Looking for America: Forgotten Cities

Unfortunately, the United States has a lengthy history of being a throw-away society. During the colonial era, residents simply tossed the trash out their windows. Today, we abandon last year’s gadget for this year’s gizmo, we design products for short-term use, we demolish historic buildings to build glass boxes, we abandon one big box to construct a new one right across the street, and we even toss our hometowns into the trash heap when greener pastures come calling.

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Needless to say, this is extremely inefficient and wasteful methodology. Build and abandon, build and abandon might have worked when there were millions of acres of undeveloped land just waiting for pioneers in Conestoga wagons, but today it leaves a dismal legacy of urban decay, deep scars on the land, and disenfranchises those left behind to pick up the pieces, which are most often the poor, immigrants, and minorities.

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Forgotten cities dot the map; they are not just a Rust Belt phenomenon, though they are more prevalent in the Northeast and Midwest.  Forgotten cities are defined by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as meeting the following criteria:

Old—cities with an industrial history, meaning they had a population of more than 5,000 inhabitants by 1880;

Small—cities with between 15,000 and 150,000 residents according to the 2000 US Census; and

Poor—cities with a median household income of less than $35,000 according to the 2000 US Census.

According to the 2007 report prepared by MIT, in conjunction with Policy Link and Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association, entitled Voices from Forgotten Cities, there are 150 forgotten cities located in 30 states.  States containing the most forgotten cities are:

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Pennsylvania (21)

New York (20)

Ohio (15)

Illinois (11)

Indiana (8)

Michigan (7)

New Jersey (7)

Connecticut (6)

Kentucky (6)

Virginia (6)

Missouri (4)

Iowa (4)

Texas (4)

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Due to the criteria set by MIT, struggling large metropolitan cities like Cleveland, St. Louis, New Orleans, Baltimore, or Detroit are not included. A few examples that are included, some of which greatly surprised this author (surprises *), are:

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Pensacola, Florida*

Savannah, Georgia*

East St. Louis, Illinois

Evansville, Indiana*

Muncie, Indiana

Lawrence, Kansas*

Owensboro, Kentucky*

Hagerstown, Maryland*

Fall River, Massachusetts

Flint, Michigan

Saginaw, Michigan

Mankato, Minnesota

Natchez, Mississippi*

Hannibal, Missouri*

Atlantic City, New Jersey

Camden, New Jersey

Ithaca, New York*

Syracuse, New York

Wilmington, North Carolina*

Newark, Ohio

Youngstown, Ohio

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Lancaster, Pennsylvania*

Columbia, South Carolina*

Galveston, Texas

Waco, Texas

Burlington, Vermont*

Fredericksburg, Virginia*

Wheeling West Virginia

La Crosse, Wisconsin

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Another surprising item is six state capitals are considered forgotten (Albany, Augusta, Columbia, Harrisburg, Hartford, and Trenton). That is one-third of all state capitals that meet the population criteria. Kind of a sad commentary in itself.

According to MIT, there are five “S” factors that define the community’s slide into the realm of being a forgotten place:

Shock – most often a large plant closing

Slippage – flight of capital and investment dollars

Self-destruction – arson, crime, blight, and abandonment

Stigmatization – negative images from news or word of mouth

Shame – chronic disengagement and lack of faith in the city

So, how does this sad legacy get reversed? The taxes invested in infrastructure alone would be a terrible waste to abandon. Why build new, when existing services are already available? The MIT report recommends the following steps:

• Start small.
• Bring people together to talk about something they care about, not just something you think they should care about.
• Do one thing well. It should be concrete. It should be visible.
• Be consistent, persistent, and relentlessly hopeful.
• Build trust.
• Raise expectations.
• Convene a group of committed and talented people who can support each other.
• Respect yourself and your community. Don’t act desperately or discount your future.
• Save the treasures of the past.
• Be intentional—do your work strategically and well.
• Generate enthusiasm around a long-term vision for the community.
• Outlast everyone.
• Enable a range of rooted stakeholders to brainstorm and invest in the vision.
• No zero sum games. Play a different game. Make the pie larger.
• Remember the basics: clean and safe streets, access to jobs, education, housing, and recreation.
• Attend to the internal market; it does exist.
• Focus on the needs of working-class families—if they thrive, so will your city.
• Be positive. Don’t rehash old history.
• Make it possible for people to participate—provide food and child care, and meet during off hours.
• Focus on the present and future: What can we do now?
• Recognize the importance of active organizing, creating partnerships, and coalitions.
• Create a demand environment where hundreds of people expect things to work right.
• If people aren’t excited about an initiative or project, it’s not working. Stop doing it.
• Creative failure is vital; that’s why you start small.
• Don’t get too invested in organizational structures; build a form that follows function.
• Keep it fun. If it’s not, then there will only be a few true believers

Beyond the ideas from MIT, another option is to build incentives for rebirth through establishing policies and encouraging action. Policies that promote adaptive reuse, revitalization, rehabilitation, and preservation instead of green field development and more sprawl. Actions that show you are putting your money where your mouth is by participating in the rebirth, not just talking about it.

Excellent examples include outgoing Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm who put policy into action by requiring state agencies to re-locate back into central cities whenever possible. In the private sector, both Compuware and Quicken Loans have both moved their headquarter back from the suburbs into downtown Detroit, while Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan is in the process of doing the same.

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As MIT stated, start small. It is amazing how small steps can start a trend, which can then lead to observable progress, a renewed sense of pride, and later rebirth. As Hillary Clinton noted, “it takes a village to raise a child.” That is very true, but without a village from which to build those foundations, many children living in the forgotten cities of America face a bleaker future than is necessary or acceptable.

 

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Looking for America

Please click on one of the links highlighted in blue to read this sad story from NPR’s “All Things Considered.”  It is about the Simon and Garfunkel song, (Looking for) America and Saginaw, Michigan. The story and song are excellent lead-ins for an upcoming post on the forgotten and forlorn cities of America. Remember, each forgotten city is someone’s hometown.

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Do we really need to hear two sides of every issue?

There is a growing sentiment on the left, particularly in the gay rights movement, that the media’s determination to appear neutral has led to legitimizing views that have no business being given equal air time. Whenever an issue comes up–tax cuts, the START treaty, DADT, health care–TV news analysts and pundits will invite “experts” onto their shows to debate the merits of each side of an issue.

Some, including moderators at the Daily Kos, support boycotting entire networks–namely Fox News, which is as fair and balanced as the sun is cold. It is so obviously biased toward Republicans a few liberals think there’s no point in Democrats going on their shows and pretending Fox is interested in the truth.

Others, including Bishop John Shelby Spong, have stopped debating specific issues, such as whether civil marriage for gay people is a basic right. His whole post is worth reading here, but in part, he writes:

I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility.

There is no debate, activists say, because marriage should be available to everyone regardless of sexual orientation, so they refuse to get into discussions with people who disagree. They also think anti-civil marriage activists should not have equal time on TV. Would the producers give equal time to people who say the world is flat? Or think women shouldn’t have the right to vote? Or oppose interracial marriage?

Media Matters took on this issue a couple of months ago, asking if the Washington Post really needed to publish homophobic diatribes in order to balance out the opinions of Dan Savage, a sex columnist and founder of the It Gets Better project:

Even if you buy the ludicrous notion that Tony Perkins’ attack on gays was necessary to balance out Dan Savage’s efforts to reduce gay suicide, that doesn’t explain the Post‘s decision to host several other gay-bashing tirades — or to pass them off as the work of “distinguished” panelists as part of an “intelligent” and “respectful” conversation.

Just how many homophobes does the Washington Post think it needs to balance out Dan Savage?

I have fallen afoul of the media’s quest for balance myself. I attended the March for Women’s Lives in 2004 and wrote about the experience for my college newspaper. There was a large group from the community that went, including 15-20 fellow students, so I wasn’t quoting myself when I wrote the article, or expressing my feelings on the subject–which were admittedly fairly obvious since I went to the march myself. After the story was published, the news adviser chided me for not talking to any anti-abortion groups on campus. Did I have an obligation to present their side? There were protesters at the march, but I doubt any of them were from my college, considering the march was in Washington, D.C., and I went to school in the Midwest. We were supposed to have at least two sources for every story. How far did I have to go to make sure one of those sources had an opposing view?

It’s an interesting debate. I do think sometimes the media, which is not liberal, despite what conservatives want you to think, goes too far in their quest to give equal attention to opposing sides. Despite what you may think of it, abortion is a legal medical procedure, yet anti-abortion groups are given equal air time with reproductive rights activists. Would CNN give credence to an anti-appendectomy group? Or an organization that opposes organ transplants? They would be laughed off the air.

I see the problem with denying people the chance to voice their opinions. Part of me would love to stop repeating anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage rhetoric, but even those with unpopular and bigoted beliefs have the right to express them. It’s guaranteed in the First Amendment. So do we have to just grit our teeth and listen to people like Maggie Gallagher, former president of the National Organization for Marriage, who can’t come up with a nonreligious reason to ban gay marriage to save her life?

I think at some point in the not too distant future, our society will go forward from the tenet that gay people have the same right to marriage as everyone else, and women have the right to control what happens to their bodies. Until then, maybe the media should be less eager to give equal attention to every belief out there.

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Men and shopping

In case you were wondering, this is what sexism looks like when it’s directed at men: Men and their holiday shopping battle. It reinforces all of those stereotypes about men who have no idea what to give their wives/girlfriends unless explicitly told by those same wives/girlfriends or helped by a sales clerk. (For a story written in New York, it’s also awfully heterocentric. Where are all the men buying for their boyfriends/husbands? Or are gay men just automatically assumed to be amazing shoppers?)

I know men whose wives leave the shopping to them because they enjoy it and are always looking for a bargain. I know men who give lovely gifts without any instruction at all. I also know women (myself included) who are like the men in the article: especially this time of year, I get in, buy and get out.

So it’s tiring to see these same stories year after year: men who are clueless about what to buy their families, women who have a gift picked out for everyone on their list. Why can’t reporters just write stories about shoppers they happen to come across instead of starting from one preconceived idea? I’d find it refreshing to read about a young woman struggling to buy for her girlfriend, or a boy who needs to find something for his dad, or a man who has the perfect present in mind for his grandmother. That would be a lot more interesting than the stories that usually come out this time of year.

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