I have commented on this before, but I want to reiterate some ideas about the connections between public schools, race relations, urban design, energy use and personal health.
In an earlier post, I commented about how one of the best things about the Obama candidacy was that he was of African decent -- thus perceived in the U.S. as African American (though I disagree with this perception). The point is that the United States has a long and very tenuous race relations history -- as do all neo-European (Australia, North and South America, etc.) areas, if not nearly every nation on earth. Human nature, perhaps.
However, because the U.S. has been the "world leader" for a good 60 years, our rolemodeling on this is both indirectly and directly examined by all other countries. I don't want to sound too "U.S. is the best" here, but I think we can all agree that other countries have looked to us for comparison and as a model.
In any event, five things have been the driving force in the vast and sweeping changes experienced over the past 60 years.
1) The creation of the Interstate Highway System based partially on aniexies of the Cold War.
2) The subsequent policies that followed concerning taxes, mortgages and home ownership.
3) The quick integration through forced federal policy of our public school system.
4) Inexpensive energy through deals cut with the Saudis coupled with the explosion of petroleum finding technologies and the general hands off energy policy.
5) The Green Revolution (partially brought about by cheap energy) that led to very inexpensive food.
None of these events were conspiracy in nature, but rather they indirectly combined and grew over several decades to be a perfect storm of decisions that we now deal with through global warming, 40,000 traffic deaths a year (10 times more than have died in Iraq since the start of the war!), increased diabetes rates, a national fat problem and now lower life expectancies among the young compared to their parents (at that is only propped up through massive spending on pharmaceuticals).
However, the perhaps the biggest driver in our national loss of city life (and all the socialization of behavior that comes with it) is the general failing of urban public schools. Fix the schools, and the main reason to move to the suburbs, drive everywhere, use a lot of gasoline, rape our farmland and forests for subdevelopments, gain weight, develop metabolic diseases and take a bunch of pharmaceuticals to "fix" them goes away. That's a huge sweeping statement that doesn't apply in every situation, but I don't think you can argue with the general statistical curve of things that moves in this direction.
Our public schools, I think, failed due to white flight. I want to stress that it is not because white people made the schools good. Rather, as a statistical group, I would argue that they paid more taxes and were higher on the socioeconomic ladder than other groups thus (again, as a group) provided a critical economic support to the city that was not immediately replaced as they moved out of the cities over the course of a decade or two.
Part of the reason they moved was the rapid integration and/or social engineering of the school system. Some sort of fix was needed at the time and the federal policy probably seemed like a good plan. I'm not going to argue that point. Rather, many found it a shock. So they moved to new school systems, usually in new suburbs created by cheap land, in turn created by the new Interstate Highway System.
None of this is new thinking. But Obama presents us with an awesome choice to start a repair process. And my hope is that the economic realities of the energy market provide the kick in the pants to continue the process.
In this New York Times article, the reporter uncovers Obama's motives for really delving into the public school issue. His experience in failure gave insight into future planning. This, along with extensive advice from experts, has led to significant and systematic policy proposals.
That process alone is the making of an excellent leader.
Obama is not the perfect candidate. He's still a politician. But his presidency could bring us great long-term benefits.
So here's how I think it could roll:
An Obama presidency empowers the black community, bringing about long-term social confidence building and changing the outlook for millions of young black men (and women). It also begins the "healing process" we need to start to rebuilt public trust.
His education policies, over the course of several years, reinvigorate urban public schools leading them to par with the best of the suburban schools. In tandem, energy prices stay high and conservation is encouraged through both regulatory and tax policy. These two events, coupled with increased urban regeneration, draws new parents from all income levels back into the cities, allowing them to drastically reduce their energy use and injecting even more funding into the school systems through an increased tax base, allowing them to surpass suburban schools and fueling the cycle even further.
We'd save so much. We'd save a generation of children from both undue social trama and start a path to reduced energy use removing pressure to purchase foreign oil and reducing the overall carbon footprint of the average American household to that of Britian (which is still, from a sustainability standpoint is way high).
The urban design part is that we have to be ready for the new residents. We need to plan now for significant upgrades and expansions of train-based transit systems. We must create (recreate) quality shared public space throughout neighborhoods and city centers. Lastly, we must streamline zoning and tax codes to allow for rapid redevelopment and redensification of our cities that call for high architectural quality and a diversification of housing typologies. This last piece is especially important so that enough supply of housing is created to keep prices low enough to justify moving in the first place. This cannot be a subsidy-based system. It has to be affordable market rate housing (a whole other post!).
Anyway, my hope for the future....
The article that inspired this post:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/10/us/politics/10educate.html
10 September 2008
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