Neighborhoods and Forces of Change

A brilliant site, called Retrographer, has been taking historic photos of Pittsburgh and linking them to photos of what the same place looks like now.  It is remarkable to see the transformation of the city.  For the Hill District, the forces of change have included urban renewal, disinvestment and gentrification.  We can see how the lively neighborhood was undermined and crumbled between the the 1950s and now.  These two photos are one example of the interesting comparisons you'll find at the site.  They include the Google map, so you know exactly where you are.  In this case, at the western edge of the urban renewal area.

Neighborhoods and Highways

The federal program of highway development showed little concern for neighborhoods, especially those of poor and working people.  Brian O'Neill in a March 2016 column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote about the East Street Valley, a neighborhood leveled for a highway.  Bill Gandy and others of those who lost their homes have organized a small museum, dedicated to collecting and showing photos of what was lost.  Between the displaced families and the historical collections, the little museum has access to 100,000 photos, helping to recreate a visual record of what was lost.

East Street Valley looking toward Swindell Bridge, 1931

Here's what the neighborhood around the new museum, at 433 E. Ohio Street, looks like, with a healthy serving of highways added:

US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has been outspoken about the damage that the federal highway program did.  He is from Charlotte and cited the story of Brooklyn, a downtown black neighborhood that was destroyed by urban renewal and highway construction.  When Foxx was growing up in Lincoln Heights, he knew he couldn't ride his bike far because of highways pinning him in.  He was quoted in the Washington Post as saying,

It became clear to me only later on that those freeways were there to carry people through my neighborhood, but never to my neighborhood.  Businesses didn't invest there.  Grocery stores and pharmacies didn't take the risk.  I could not even get a pizza delivered to my house.  

He showed a dramatic set of maps of the ways in which Charlotte moved poor and black people out of the center, to the periphery of the city.  In these maps, the blue areas indicate that greater than 30% of the population was low income, while the red areas had less than 30% of the population in that income bracket.  The "sorting" of Charlotte, including the role of redlining, urban renewal and highway construction, has been brilliantly described by historian Thomas Hanchett, in his landmark book, Sorting out the New South City.  

Poorer health, shorter lives

An editorial in the American Journal of Public Health laid out the problem facing the US: We spend the most on "health care" but the least of social services. In return, the health of the nation is failing compared to other developed nations.  In fact, we are losing ground.  The editorial is concerned that this deep problem is non-issue on this year's campaign trail.  I believe that part of the problem that we're in is a linguistic tangle, because we use "health" as a synonym for "disease."  What doctors do is called "health" care but it is actually "disease" care.  You can't actually get to "health" by spending endless amount on "disease."  To get to health, you actually have to spend on the things that create health, like housing people can afford, jobs with decent pay, and education that prepares for the workplace without bankrupting people.

County Health Rankings Model
http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/faq-category/general-questions

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, aware of this larger picture, has launched a "culture of health" project.  An Orange NJ coalition, led by the Board of Education, has been funded to develop a culture of health project.  The RWFJ program begins with the County Health Rankings model of contributors to health, which allocates the proportion of contribution made to health by a list of factors.  Social and economic factors, for example, account for 40% of the influence on health, while clinical care ("disease management") accounts for 20%.  This model suggests that as we widen our lens we will open up ways to spend that both "manage disease" and "create health."

The Healthy Orange Coalition has focused on educational attainment, because that creates a clear pathway to health.  In fact, increasing educational attainment will improve many other markers, like employment, income, health behaviors, increasing the effect of this single intervention to many areas.  The Coalition is in the early phases of developing a broad network of support which can guide the campaign.  More to come!

It takes a what to raise a genius?

An article in Next City has the humorous title, "It May Take A City to Raise a Genius."  The story discusses the book The Geography of Genius by EricWeiner.  He is a travel writer who became intrigued by the idea that certain times and places produced clusters of genius.  This required several factors: diversity of population, openness to new ideas, and "third spaces" in which people could cross paths and rub shoulders, maybe share some strudel as they did in the coffee shops of Vienna.  One wonders did they have baklava back when Plato and Sophocles were hanging out in the markets of Athens.  This raises the question: couldn't we create similar conditions everywhere?  I noticed a great stirring of imagination at Ironworks, a youth arts center in Orange NJ.  It was amazing how this rippled out over space and time, evolving, engaging more young people, and pushing the conversation about art.  "Finances" reared their ugly head and the youth arts program was exchanged for architects with moolah.  What have we done to history?  Can we fix it?  Echoes of Flint ring in my head.

Where did the term "gerrymander" come from?

A Very Helpful Article in today's NY Times explained the history of the term "gerrymander."  I'd grown up with the word because the schools in my hometown were gerrymandered, and my parents led the fight to undo that policy of segregation.  But when and where did the term arise?  Article author Carl Hulse explained that the term referred to Boston voting districts which in 1832 were drawn in bizarre shapes that gave advantage to one political party.  Governor Gerry signed this into law.  A newspaper published a cartoon saying the shape was reminiscent of salamander, indeed, a "Gerry-mander."  You learn something every day!  And what a cartoon!

According the NY Times: "This 1812 cartoon in The Boston Gazette
skewered twisting legislative districts in Massachusetts and helped
give rise to the term 'gerrymandering.'"

What is an Iowa caucus?

It's a very blizzardy Jan 32rd here in New Jersey during Winter Storm Jonas, and I have time to do all sorts of things, like click on the links in The New York Times.  I found this link to a video of an Iowa caucus.  It was a Des Moines caucus in 2008--I don't know if this more than one.  In this video, the Democrats gathered in a large gym.  They counted themselves, and then divided up by candidate.  Candidates with less than 15% of the crowd were considered "non-viable" and then their supporters could scatter to other candidates.  It was quite a process of people engaging in the political process.  One woman was trying to convince some men to support Obama.  One man with a Hilary sign got hysterical, shouting that Obama didn't raise his hand to salute the flag. Another man said to the woman, "Could you give him a Valium?"  It is a fascinating look at what will be happening in Iowa, as Bernie Sanders and Hilary Clinton go toe-to-toe.

Chaos in Cologne

The chaos in the streets of Cologne on New Year's Eve is provoking lots of second thoughts about permitting large numbers of refugees into Germany and elsewhere in Europe.  The police expected, and prepared for, the usual, and when the unusual happened, they made a series of bad decisions which escalated the situation.  Not good.

It's easy enough to see the problem of a clash of cultures.  But it's not as if the countries that young men are from traditionally allow drunken, rowdy behavior and mass attacks on women.  It's the lack of culture, the sudden upheaval, the joy of being out of danger and the lack of a sense of boundaries in the new place that put all in danger.  It is easy to assume that, having offered asylum, all will be grateful and behavior in the "right" way.  Most have -- there are a million refugees in Germany, for example, a some hundreds that mobbed the New Year's Eve crowd.  To blame the whole for the bad behavior of a few is always a bad idea.  But the point is that it demonstrates that the assumption -- be grateful, be proper -- is not sufficient.

What else has to be considered?

First, what is the history in Germany or the other host countries of treating people from the Middle East who have settled there?  Are they well-integrated into the culture?  Are they connected to the new arrivals?  This kind of history is crucial for beginning to think about what will happen next.  A well-integrated immigrant group can quickly help fellow immigrants connect -- the "Soviet" era Jewish immigrants in New York, for example, have been stalwarts in integrating others from "Russia."

Second, what is the history of upheaval from which people were fleeing?  What kind of behaviors did they see and participate in or suffer from?  In periods of upheaval, people see and do all kinds of things that have to do with cultural traditions and everything to do with the struggles for power, survival and hegemony.

Third, what is the setting into which people are welcomed?  Are they able to start to work, to learn the language, to develop a future?  Are they in refugee camps?  What are the camps like?  The more unstable and marginal the situation of the refugees, the more chaos can be expected.

These are only some of the serious questions that have to be answered before predictions can be made or judgements of behavior reached.  The crisis is serious, the chaos a symptom that must be taken seriously.  Using one incident to set policy, without a thorough assessment of its context and meaning, is shortsighted and can only aggravate the larger global situation in which we find ourselves.