Sprawl: The Mother of All Gated Communities
Guest Blogger - Mita Williams
I ran into Chris last week at Staples, and in the course of our conversation the topic of street cars came up. From there, I told him some of my thoughts about the relationship between public transit and the unseen barriers of suburbia. Afterwards he asked me if I would be interested in sharing them at Scaledown and that’s why you are reading this.
There’s a classic example about how public transit has can be used as a barrier to access. It’s on record that Robert Moses, the “master builder” of New York City, explicitly instructed that bridges on his parkways be built too low for buses to pass as a means to prevent the poor and racial minorities from accessing Jones Beach.
But what’s harder to see are those invisible barriers that are around us.
The way that our cities (and our lives) are laid out – with our homes in one area of the city, our shopping centres at another and our work in still another place – is only made possible because most of us have cars. But what if you can’t afford a car? Well, in short, if you don’t have a car, you can’t live in the suburbs. And that means that there are less unemployed folks, less working poor and less recent immigrants who live in the suburbs. In a sense, all suburbs are gated communities.
I’m not aware of any Canadian campaigns that are promoting public transit explicitly as a means to help out the less financially fortunate. Perhaps this is because those involved are afraid of further associations between riding the bus and ‘being poor’. Or maybe they don’t want to raise the ire of those folks who don’t approve of any government subsidy that they can’t see themselves using.
Perhaps if more middle class people could see how much access to good public transit helps the working poor then they would be more inclined to support subsidizing it. The irony, of course, is that suburbs keep these groups of people separated and even responsible (perhaps) for taking out the political middle ground between them.
Mita Williams is a librarian at the Leddy Library in the University of Windsor. She’s been blogging since 1999 and has lived in Windsor since 1999 — although these facts aren’t related to each other.
Tags: gated communities, guest blogger, poverty, public transit, Suburbs
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Mita, everyone knows that buses are for losers and kids (except for my wonderful wife who, every morning brightens her bus drivers day as she boards to head downtown to work) who can’t afford a car.
The same Riverside Drive bus stop that was regularly buried in snow over the winter is now fenced in by the Red Bull barriers. Two extra sections of fence and the bus stop is usable but, nobody gave it a second thought.
I know everyone here wants light rail but, what happened to Transit Windsor’s plans for bus rapid transit? With all the “stimulus” cash flowing you’d think TW could get some to at least do a feasibility study and identify some routes.
I can afford a car (most of my co-workers drive to work) but choose not to drive sinse living abroad and seeing the bennefits and community-building effect, and many other huge bennefits that efficient non-stigmatized mass transit can bring to a city. It’s unfortunate that there is such stigma against public transit. However, I think there is a real reverse-correlation between quality of public transit and the stigma against it - ie. the better quality of transit that is available, the less stigma there is towards it as it becomes a more impressive part of a city’s infrastructure rather than viewed as a type of “Social Service”.
I get rid off my car 3 years ago. It’s true that you can find different profiles of people on bus,but I have found Jame’s comment highly disrespectful for us who use bus by CHOICE.
I will never choose car over the bus. There is no joy in owning a car: car payment, insurance, gas that goes every minute up, repairs that cost almost as 1/3 of the Car. I could go on and on…
Zee - James was writing VERY tongue-in-cheek in his comment. You will be hard pressed to find a bigger transit activist than him!
Trust me when I say that he meant no disrespect!
Zee, I’m sorry if I offended you. You missed the part where I mentioned my wife rides TW to work every day (and if it didn’t take one-and-a-half hours to ride TW to work I would use it too). I did it for about six months when I started working out at the college (I also lobbied the President of the College to move the program that I work in to a downtown location so I could use the bus myself). I read a ton of books but giving up three hours a day to commute - that’s crazy!
Transit in this city sucks not because of the people that use it but, because it is a crappy, inefficient, underfunded, backward system.
Asolutely, the right description James!!
No offence taken.
I understand that Bus routes sucks, but City administration really doesn’t help Transit Windsor. As you can see most of bus routes are going in directions of large malls, and of course most of these malls and let’s call them shopping centers are way to far from downtown. NO wonder our Downtown looks so bad.
Wow! I never looked at it that way before but this is bang on!
I am surrounded by low income, and yes it is trying sometimes but just the other day are Chrysler 300 stops at the corner and throws a beer can onto the sidewalk and drives away. I see other high end vehicles rarely stop at the 4-way crossing but usually, in my observations, I see older models stop completely. Why most have kids in them! And it is a fact that lower income people have more kids than those with money.
We all know that by spreading out low income people throughtout a city instead of ghettoizing them not only helps the low income, but is much better for society as a whole. Yet we all still fight it.
Now I wonder why Mayor McNamara in his kingdom of Tecumseh doesn’t and wont’ help fund transit to his town? Could the above article be a major reason? After all, most high end stores have gone to the centre of ….err, I mean gone to the strip malls on Manning.
It is not just people with low income who ride the public transit, many people who have disabilities (confined to a wheelchair, legal blind, have seizers, etc) cannot obtain a drivers license. In the future there is going to be a shift in the age of our population, more seniors in the community. I believe more people may come to rely on public transit and being able to walk to conveniences (stores, clinics, churches, etc.). Some people may not always want to drive and other may not be able to drive due to eye site problems.
I think everybody should be able to have the freedom to get around without have to rely on others to drive them everywhere they need to go. Living in suburbia with no access public transit just restricts people’s independence.
I’m not poor and can afford an automobile but twenty years have past since I have owned one, not to say that I don’t drive occaisionally (rent-a-car) and I don’t mind using our transit system but it does have an image problem among others, one being that it is only the poor, students, the unemployed and seniors that use it. And if you have been on one lately that is basically what you will see.
Good old Moses, he parted more cities with his ideas than the real Moses did with the Red Sea, so that the supposedly middle-class could escape the conditions of the great unwashed of crowded filthy cities. Now that the middle-class is about to disappear in North America, will there be a return to Urban life rather than “sub”-urban existence, time will tell but what James said in 3000 Reasons that might not happen.
When I came back to Windsor and found out what library I would be working at, I made the decision to live within walking distance of it rather than go into debt for a car and a house and student loans and into debt for all the stuff you have buy and consume to keep that house/car operating. There is nothing pretty about our sub-urbs, they all look like used car, RV and boat lots! Are you richer if you have to shell out money every month to keep two to three cars running, depending if both wife and husband work and their teenager needs a car to get to SilverCity to work –yes of course both HAVE to work that is how they can afford the middle class suburb.
And a big welcome to Mita to Scaledown!
Listen to CBC - The Current
Jarvis Street Car/Bike War - Toronto
http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/current_20090602_16478.mp3
Posted a link to that show yesterday, happy to hear you found the MP3 version of it though I’ll have to throw it onto my MP3 Player
James, I published a series on the Mean Streets of Toronto plus stories on Jarvis street in the NEWS a week or so ago.
The product offered by Windsor Transit sucks. It is positioned as a minimal-effort, bare bones, prison-transport-esque, social service for those with no other options to car use.
In Windsor, we make no quips about our position: “We don’t give a flying fuck about public transit.” The message is: “Mita, Tim, Mark, Chris, James stop bitching already and buy a car.” The nerve of yous-guys trying to make this city better! Can’t you see that if we wanted to improve transit we could? We have the plans that would be a good start. We simply choose to ignore them year after year after year. We simply don’t give a flying fuck about public transit!
Flying Fuck Definition:
Though used in daily speech, little is actually known about the flying fuck. Native to Africa, this flightless bird tends to be secretive and rarely allows itself to be visible, hence, examining it in it’s natural habitat is nearly impossible. Due to their extreme lack of activity within the community, they were considered a rare commodity throughout several African villages. The term “I don’t give a flying fuck” Originally meant that you could not put a price on such an item or service, but after translation and over use, the statement now means the exact opposite of this - when you don’t care at all about something.
TRANSIT RIDERSHIP GROWTH AND ASSET MANAGEMENT PLAN
http://www.citywindsor.ca/DisplayAttach.asp?AttachID=4973
Edwin, the political will to improve transit has been hard to come by in our community’s leaders. There are some very enthusiastic people at the helm of Transit Windsor but they also seem apathetic and powerless (Recall Penny Williams interview with ScaleDown - “That would be up to council to decide” she replied when asked about the future of LRT in Windsor)
Many would argue that the need for such a service does not exist and that if people wanted better transit they would be riding transit instead of their cars already. Edwin, do you think if a fast, efficient, frequent service was made available through the right cooridoors that it would be well utilized? Most of our politicians dont seem to think so. I would argue that if people could be given the chance to see how much it can do for quality of life, it might just be embraced. After all, so many people in this part of the world have never ventured outside of Car-Culture North America.
I’m not bitching at all Edwin! I enjoy having excessive amounts of loose money in my pocket, money that doesn’t go to an insurance company, the extra taxes on gazaline and stuff, new shoes are cheaper than a set of tires, I don’t walk fast enough to slam on the brakes, I don’t have sidewalk rage, I don’t have to pay to park a bus, I don’t have to shovel snow, when I wake in the morning my engine is already running and don’t have the anger when it doesn’t when it should be starting (talk about the lack of faith in our culture, we have more religious faith in our things, in that they will always work/run when we need them!)
You’re right though, this city does not care about public transportation, until they need to get their kids to work when the “extra car” broke down and the kid has to walk kilometres to a bus stop, then they start whining that “something” should be done to improve service to “their doorstep!” even thought they still have two cars parked in the driveway!
Aw come on Edwin, go out and hug a bus today!
Oh! I know how suburbia was paid for! Canadians owe 1.3 trillion dollars in personal debt! That is the onLy way that suburbia can be maintained!
The new normal
Oh my! I have whiplash after the month of May in the financial world. How quickly financial flows can reverse at the first signs of normality – Canadian dollar up-up-and away, US fiscal ship sinking, BRIC nations leading, and energy resuming its unstoppable climb to the heavens. But will we be back to normal? - with the economy growing at a torrid pace? No way! No How! Not possible! Not in my lifetime!
The growth of the past was only possible with dangerous levels of leverage, a lack of government supervision and cheap energy. Today, it is the opposite. The systemic risks created by the shadow banking system are known and we will never again allow those levels of leverage. Less leverage means less growth. Governments all over the world are being forced into the marketplace. Even in areas they don’t want to be in. Regulation and more government control means slower growth. And what expensive energy means, well I don’t have to tell anyone that. Our entire economy is built around the exploitation of the productive capacity of cheap energy.
We are in a new normal. Where growth is timid at best. Where inflation, especially energy inflation, is the biggest struggle the middle class will face. In the new normal, if we want to keep a similar level of prosperity as we enjoy today efficiency is the name of the game. The good news is we are so wasteful that we have lots of room to maneuver.
A New Normal
http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/PIMCO+Spotlight/2009/Secular+Outlook+May+2009+El-Erian.htm
I think Transit Windsor is in a Catch 22 situation. Many folks won’t use the bus unless routes are more convenient, buses more frequent and the bus stops more comfortable. But these same folks won’t pay for the necessary upgrades because people don’t want to subsidize a service that they can’t see themselves using. (”A subsidy for home renovations? Great! For public transportation? No way!”)
So how to break out of this impasse? I think we have to find a small success and grow from there. In 2006, there was a referendum held by the University of Windsor Student Union to establish a non-opt out program in which every UWin student would be able to buy a $36 per term universal bus pass (normally costing $208) in exchange for upgraded bus service by 100 hours a week on routes heavily used by students (and a $800,00 profit to Transit Windsor). The vote failed to pass but it wasn’t so a large a loss at 44%. With the economy as it is, perhaps its time to try again — but this time, as a ‘break-even’ proposition to sweeten the deal.
The stigma attached to busing is huge and I think some of the appeal of light-transit is because it’s a sexier proposition. But buses are cheaper and their routes can be changed to respond to a city’s needs. Personally, I would love to see the boarding tubes like those of Curitba’s Bus System.
Sorry - the post should read, “and $800,000 in revenue to Transit Windsor”
Mita, in my opinion, labeling it a catch 22 is a cop-out. The evidence is clear. The benefits are great. The expert recommendations are numerous. It is the political leadership that is lacking. The areas’ politicos don’t want to take on the political flack generated from informing residents and forming opinion. The politicos are all too willing to follow the route of least resistance instead of leading.
I hear ya Mark.
I’m hardly considered low income, and I choose to take the bus.
I do this based primarly upon cost with little thought to the environment.
Why pay insurance, license renewals, upkeep and lease payments when I can ride the bus for $80 a month. And when its warm and dry, I’ll ride my bike.
About twice a month I’ll take a cab for groceries and the like; but it saves me a whack of money (which unfortunately is going towards paying off debts and students loans at this time); but in the end, I’m further ahead.
Do I wish I had car? Sometimes - especially on those gruelling 9 hour long bus rides to Wiarton - ugg. Via Rail does not service the Grey-Bruce area.
Mita - I think the increase in cost for parking will see students change their minds (I hope).
In digging around for a link to the zipcar service for universities I found out that it appears that Casino Windsor offers zipcars for individual rental?! Does anyone here know about this?
Chris S, you must be getting mighty hungry with the taxis on strike!
Here is what they are doing in London with their public transit product.
Get on the Bus
http://brandavenue.typepad.com/brand_avenue/2008/12/a-team-composed-of-aston-martin-car-designers-and-foster-partners-architects-have-won-a-competition-to-design-the-next-gene.html
A team composed of Aston Martin car designers and Foster + Partners architects have won a competition to design the next generation of iconic, much-loved double-decker buses for London.
…
Both the layout and choice of warm lighting and wooden ?oors are conceived to foster a spirit of conviviality. The arrangement of the decks is driven by comfort and particular consideration is given to the selection of upholstery to create a ‘living room’ feel, especially in the saloon-like lower deck.
Hey I’m not asking for an iconic brand or an award-winning design, but can we at least have some pride in our transit system? Can we at least make the needed investments? Can we at least explore ways to improve the quality and efficiency of the system? Can we at least look to do what any businessperson would do and make our transit product competitive? None of this is hard, if you care!
It’s pretty clear that just about everybody here at SD wants to see a significant and unprecedented investment in mass transit in our community to elevate it from being a stigmatized “social service” into an actual respectable, viable mode of transportation. So, WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
I would like to hear anyone’s proposals of what actual course of actions we can take as citizens to push this issue forward. I can think of a few ideas including (and of course feel free to reply with your own ideas)
a) Starting a facebook group to rally for either a significant investment and upgrade in transit service in the Windsor area, or (perhaps less realistically at this time) a trial LRT system.
b) The creation of a website advocating specifically for better mass transit in Windsor (something similar, for example, to http://www.transitaction.ca or http://www.hamiltonlightrail.com)
c) A bunch of us showing up at TW’s board meeting, which is open to the public, to voice our concerns, raise important questions, etc. I think an unprecedented showing of interest from a community like we have here at SD might turn some heads and get people talking. I’m sure usually, not a heck of a lot of people from the public attend the TW meeting. (See here: http://citywindsor.ca/001297.asp)
d) A letter writing campaign (though I might argue most letters to council at this time would be lost in the flood of mail regarding the CUPE strike, etc.) MPs and MPPs should of course also be written to as a fair share of transit funding comes from upper government.
e) *perhaps following steps a,b,c and d, Organizing some sort of convention/seminar/presentation, bringing in an outside speaker/advocate of LRT or Transit Oriented Development, Peak Oil, etc.
I’m interested to hear anyone else’s ideas. We can complain about our system all we want on SD but nothing will change by itself. I for one don’t want to be but another talking head.. Ideas Please!
I propose the formation of a not-for-profit agency, aimed at raising funds to promote good design and education of the issue.
Name it “Windsor Transit Foundation”
…or “WTF” for short
Edwin, i love that bus design. It sure would be cool if local buses were more interesting! And what city would be best suited to design and produce these unique buses?
Tim, I think things will not change until the public demands it. I favor the idea of making a design plan (or two) public, and let people realize the benefits, and maybe offer suggestions. Also, there are many city transit systems that have partnered with Google Maps to provide bus routes and directions. This would make EASIER access to bus routes for people that have not tried them.
Also, I think jumping into LRT right away might be a lot harder to lobby for than a more gradual progression. For example, why not lobby for better routes that mimic what a LRT line would do. (Express routes that connect city center points, and places of interest such as Downtown, University/Sandwich, Walkerville, Erie St, Devonshire, Riverside, WFCU Center, St.Claire College, etc etc.) And start smaller: maybe lobby for Electric Buses… so that when in the downtown areas and where the landscape allows, the buses will run on electricity. That will create much less pollution and noise in the core! (Which in turn makes it more desirable to live!) ..and it will be less initial capital investment, until there is enough ridership to push for the LRT.
And, if all else fails, you can always do the Windsor thing, and put campaign signs on lawns that read ‘citizens for transit now’ hahahahahahhaah
Tim, JP
Great ideas and points, count me in.
My two cents, I think providing information is the most important thing we need to do now. My view is we are quickly moving to a SD-esque world. So, whether we lead the way there or are dragged kicking and screaming – it’s the imminent destination regardless.
In essences we are the community experts and being looked at to provide the solutions. The days of having to scream just to be heard are over. We need to continue to analyze the deficiencies in our community, explore best practices and/or develop innovative solutions and champion them. Sooner rather than later these solutions will be adopted.
I love the excitement and changes taking place in Windsor. While we have a long way to go, considering where we are coming from, we are making wonderful progress and picking up steam.
What Edwin said…
Mita, plus all of you above peeked my curiousity on something that I have been reading and following on Market Urbanism website. The discussion there deals with private - public ownership and the public’s role in sprawl and exclusion. So I have backtracked though my alerts and found the discussion going on there.
Part one: Rothbard the Urbanist Part !: Public Education’s Role in Sprawl and Exclusion http://tiny.cc/SzD4W
I’ve been meaning to address the public education system’s complex role in land use patterns, and found that Murray Rothbard does a better job in his 1973 manifesto, For a New Libertythan I ever could. In summary, locally-funded public education is an engine of geographical segregation, which encourages flight from urban areas, and was a driving motivation for the popular acceptance of exclusionary zoning in newer suburbs. As a result, wealth is consistently concentrated geographically, and housing affordability is at odds with these restrictions of supply intended to exclude poorer people from draining the property tax base.”
Here’s a paragraph from the chapter on education:
The geographical nature of the public school system has also led to a coerced pattern of residential segregation, in income and consequently in race, throughout the country and particularly in the suburbs. As everyone knows, the United States since World War II has seen an expansion of population, not in the inner central cities, but in the surrounding suburban areas. As new and younger families have moved to the suburbs, by far the largest and growing burden of local budgets has been to pay for the public schools, which have to accommodate a young population with a relatively high proportion of children per capita. These schools invariably have been financed from growing property taxation, which largely falls on the suburban residences. This means that the wealthier the suburban family, and the more expensive its home, the greater will be its tax contribution for the local school. Hence, as [p. 133] the burden of school taxes increases steadily, the suburbanites try desperately to encourage an inflow of wealthy residents and expensive homes, and to discourage an inflow of poorer citizens. There is, in short, a breakeven point of the price of a house beyond which a new family in a new house will more than pay for its children’s education in its property taxes. Families in homes below that cost level will not pay enough in property taxes to finance their children’s education and hence will throw a greater tax burden on the existing population of the suburb. Realizing this, suburbs have generally adopted rigorous zoning laws which prohibit the erection of housing below a minimum cost level — and thereby freeze out any inflow of poorer citizens. Since the proportion of Negro poor is far greater than white poor, this effectively also bars Negroes from joining the move to the suburbs. And since in recent years there has been an increasing shift of jobs and industry from the central city to the suburbs as well, the result is an increasing pressure of unemployment on the Negroes — a pressure which is bound to intensify as the job shift accelerates. The abolition of the public schools, and therefore of the school burden-property tax linkage, would go a long way toward removing zoning restrictions and ending the suburb as an upper middle-class-white preserve.
Rothbard the Urbanist Part 2: Safe Streets http://tiny.cc/hx61U
“It turns out the entire Chapter 11 called “The Public Sector, II: Streets and Roads” is actually a chapter on Market Urbanism. Bryan Caplan considers this chapter “the least convincing chapter in the book”, but as a Market Urbanist, I strongly disagree. I do admit that his discussion of safety and policing of private local streets involves a great deal of speculation and reliance on faith in the action of individual agents, but the insights into road subsidization and land-use patterns was decades ahead of its time. These insights may not seem so radical now, but imagine the resistance to these ideas in the days before urbanism gained much credibility.
I decided it would be valuable to share a thorough parsing of the chapter. I checked with the Mises Institute, who informed me that I am welcome to quote large pieces of text directly from the book – so I will. Over the next few weeks I’ll share parts of Chapter 11 for discussion. Feel free to read ahead…
In response to the first Rothbard post, Bill Nelson commented:
That said, I think that Professor Rothbard unfortunately only sees what he wants to see through his “Austrian” lens, and is therefore missing other reasons why “poor” people are not welcome in the suburbs — or anywhere else. Specifically, most home owners are interested in keeping out not poor people — but instead people with sociopathic behavior — which is more common among people who are less well-off. ”
“…I think it is easy to mistake Rothbard’s vision as some sort of privately-run pseudo-police state, clashing with Jane Jacobs’ vibrant public spaces. Keep in mind that this was written in the 1970’s - when crime was at its peak in New York and many other cities. But, as Jane Jacobs taught us, diverse, vibrant street life provides “eyes on the street” - a no-cost security measure. As a commercial benefit, streets with high foot traffic also enable higher-rent ground-floor retail. So, I think it’s important to add to Rothbard’s discussion of safety that a well-run block or street would be wise to encourage pedestrian-activated streets as both a cost reducing and revenue increasing measure. Publicly-run streets lack this natural incentive.”
The Author:I recommend reading Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty in its entirety. It is elegant in its consistently radical application of principles. It is available for free from the Mises Institute as a pdf, and webpage. I listened to the audio book version superbly read by Jeff Riggenbach.
For a New Liberty pdf: http://mises.org/rothbard/foranewlb.pdf