My first content posted to a weblog... Unfortunately, this is incomplete. However on Herb’s urging, I decided to post something for comments and continue the analysis and review in a further posting.
Constructing Inequality by Susan Bickford raises issues many of which I have never really considered in depth. Let me preface that by saying that I grew up in the "City" of Waterville, Maine (pop. 15,000) which has no gated communities and no ghettos. It is however still a somewhat divided city based on socio-economic status. Waterville has the poorer part of town - the "South-End" and the up-scale neighborhoods extending toward Colby College. The State of Maine is currently ranked as one of the "whitest" states in the nation with 96% White and less than 1% Black, Asian, or Hispanic. I currently reside in rural Sidney, Maine (pop. 3500) where public democratic participation still thrives as our form of governmental decision making is the town meeting. Our town still decides the important issues before it by a show of hands. If I have firsthand experience with the "gates" of Bickford’s essay, it is of the gated community which is the State of Maine and of the invisible gates which are lines on a map.
That said, I can see the validity of some of Bickford’s main points in the terms of large cities and the surrounding suburbs. However, I cannot agree with some of her conclusions. Her ideal city would be a place where a large number of people of different races and cultures live and work creating a vital culture which wields fair and democratic political power. A fine ideal but how do we achieve it. Her model for this democratic society is the Greek city-state where she says, "political philosophy emerged through critical contemplation of these concrete cities; it engaged a variety of political and ethical themes, including... the problems of citizenship in a context of formal equality" America was founded on the principle of equality; as in the Declaration of Independence,
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
In America, we certainly place high value on Safety and Freedom to choose. The method for democratic decision making is one vote per person or if you live in Sidney, Maine, one vote in person. One person - one vote, fair and equal representation, that is if everyone is informed on the issues and then actually casts a vote.
The high value which we - as a society - put on privacy, safety, security, and comfort tends to insulate us from the rest of society and especially tends to segregate us from those who are different from us. I would say that inherent human nature to seek associations and relationships with people of similar values, ideals and status. Extending those values into the design of public spaces may serve to homogenize the experience of those spaces by segregating groups along ethnic and socio-economic lines. Our desire for security and comfort may drive us apart.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
First, let me say that incomplete posts are good. Let me also say that if this is what it means to be incomplete, we're setting a pretty high standard!
So here's a thought. Let's say that the welcoming of diversity in our everyday lives is a muscle that we can exercise -- that the more we do it, the stronger we get (and the more we enjoy it, as well). One of Bickford's primary arguments is that we build environments that allow us to avoid that exercise, just as we build ways to avoid physical exercise (with the inevitable results we all know). As she says when framing her argument on p. 356, "...the architecture of our urban and suburban lives provides a hostile environment for the development of democratic imagination and participation." I think one of the key (and overlooked) words in her argument is "imagination." That is, we can't even imagine what democratic lives look like, since our environments don't let us experience the pleasures of having diverse interactions so that we might value them and want more.
Herb:
It is interesting that you hit on this point, because it is one which I had underlined, commented on in the margins and was planning to discuss in the outline of my no longer "incomplete" Blog. She speaks of the "dangerous consequences" of "purifying public spaces of fear, discomfort and uncertainty" I agree with her that the comfort of modern life with its focus on privacy and may have resulted in "the fall of the public man". Perhaps we can take some risk, excercise our diversity muscle, and redevelop our public selves thus fostering democratic discourse.
Post a Comment