Experience is still the best teacher. This project might help. Get in your car and drive from one corner of your city/town to the other. Along the way, park your car, get out and walk one block in any direction and take at least 2 pictures. Back at your car, write down 2 sentences describing your feelings then drive on. In my tiny town, this drive takes 2 hours. In Los Angeles, you can do it in 5 hours (on an early Sunday morning).
At home, put your pictures on the computer screen and start comparing the public spaces. Forget the buildings and houses and focus on public space only. You are comparing the condition of streets, crosswalks, road striping, sidewalks (if there are any), parkways, street lights, trash cans, schools, libraries, government buildings, benches, signage, parking lots, vacant lots, fencing, parks and playgrounds. Pay extra close attention to landscaping (trees, bushes, flowers, fountains).
I already know what you will find. But doing this project yourself, will enable you to “see” the system you live in, all day, every day. People did not create those places. The land-sue system created every inch of public space you see in the photos you took. The land-use system also created the feelings you wrote down when you stopped your car.
The land-use system is one of the most systemically racist systems in America today. There are ways to fix the land-use system, but first people like you and me must decide we want a governing system that is fair (not tilted towards some people and away from others).
To fix our land-use system, my community replaced zoning with Form Based Codes. Once the community had designed our public spaces, the city and county went to work building them. We aren’t boarded up and dying anymore. Today, we are a very pretty and prosperous little mountain town (with lots of lovely affordable housing). In fact, our newest low-income development will have 200 new homes, a community swimming pool, community center and pocket parks (and people to help new buyers with the mortgage process). That's what happens when people care about their community (instead of MY neighborhood)
