The Confederate States of America & Our Cities

The film, C.S.A: The Confederate States of America, is a must see! From IMDB:

Set in an contemporary alternative world where the Confederate States of America managed to win the American Civil War, a British film documentary examines the history of this nation. Beginning with its conquest of the northern states, the film covers the history of this state where racial enslavement became triumphant and the nation carried sinister designs of conquest. Interspersed throughout are various TV commercials of products of a virulent racist nature as well as public service announcements promoting this tyranny. Only at the end do you learn that there is less wholly imagined material in the film than you might suspect.

The film is the work of writer & director Kevin WIllmott, a professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. It is a joint presentation of IFC Films and Spike Lee. IThe film assumes many white abolitionists and freed slaves would have escaped to Canada. ‘m not going to give away any of the specifics as you need to see the film yourself. Suffice to say, it got me thinking.

What if America still permitted/encouraged the immoral act of slavery? Our cities would certainly look different than today. As a society we still would have fallen in love with the car and we would have had a need for housing following WWII. But would the suburban boom have been what it was without demands for civil rights? With slaves to do house and yard work the typical 1950s house may not have been the same. I would imagine houses would have remained larger and that multiple generations would have stayed together more than in our reality. Literal industrial slave labor would have kept many manufacturing jobs in America — why export to foreign slave shops. Kathy Lee could have had American-slave made shirts. Retaining a manufacturing base would have meant slave housing around factories. Whites would not have fled cities as they did when having to do sane things like share a drinking fountain or a classroom. If you are white these cities might not sound so bad but consider the many technological and cultural accomplishments that would not have happened.

But the Union did defeat the Confederates and we ended up with institutionalized segregation rather than actual freedom. Northern whites wanted no more to do with blacks than did Southern whites for many decades up to and through the Civil Rights Movement (some could argue, convincingly, this is still the case). So what I want to know is where would our cities be today had white folks, say by a generation removed from the Civil War, not really cared much about race. Yes, a big stretch of the imagination and far from reality but go with me on this.

We would not have had any white flight in this case either as we’d already be fully integrated on a race basis. Economic segregation would still be an issue but I think it would be more balanced than today as we would not have had decades of discrimination in education and employment.

– Steve

Baby Boomers Brainwashed into Hating Cities

Although I am going to have a huge amount of reading for my classes in Urban Planning at Saint Louis University this Fall I could not help but stop by the Carondelet YMCA for their annual book fair (continuing through tomorrow). I bought a number of Life magazines from the 1960s as well as a former school library book, Cities and Metropolitan Areas in Today’s World by Samuel L. Arbital. The book is copyrighted 1968.

Wow, no wonder some many people hated cities, if I had read such propaganda as a child I might be living out in a suburb and fearful of the city. Here are some selected quotes from the first half of the book:

Preface:

The problems of our cites and metropolitan areas are nation-wide. No city is along in crisis.

Chapter 1 – From City to Megalopolis

During business hours, the core of the city teems with action. People at work, people shopping, people on a visit — people coming or going. Workers travel into the core every weekday morning from other parts of the city or from the suburbs. After work the movement of people flows in reverse — away from the core to their homes in the outlying sections of the city or suburbs.

Highways and main traffic arteries have had to be built to help route traffic into and out of the core. In Minneapolis, Hiawatha Avenue cuts across the core. In Detroit, the main arteries are Gratier Avenue, Woodward Avenue and Grand Avenue.

Those who live in the core are, for the most part, people who cannot afford to live elsewhere and must settle for old rundown tenements until they can afford to move away.

The majority of people who live in the inner ring, however, are poor. They live in old, outdated, neglected houses built when the city was young. Many houses lack adequate sanitation, heat, hot water, garbage removal facilities, fire protection or other requirements for decent living standards.

Just as the pioneers of old moved ever outward from the crowded areas, many families today have been pushing beyond the political boundaries of the city into open space in the suburbs.

Chapter 2 – The Problems of Cities and Metropolitan Areas

It is typical today for young married couples to move to the suburbs, while their parents and grandparents remain in the core. One of the chief reasons for deterioration has been the in-migration of rural families, both white and Negro, whose customs and values are different from those of older city dwellers, thus giving additional momentum to the movement out of the city. Those who remain have to adapt to the old houses, stores, schools and streets.

As national legislation helps to finance long-range programs worked out by local agencies, there can be a reduction in grinding poverty and improvement in educational and cultural opportunities within the city. Cities will then regain their vitality and blight can be eliminated.

All too often it is to the core of the city that Negro families have moved and the boundaries have become hardened and fixed. Housing is interior to the housing for white families on the city’s fringe or in the suburbs. Negro communities are permitted to deteriorate with no encouragement for those who want to maintain their property.

Every central city is faced with the difficulty of transporting passengers into and through the core at a minimum cost and with maximum speed and efficiency. Narrow streets in the downtown sections of cities are inadequate for the steady flow of automobiles, buses, taxis and trucks that move through them each day.

Detroit has 21 redevelopment and nine neighborhood conservation projects. One of the problems which Detroit has in common with other large cities is the relocation of Negro families, even those who can afford middle income or high rental housing, from the city slum areas.

In a future post I’ll bring you quotes from the second half with chapter 2, Cities meet the challenge and chapter 4, the future by design.

– Steve

Come for the Pesto, Stay for the Documentary

September 16th is a very interesting sounding event, Pesto Feast! There are few things that I like better than a nice plate of fresh pesto but what interests me about the event is the documentary film, Ivory Perry: Pioneer in the Struggle Against Lead Poisoning.

Civil rights activist Ivory Perry grabbed S.t Louis headlines in the 1960s for his daring acts of civil disobediance, such as lying down in the street to stop traffic for the cause. He was shocked to discover that lead poisoning was ruining childrens’ health. By starting a movement to eradicate this silent killer, he was one of the first to call for environmental justice.

All the details are on the image at right. If you click on the image you’ll be taken to the event website which has even more information on the pesto and Mr. Perry.

– Steve

50th Anniversary of Buses on Broadway

Buses on Broadway is not a long running transit themed musical but the #40 Route in St. Louis. Yesterday, the 19th of August, marked fifty years since the line switched from streetcars to bus service.

While I cannot, as this time, prove a correlation between the change from streetcars to buses and the dramatic reduction in residents in the city during the same time period I am convinced this was at least a contributing factor. Transit was and will remain important to central cities and we cannot underestimate the importance of this relationship to perception, population trends general health of the community.

Citizens for Modern Transit Executive Director Thomas Shrout, Metro’s Walking tour guide Melanie Harvey, follow urbanist blogger Joe Frank and myself discussed organizing an event to commemorate (mourn?) the switch from streetcars to bus service bus our busy schedules simply didn’t allow us to get anything organized. Besides, we had doubt that anyone would ride the #40 simply for the purpose of noting the anniversary.

– Steve

Preservation Board to Review Proposed Changes to Forest Park’s Government Hill

The St. Louis Preservation Board reviewed a radical proposal at their June 2006 meeting (see post). The board at the time deferred any recommendation to Forest Park Forever and instead asked them to reconsider the concept. And it worked.

Last week I heard about a special meeting of the Preservation Board being called to consider the revisions. On Saturday morning I ran into Board Chair Timothy Mulligan at Soulard Market and he wanted to make sure the public was aware of the meeting.

The prior concept can be seen in the June 2006 report and the latest design can be seen here.

It is hard to make out the new design from the images in the PDF agenda but the description from the staff is helpful. One key part is making the area ADA compliant without regrading the entire hillside:

The revised design incorporates accessibility features in a manner that blends these features into overall design of the space rather than designing the space around the accessibility features. The accessibility features are now made a part of the landscaping and have gentle slopes that do not require ramp treatment—an accessible route with a slope of less than 5% will be integrated into the design of the rooms. The accessible paths will not be visible from Government Drive because the revised plan no longer involves extensively regrading the hill.

The meeting starts at 4:30pm this afternoon at 1015 Washington, 12th floor.

– Steve