|
Why is "Regionalism" and the expansion
of social contacts for the people of Camden important?
How did you find your last job? 85% of all
people, across the educational and professional spectrum, report they found
their job through a friend or relative. If all or most of your friends and
relatives live and work in Camden, what kind of job and pay rate are you likely
to acquire? In today's competitive job market, we rely on insider information
and connections to identify the best jobs and make the best match.
On the flip side, employers trust the opinions of
their most successful employees and value their recommendations for new hires.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"...the salvation of Camden can not be laid
at the feet of speculative real estate developers. The State of New Jersey is
not blameless for a region in such long-term and shameless neglect. The poor who
strive to live good lives amidst lawlessness are citizens of a state that has
abandoned them with little conscience or concern." From the blog WiredNY.
| |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
| |
|
|
"Race and Space" by john a. powell
Race has been a major factor in the spatial configuration of
our metropolitan areas. The outer-ring suburbs of metropolitan
areas are overwhelmingly White (although recently minorities,
and in particular middle-class Blacks, have participated in
the move to the suburbs), and the inner cities are populated
largely by people of color, especially Blacks. This spatial
and racial pattern makes sharing or fairly distributing
regional benefits almost impossible. White suburbanites resist
regional strategies, reluctant to embrace something that will
have negative economic consequences for them — which is
rational, albeit short-sighted. Blacks also resist regional
solutions because they fear a loss cultural control or
identity and a loss of political power.
Ignoring these claims from the minority community is a serious
mistake. Doing so makes a regional solution into just one more
solution imposed by Whites on people of color. Given the
history of White and non-White relations in this country,
particularly around the development of sprawl and metropolitan
fragmentation, this is simply untenable. At a more practical
level, in regions with a substantial minority population,
regional approaches that do not engage the minority community
will have difficulty gaining the necessary support. But
regional solutions are imperative because a number of
important inner-city problems are caused by regional forces,
and thus can only be adequately addressed at the regional
level. A failure to address central city problems adversely
affects the entire region. The failure to adopt regional
strategies adversely affects the central cities.
We need a regional approach that gives cities or communities a
way to maintain appropriate control of their political and
cultural institutions, while sharing in both regional
resources and balancing regional policy-making. We need an
approach that avoids the myopia of local, fragmented
governance and the blunt regionalism exercised by an
overarching unit of government, such as a county or state,
that can suffocate local governments.
The Metropolitan Area in Black and White
The economic and political isolation of poor minorities in the
inner cities is caused by flight or sprawl, and fragmentation.
The movement further away from the central cities to the
suburbs is sprawl. The effect of the creation of rigid
boundaries, which separate municipalities from each other and
more importantly from the central core, is fragmentation. As a
result of these forces, minorities find themselves in
neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, where four out of ten
of their neighbors (or they themselves) are poor. Of the more
than 8.2 million people who live in these areas, more than
half are Black, a quarter are Hispanic.
The residential segregation and concentration of poverty in
neighborhoods inhabited by Blacks did not come about
accidentally. It was constructed and is perpetuated through
governmental housing and transportation policies,
institutional practices and private behaviors. In the 1940s
and 1950s, the Federal Housing Administration pursued an
explicit policy against granting mortgages for homes in
minority or integrated neighborhoods, and preferred to back
new construction rather than the purchase of existing units.
Essentially, the FHA paid Whites to leave the central cities
and confined Blacks to the central cities, which were, in
turn, divested by the federal government and private capital.
The national highway program facilitated exit from the central
city and destabilized many urban neighborhoods. “Urban
renewal” efforts destroyed stable Black neighborhoods. Local
governments have also contributed to the problems of
segregation and concentrated poverty through the ongoing
practice of exclusionary zoning (requiring large minimum lot
sizes or banning multi-family housing), which makes it nearly
impossible for poor families to find affordable housing in
White suburban communities. Similar private measures included
but are not limited to the practice of blockbusting by the
real estate profession and the creation of racially
restrictive covenants by homeowners.
The concentrated poverty that these kinds of policies create
is usually ruinous to people’s life chances. High levels of
crime, drug use and other social pathologies emerge and become
self-perpetuating. In addition to this poor quality of life,
residents experience severely limited social and economic
opportunities. The quality of schools, housing and municipal
services and the availability of transportation and employment
are undermined.
When one part of the region becomes dysfunctional, the entire
area is compromised. This is what is happening with the inner
cities and older suburbs — their difficulties are negatively
affecting entire regions. Among other things, a poor and
racially segregated urban core harms the reputation of the
metropolitan region as a whole and makes it less inviting to
international, national and local businesses as well as
families looking for homes.
But White suburbanites have traditionally resisted claims like
these that tie them to the inner city. The justification for
this resistance changes over time. The current justification
is that the “culture of poverty” found in the inner cities
will infiltrate protected suburban enclaves — a
justification that is simply a new name for a long-standing
racism directed toward the central cities.
White segregationism, or resistance to regionalism, manifests
itself in support of in-place strategies. Such strategies
attempt to move resources and opportunities to low-income
central city residents, and to generate improvements in urban
neighborhoods of color, as opposed to mobility-oriented
schemes, which aim to disperse central city residents to
existing opportunities. Whites want to keep minorities
“immobile” and out of their suburban neighborhoods.
In-place strategies frequently receive support from minorities
as well, though for different reasons. One motivation is the
preservation of cultural identity. As Cornel West and others
have argued, deconcentration of minorities can result in both
assimilation of minorities who are pocketed in more affluent
areas and dilution of culture in predominantly Black areas.
Minorities also fear the erosion of political power and the
loss of control over the political process if the political
base of their communities diminishes or the minority
population is dispersed throughout the region. Minorities
would often rather retain this control even if opportunity
structures are lacking in their communities. Political power
is actually a very complex issue. On the one hand, the
geographic concentration of minorities does not guarantee
their political cohesion, nor, given the challenges to
majority-minority legislative districts, does it guarantee the
election of minority candidates. Even if minority candidates
do win office, they are likely to be isolated in the
legislature. But on the other hand, mobility and the resulting
dispersion of Blacks throughout a metropolitan area may
generate a backlash in some places, reducing Black political
power. There is evidence of a White backlash against Black
interests when the Black population rises above 30% of a
voting district. While a mobility strategy seems to be a
better choice for the creation and maintenance of economic
power for communities of color, it is likely to undermine
political power.
In fact, both mobility and in-place strategies by themselves
are limited, because they address only part of the problem.
One proposes political and cultural control of areas isolated
and starved of economic resources; the other, the possibility
of access to resources at the cost of a stifled political
voice and cultural assimilation or marginalization. These
one-sided approaches must be rejected because they fail to
address both the economic and concentrated poverty issues of
the central core while at the same time respecting the right
to effective participation in political and cultural
institutions.
Federated Regionalism as a Response to Minority Resistance
Federated regionalism attempts to balance both approaches by
allowing entities within a metropolitan region to cooperate on
some levels and remain separate on others. It is based on two
premises: (1) many important issues within the inner cities
and older suburbs can only be adequately addressed at a
regional level and (2) some issues are of a local nature and
are thus more effectively addressed by a local government.
A federated approach recognizes the regional nature of racial
and economic segregation and provides a solution that
integrates regional policymaking with local governance. An
example is tax-base sharing, which, as practiced in
Minnesota’s Twin Cities, distributes the regional tax base
according to regional needs without compromising local
interests. Each city is allocated a certain share of the
regional tax base but controls the tax rate for its residents,
thereby maintaining authority and discretion over local
issues. Another example is Portland’s regional housing
strategy. There, the regional governing body sets requirements
for affordable housing, but municipalities maintain
responsibility for zoning and how they choose to meet their
share of the regional housing need.
While strategies of federated regionalism such as these can
provide a balance between local governance and regional
concerns, not all federated strategies strike that balance.
Those that fail to do so can actually perpetuate regional
fragmentation. An example is Indianapolis’ Uni-Gov, which
made regional many areas of governance but left the schools
under existing local segregated boundaries. The ideal balance
between “local” and “federated” must be responsive to
concerns of communities of color and the problems of
concentrated poverty. It is critical that racial minorities
participate in the effort to strike that balance.
Minorities have cause to be wary of regional solutions to the
problems of segregation and concentrated poverty. What little
political power they wield seems at risk of dilution if
regionalism further fragments their communities. In searching
for regional strategies, we must steer between two extremes.
One is to be so jealous of local control as to preserve
political and cultural control, but in areas that are isolated
and starved of economic resources. The other extreme is a
regionalism that offers access to resources at the cost of a
stifled political voice and cultural assimilation or
marginalization. We need a metropolitan approach that
addresses both the economic and concentrated poverty issues of
the central core while respecting the right to effective
participation in political and cultural institutions.
Tensions between local concerns and the needs of the whole
metropolitan region are healthy. Structuring these tensions in
a way that leads to true democratic cooperation in
metropolitan planning – cooperation that transcends racial
polarization – is the challenge.
john a. powell is Secretary of PRRAC's Board, is on the
faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School, where he
directs the Institute on Race & Poverty (415 Law Ctr., 229
19th Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55455. 612/625-5529, E-mail: irp@gold.tc.umn.edu.
[1864]
|
©Copyright 1992-2006 Poverty & Race Research Action
Council |
|
|
