Visioning Cities and Remembering our Past
One thing AVODAH helped me realize is my love for cities. That may sound odd, but AVODAH helped me come to New Orleans, and it gave me a framework through which to see the city anew. My work at The Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement And Development, which deals largely with planning issues, has also helped to increase my interest and experience in community based models of Urban Planning and has helped me to see cities through a more regional lens.
"Learning about histories of red-lining, segregation, white flight, gentrification...these terms are far too real to me now."
What has been particularly interesting for me to learn is how intricately the history of the Urban Planner and the development of our cities is tied into oppression of people of color. Learning about histories of red-lining, segregation, white flight, gentrification…these terms are far too real to me now. What is sad, is that these terms aren’t just historical footnotes: they are living and breathing.
Unfortunately, some don’t know the history. Take for example this recent article in the Time’s Picayune from March 6, 2010 called “Treasure in Terrytown.” Here is just one gem from this article:
“From a subdivision of 6,000 homes Terrytown grew to more than 25,000 residents today. By the late 1990s, some urban ills began to creep into certain neighborhoods. Several pockets of rental housing, like those in the troubled Monterey Court area, began to become dilapidated and crime-ridden as demographics changed and absentee landlords took over.”
In other words, everyone is fine until those “urban ills” began showing up, with no mention of how Terrytown was explicitly created and zoned exclusively for white people. It was even paid for by the Federal Government under the G.I. Bill.
St. Bernard Parish, LA was founded on the idea of exclusion. While white New Orleanians had been gobbling up swamp land in the name of achieving the American Dream, moving eastward and westward away from the urban poor since the 1950’s, White Flight really kicked in post 1965 with the integration of public schools. Since its founding St. Bernard Parish has done everything in its power to exclude low income people of color, and it has redoubled its efforts post Katrina.
Those who live in ‘Da Parish,’ might disagree with me, saying, “We aren’t racist, we are just protecting our home values,” or maybe even, “So? Big Deal. What’s wrong with people sticking to their own?” Good question.
It’s wrong because segregation, forced or no, is detrimental to democracy and a healthy society.
Again, these terms aren’t just historical footnotes. Since the 1980’s, when the culture of selfishness regained its stranglehold on the American conscience, America has undergone re-segragation at alarming rates. This may sound strange to those living in New Orleans, where it at times seems like cultures are constantly coming together, but nation wide their are some scary trends.
Rich Benjamin, in his amazing book entitled, “Searching for Whitopia,” journeys across America to investigate what he calls ‘Whitopias.’ What is a Whitopia?
“A Whitopia (pronounced why - toe -pee -uh) is whiter than the nation, its respective region, and its state. It has posted at least 6 percent growth (often upward of 90 percent) from white migrants. And a Whitopia has a je ne sais quoi- an ineffable social charisma, a pleasant look and feel.”
Towns such as Forsyth, Georgia, St. George, Utah, Bend, Oregon and Livingston Parish, Louisiana are all Whitopias. The growth of these “Exurbs” has taken place mostly during the 1990’s! These towns are also not to be confused with those of the housing boom and bust, as most Whitopia’s have weathered the economic storm better than other cities of thier size. During the 1990’s the suburbs of greater Los Angeles lost 381,000 whites, and other California suburbs such as Oakland and Riverside-San Bernadino, and also Bergen-Passaic suburbs in New Jersey, lost more than 70,000 whites each, according to Bill Frey, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute. White Flight continues to this day.
While many living in these new exurbs based on pristine landscapes, luxurious homes and lavish golf courses would claim they aren’t racist, the reasons for moving there tell other wise. One lady in “Searching for Whitopia,” puts it this way:
“What’s happening in LA is the native-born population is being driven out, in effect - 669,000 left last year but they were replaced by that many out of country immigrants.”
Let’s forget the blatant disregard for the facts in this quote, and that she is talking about white native-born peoples, not real native-born peoples. What is interesting to me is how clear it is that unfounded fears of being over-run by immigrants and impending gang wars fuel our continued White Flight. The media reinforces these themes too. Not just the themes about immigration and gangs, but things like the Top Ten lists of the Best Places to live in America . On Forbe’s list in 2009, out of the top ten cities, 9 were Whitopias.
But again, back to this question of “What is the big deal? Where is the harm in planning our communities this way?” “What is the harm in wanting to live with people of your own race?” Benjamin answers this perfectly:
“There is a harm in that it is leading Americans to accept in a de-facto way ethnic and class Balkanization as a semipermanent feature of American life. Whiteopia imperils a collective committment to the common good. That’s the harm, an impoverishment of our understanding of one another and even our personal exposure to the arguments and lives and predicaments of our fellow Americans.”
The harm isn’t just in interpersonal relations either. As wealthy white Americans continue to search for bucolic settings free from urban woes, they gain a disproportionate share of public infrastructure dollars and they increase America’s ecological footprint by continuing to stretch our resources and gobble up more land. All this while blaming Immigrants for climate change.
We canno’t allow the New Orleans Master Plan to perpetuate structural racism.
We must design our cities and our public spaces to bring people together, not keep us gated and apart from one another.
While the Master Plan was supposed to be about what the people wanted, this clearly hasn’t happened. So my charge is, that in conjunction with the New Orleans Master Plan, we need a second plan.
This second plan won’t just be the x’s and o’s of zoning. It will be a plan truly created by the people. A plan about citizen action that demands government action. It will be about answering what kind of city, what kind of America do we want to be? One that chooses segregation? One that openly bucks what the Constitution says about seperate but equal being unequal? Progressives must stand on their principles of smart growth, urban renewal, public education and racial integration. While we must be mindful of how we re-enter urban centers when moving back (see Gentrification), we must not stop telling the truth, which is that when some Americans suffer in poverty, all of America is worse off because of it.
Now if someone could please write a follow up on how to get the government to enact citizen driven plans that would be most helpful!
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