to achieving an American Dream of Communities. Look for the next post, which will describe this vision in detail ☺.

The 21st Century Walker

A look at several key socioeconomic indicators challenges the essential assumption of the post-racial narrative—that the landscape of opportunity is equal. Wolff’s study of a 2007 Federal Reserve dataset revealed dramatic racial wealth disparities. Families of color, on average, own 16 cents to the white family’s dollar (Wolff 2007, Domhoff 2009). Importantly, a distinction is made between wealth and income. Wealth refers to net assets (such as stocks, bonds, and real estate), while income simply refers to the sum of all earnings a person receives (such as a salary). In his study, Wolff refers to the way wealth is a more reliable socioeconomic indicator for economic mobility, innovation, and economic reinvigoration. Indeed, racial wealth disparities, then, stymie the strength of the economy as a whole through untapped potential and inequitable access to opportunities.

Household Median Wealth

John Powell’s work in opportunity mapping visually shows an uneven landscape of opportunity. Mapping major metropolitan regions across the United States, Powell finds that African Americans and Latinos are more likely to live segregated in areas of low opportunity. Here, opportunity is not only defined by financial wealth; opportunity is also access to healthcare, clean environments, jobs, and quality education. His maps provide a telling story that opportunity is not evenly accessible across regions, and, much like Wolff’s analysis, the unevenness of opportunity has only intensified over the past 20 years. One can then argue that it is not simply a question of hard work.  Not everyone has a fair chance—many encounter barriers to opportunity that cannot be overcome simply by hard work. Both are needed to attain the American Dream.

Opportunity Map of Los Angeles

Opportunity Map by African American Males

This focus on race and opportunity does not also mean barriers to class and gender relations are absent. Experiences in race, class, and gender are intertwined. In the same analysis, Wolff illustrates more generally stark (and growing) economic inequalities in the United States.  84.6% of the total net worth in the United States derived from the top 20% (the top 1% held 34.3% of that worth), while the bottom 80% only held 15.3% of that net worth. Gender, too, also plays a factor. Women still only make 81 cents for every dollar that men make, and this inequity persists despite educational attainment (Opportunity Agenda 2008). Working-class whites also face disparities in opportunity, but a distinction must be made: a family of color (or even a woman of color) is more likely to face a double whammy, including having less wealth and/or being segregated in low-opportunity areas. The issue is not black and white. Access to opportunity is not only about race; it’s also about class and gender.

Net worth and financial wealth distribution in the U.S. in 2007 (Domhoff 2009)

One of the key drivers of this inequitable landscape of opportunity has been an exclusive and material version of our American dream of suburban sprawl. The post-World War II public policies that promoted housing and transit opportunities hinged on suburban sprawl. Marked by large lots and single-family housing, sprawl is a form of development biased toward the outer edges of the city and makes the automobile the most convenient mode of travel. In the decades following World War II, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veteran’s Administration (VA) refused to underwrite mortgages to urban developments and encouraged growth in the urban periphery on “a scale virtually unknown in U.S. history” (Hartnett 165), with subsidies totaling $53 billion annually by 1984—five times more than all direct federal expenditures for housing. A massive growth in suburbanization ensued, with more low-density, single-family homes ordered about a normative vision of the ideal American society centered on privacy and ownership. These housing policies also interacted with transit policies. With the passage of the Highway Act of 1956, $27 billion for 42,500 miles of expressways were allocated on the premise of linking central cities with sprawling suburbs via automobile transit and removing slums that threatened the “public health, safety, morals, and welfare of the nation” (Mohl 233). Investments in these new expressways subsidized further suburban development, and facilitated dramatic demographic out-migration (especially “White Flight”) from the city.

Suburban Developments

Though it may be hard to hear, housing and transit policy is also a history of discrimination. Access to these opportunities was limited on the basis of gender, race, and class. For example, the FHA Underwriting Manual denied mortgage loans to female-headed households for many years. The FHA also prevented integration of both lower-income residents and minorities through redlining practices, and even encouraged developers to write restrictive covenants into all deeds, legally blocking the sale and purchase of homes to specific groups (Hanchett 166). As late as the 1960s, one suburb—Levittown, Long Island—did not have a single resident of color in a town of 82,000, more than a decade after the Supreme Court ruled restrictive covenants unconstitutional. Transit policies also institutionalized inequalities. In the early 1960s, highway construction dislocated an average of 32,400 families each year—most of whom were low-income and of color.

Redlined Map in Philadelphia

With suburban housing policies, freeways facilitated urban disinvestment and the flight of middle- and high-income white residents from the city. With these demographic transitions, central city tax bases fell and social service burdens increased as low-income populations became increasingly segregated in the city. Economic restructuring, de-industrialization, and unprecedented corporate mobility shed many accessible well-paying manufacturing job opportunities. A dramatic race to the bottom ensued. Stark urban competition for capital between fragmented localities forced continual concessions to businesses and intensified central city decline. All of these transitions further reinforced a cycle of segregation, poverty, and spatial inequality.

Urban Disinvestment

With institutionalized exclusion in a time of such unprecedented growth, it should then come as no surprise that lower-income working-class communities are highly concentrated in certain geographic spaces across a region and, further, that they are often of color. For example, L.A. in 1990 had a nearly a 38% Latino, 10% African American, and a 41% white population. Pastor’s analysis finds that the poor, however, were overrepresented by Latinos (57% of the poor) and Blacks (15% of the poor), while whites were underrepresented (18% of the poor). Segregation is also stark. In 2000, 73% of Blacks in L.A. would have to move in order to achieve full integration with Whites (Haaga and Farley 2005).

Segregation between Whites and African Americans

Unfortunately, the concentration of poverty did not end with suburbanization. Working-class communities are continually displaced and increasingly segregated by policies that focus on either people-based development (such as education) or place-based approaches (such as urban redevelopment). Without far-sighted policies in place, many educated people of color simply out-migrate from the central city, reinforcing economic segregation, and urban redevelopment may displace existing residents in the name of slum clearance and attracting wealthier residents.

Michael Roman's "Angel of Gentrification"

Recognizing these regional dynamics, policymakers must to rethink their approach to the cities. Regional equity is a framework that ensures all families benefit from economic activity in the region—through new metropolitan strategies in housing, economic and workforce development, and education, to tie equity, economy, and sustainability together. At its heart, it is a framework that understands that the dynamics of poverty and inequality are not simply sustained in local neighborhoods. Rather, poverty and inequality are prevalent across many neighborhoods in a region due to larger structural forces at play, such as segregated housing patterns and suburban sprawl.

Regional Equity: Expanding Opportunity for All

Forcefully, regional equity argues that equity and economic development are inter-linked. In a national survey of 74 metropolitan areas, Pastor found that by indexing per-capita growth, change in inner-city poverty, and residential segregation, the best-performing cities—such as Charlotte, North Carolina—addressed equity and economic growth together. These cities championed regional strategies, from promoting regional “fair share” housing, creating regional (as opposed to city-wide) jurisdictions to share economic resources, to funding education equally across a region (Pastor 2000).  Additionally, Pastor found that as central cities declined, the incomes of residents in the suburbs also declined. The destinies of the cities and suburbs—all places in a region—are linked.

Linked Fate

The actual design of our regions must also be rethought.  Instead of designing for suburban sprawl, we must design for smart growth to conserve the environment, promote community, increase pedestrian and alternative transportation options, and ensure fair investment all across the region—not only wealthy neighborhoods and downtowns—by managing sprawl.

Smart Growth Design

Some of our policies must also be reconsidered. Instead of large franchises, we can invest in environmentally and socioeconomically responsible community-owned businesses that support local industries and bring money back into communities. We can think outside the box by incentivizing cooperatives and resident ownership mechanisms. We must reinvest regionally in our housing, our transportation, our sustainable industries, our food systems, and our education. We can interlink these systems with innovation, technology, research, and people– and create thousands of rewarding jobs along the way.

Local Business

Our institutions must also support these efforts. We must employ continuous regional development diagnostics, based on the local environment, to discover and reform the binding constraints on development, innovation, and investment (Rodrik 2005). Regional collaborations of businesses, banks, and industries, colleges and universities, community organizations, nonprofits, religious bodies, public agencies, and city jurisdictions can revitalize regional planning, policies, and revenue sharing toward a more sustainable and prosperous future.

Institutions and Innovation

And we need a new vision for our regional economies. It is an economy that combines:

“(a) strategic growth to promote industries that provide family sustaining wages; (b) the development of jobs that are accessible to large sectors of the population, not just the highly educated; (c) improvement of economic mobility and the creation of cross-employer career ladders in regional labor markets; and (d) the raising of the base level of wages in low-wage jobs” (Pastor, Benner, Matsuoka 2009).

Pastor, Benner, and Matsuoka discuss an economy that, at its heart, is more human, fair, and cooperative, that inherently lifts up the working and middle classes.  It is an economy that adheres to a balance among economy, environment, and equity. This economy must drive our 21st Century American Dream.

A More Compassionate Economy

But this is not enough. We must also envision the moral purpose of our Dream (Lakoff 2009).  Many of us are privileged enough to be afforded opportunities through our communities and our institutions. With hard work, many of us seek and achieve the Dream. But if we pursue a materialistic and individualistic version of the Dream—only to leave behind and harm our fellow Dreamers and Seekers—are we being fair, responsible, compassionate, and human? The 21st Century American Dream must also be a Dream of Communities—not only those of the United States, but also communities of the world. Though it may be easy to forget, we share a destiny as Dreamers and Seekers. We must humbly remember that through our opportunities, we have received much from our communities and institutions. We have received much from the common good. It is our responsibility to give our fair share to communities across the region to ensure future opportunities and common prosperity. The very act of dreaming and seeking, then, must inherently bolster the Dreams and opportunities of our neighbors. Our dreams must invigorate the common good.

Coming Together

In an American Dream of Communities, our individual actions and our communities are intertwined. When we seek a Dream of Communities, we are upholding America’s promise of opportunity. When we seek a Dream of Communities and shore up opportunity, we are upholding America’s promise of freedom: freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom from harm, freedom to innovate, freedom to voice our beliefs in democracy, and freedom to pursue our personal Dreams. When we seek a Dream of Communities, we are revitalizing a Dream that, at its soul, cares for and encourages the lives and dreams of our neighbors. This is the legacy of America. This is the 21st Century American Dream.

The American Dream of Communities

WORKS CITED

• Domhoff, G.W. (2009). “Wealth, Income, Power.” Who Rules America Website. http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
• Farrar, L. (2008). “Is America’s Suburban Dream Collapsing into a Nightmare?” CNN.com/technology. June 16. http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/16/suburb.city/index.html
• Hanchett, TW. (2000). “Public Housing and the Postwar Urban Renaissance, 1949-1973.” From Tenements to the Taylor Homes. Ed. John Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin Szylvian. The Pennsylvania State University Press: University Park. 163-179.
• Hausmann, R., Rodrik, D., Velsaco, A. (2005). “Growth Diagnostics.” Kennedy School Lunch Group on International Economic Policy.
• LAANE.  (2007). “Poverty, Jobs and the Los Angeles Economy: An Analysis of U.S. Census Data and the Challenges Facing Our Region.” Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy.
• Lakoff, G. (2009). “George Lakoff: The Obama Code.” The Huffington Post, October 4. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/the-obama-code_b_169580.html
• Mohl R. (2000). “Planned Destruction; The Interstates and Central City Housing.” From  Tenements to the Taylor Homes. Ed. John Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin Szylvian. The Pennsylvania State University Press: University Park, 226-245.
• Muwakkil, S. (2008). “Obama’s Election Clearly Doesn’t Mark The Beginning of a ‘Post-Racial’ Society. http://www.alternet.org/rights/142717/obama%27s_election_clearly_doesn%27t_mark_the_beginning_of_a_%27post-racial%27_society
• Pastor, M., Dreier, PJ., Grigsby, E., López-Garza, M. (2000). Regions that Work: How Cities and Suburbs Can Grow Together. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis.
• Pastor, M., Benner, C., Matsuoka, M. (2009). This Could Be the Start of Something Big: How Social Movements for Regional Equity Are Reshaping Metropolitan America. Cornell University Press: Cornell.
• Powell, J. (2003). “Opportunity Maps Illustrate Where Neighborhood Opportunities and Barriers Exist.” Institute on Race and Poverty- Mapping. http://www1.umn.edu/irp/programs/oppmapping.html
• Wolff, E. N. (2007). Recent Trends in Household Wealth in the United States: Rising Debt and the Middle-Class Squeeze Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: The Levy Economics Institute.

An example of a bad marketing choice

The view that the financial crisis was simply due to irrationality and bad judgment, or even greed, does not consider the role powerful actors played in structuring financial decisions. It’s too easy to blame the everyday citizen with short-sightedness.

Consider the role financial corporations and businesses played in creating new, ‘innovative’ financial products such as the No Income, No Jobs, No Asset (NINJA) sub-prime loans. These loans targeted low-income individuals and provided horrible terms of payment (such as negative amortization loans, which even penalized borrowers for paying off their loan early), while brokers and executives amassed great profits.

Ninja Loans

Consider the role market fundamentalist proponents, who conveniently include corporate bankers and financiers, played in destroying vital financial regulations, such as the Glass-Steagall Act, spending nearly $300 million to repeal. I wonder why Glass-Steagall was enacted after the Great Depression? We don’t learn our economic history; Markets fail and, when they fail, working class people get severely hurt.

Phil Gramm (R-TX from 1985-2002) who spearheaded the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act

And consider the role corporate media and developers played in marketing an American Dream of a white picket fence in the suburbs. So ingrained into our American identity, the idea of owning a suburb is so luring in its connotations of security, individualism, and prosperity. It’s not simply irrationality. Indeed, much of this version of the American Dream was marketed effectively by corporate developers and financiers that helped spur on post-World War II suburbanization.

Advertisement of a typical suburb post- WWII

All of this isn’t to say we do not have choice. But when the odds are stacked against us, it’s easy to make the economically ‘wrong’ choices. Recognizing these structural factors allows us to learn from history, ensure that the default setting of our economic institutions provides the common good, and rethink our basic values and cultural memes from ownership to interdependence.

Our economic recovery policies will drastically reshape our cities and communities. In our future economic and urban policies, we must re-infuse progressive American values of fairness, democracy, and community. Indeed, our individual liberties and freedoms will only thrive when our cities and our communities also thrive.

Community: Central to the American Dream

And our economy will only thrive when we have the best interests of the working and middle class at hand.  The economy we rebuild must overcome barriers and bolster opportunities for the working and middle class.  Whether we’re thinking about policies to help families pay off their mortgages, increase benefits for unemployment, bolster community banks, and reinvigorate national and global financial reforms, we can feel safe thinking that helping out Wall Street isn’t the only viable policy. And we must also recognize that the majority of our population live within our metropolitan areas. Our cities and regions thus become important focal points for economic policy- for fair share housing throughout the region, fiscally responsible and accessible public transit alternatives, and accessible sustainable and socio-economically responsible industries.

Working Class Families Matter

To truly promote opportunities and reclaim America’s promise, we must also think about “Main Street”, not only “Wall Street.” It’s not about delaying gratification, but about ensuring sound urban and regional public policy.