Racism - It's a real thing.

Jane Fonda lost me.
 

“Well, you know, you can take anything - sexism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, whatever, the war," the actress said. "And if you really get into it, and study it and learn about it and the history of it and everything's connected. There'd be no climate crisis if it wasn't for racism."

“Where would they put the poison and the pollution?" Fonda continued. "They're not gonna put it in Bel Air. They've got to find some place where poor people or indigenous people or people of color are living. Put it there. They can't fight back. And that's why a big part of the climate movement now has to do with climate justice."

 
nic said:
Jane Fonda lost me.
 

“Well, you know, you can take anything - sexism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, whatever, the war," the actress said. "And if you really get into it, and study it and learn about it and the history of it and everything's connected. There'd be no climate crisis if it wasn't for racism."

“Where would they put the poison and the pollution?" Fonda continued. "They're not gonna put it in Bel Air. They've got to find some place where poor people or indigenous people or people of color are living. Put it there. They can't fight back. And that's why a big part of the climate movement now has to do with climate justice."
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A bit misguided but there's elements of truth in there. Major infrastructure projects in older urban areas tend to disproportionately affect lower income citizens, which tend to be POC/minorities. Freeways built in inner cities are often built over neighborhoods with high minority populations, kicking them out of their homes or leaving them with the air and noise pollution if they can stay. Factories aren't built in rich neighborhoods. No one's dumping toxic chemicals in the yatch club's dock. Air traffic landing patterns don't typically fly over mansions.

Maybe not racism but the inequality that comes with economic status.

ZRod said:
I'm an idiot and don't know how to edit.
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ZRod said:
A bit misguided but there's elements of truth in there. Major infrastructure projects in older urban areas tend to disproportionately affect lower income citizens, which tend to be POC/minorities. Freeways built in inner cities often are built over neighborhoods with high minority populations, kicking them out of their homes or leaving them with the air a noise pollution if they can stay. Factories aren't built in rich neighborhoods. No one's dumping toxic chemicals in the yatch club's dock. Air traffic landing patterns don't typically fly over mansion.

Maybe not racism but the inequality that comes with economic status.
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I've heard this for decades.  But, I honestly don't know what a municipality is supposed to do about it.  You have two neighborhoods. One is upper class, low crime, well maintained.  You have another part that is run down, crime infested, low income, homeless problem...etc.  You're going to build a new sports arena.  What part are you going to look at to improve.

Now, maybe municipalities need to work harder at helping the citizens that are affected by this.  But, a city isn't going to tear down a nice area for this while leaving a crappy area.

 
BigRedBuster said:
I've heard this for decades.  But, I honestly don't know what a municipality is supposed to do about it.  You have two neighborhoods. One is upper class, low crime, well maintained.  You have another part that is run down, crime infested, low income, homeless problem...etc.  You're going to build a new sports arena.  What part are you going to look at to improve.

Now, maybe municipalities need to work harder at helping the citizens that are affected by this.  But, a city isn't going to tear down a nice area for this while leaving a crappy area.
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I mean, I get it. It's just one of those systematic things that piles on those already in the least favorable situations...

 
BigRedBuster said:
I've heard this for decades.  But, I honestly don't know what a municipality is supposed to do about it.  You have two neighborhoods. One is upper class, low crime, well maintained.  You have another part that is run down, crime infested, low income, homeless problem...etc.  You're going to build a new sports arena.  What part are you going to look at to improve.

Now, maybe municipalities need to work harder at helping the citizens that are affected by this.  But, a city isn't going to tear down a nice area for this while leaving a crappy area.
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I struggle to call any suburbs "nice". Makes more sense IMO for a city to tear down those cookie cutter neighborhoods, which will usually affect fewer people than higher density urban areas. But the burbs tend to have more resources to fight in court.

 
ZRod said:
I mean, I get it. It's just one of those systematic things that piles on those already in the least favorable situations...
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But, it's discussed as though the city and city managers are racist for doing it.  I don't believe that.  It's just an unfortunate situation for those people.

Now, if someone can come up with a solution, then that should be discussed and considered.

 
RedDenver said:
I struggle to call any suburbs "nice". Makes more sense IMO for a city to tear down those cookie cutter neighborhoods, which will usually affect fewer people than higher density urban areas. But the burbs tend to have more resources to fight in court.
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I didn't mention burbs.  There are nice areas in most cities that aren't burbs.  

And, they really don't need to fight it in court, because no city is going to go tear down a nice area and leave the crappy areas.

 
RedDenver said:
I struggle to call any suburbs "nice". Makes more sense IMO for a city to tear down those cookie cutter neighborhoods, which will usually affect fewer people than higher density urban areas. But the burbs tend to have more resources to fight in court.
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The type of projects aren't necessarily need in the burbs, but needed because of the burbs. I75 I'm Detroit is a prime example. It basically cut the metro in half going north to south from the Detroit river past Flint. It's primarily used for people to get to and from work, and it tore through minority neighborhoods. Now they are removing the 375 spur in Detroit and replacing it with walkways and parks over the next decade.

 
ZRod said:
The type of projects aren't necessarily need in the burbs, but needed because of the burbs. I75 I'm Detroit is a prime example. It basically cut the metro in half going north to south from the Detroit river past Flint. It's primarily used for people to get to and from work, and it tore through minority neighborhoods. Now they are removing the 375 spur in Detroit and replacing it with walkways and parks over the next decade.
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So, Detroit wants to put a freeway in so that people can commute to downtown for work.  Downtown is encircled by crappy, run down neighborhoods.  How do people expect that freeway to be build without going through a minority poor neighborhood?

 
ZRod said:
Tunneling. Or mass transit with tunnels. I love cars, but they have absolutely f#&%ed up our urban design.
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That is an idea.  But, that is a lot more expensive.

I'm sure the commuters would actually like it, they wouldn't have to deal with crappy weather and slick roads.

 
Detroit is an interesting example.  I haven't read up on it for a long time.  But, at one point, most of those neighborhoods were mostly abandoned and they were trying to figure out how to tear them down economically and use the land for something else.  They had even discussed urban farming.

 
BigRedBuster said:
That is an idea.  But, that is a lot more expensive.

I'm sure the commuters would actually like it, they wouldn't have to deal with crappy weather and slick roads.
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It is, but it makes things better for the population. See Boston and Madrid.

BigRedBuster said:
Detroit is an interesting example.  I haven't read up on it for a long time.  But, at one point, most of those neighborhoods were mostly abandoned and they were trying to figure out how to tear them down economically and use the land for something else.  They had even discussed urban farming.
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It's still like that. A lot has been torn down, but there are still thousands of dilapidated and abandoned houses. Things are being gentrified from the downtown outward, but you have a miles wide belt of of urban decay that has to be delt with. 

 
ZRod said:
t's still like that. A lot has been torn down, but there are still thousands of dilapidated and abandoned houses. Things are being gentrified from the downtown outward, but you have a miles wide belt of of urban decay that has to be delt with. 
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I'm glad they're moving forward with tearing them down.  I read one time that there was a around 30 square miles of the city that needed to be torn down.

So, when a project like this goes through, tear it down, help the few people that are actually still living their consolidate into other areas that are like what was torn down.  Eventually, you get rid of most of the bad area and people are consolidated enough that they can actually have a neighborhood and the city can efficiently manage it.

Again, Detroit is not your normal city that this is happening in.

 
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BigRedBuster said:
I've heard this for decades.  But, I honestly don't know what a municipality is supposed to do about it.  You have two neighborhoods. One is upper class, low crime, well maintained.  You have another part that is run down, crime infested, low income, homeless problem...etc.  You're going to build a new sports arena.  What part are you going to look at to improve.

Now, maybe municipalities need to work harder at helping the citizens that are affected by this.  But, a city isn't going to tear down a nice area for this while leaving a crappy area.
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I've got a lot of thoughts about this but one is that there are plenty of times in our history of urban development where it wasn't low income/crime infested/run down places getting razed to the ground - it was healthy minority middle-class neighborhoods who didn't happen to have the means to organize and fight and be represented in their governments. 

This video includes some bias and conjecture, but also informative as a starting point:





I think often times with issues like this, people fail to explain the distinction between something coming from a racist intent, or something that ends with a racist result. Even if the decisions and people making them aren't innately racist, which most things aren't, if they clearly correlate to disproportionate suffering based on the variable of race, well... we don't need to demonize that but at least need to accept the sobering reality.

 
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