Which comes first...

"Skeptics may argue that the nation lacks the political will to implement fair housing practices, that they fly in the face of the direction that land use and tax policies have been going for decades. But this inverts cause and effect. It is not that suburban whites are innately racist and consequently favor land-use policies that have increased the racial gap, but rather that prevailing land use policies provide extraordinary inducements, incentives, and encouragement for a system of privatization that has drastic racial consequences."

-Lipsitz (p. 19)

In last week's discussion of the Edge City, sprawl, New Urbanism etc., the automobile loomed large. I believe it is not just the utility or marketability of cars that gives them such a large role in the way spaces are organized and planned -- it is the way the spaces are planned that makes cars so appealing. In a similar inversion of cause and effect, some suggest that land use policy weighted toward better roads and highways is a democratic response to a demanding public; the notion that the policy might be designed to create market demand in the first place should not go unconsidered.

The passage above introduces Clarence Lo's observations on "forced busing," and it is worth noting the automotive connection. The spatial imaginary extends very clearly into transportation, infrastructure, and land/city-scape. I still find it hard to move beyond the chicken and egg conundrum -- can we say with any certainty whether latent attitudes about race, class, and ownership follow from morally bankrupt policy, or vice versa? Does it really matter?

New Orleans offers a compelling example of how divergent spatial imaginaries can make legible the true degree of inequality of access to housing and government resources. "Working-class blacks in New Orleans were resource-poor but network-rich," says Lipsitz (p.21). The causality of the first of these conditions is much easier to grasp than the second. The statement seems to imply that the white, suburban elite is network-poor -- that the importance of social networks in maximizing access to resources is a novel and seldom exploited idea. I agree that a real attempt to "rebuild" New Orleans should prioritize the reconnection of informal social networks. This won't happen (or won't happen soon or completely enough) precisely because the frailty of those networks, linked as they are to a frail infrastructure and fabric, is a fact that has been made nearly permanent (like the car) by the self-serving and cynical deployment of other, more robust ones.