How Transportation Segregates a City

After our class discussion on how cities can be separate spheres of public and private space and how we can create a non-sexist city, I became very interested in the idea of how transportation may be restricting access to certain groups of people. In the article, "What Would a Non-Sexist City Be Like", they discussed how the lack of transportation was not accommodating to the working woman. It was clear that with urban sprawl, women were practically forced to remain in their home to take care of the duties that were typically thought to be women's work because they did not have the access or amenities needed to travel to a paid job. Public transportation is meant to provide mobility to everybody but in many cases it ends up limiting many.

There are many cases of transportation separating communities in America. When highways are built they often isolate lower income neighborhoods from the rest of the city. Americas public transportation system is meant to provide opportunity to those who may not be able to afford a car but still need access to jobs or grocery stores. An article from The Atlantic discusses a study done at NYU that connected the public transportation use and higher rates of unemployment. The article mentions just how much humans rely on being mobile in order to access things such as schools, healthcare, jobs, and basic necessities.

In many cases, transportation, like the bus or a subway, located in lower income areas has fairly poor upkeep. I am from Columbus, Ohio and there are many bus stops in the downtown area which do not have shelters to protect waiting passengers from rain or snow. Another article from Slate discusses how transportation in New Orleans was affected after Hurricane Katrina hit. Many neighborhoods in New Orleans are still feeling the effects from the hurricane, especially the lower income neighborhoods. According to the article, 77% of the streetcar lines had been repaired but only 29% of the bus routes were repaired. The buses were once used to transport residents of the city to and from work, yet the streetcars were used to transport tourist’s downtown. With the lack of transportation, many people are forced to live in poverty years after the disaster. In a case like New Orleans, it may be hard for the city to provide necessary funding to transportation. However for cities who can provide an upgraded transportation system to their residents, it would provide a better city dynamic in the long run.  

Articles used:

How America's Failing Public Transportation Increases Inequality

How America's Transportation System Discriminates Against the Most Vulnerable

Exclusionary Architecture: The High Line

An interesting topic this week in class was how a built environment can be defined as being racist or classist. The article entitled, “Racism in Three Dimensions: South African Architecture and the Ideology of White Superiority,” explained how the South African architecture of the land that has been built during years and years of colonialism still reinforces racist ideals. The designed space is known as exclusionary architecture and is purposely made to limit interactions between races. To do this, they use high walls, razor wire and purposely discourage house visits.

The idea of exclusionary architecture is continued into modern day design schemes in America and reflect an era where civil rights were not given in abundance. Another article that highlights this is written by Sarah Schindler and talks about how racism can be instilled through the physical design of a built environment. Several points in the article lead to the issue of gentrification or towns that get divided by highway placement in typically black areas. The author believes that the issues that institute these decisions is when planners choose focus on pedestrian flow and civil engineering rather than equal access for all.

Robert Moses would be a good example of someone who used these exclusionary tactics when building up New York City in the mid-20^th century. He had big ideas of grandeur when planning the city that lead to black neighborhoods being split in half by major highway systems and train tracks. While these highways and tracks were built to exclude those below and between, there is new life being breathed into them within the last few years. Literally.

The High Line https://i.ytimg.com/vi/m-X5wYdqW6s/maxresdefault.jpg

In order to combat the decaying highway systems and abandoned railroad tracks that bring down property value in New York City neighborhoods, a renewal movement decided to transform the spaces. The high line runs through public housing but has transformed into a middle-class oasis. While the thought behind the transformation was to bring the community together, they still struggle with inclusion with the project due to the lack of input from residents nearby.

The High Line http://tonysimone.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Abington-House-High-Line.png

If the built environment isn’t built with race in mind, it is built with class or gender in mind. The exclusion process still takes place even with the renewed effort to prevent it and maintain equity in an area.

For a more in-depth look on the discussion of the High Line, https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/05/03/how-the-high-line-changed-nyc/

To read the article by Sarah Schindler on this topic, exclusionary architecture, https://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/architectural-exclusion

The home, women's oppression, and capitalism

After our intriguing class discussions the other week in regards to the home and the ideology of separate spheres, I wanted to do more research on the home as a source of women’s oppression, as well as the vital role played by unpaid domestic labor (done primarily by women) in the maintenance of the capitalist system.

While we discussed the home as a site for the production of gender identity and gendered difference, we did not dive more deeply into the origins of the feminization of the home, nor did we look into the origins of women’s oppression and its relation to the home.

I would argue that both the gendered division of labor, made apparent through the separation of public and private spheres, and women’s oppression itself have concrete, material origins in the development of class society.

Frederick Engels located the root of women’s oppression in the formation of the nuclear family, which emerged for the sole purpose of passing on private property from one generation to the next in class society.

Furthermore, Engels argues that women’s oppression is a result of the dominance of production for exchange in combination with the gendered division of labor. Basically, because women have the ability to bear children, they were excluded from public production, which was left for men to do, and which was also valued more in society. Engels remarks, “the modern individual family is founded on the open or concealed domestic slavery of the wife, and modern society is a mass composed of these individual families as its molecules.”

The association of women with the “private sphere” (i.e. the home) is not separate from the capitalist economic system, rather, it is a direct development of its emergence and plays a crucial role in its maintenance.

Domestic labor (cooking meals, doing laundry, cleaning, raising children) is an essential component to the reproduction and maintenance of workers for the capitalist system. “The burden for the reproduction of labor power still lies primarily within the working-class family–and women’s role within it–both for enabling today’s generation of workers to replenish themselves so they can return to their jobs each day and for rearing the next generation of workers through childhood. The working-class family is extremely valuable to the capitalist system as a cheap means of reproducing labor power”. Thus, the unpaid labor done by women in the private sphere is essential to the capitalist system, ultimately contributing to capitalists' profits as they exploit their workers.

Furthermore, even as women are increasingly entering the workforce (or the public sphere of production), they are still expected to take on the brunt of the domestic labor within the private sphere. Thus, the privatization of reproduction is intrinsic to the capitalist system. This remains true even as some working-class men begin to take on domestic labor. The end to the privatization of domestic labor, the perpetuation of the nuclear family, and, ultimately, women's oppression can only come about through a complete revitalization and transformation of the mode of production in society itself.

Homelessness

When I saw that we were going to cover homelessness in this class I knew I had the prefect article to discuss. I was watching TV while getting ready for work when E:60 came on ESPN. The main story that morning was about a woman, Schuye LaRue, who was once a professional basketball player and is now homeless on the streets of Washington D.C. Schuye is also a contrast to the specialist homeless literature of Britain. The article says, “noting that women are less likely than men to sleep rough or to engage in other activities (such as begging) that mark them as ‘visibly homeless’” (122). She prefers to sleep outside where she can have fresh air. She panhandles outside the 7-Eleven and says God bless you to everyone who stops in front of her. And there is something else that sets her apart from the homeless literature of Britain, she has a mental illness.   

Schuye suffers from schizophrenia and it is essentially the main reason she is homeless. She stopped taking her medication and her mom was forced to kick her out or they would both end up homeless. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration says that between 20 and 25 percent of homeless people in the United States suffer from some form of severe mental illness. Homeless and homeless suffering from mental illness tend to be ignored by the mainstream media in the United States. When I Googled mental illness and homelessness only two mainstream media articles made up the first page of the search. One was from USA Today in 2014 and the other was from this year in the LA Times. It seems to me that homelessness is ignored by the American population because it is something they do not want to see. Or, like me, they have seen homeless people begging on the street corner and they have an IPhone and it makes you question whether or not they are really homeless. Homelessness and mental health issues need to be discussed in this country as intertwined and separate issues.

Today, Schuye is in jail for felony possession of drugs. She has not been cooperating with her public defender. While it is not a mental hospital, at least she is off the streets.

http://www.espn.com/espnw/culture/feature/article/20162095/schuye-larue-living-streets-washington-dc-want-your-help

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/27/mental-health-homeless-series/14255283/

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-mentally-ill-homeless-20170807-htmlstory.html

http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/Mental_Illness.pdf

GRACE KIM: How cohousing can make us happier (and live longer)

I inadvertently saved all these TED Talks over the last several weeks that coincide with our class discussions.

Here's another one I watched this morning about 'co-housing' and healthy living:

BONUS CONTENT: 'The feeling of home' blog

I keep up with an active blog on my personal/professional website, and this week I wrote about 'The feeling of home' -- inspired by some of our class discussions, reading materials, and personal life moments.

Here's a quick highlight:

Connecting the lessons I’ve learned in the past year, I realize that central to this idea of homemaking is the feeling of home in my own body. In California, I was eating and acting at optimal weight – and felt weightless about my health worries. In Ohio, I’ve always struggled to find myself ‘at home’ in my own body; I wonder now if this psychological dissociation of ‘home-seeking’ in Ohio has prevented me from remaining truly ‘at home’ in my own body.

Just as I wrote about this new homecoming on my blog last month, fellow blogger and Internet acquaintance Candace Rose Rardon phrased it this way: “the greatest homecoming of all [is] coming home to ourselves.”

Happy Reading Day!

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OLUTIMEHIN ADEGBEYE: Who belongs in a city?

Another TED Talk to share!

OluTimehin Adegbeye shares the story of her city, Lagos (Nigeria), and how the rights of its poorest people to BE in their own communities is being striped away.

Like so many cities across the world, Lagos leaders are implementing a 'restoration' (read: gentrification) process, in an effort to become the "next Dubai."

In Adegbeye's own words: "Last October, the Governor announced plans to demolish every single waterfront settlement in Lagos. There are more than 40 of these indigenous communities all over the city, with over 300,000 people living in them. Otodo Gbame, a hundred-year-old fishing village with a population about three-quarters that of Monaco and similar potential for beachfront luxury was one of the first to be targeted."

But the city of Lagos wasn't founded on rich oil elites -- it was founded preciously by those same indigenous fishing communities that are now scrambling to get out alive.

Land grabs throughout the entire African continent are being realized more and more as "a worrisome trend" per this UN blog -- but I (and countless scholars, I'm sure) see this trend as directly linked to Africa's colonial history. For how long has this geographic region of the world been seen as a catch-all continent for land and labor? Longer than "recent."  

Land grabs are exercised by both foreign investors (like South Korea) and city elites within the African countries themselves. I remember reading about the controversial topic of land grabs in Africa last year for 'Gender, Environment, and Development.' I am by no means an expert, but this is what I remember: Land grabs can sometimes provide economic and development opportunities, but more often than not pose problems for water and food security. Gender is rarely, if ever, considered. 

"Informal settlements are incorrectly named as the problem" for economic development, Adegbeye continues in her talk. "In fact, the real problems are the factors that create them, like the entrenchment of poverty, social exclusion and state failures. When our governments frame slums as threats in order to justify violent land grabs or forced evictions, they're counting on those of us who live in formal housing to tacitly and ignorantly agree with them. Rather, we must remind them that governments exist to serve not only those who build and live in luxury homes, but also those who clean and guard them. 

Our realities may differ, but our rights don't."

By denying the humanity of those who "live in slums" -- as if by choice, to purposefully 'de-beautify' a city's well-being -- we risk the lives and livelihoods of people who make up those cities.

Already, the indigenous communities in Lagos have faced relentless police and state violence, forced evictions, and sometimes death for refusing to leave their own homes. And the violence, says Adegbeye, continues to this day.

To me, this story is an example of spatial justice: "the intersection of space and social justice" per the Design Studio for Social Intervention (reading Sept. 7). 

The oppression faced by these indigenous communities of Lagos is directly tied to their occupation of space. To quote from the Design Studio reading: "any and every marginalized group has had space itself used as part of the terrain through which they experience injustice in their day to day lives."

This line from Adegbeye really got me: "poor people don't generally tend to just disappear because they've been stripped of everything they have."

So, where are these people of Lagos expected to go next?