A City Divided: Indignation is Easy - Real Change is Hard

... differences in civilization are not due to differences in individuals or races, but rather to differences in social organization. Progress is always kindled by association. And civilization always declines as inequality develops (Henry George, Progress and Poverty, Fourth Edition 1880)

As an architect who works with community development corporations, non-profits, government and private developers alike, I often feel like I am standing on top of a deep chasm that goes right through our cities and probably the country.

On one side of the chasm is cyniscism, despair, anger and activism.On the other is giddy exuberance about startups, the many cranes in downtown, or the sharing economy.  

chasms

Or anger, xenophobia and frustration on the one and delight in diversity and multiculturalism on the other. 

However one draws the lines, one thing is certain: There are always those who express indignation about the actions of the other and are sure what is right and what wrong.

That even though the sides are by no means clearly marked by easily identifiable boundaries such as party lines, as a Pew Research study suggests, they are mostly characterized by polarizing purity and self-righteousness. Often such polarization is based onself-made ideology since all the big ideologies of the past (communism, socialism, capitalism, idealism, materialism, consumerism, individualism and so forth) are bankrupt and discredited.

The eroding middle ground: Pew Study (source: Pew research center)

Part of what’s happening, according to the Pew survey from 2014, is that Americans are becoming more consistent, even rigid, in their political beliefs. It used to be more common for Americans to have mixed views—a bit of conservative economics, a dollop of liberal social policy. But “ideological silos” have become increasingly the norm on both sides of the aisle, which in turn affects how, and with whom, Americans interact. “People with down-the-line ideological positions”— nearly two-thirds of conservatives and about half of liberals—“...say that most of their close friends share their political views,“ the Pew report states.

The diminishing area of the middle ground is bad news, indeed. Recent years have provided ample evidence for those who still needed it: real progress is rarely made on the barricades and in fiery revolutions, not in Egypt, not in the Ukraine and not in Istanbul's Taksim Plaza. Admittedly, that is an underwhelming insight: Enduring progress is found in the middle. History has consistently shown that it is easy to topple something with great bravado, but it is much harder to build something better that can sustain and endure. Especially in a pragmatic democracy like the one we like to think we have in the United States, a middle ground is sorely needed. A place for give and take, a place where compromise is possible without losing face or identity. Demographically, socially and economically, the middle class is an expression of this: A large cohort of people who have something to aspire to on the one side and something to lose on the other. Of course, that middle class is precisely what the United States has seen eroding for years like the polar glaciers. To stay in the metaphor: Now the level middle ground has flooding while the flags fly proudly from the higher peaks.

....the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. (William Butler Yates, The Second Coming).

In cities, the erosion of the middle can be detected physically. The middle class has not only diminished in numbers, it also has fled the urban centers for supposedly higher ground in the burbs. High concentrations of poverty and increasingly also rich enclaves are settling into the vacuum, with no middle in between. Neighborhoods become ever more polarized and it is typically impossible to confuse to which side a neighborhood belongs.

Is the other side a threat?

Food deserts, shootings, and boarded up retail on one side, ever more restaurants, diners spilling out to the sidewalks on the other. Dilapidated houses on one, glitzy glass condo towers on the other. A sea of concrete, brick, weeds and blazing sun on one side, manicured landscaping and cool shade on the other side.

There is hardly a common language between the two sides, whether it is the ideological or the physical divide. The steady admonition of politicians that there is more that unites us than divides us sounds hollow either way. 

Often there is no real space in between. There are worlds between the new Mt. Vernon Marketplace on Park Avenue and the historic Lexington Market in Baltimore, even though the two are only half a mile apart and the posh yuppie market is bordered by no less decay than its much older and larger sibling. My office sits at the mid-point,  at what feels like, again, a chasm.

Chasms

What happened last Thursday in the span of a few hours illustrates the divisions even though the two things have really no causal relation: The judge in the Freddie Gray case announced acquittal of the police officer with the most severe charges, and the Baltimore Planning Commission approved the Under Armour (technically Sagamore Development) masterplan with a $553 million tag of  anticipated TIF funding.

The absence of a logical connection between the two doesn't stop the contingent of indignation to immediately spin a narrative of the deep injustice of an oppressive police force going free while one of the richest men in town will get a fortune forked over to build a headquarters surrounded by a company town.

That narrative was also on display when the growth management group 1000 Friends of Maryland held a fundraiser at the former bus garage which currently serves as the already-completed Under Armour (UA) gateway in the development area. The picketers didn't care that Under Armour had an internationally recognized event earlier the same day in the same location in the extremely competitive UA owner let a robot cut the ribbon and announced a new age in which stuff is again made right here in America. They didn't care that the 1000 Friends have a progressive agenda picking fights with developers who want to pave over cornfields instead of investing inside established communities. The event was first "picketed" and then disrupted by demonstrators for fair and affordable housing. The independent media sources reported mostly about the disruption and stressed that the fundraising participants were well-off and ate pretty snacks and had fine drinks. The "Real News" didn't report correctly what TIFs are, but neither did they address the "real" problem: the unenforceable Baltimore inclusionary housing law and the reasons why affordable housing is so scarce in cities across the country. Although the UA developers had met with dozens of stakeholders, the picketers had never sought to meet with UA to discuss affordable housing in the proposed mega development.

As one who sees the benefits of the UA/Sagamore proposed 15 million squarefoot development and is an advocate for affordable housing, I felt again like I was sitting on a chasm.

health discrepancies: life expectancy

Even though the narrative of indignation conflates things that have no causal relation, the ills of cities are so grave and have been swept under the rug for so long that laying them at the feet of just about any current events topic feels justified.

How can we have 21 years of life expectancy discrepancy between the poorest and the richest neighborhoods in town, those incredible incarceration rates, the skyrocketing unemployment rates in certain zip-codes, neighborhoods where every third house sits vacant and every month several people get killed, how can we have food deserts, high infant mortality, record addiction rates, poor school performance, and still talk about the glitzy new developments like Harbor East, Harbor Point, Canton Crossing and now Port Covington, or their counterparts in other cities?

In light of those urban ills being so pervasive in the modern American City, many consider any talk about posh new enclaves like playing violin on the deck of the Titanic after the ship was fatally struck by the iceberg.

The "purity" sought out of indignation and righteousness is dangerous. It evacuates the middle ground. It is a view that in its extreme and without an actionable path can lead anti-abortionists to shoot because they see only the suffering of countless unborn, can lead survivalists to occupy public land and attack police in the name of freedom, can tempt environmentalists to burning down oil company camps in the name of protecting nature. Extreme indignation and righteousness can turn even benign people into hopeless individuals and has guided the shots of the German Red Army Faction (RAF) in the seventies and it leads some youth to signing on with ISIS.

Besides: The journey of our cities has never been as carefree as the initial journey of the Titanic, nor are cities about to sink to the ground. A more applicable, but no less unsettling, image would be of the privileged sunning themselves around the pool on deck of the ocean liner while others fight in dinghies with the rough sea.  The reality is not as clear cut, it wasn't in the past and it won't be in the future.

A good while back, after the sinking of the Titanic and after the unbearable horrors of World War II but before Bophal, Syria, or Tienanmen Square, Bethlehem Steel employed 35,000 people in the Baltimore region. A single wage earner working there could support a whole family. But capitalism wasn't any prettier then than it is now. 

The ten most unequal US cities: Baltimore is not on the list

There was exploitation, air pollution, and the occasional worker being incinerated in a smelter of molten metal because workplace safety was so poor. Women were preferred as homemakers, blacks couldn't get service at lunch counters or buy homes in the suburbs, homosexuality was a crime, clean and safe housing for the poor was scarce. Paints and gasoline contained lead and thousands more died in a terrible slaughter on the roads before seatbelts and airbags.

Even though there is little reason to think America was really so great then, most seemed to be in a consensus that what was good for Bethlehem Steel, (or Carr Lowry, Black & Decker, McCormick, Allied Signal, Domino Sugar, Lockheed Martin or, proverbially, for General Motors, all companies present in the Baltimore region) was good not only for Baltimore City and County but was perceived as good for America.

What the Pew study shows, and what daily experience confirms, is that this consensus has eroded. Looking for an explanation one can observe that the consensus diminished at the same rate as the middle class has eroded. As supply of labor increased (women entering the workforce in large numbers, baby boomers, echo boomers, immigration) the demand for labor decreased thanks to automation and increased productivity. These two ongoing opposite trends resulted, quite in keeping with the rules of supply in demand, in reduced power of unions and sinking or stagnant wages (Henry George, by the way, does not agree whith the demand and supply ratio as the base for wages).

Source: center of American Progress Fund, April 2011

With more of the workforce being pushed up the qualification ladder into the now also thinning territory of service and administrative jobs, actual, tangible, locall-made products have become rare and no longer are a basis of local pride. In the same manner in which workers have fragmented into all kinds of employment, worker solidarity and the sense that "we are in this together" has evaporated. Skilled laborers look down on burger-flippers, while both groups despise illegal immigrants. Also despised, the white collar folks in their corner offices and the obscure middle men in finance and real estate. From that soil grew the red herring of the urban elites who in the narrative of indignation take on the role as the bad guys, alternatively called yuppies, creatives, Millennials, or liberals.
With the legacy industries largely wiped out, the new industries of the sunbelt and Silicon Valley don't fare any better. Their leaders are just as unpopular as bankers, financiers or brokers. It is a sign of the eroding middle ground that even "benign" successful entrepreneurs and their "social capitalism" projects are met with the same disdain, no matter that injury, exploitation, and the once so dominant alienation are mostly absent in companies which are often branded around "social impact".

In a country in which "making it" was once a universal goal, success is now so suspect that even a down to earth Baltimore Greek immigrant whomade a fortune by baking rolls became an enemy after he was dragged by a former Baltimore Mayor into land development. His land development dealings turned him overnight from simple baker into a "mogul" or "magnate", especially after public subsidies and a tax increment financing deal turned out to be badly negotiated by the municipal government who overestimated the TIF payback periods.

So self-made man Kevin Plank and his explosively growing sports apparel empire Under Armour ("We defend this House") can attract attention world-wide, but he doesn't get any slack back home. There may be affinity and pride for his brand and the sports apparel, as is evident from the frequency in which one finds the emblem on accessories in board or bar rooms here. But as as soon as it comes to development and Plank's project of a brand-new corporate headquarters surrounded by a 220 acre new town, the positive sentiment abruptly ends and the two camps emerge as strictly divided as the city itself.

The notion that the project could benefit the city as a whole evidently is thoroughly discredited, by the evidence of whatever past big projects that failed to lift Baltimore's poor areas. The baker's Harbor East is heralded as a sign that Baltimore is by no means a sinking ship by those affluent enough to work, eat or shop there. But those advocating for the poor see it as a new "gated community". The picketers spoke of the new developments as "redlined", referring to the horrible discriminatory practice in which whole sections of town were blocked for black buyers or renters. Academics chime in with their own brand of indignation. Baltimore's ACLU and Baltimore's HBCU alike:

“Baltimore is a deeply segregated city and has been for the past century. A project like Port Covington, where there’s no fair-housing mandate and no promise for living wages, is really a missed opportunity. It’s reifying and intensifying the ‘two Baltimores’ problem we have now. In its sweeping vision and unprecedented costs, Port Covington is an example of the increasing influence corporations are having on city planning.” (Lawrence Brown, professor of community health and policy at Morgan State University as quoted in Bloomberg News.)

But the cherished narrative of indignation doesn't jive with reality. The residents of the Perkins Homes public housing project use their Independence Cards at nearby Harbor East's Whole Foods as much as the maligned urban elite because they appreciate the presence of quality food just like everybody else. Poor people like the quick access to the public promenade and waterfront, and go to the multi screen theater as well. Why should it be otherwise?

At a minimum, the communities of Westport, Cherry Hill and Brooklyn surrounding the envisioned Port Covington redevelopment could benefit from waterfront access, promenades, parks and recreational trails as well.

While I have read enough Marx, Engels and Lefebvre to understand that not all interests are equal, the truth is also, that neither Google nor Under Armour can prosper in a world in which half the population is left out. More and more companies understand that. The communities around Port Covington are beyond indignation and are well engaged in negotiations with the development team. They know that a combative and antagonistic narrative of class warfare leaves them with no seat at the tablein the end. The contingent of the aggrieved who prefer bullhorns over negotiation is frequently not from an affected community at all, and not appointed to speak for them. They heap derision on those who testify for the development as having been bribed by a free bus ride and a lunch. Thus the scale of a 15 million square foot development comes down to a sandwich.

For someone sitting on top of the chasm between the parties, the accusation of bribed African American pastors and community associations is as uncomfortable as a homeless person crashing a fine fundraising event to emphasize his plight. Baltimore's history is full of bribes and corruption, no doubt. Yet, fighting the most successful company in town (and the second most successful one in all of America) is as self-defeating as burning down the CVS on Penn and North or as Britain leaving the EU. In each case the misguided narrative of indignation is leading people into the dead ends of an ultimately destructive pattern.

What is left is the exploration of the middle ground. Just as Britain should have been a more constructive member in the EU instead of cutting its ties, so too must urban Americaengage, break open silos, and communicate for a more equitable city. In an age of public poverty this has to include the private sector, like it or not.

Sluseholmen urban redevelopment Copenhagen

Pragmatic negotiation and exchange, not excessive class warfare, has made cities like Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo attractive and much more equitable than Baltimore. Successful industries have made Portland, Seattle, Austin and San Diego have a much more consistent quality of life in their cities than Baltimore, New Orleans or Detroit, even though poverty and homelessness is still rampant in all those places. There is no other way forward than the one of negotiation and taking small steps forward in the terrain that is the shrinking common ground. Identifying the elements of a win-win one-by-one is so much more sustaining than crash and burn. Urban design and landscape urbanism can play important roles in this. 

Riding the chasm successfully requires a lot more than the maligned trickle down, though.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
edited by Ben Groff, JD. 
Updated for the introductory quote based on a reader's comment

Links:
The 10 most unequal US cities (Bloomberg)
Income inequality in cities (Brookings)
Bloomberg: Under Armour's Quest to Dethrone Nike and Jump Start Baltimore

see also on this blog:
Divided City

NOTE: During the summer months articles on this weekly blog and the compendium daily blog will become less regular due to travel, conferences and book writing