Response 1/28/13
Segregation and
Sprawl
Time and
time again I was blown away by the stark discrepancies between American
urbanization and European urbanization.
In Europe the rich live in the center city where as in America, the rich
flee from the city except to fill their 9 to 5 obligations. Massive amounts of government spending in
Europe ameliorate some of the effects of concentrated poverty. Schools are better, healthcare is more
reliable, and public transportation actually moves people efficiently. As Chapter 3 explains, insufficient and
costly transportation plagues the inner-city poor in a suburbanized service
economy. High stress influenced by
larger families, expensive yet cheap foods, long commutes, and mediocre medical
care has led to a nationwide health epidemic.
According to the chapter, “the US has a highly unequal income
distribution and lower life expectancies, despite spending more per capita on
health care than any other country.”
(77) One has to think that maybe
Obama his progressive agenda are at least steering towards the direction of our
European counterparts, who at least statistically are doing it right.
Questions
for reflection:
·
How much can you relate to the anecdotes of
pristine suburban communities or complex inner-city neighborhoods? Can you visualize these locations?
·
What should Memphis city government’s first
steps be to combat economic segregation?
Tennessee? The nation?
·
Were there any stereotype of the poor challenged
for you while reading?
While I agree that for the most part American suburbs stand in stark contrast to the American cities, it would be an oversight to simply claim that all suburbs are wealthy and all cities house the impoverished. Dreier points out that classifying suburbs as wealthy and cities as poor is an oversimplification. The fact is that there are many better off cities that do attract the wealthy “creative” class to live downtown close to their jobs- New York as an example. That is not to say that many wealthy people that work in NYC do not choose to live in the suburbs. At the same time, as the first paragraph in chapter four points out, many impoverished people are forced to live in the suburbs because it is the only affordable housing. With that, however, comes a whole set of other challenges for impoverished people. The long commute that many suburbanites who make a decent living seems to be more time consuming and therefore costly for the poor. That being said, Chapter four of Dreier’s book highlights the fact that it is not cut and dry poverty and wealth between cities and suburbs.
ReplyDeleteHow then do we find a solution to the challenges posed by the diversity of suburban and inner city poverty?. Dreier states that much of the issue lies within a historical federal choice to give states more rights with regards to land use planning. Should the federal government take back states right to choose how their land is used? Could this possibly reverse a trend that has become so normalized in our country?