Guest Post: ACA Ruling Effects on Labor

It's a special day at Surly Urbanism as we have our first official guest post from my man, Steve ( steven.howland@gmail.com). He's a classmate of mine and specializes on issues in economic development and regional science. Show him some love. And, as always, hit up the comments. Without further ado...

Some labor market considerations from the ACA decision

It’s been two weeks since we have all learned of the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Since the announcement, Republicans have been roiling over the ruling while ramping up efforts to repeal the act in its entirety (the House just held their 31st vote of this Congress to repeal the act). Democrats, meanwhile, have been largely ready to move on from the discussion and on to “greater” issues in the national policy spectrum. What has been largely missing from any of the national media attention around the ACA has been the effect the Supreme Court decision will have on labor. While the individual mandate was found constitutional under Congressional tax powers, the Supreme Court also determined that the states cannot be penalized for failing to expand their Medicaid programs to cover everyone up to 133% of the poverty level as envisioned under the law. Both rulings will have significant effects on many different groups of workers. The first of which is how employers will respond to the necessity of insurance coverage or facing a tax. The second and equally if not more troubling effect is the implication for those falling in what I am terming the insurance gap.

The original purpose of the act was to insure all Americans. This was due to the large number of uninsured in the U.S. (nearly 50 million in 2010 according to the Census Bureau) creating a large amount of non-coverage charges and in effect passing those costs on to insured consumers. Aside from collective cost issues, insurance for all is important for labor concerns as well. Gallup has been tracking the number of uninsured in the U.S. through their well-being index and found that since 2008, the percentage of adults 18 and older without health insurance has increased from 14.8% to 17.1% in 2011. Much of that increase can be attributed to the disastrous jobs situation in the U.S. since 2007, but we cannot be assured that the rate will decrease as jobs come back. That is evident in a more recent Gallup poll which has been tracking employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) by age group from 2008 to mid-2012. Even though jobs have been added to the economy every month since late 2010 (see BLS report here), the percentage of the population that has ESI coverage has continued to drop substantially. From 2008 to 2010, the best employed age group (26-64 year olds) saw a 3.5% decrease in employer coverage, and it dropped another 2.2% under increasing employment conditions. While it is very likely the continued decrease in employer provided insurance is due to cost cutting by employers to cope with the economy and the lack of bargaining power that labor unions have to keep the benefits, there are no widespread surveys to truly understand what is happening.

The ACA is meant to remedy the loss of ESI to some extent in 2014 by implementing taxes on employers not providing insurance and tax incentives for individuals and families making under 400% of the poverty level. By taxing ($167/month per full time employee in excess of 30 with increasing penalties over time) employers with the equivalent of 50 or more full-time employees if any of their employees are not covered by an employer-sponsored health plan, the ACA is expecting employers to take a high road approach and maintain or add health insurance plans for their employees. The fault in that expectation is that those taxes rest far below the cost of actually insuring their employees and is likely to lead many employers, especially those with fewer than 100 employees to opt out of paying for insurance if they are not already doing so. Companies that are currently offering insurance to their employees may reevaluate whether or not to continue insurance coverage for their employees. This is due to the tax incentives that are available to workers earning between 133% and 400% of the poverty level. Several options are available to employers to comply with the law, and one such option is to give their employees a free choice voucher in order to purchase their own insurance in an insurance exchange. A McKinsey Quarterly report from from a survey they conducted last year found that when employers give their employees a voucher to purchase their own plans, 70% of employees chose a less expensive plan than the employer was going to offer, thus saving the company money. However, that may not provide the kind of coverage an employee needs or desires.

For those left to purchase insurance on their own, the tax credits available to individuals and families earning under 400% of the poverty level could affect their willingness to pressure their employer for another option. Under the incentive rules, those at 400% of the poverty line will see their health care expenses capped at 9.5% of their income. That means a family earning $80,000 a year could be responsible for up to $7600/year in health costs or $633/month and anything above that would be covered by tax incentives. The incentives may be insignificant enough that a backlash could ensue. With the amount of debt the American public has accrued, asking people to contribute nearly 10% of their income to health insurance may be a burden they will be unable to cover. Luckily, there are hardship exemptions, but how lenient the IRS will be with those is a large grey area at this point. The concern for those at the tail end of the tax incentive income bracket is likely to be blunted substantially due to the fact that higher incomes usually mean employers act more competitively with those employees and will be more likely to offer health benefits to do so. As such, those left without ESI at the tail end of the bracket will likely have fewer collective voices to bring attention to the cost burden problem. The larger concern out of this is that without the Medicaid expansion in all states, there will be millions of low-income workers that will be severely harmed by the ACA.

At the lower end of the economic ladder poor and low-income workers were to see large benefits come to them from the ACA. The Supreme Court ruling put some of that in jeopardy. Without being able to penalize states that do not agree to expand Medicaid rolls to include everyone up to 133% of the poverty level, millions of workers are likely to see large health care bills in their future. Seven Republican governors have pledged to not expand Medicaid and many more can be expected to opt out considering their involvement in the lawsuit against the Federal government over the ACA (see map below or a larger version here). Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a letter to the states on July 11 saying that should they opt out of the Medicaid expansion, their low-income population will be eligible for hardship waivers. That’s a relief for low-income workers, but it also means they will fall into the insurance gap by being the only substantial group, except for undocumented immigrants, that will remain uninsured. At the very least, it appears that states can still be penalized with the loss of all Medicaid funding if they restrict access to Medicaid any further, providing they do not file for a exemption due to budgetary constraints. The insurance problem for low-income workers is only further complicated by looking at where low-income workers are employed and how that impacts their insurance status.

Low-income workers are rarely provided ESI for the primary reason that a large majority of them are part-time employees. A 2009 report from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey showed that between 1996-97 and 2005-06 even full-time low-income workers have been left out of ESI coverage (See Chart 1 recreated from the report). With the growing number of low-income workers and part-time employment, the situation becomes more dire. Nearly half the 7.5 million worker growth of low-income workers in the U.S. was in part-time employment (3.6 million) while most the other half was growth in unemployment (See Chart 2 recreated from the MEPS report).

Chart 1: Insurance Status by Family Income for Non-Elderly, Full-time/full-year workers excluding self-employed, 2005-06#

Chart 2: Population of Low-income Workers by Employment Status, in Millions: 1996-97 to 2005-061

If it is expected that low-income workers are to be helped out by the employer requirements of the law, that expectation is likely to fall short. Part-time employees are not covered under the employer mandate portion of the ACA, but large employers will be penalized for employing a part-time employee that has claimed a premium credit for insurance from a state insurance exchange. This could make large employers more selective about who they hire and may lead employers to re-evaluate the costs and benefits of having part-time vs. full-time employees. Should employers find the costs pan out to have more full-time employees, that will be good for a select few workers, but many others will go unemployed as a result. Business size will also factor into the situation considerably. According to the MEPS report, in 2005-06 nearly 70% of full-time non-elderly low-income workers were employed in establishments with fewer than 100 employees. Over 45% of those were working in establishments with fewer than 25 employees. Since the ACA only mandates that employers with 50 or more employees participate, the growth in ESI coverage is likely to be minimal for low-income workers. While tax credits will be available to small-businesses (those with fewer than 25 employees) to provide or maintain health benefits for their employees, it is not likely that the small businesses in which a majority of low-income workers are employed will be providing any additional health coverage than they already are. Even then, the tax credits only last for 2 years.

What will be left is a fairly significant portion of the population that will still be uninsured. These will be households that already are struggling from high costs of housing and transportation in most metropolitan areas. Low-income workers that fall into the insurance gap between qualifying for Medicaid and without ESI will face a problematic labor market status. Their lower income competition will have health care provided to them so that they can stay healthier and thus more productive. Since they provide a lower labor cost to the employer, their usefulness to the employer will put them at a labor market advantage over just slightly higher income workers. Meanwhile, by not having insurance, the low-income workers that fall into the gap can see their health falter leaving them at a disadvantage over other workers of similar income that were able to get insurance through their employer. Not only can their health put them at a disadvantage, any medical emergencies could easily put them in severe debt and limit their employment opportunities as more employers are checking credit scores for potential employees.

Ultimately, many millions of workers will be aided by the ACA as it is implemented over the next few years even with problems to fix for those in the insurance gap and the large amount of pure speculation in how employers will decide to act. Employers that already offer insurance are likely to continue offering insurance in the future, but if they employ a large proportion of low-income workers, they may find it better to offer vouchers instead. Should this law actually transition employers into hiring more full-time employees, we could see a climb in unemployment. One thing that is not likely is that the tax penalties or insurance premium costs will substantially dent hiring, especially among employers at or near the 50 employee mark as many conservatives have claimed. The reason for this is that the tax penalties will not be substantial enough to offset the profit growth obtained by expanding employment and, in effect, output. Also, Factcheck.org checked the GOP claims that the law will kill jobs, and their analysis found only the Congressional Budget Office and The Lewin Group had provided non-partisan analyses on the job effects of the law as of January 2011. Both said the job losses would be small with most the losses made up by gains in the healthcare industry. The Lewin Group expects some employers to turn to more part-time employment, but I still suspect that employers would be more likely to turn to vouchers for all employees or more full-time employment over the risk of employing a part-time worker that could trigger tax penalties far in excess of the cost of the part-time worker. For employers that choose to accept the tax penalties, it would be possible to employ part-time employees with no risk. In the end, the complications and inefficiencies brought about by this law and the subsequent Supreme Court ruling will make many wish we had a single-payer system instead. But, since this is what we were given, it is the system we will have to work with for the foreseeable future.

Ignored Prophets: Why no Black urbanists?

A recent blog post is making the rounds of the twitter-sphere and causing a little bit of a buzz. The post asks the provocative question: where are the Black urbanists?

When I first read this piece I must admit that I nodded right along and found it a bit refreshing. But upon further reflection, and discussion with @rjkoscielniak and @tressiemcphd over email and beers, I became increasingly discontent and have decided that I disagree with the premise of the piece for a few reasons. There are black urbanists. We've simply been ignored or excluded. In other words, it's not community activist recalcitrance, white flight, or even large cultural perceptions of urban=bad/dirty that have limited the voices of Black urbanists, but widespread structural and cultural racism, and an urbanist community that is largely silent on issues that many Black urbanists, activists, and scholars have advocated over the life of this country.

Where art thou, urbanist?

But first let's examine what it is we mean by "urbanist".  Pete Saunders actually gives the reader a couple of definitions that are slightly contradictory. Not in a way that totally invalidates his points, but it goes to the difficulty of trying to define who can be classified as an "urbanist" and the inclusion or exclusion of Black voices. The first distinction is in delineating "traditional" urbanist areas of concentration: academics and intellectuals concerned about urban form characterized by abstraction and design-centered approaches. The second includes issue advocates such as urban agriculture activists, transit proponents, walkability folks etc. These two distinctions are narrow and fairly specific (one could challenge them, but I applaud trying to better bracket what we mean by "urbanist"), but Saunders then shoots himself in the foot by referencing the Planetizen Top 100 Urban Thinkers that includes multiple activists, scholars, politicians that don't fit those two prior areas, unless he wants to expand his notion of activists a lot wider. Jacob Riis, Henry Ford, and Prince Charles are all included on the list and do not fit the narrow definitions first offered. 


To his credit, Saunders fully recognizes that the fields of urban planning, architecture and other design-centered industries have very low minority representation, thus limiting the potential range of prominent black voices from those fields. So, already, we need to recognize past structural barriers to entry to Black voices and contemporary structural issues that potentially limit the ability of Blacks to be heard. But that does not explain the total indifference to prominent Black commentators on urban life and urbanism in other fields, including planning.


Some Black Urbanists


First, let's see if we can find some Black urbanists that would fit Saunders' more traditional definitions and see if we can recognize these people as respected and influential thinkers. The two people that instantly jumped out in conversation with folks were Professors June Manning Thomas and William Julius Wilson.

Professor Thomas has authored or edited multiple books examining issues of social equity, racial justice and urban development. There are few active Black planning scholars today that compare to her notoriety and expertise and there are very few scholars at all in planning that examine issues of race, re-development, decline and urban history like Dr. Thomas.

Professor William Julius Wilson probably needs very little introduction to most of the readers of this blog, but it is not an exaggeration to say that he re-defined our concept of poverty, the ghetto, and work. There are few more eloquent critics of urban development and its role in exacerbating existing social and racial disparity.

We can argue over scoring points in identifying Black urbanists but when you talk about intellectual concepts of space as well as strong advocates, then I would say you would be hard pressed to find two scholars more esteemed than Thomas and Wilson. Yet these two are nowhere to be found in the post or Planetizen's list.

But extending our concept of urbanist to a broader range of individuals, like those found on Planetizen's list yields an even richer amount of Black urban voices. Some of these folks are no longer with us while some are. The point is to show that we have a MULTITUDE of Black urbanist voices that are not commonly accepted or cited (I'll try to give some theories as to why they're so ignored further on).

• W.E.B. DuBois- other than being one of the most eloquent critics of American racism and a prolific scholar, DuBois' The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Story  is a landmark bit of urban sociology and geography as well as a great exploration of the socio-spatial relations of segregation in a northern city. A true urbanism project.
• Elijah Anderson- noted sociologist and urban ethnographer that has also helped to redefine our perceptions of the "street" and the people who live there. A strong voice for marginalized and ghettoized populations and a great Black urbanist scholar. 
• James Baldwin- a great writer and critic of American racism, Baldwin also wrote extensively about growing up in Harlem and the unique rhythms, circumstances, the simultaneous expressions of hope despair, love and hate, suffering and salvation that define the lives of poor Black people
• Langston Hughes- few people have better illustrated the lives of Black people in verse and his portraits of Black life in the city resonate still
• Martin Luther King Jr.- seriously, if we include Jacob Riis on the Planetizen list, then you gotta have Dr. King. The civil rights movement in many ways was an urban movement and few people spoke as eloquently on the hope of this country and its cities and their abilities to accept Black people fully than King.
• Malcolm X- A product of our cities and our prisons. Malcolm X, and the Nation of Islam, were urban-based activists and their demands for self-determination, self-defense and community economic development are rich, deep models of alternative urban life.
• Franz Fanon- while not an American Black person his anti-colonial works were once again based largely in cities and from observation of the city lives of marginalized and colonized peoples.
• Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and the Black Panther Party- an urban revolutionary organization that demonstrated the power of local political action and the possibilities of different ways of organizing our own lives and society in a way that was more inclusive. The party stands as a great example of a radical urbanism that is often ignored by many urbanist and planning scholars.
• Majora Carter- while Carter is still relatively new on the scene her advocacy for environmental justice, livability, and equality stands as a strong guide for urbanists that are legitimately interested in sustainability and the city. Not that one should care but she has a national TED talk. I mean, c'mon, do you need a bigger sign in our new world of one's importance?

This list could go on and on. I also recognize that the list is incredibly light on women, queer folk of color and many other groups. While I cannot provide an exhaustive list, I wanted to try and balance names that many people should be familiar with and show that there are a variety of Black urbanist voices but they are not recognized within the urbanism community.

Can we get some love?

Why aren't these folks recognized as visionary urban or urbanist thinkers? I have two ideas why. 

The first, as Saunders accurately pointed out, is that Black folks are not heavily represented in the "traditional" urbanism fields. Architecture, as a profession, has a long history of trying to improve its diversity. We find similar disparity in many design-oriented fields when we examine minority and woman representation. Until we can better prepare Black students to enter these fields as well as reform these fields to better value racial and gender diversity, then this disparity will persist. 

The second reason is a bit more subtle, but it has to do with the politics of these commentators. If you examine some of the celebrated urbanists that Saunders cites by name and the Planetizen list, then it becomes evident after a while that the politics of many contemporary urban thinkers rests squarely within the status quo or actually veers a bit to the right. Thinkers like Flordia, Duany, or a Kunstler have not been strong advocates of racial or social justice. While their work may seem radical in that it questions some closely-held cultural beliefs over car ownership, sprawl etc their views that do not really actively trouble existing social, political, or economic relations. In fact, it is quite telling that when you examine the Planetizen list that the openly radical, American thinkers all were practicing or directly influential more than 30 years ago. The closest we get is Norm Krumholz and equity planning, but we can't pretend that this is a dominant urban development paradigm. In fact, when we look at contemporary big-time thinkers, we often find that they say very little on issues of racial equity, social justice, environmental justice, poverty alleviation etc...areas of concern that traditionally have been areas where Black academics have focused.

It is this cordoning off of acceptable areas of urban inquiry that is a major blow to the notoriety of Black urbanists. It is telling that Saunders, when listing urban "advocates" as part of his urbanist dualism, does not mention housing affordability advocates, transit justice advocates, or environmental justice groups as urbanist interest groups. Organizations like PolicyLink, headed by Angela Glover Blackwell, is a national thought leader and strong advocate for urbanism based on equity and access for people of color and the poor, yet organizations like PolicyLink and thinkers like Blackwell are not included as urbanism advocates? Why? Because their concepts of urbanism and the city explicitly challenge the awful social relations, based in racism, segregation, and neoliberal development, that dictate much of urban life for marginalized folks of all races and creeds. Asking for more bike lanes and transit oriented development, while different and "progressive", aren't necessarily attacking fundamental relations between the state and capital or the people and the state. 

This is why communities of color and poorer communities scoff at the advancement of bike lanes and certain kinds of redevelopment. It is not a knee-jerk response to have neighborhoods "by blacks, for blacks" but it is often a response to being ignored for years, living in areas that are already transitioning (primarily through displacement), and being disgusted that the concerns of a privileged few are given credence over decades of requests for assistance from city governments. Black urbanists and activists have often acted as advocates for this ignored populations.

It is this often radical turn of Black urbanist commentary and thought that has been left outside of the consideration of most mainstream urban commentators precisely because they trouble and problematize existing social relations. In this sense, I celebrate the lack of a black Richard Florida or Jane Jacobs because as popular as these scholars are, the politics they embody have been implicated in increased gentrification, labor market bifurcation, and continued indifference to the plight of communities of color and other marginalized populations.

Do not despair, urbanists of color. We're out there. Our voices are loud and radical and we have a tradition that stretches back over a century. If we are not recognized, it is because we still often insist on holding America and its cities to account and to imagine a country and a city that is defined not by inequality, gentrification, and social exclusion but opportunity, equality, and inclusion.

Creative Class Pile-On: It's the Politics, Y'all

An article for thirty two mag has been making its way around the twitterverse recently and has got folks all riled up! Apparently, the creative class theory, championed by the hustler supremo Richard Florida, may not work!!

This piece has excited a lot of people in the "urbanist" twitter world and has people (finally) starting to look a lot harder at the policies and theories that Florida has been pimping out for the past decade. While I find this soul-searching to be refreshing I feel like we all need to take a step back and ask a really central question.

Where the hell have you people been for the past ten years?

Seriously, there is absolutely NOTHING new to be found in this article in terms of its questioning of the creative class that couldn't be found in academic and popular press by a myriad of authors and commentators. The author cites Jaime Peck, who's brilliant piece "Struggling with the Creative Class" came out in 2005, and has been a constant critic of the creative class thesis nearly since its inception.

I'm glad the author has summarized a bunch of recent empirical findings challenging the evidence Florida presents, but the critique is still amazingly lacking. Forgive me, but I find it hard to garner a lot of sympathy over one's disillusionment because your neighbor wasn't a great conversationalist and because the sleepy college town you moved to ended up being...a sleepy college town. At the end of the day, we learn that the evidence still shows that returns to scale matter for agglomeration (read: big cities are likely to grow and foster economically, creative or otherwise than smaller areas) and that while arts and cultural products and amenities can help one develop a city, they are not sufficient and still require large enough populations to support them.

Like I said. This is all well and good. It shouldn't be a surprise to a lot of planners/urbanists or economists, but sometimes stuff like this takes time to spread. What does royally tick me off, though, is the utter indifference to the politics and neoliberal urban development and political approaches that rest underneath the creative class thesis and how this piece utterly ignores them.

It's telling that the article mentioned above accompanied another article on the "new"/"creative" economy that centered on Brooklyn. While this piece did not have a title to let you know it was critiquing the creative class it ended up being a much more rich, nuanced, and informative view of the consequences of unquestioningly celebrating the "creatives" and the kind of economy that Florida and his ilk push. Succinctly, the benefits to the new economy are incredibly unevenly distributed, risk is further heaped upon the individual through greater subcontracting/freelancing, not to mention the ever present gentrification and residential displacement. All of these issues, in terms of being challenged, are noticeably absent from the former piece and challenge deeper held assumptions and desires that many people still have when they think about the "creative city".

And this is ultimately what irks me. The idea of the "creative city" and the "creative class" is not essentially challenged in the thirty two piece. The trappings of the creative city, like bike lanes, art studios, exciting night life are all desired, but the politics that creative class development engenders go unquestioned. Conveniently ignored is the fact that you can get all of those amenities without resorting to creative class type development schemes dependent on gentrification, labor market bifurcation, or fetishizing disgustingly shallow concepts of diversity like the "Gay Index". These are all things cities can and should be doing anyway to make the lived experience of their citizens better. Putting in bike lanes should be done so that communities have equal access to essential infrastructure. We should encourage the development of cultural spaces because art and culture possess a value unto themselves in addition to their ability to catalyze economic growth. We should attempt to strengthen the power of our part-time, contingent, and freelance workers as well as strengthen worker protections in our traditional service and manufacturing industries. But the creative class has nothing to say about ANY of that, because it's not concerned with the current residents of a city, or those that don't fit into the category of a "creative" worker (i.e. possesses a bachelors degree).

What makes the creative class thesis so dangerous is not that the empirical work is wrong (although, that's a huge red flag and has been known for YEARS) but that the politics it embodies is the dominant approach that many cities are taking to development today. It rests not on growing jobs, but on developing property. It rests not on "development" but on "revitalization". It's about attracting the creative class and not about educating everyone in your city to the highest degree possible. It's about celebrating contingent labor relations as "freedom" instead of trying to guarantee that all workers can have access to regular pay, good working conditions, and benefits in order to help them and their firms be more productive and happy. It's not about making a city better for everyone, but about attracting a new, preferred citizen (and a new form of citizenship) and removing the unwanted and the inconvenient.

So, yeah, I'm glad y'all have discovered the creative class doesn't hold any water. Welcome to 2005.

Black Scholarship Matters

***I will warn those about to read this post. I am still INCREDIBLY angry at this so my rage may come through in a typo or three or gratuitous profanity...I'll try to moderate it, but this is your warning.

I was working peacefully earlier today on a paper for my urban sociology course, trying to draw some links between sustainable development policies (specifically smart growth and new urbanist policies) and gentrification. I took a break to grab a burrito and logged on to twitter in order to catch up on the variety of news, commentary, and ratchetness that is my timeline. One of my followers, @tressiemcphd (a good follow, btw, if you're into issues of education) was up in arms over a recent article in the "Chronicle of Higher Education" and wrote a blog post in response. Like her, I refuse to link to chronicle article because I don't want to give this person any more views than is necessary. The blog post gives a good rundown.

You can check my timeline if you're interested in exactly what I said. This post is to talk about something that the author of that offending post at the chronicle refuses to see or just ignores. Black scholarship matters. I mean Black scholarship as in research performed by Black academics and research that focuses upon the experiences of Black people, not only in the US, but around the globe.

On the first observation, the importance of having Black, and by extensions any minority or marginalized, scholars. While many of us give lip-service to the notion of diversity, I can honestly say that my intellectual development would have been severely limited had it not been for the myriad scholars and commentators I have been forced and voluntarily decided to read. I am a planner and a scholar of cities. I cannot better understand how our cities organize themselves, the complex interplay of politics, space, and place, or the nature of work and economic development if I am not willing to listen to and come to a basic understanding of how other people, groups, etc view and live the city. My knowledge and understanding of the city is  more rich because I have read feminist critiques of our economic system and how patriarchy manifests and reproduces itself through labor practices and space. I become a smarter thinker and can ask more thoughtful questions because I have read the writings of farmworkers and Latino activists. I cannot grasp the more subtle attributes of urban form if I do not read about the ways in which planners and political institutions encouraged and reinforced racial and income segregation throughout American history. And frankly, many of these topics, questions, and ideas would not have been pursued if it were not for the fact that there were scholars of all different types with different experiences and concerns that asked these questions. You do not have the development of feminism without women, you do not have the rise of varied forms of ethnic and racial studies without scholars and activists of color, and you do not have serious examinations of sustainability without the hard work of environmental justice advocates and scholars and attorneys of color that have represented the interests of poor and marginalized communities that bear the disproportionate brunt of environmental costs. In other words, our understanding of the world and the myriad processes that exist within it is much richer BECAUSE we have scholars that are incredibly different.

On my second point, the legitimacy of studying the lived experiences and history of Black peoples. In case you were unaware, I'm a Black man. That means any variety of things, but one thing it certainly means is that I am aware that the lived experiences of Black people in America are unique and deserve study. The first reason why Black life deserves study is because Black people exist and our existence, in the US and around the world, has been defined by a constant struggle for freedom and justice. We are the descendants of slaves, and from the first moment an African was captured and set loose on the US, our struggle has mirrored the struggle that of this country's halting steps towards liberty.

The history of Black people is largely the history of America. From the colonial and early national dependence upon slavery for economic strength (including the construction of some of our most prized monuments and cities, to the bloodshed of the Civil War, both World Wars, the industrialization of America, to the Civil Rights movement, the great dramatic periods of American history are intimately connected to the lives of Black people. Our modern understandings of justice and civil rights are entirely due to the struggles of Black americans. In other words, Black people matter! But we matter not only because we have played integral parts in the creation and evolution of this country. We matter because we are human, and our experiences have been and continue to be largely shaped and influenced by our Blackness. History and our own lived experience, chronicled in books, music, film etc show that our stories matter and our important, not just for us, but for everyone else. To have this essential piece of our humanity, the idea that we matter because we exist, and that we matter because history, rejected by this woman is not simply an attack on Black studies or 5 grad students, but it is an attack on Black people. It seems that no matter how often it is shown that Black people are treated differently (almost ALWAYS to our detriment) as reflected in study after study after study our experiences still don't matter. This is an outright rejection of not only Black studies, but of the black lived experience.

It is a rejection of me and my life. It is a rejection of the experiences of my parents, who suffered through the traumas of segregation and desegregation. It is a rejection of all Black people. And it hurts so much because I'm not surprised.

I'm out.

Sprawl is not Dead...

Countless articles and blogs have breathlessly proclaimed the "Death of Sprawl" in light of new census data showing that exurb growth has stagnated or shrunk in many regions around the country. Planners and urbanist commentators have trumpeted the death of the sprawl and the rise of a new generation of people that can't wait to rush into multifamily housing complexes in mixed-use developments adjacent to light-rail stops and bike lanes, all while building iPhone apps in their spare time in between yarn-bombing trees and yoga flashmobs.

Forgive me if I seem less than sanguine about such calls. There are multiple issues that arise when we actually take a step back and think a bit about these pronouncements. I'll only cover a couple as there have  already been a few folks much smarter and established than me who have called for sanity in these pronouncements.

1. We're Counting Data in a Housing Slump


This is the most egregious, basic first-year grad school mistake made by commentators looking at this census data and proclaiming the end of sprawl in ignoring the business cycle. Have we forgotten that we have spent the better part of the entire first decade of the 21st century in recession? Even before the great financial crash, the US had suffered from sluggish economic growth as part of a hangover from tech stock speculation and 9-11. This anemic growth was bolstered by incredibly cheap credit that fueled a housing market bubble. When we could no longer extend credit, the bubble collapsed in on itself. Because of this, we've had a major drop in housing demand due to a loss of jobs, difficulty in obtaining credit, and in some regions there was certainly excess supply built in booming exurbs far from employment centers.

This recent census data is largely showing this effect of a HUGE housing collapse that's accompanied a stubborn recession. It makes sense that the housing markets that were most driven by the cheap financing that has now dried up would collapse.

2. Urban Growth is Different than City Growth


This is a more subtle argument, but it still holds weight when you have people trumpeting the death of sprawl and a magical exodus back to the city based on some fundamental change in the values of young people, or the country, in general.

What these census values have shown, and what some commentators have been careful to show, is that while exurb growth has certainly slowed or stopped entirely the growth we are seeing are in "urban areas". Urban areas and urban clusters, according to the Census, are areas with census block groups with a population density of at least 1000 people/sq mile, and surrounding census block groups with at least 500 people/sq mile.

Much of the growth touted by urbanists and planners has been in southeast and southwest in areas that are traditionally less dense than large eastern cities and MSAs. The bulk of the growth of these urban areas has been within the metro areas, in suburban areas that are encompassed within metro and urban areas. Witold Rybczynski spoke to this back in November in response to a blog post from Richard Florida pushing this narrative. In a paragraph, Rybczynski, destroys Florida's argument and it should force us to take pause. Our definition of urban, at least the definition as given by the Census, IS NOT the same as saying people are moving back into central cities, or even older inner-ring suburbs in droves. Growth has certainly been concentrated around major urban centers and MSAs, but urban areas have been centers of economic growth and anchors for suburban growth for centuries. This should not be a surprise, nor does it necessarily imply some kind of fundamental shift in values based off of a limited data set in our worst recession and housing slump since the Great Depression.

3. Where's the political support or reform?


This to me is the central indicator as to whether or not we have seen some kind of fundamental value shift in how we perceive what is valuable in where we ultimately settle and what we view as favorable urban forms. This supposed renaissance of urban living as signified by the death of sprawl should be accompanied by a political push to strengthen development guidelines to encourage smart growth, transit-oriented and adjacent development, and, ideally, balancing out jobs-housing spatial mismatch, and working to lessen the primacy of the automobile in our every day lives.

Outside of some pilot cities and large urban areas, this has not been the case. While certain states, like California, have seen recent success in bringing regional development plans into fruition, the regional governing bodies still have few mechanisms to enforce new guidelines and there are still open questions regarding whether there will be funding for these ambitious and, I think, positive steps.

Let us also not forget the rather vociferous campaign by the republicans in congress to utterly eviscerate funding for mass transit and smart-growth initiatives. All of the political indicators show a continuation of the pro-sprawl values that have propelled us forward for the past 80 years. We can talk about the death of sprawl when the federal government gives COGs greater teeth or we see movement on reviving federal growth management policy and leadership. Until then, let's fall back a bit and think more deeply on how we can continue to take advantage of this drop in sprawling development and make our urban areas better and more desirable places to live so that when the economy rebounds (and we should all hope that it does) that we can actually hope for a shift in the underlying values of our citizens, the incentives that drive sprawl, and the political and institutional structures that exacerbate it.

Why walkability would not have saved Trayvon Martin and Why Planners need to Look at Inequality

By now even the most uninformed of individuals has heard of the story of Trayvon Martin and his death in Sanford, FL. This story has transformed, thanks largely in part to the persistent pressure of folks on varied social media platforms, especially twitter, demanding greater information, accountability for the Sanford police department and justice for Trayvon. In many ways, it is a testament to the power of social media to sway greater traditional media by grabbing the attention of mainstream journalists and getting them to wonder what all the fuss is about. There has been a barrage of columns and commentaries on Trayvon's killing. Some have been incredibly heartfelt expressing what Trayvon's death represents in terms of living as a black man and the existential angst and terror that accompanies it, the experiences of black women in relation to living with the memory of dead black boys and men. Other posts have attacked Trayvon or defended his killer, George Zimmerman, by excusing Zimmerman's belief that Trayvon was suspicious because he wore a hoodie, and other individuals (who I refuse to link here, y'all can use your search engine of choice to corroborate) defend Zimmerman by casting aspersions upon Trayvon's character or saying that Zimmerman was justified in shooting Trayvon because Trayvon may have bested him in a physical altercation.

There has been a lot written, and even more said, about this horrific event. Recently, over the past few days, urban thinkers and planners have started to wade into the case with a more critical eye, looking at Trayvon's neighborhood and seeing how the built environment may have inadvertently contributed to Trayvon's death or, vice versa, how different design could have saved Trayvon's life. One article, in particular jumps out to me,  bettercities.net. This article looks at the gated community that Trayvon was visting and, astutely, points out how such communities are designed for those who own cars and that walkers are often marginalized in such places. The article goes on to describe how the economic downturn has helped to concentrate some poverty and that the residents were "majority-minority" with a large Hispanic and Black population and how George Zimmerman had a long history of viewing black males as suspicious and calling 911 in order to make this complex as inhospitable as possible for those he viewed as interlopers. All of this is pretty boilerplate stuff, but then the article takes a weird turn where the author talks about how if the development had been more friendly to walkers that this tragedy could have been avoided. I stopped. I re-read the line.

Okay...for the record, I am not anti-pedestrian or walkability, but we, as planners and urban thinkers, need to think MUCH more critically about these kinds of subjects before going directly to environmentally deterministic modes of thought. A walkable neighborhood would not have saved Trayvon Martin, just like being in a pleasant, walkable downtown did not save Emmit Till's life. It is incredibly frustrating to read an article that points to how greater socioeconomic and political forces have shaped the character of this development and explicitly mentions how George Zimmerman has frequently engaged in racially charged attacks on black males, and then crow about the need for walkability. How does walkability change ANY of the reasons that article JUST listed that contributed to Trayvon's death? You have a housing development that has been buffeted by the economic downturn, that suffers from entrenched racial and social tension that is omnipresent in American life, a man, with delusions of grandeur, carrying
a concealed firearm, and a local police department that has shown relative indifference in the case of a killed young black man. Somehow building more sidewalks and mixed-use developments are supposed to have saved Trayvon. Let's forget that racial profiling is rampant, like New York's "stop and frisk" policy that explicitly target Black and Hispanic men, or that Black men have gotten shot literally any where people end up, including transit stations, or in a car. These cases are not about neighborhood design, they are about racial profiling, the perception of Black criminality, the devaluing of the Black body in the eyes of the state. These cases also call into question issues of class, gender, and a myriad of other important topics. And yes, the physical environment can be an incredibly vital part of these equations, but focusing only on the physical environment without interrogating the socioeconomic structures that placed them there is, at best, myopic, or, at worst, dishonest.

Yes, encouraging walkability can get at some of the forces that placed Trayvon Martin the situation he was in, but it ENTIRELY ignores issues of racism, inequality, racial, ethnic and income segregation, and poverty; issues that many planners and urbanists are absolutely COMPLICIT in extending. Professors June Manning Thomas and Marsha Ritzdorf have a great book called Urban Planning and the African American Community, an edited volume of the role that planning and planners have had in the shaping of the African American community in the 20th century. Planners, from the North and South, have long worked with established political powers to encourage segregation, through zoning, have actively inhibited the ability of African Americans to gain access to affordable housing, have allowed for systemic disinvestment of communities and the rise of slums, and supervised the destruction of countless neighborhoods through urban renewal. As planners, we are taught to take responsibility for urban renewal and the resulting sprawl and we constantly flog ourselves to remind us to never repeat the mistakes of the 50s and 60s, and yet, within these discussions we are not forced to see how we are also complicit in designing, maintaining, and defending a built environment that reinforces social inequality. If we cannot own the fact that many policies we have encouraged or continue to encourage are indifferent to the poor and communities of color, then WE ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.

We should look at planners, architects, and designers and ask them why they would build gated communities in the first place? Look at architects and designers and ask them why it is so uncommon to see uplifting positive, innovative designs for affordable housing. Ask city and regional planners why their own cities don't have inclusionary zoning or other regulations that at least attempt to mitigate the concentration of poverty and can expand good housing stock for low-income individuals. Look at architecture firms and ask them why their field is overwhelmingly white and male. Until we look at how we contribute to a society that criminalizes black people, that segregates our populations based on race and class, and implicitly accepts the notion that redevelopment and gentrification and displacement must go in hand in hand, then we are part of the problem.

Yes, I understand that the role of the planner in most places is that of a public servant. We do not make policy on our own and it may not be appropriate to lobby for particular policies etc...I recognize those limits. But I also say that if you use that as your reasoning as to why you do not speak up or advocate for vulnerable or oppressed populations, then you are STILL part of the problem. We, as a field, need to embrace our roles as guardians of the public interest and return back our roles as ensuring the equitable distribution of public goods. We should push for affordable housing, as a field and as academicians and practitioners, we should push fair and equal access to transportation, we should push for adequate and equal infrastructure provisions for all of our citizens. Anything less and then you get gated communities where black men are seen as intruders, not residents, and therefore open not only to execution, but also not worth the time and resources to prosecute his killer.

And if all you see when you look at this case is that the neighborhood had a low walkability score, then you're not looking hard enough. I'm out.

Race, Class, and Privilege: A Brief Reflection

I'm writing for many, many reasons. The first is that I've gotten A LOT of responses from people on my post on biking and privilege. Some of it has been quite positive, some quite negative, others have respectfully challenged my positions, and I try to respond to them all. I've actually really enjoyed the back and forth with some thoughtful commenters (I see you, Fern) and I realize that in the interest of brevity and being provocative, some of my larger critiques were not entirely clear.

The second is because earlier this week I went to a critique at my university's architecture school and I got to witness third-year architecture students try to describe their designs for a "hip-hop" community center in East Portland. The result was seeing a bunch of kids, and professors and professional architect reviewers. with no familiarity with hip-hop, no connection to the neighborhood or communities that this building will serve (it was noted at the beginning that the Rosewood neighborhood was "unique" because it had population characteristics similar to the rest of the country [read: it had people of color] all while the students and professors in charge we uniformly white and middle class). The results, after viewing three critiques, were a series of strained metaphors of what hip-hop is and how these buildings would save Rosewood's kids from lives of crime and gangbanging. It perfectly illustrated how having such a homogeneous student body can deaden creativity but it also illustrated the problematic nature of a field like architecture that purports to represent varied cultures, communities, or arts when many architects have no familiarity or intimacy with the concepts or communities they purport to represent.

My last reason why I feel this post is necessary is because of Trayvon Martin. The inadequate summary of events thus far is this: two weeks ago, George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch member shot and killed Trayvon as he was walking back to his stepmother's house from a local convenience store to pick up food for his little cousins. Zimmerman, while sitting in his car, saw Martin walking back home at night in the rain and decided he looked "suspicious". He then called 911 to report the suspicious character to police and he was told by 911 dispatchers that a cruiser was being sent and to stay put. Zimmerman decided he would pursue Martin, so he got out of his car, chased Martin down the street, they got into a fist fight and then Zimmerman shot and killed Martin. Where is Zimmerman? He's walking the streets of Sanford, FL and the local police have not charged him because they claim there is a lack of evidence to charge him and they have kicked the case to the local prosecutor.

What do these disparate topics have to do with issues of privilege, race, or class? In short, everything. First let's try to unpack this concept of "privilege". All three of these examples are textbook cases of "white privilege". Succinctly, white privilege are the benefits that white people accrue simply from being white. While this idea is not particularly new, Peggy Mcintosh's classic essay on "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" is a great exposition from a white woman on exploring the implications of privilege (starting from the subject of male privilege in feminist theory) and extending that to issues regarding race. She gives a series of statements illustrating many of the unstated benefits of white privilege, here are some examples:


1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.


2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area, which I can
afford and in which I would want to live.


3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.


4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely
represented.


6. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my
color made it what it is.


7. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their
race.


8. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.


9. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket
and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone
who can cut my hair.

And the list goes on from there. As you can see, white privilege is a nuanced, complex, subtle phenomenon and the greatest example of white privilege is the ability for white people to ignore that it exists. This is not the case for people of color in this country. The reason why I bring up this idea of white privilege is to point out that there are many forms of privilege and they shift and change depending where you are. As a male, I have male privilege. I recognize that the ways I learn and communicate are often rewarded compared to other forms. I know that people will assume that I am more rational based on my gender than a woman and a myriad other small advantages I receive every day based on my gender. I can't necessarily eliminate sexism or the structural and cultural institutions that exacerbate it, but I can recognize my privilege and attempt to act in a way that is self-reflective and that respects the views and experiences of other people. I cannot impose my own particular worldview, and by extension the advantages that I unfairly receive that they may not benefit from, onto other people. It's counterproductive and if you are actually interested in addressing a problem, then it distracts from looking at deep, structural causes of many issues.

In my biking post, I wanted to illustrate that the normative rhetoric regarding voluntary bike commuting and sustainable living often comes from a privileged position that does not recognize the lived differences and experiences of people that would lead to choose not to bike. I tried to describe how simply lambasting non-bikers for not living sustainably, for not living close to their place of work, for not being willing to take a shower at their job after biking, is counterproductive and misses the multitude of reasons, structural, cultural, institutional, economic, and behavioral that go into someone's choice of their dominant mode of transit. Frankly, we cannot talk about getting more people to bike without talking about housing-jobs geographical mismatch, we cannot talk about getting more women to bike if we don't talk about the beauty standards that women have to meet in the professional workplace that make bike commuting a less viable option for them, we cannot talk about getting more people to bike if we don't seriously examine the multitude of factors that go into transportation choices. The situation is much more complex than simply building more bike lanes (although we should have better infrastructure for cyclists). I am not anti-cyclist. I wish that people could live where they could choose a multitude of affordable and sustainable transportation choices, but until we get to a point where everyone has that opportunity and we live in a culture that does not unfairly penalize individuals for choosing to bike, then we are NOT helping the situation by criticizing people who choose to not bike for legitimate reasons. We should be examining much more deeply how people feel about certain modes of transit and how can we best offer them services that they want/need, and not simply champion one mode over another and pathologize those populations that choose not to participate.

This position of privilege is also reflected in my other two examples. It is mindboggling to me that you have a profession that purports to represent and serve communities, yet it was obvious that not only did this particularly university group have a decidedly monochromatic make up, but they spent very little to zero time actually talking with the people in the neighborhood that they are designing a building for, AND they had very little actual connection with the art/culture, hip-hop, that this community center was to be based around. When your entre into hip-hop culture is a hip-hop dance course (really) and you live in a city that doesn't have a hip-hop station other than your top-40 pop station, it is absurd to think that you could reflect the feelings/desires/needs of a community. It's beyond arrogant. Combine that with an especially offensive presentation that made the Rosewood neighborhood sound like Beirut (seriously, this one student designed her building with bulletproof glass and put the kids common area of the third floor because she said people often shoot at eye level, not up) and not a SINGLE reviewer called her out on her assumptions regarding the neighborhood and you see how institutional racism is reproduced in the academy and in other professional fields. And what makes this worse is that such attitudes are precisely the kinds of attitudes that lead people like George Zimmerman to look at a kid like Trayvon Martin and not see just a kid walking home but to see a criminal and someone deserving of being killed.

Until we ALL step back and examine our own privilege that comes from our gender, race, income levels, religious affiliation etc we won't be able to move forward and we'll certainly have a hell of a hard time communicating with people that are different from us. Being "colorblind" or saying you "don't see race" doesn't eliminate the privileges you receive, all it does is ignore the real differences that other people live every day. And that's a crying shame.