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作者

Dan Immergluck;Kimberley Kinder;Elvin Wyly;Jason Hackworth

来源

URBAN GEOGRAPHY,Vol.41,Issue4,P.625-632

语言

英文

关键字

作者单位

University of Toronto

摘要

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Urban decline, expanding the bounds of policy, and an appeal to bring black political economy to urban geography: a reply to Immergluck, Kinder, and Wyly Let me begin by thanking my friends Dan, Elvin and Kim for participating in this book review forum, and Mark for organizing it. Elvin, in particular, has been there with me from graduate school onward, and is as responsible for who I am as a scholar as any other person. In such an abbreviated format, it is difficult to respond fully to all issues raised, but there were two comments raised by Dan and Kim, respectively, that tap into much wider issues that have been weighing on me in the months since I finished Manufacturing Decline, so I thought I might elaborate on them here. The two issues involve the bounds of policy and the dearth of Black political economy in urban geography. Dan’s comment about the necessity of demolition in certain neighborhoods taps into something I have been thinking about for a while – the dissonance between conventional policy analysis, and the possibility of widening the bounds of what is considered policy. It is, of course, true that as a particular matter, most disinvested neighborhoods are left with few options other than demolition. Vacant houses are dangerous – they attract vermin, scrappers, and arson. They are unsafe for kids to play in and around. They reduce the value of nearby properties even more than vacant lots do. Demolition is also the only form of money that governments are willing to spend in such spaces. As a defensive, almost tragic matter, there is almost nothing other to be done than demolish abandoned houses. The same can be said of other policy “innovations” – austerity (because the city has no money), and right-sizing (because the city is losing population anyway). A common course for policy-focused academics is to perform a cost-benefit analysis of these practices within their stated framework. When, for example, is demolition needed? Under what terms do we need to cut funding? I would like to suggest that we can do this, but also critique the wider set of planned practices that affect such spaces. To me, demolition is not “necessary” because it is the only thing that can or should be done. It is necessary because of the organized limitations placed on more productive, humane outcomes. Taxation policy, the way that schools are funded, the limitations on municipal annexation, eminent domain guidelines, and rules about tax foreclosure are almost always crafted outside of the declining city but they have enormous impact on what happens there. These acts are every bit as planned as a zoning ordinance, or demolition policy. They are policy as much as the narrow question of which houses to demolish. I think that when we discuss the limits of policy and planning we ought to include the very organized effort to stymie progressive or imaginative alternatives. I begin Manufacturing Decline with a retrospective vignette about the Kerner Commission Report in part to provide a historical benchmark for how much things have changed in 50 years. Kerner and his commission studied many of the neighborhoods that I write about in this book and what they recommended was a virtual Marshall Plan for cities: massive sustained investment, fair housing enforcement, school desegregation – not for a few years but for a generation. It is almost quaint to think about such policy ambition today – nothing of that magnitude is on the table and that does not appear to be changing any time soon. But I do think that there is a role for academics – precisely because they are not constrained by the same forces that actual policy-makers are – to expose the very organized attempt to limit what is currently possible. Kim’s comment about the asymmetry of racial analysis in the book also tapped into a wider set of ideas I have been thinking about recently. The first three chapters explain why racism, at a variety of scales, both generates and exacerbates decline. The next few chapters illustrate the forms of deprivation that are more common in, but not unique to, black spaces in the American Midwest. In the latter, “anti-blackness”, “race”, and “racism”, are virtually absent. My argument is that racism generates forms of economic deprivation that we often reduce to deindustrialization and other “purely” economic processes. In this way, it is drawn theoretically from my favorite political economist W.E.B. Du Bois. Among Du Bois’ many insights is the notion that the construction of class and race are co-constituted and intertwined in the United States. Racism is in the DNA of the country and among other outcomes, it functions to restrict and deny access to capital for nonwhite people. But Kim is right to point this out. This approach is only one of the several that could have been chosen. There are other ways of analyzing how racism is present in the more quotidian aspects of policy implementation that are not found in my approach. To me, this highlights the need for urban geographers, particularly urban political economists, to engage more deeply in the black political economy tradition where the variety of angles on this issue can be explored and theorized. Du Bois, Cedric Robinson, Ida B. Wells, and Richard Wright are at least as important for understanding American urbanization as Marx, Foucault, and Gramsci, yet our field is dominated by the latter rather than the former. Many urban geographers now emphasize that “race matters” or invoke “racialization”, or add a “percent Black” variable to their models but return to Harvey, or Marx, or Foucault to theorize the pattern. These are brilliant scholars – don’t get me wrong – but their understanding of how anti-blackness has been integral for the formation of American capitalism is not their strength. There is a considerable body of black political economy literature upon which to expand “conventional” political economic analysis. It is my hope that more urban geographers invest in this literature in the future. Thank you again to Dan, Elvin, Kim and Mark. I appreciate the engagement.