First of all, your reading that work impresses me. I will do my best to answer your question.
One. This particular piece focuses on the “origins” of systemic racism in land-use and urban planning. Identifying the origins makes it possible to track “racism” buried inside the system inherited by one generation after another.
Two. As the author cites, several times, court rulings against “racial segregation and zoning” were met by efforts to disguise racism in the planning process (not eliminate it). The question became, “How can we do it, without telling anyone what we’re really doing?” The success of these efforts to disguise racism in the system, enabled politicians and power brokers to deny racism, while enforcing it.
Three. Let’s use Chicago as an example. The zoning map of Chicago was established more than 100 years ago. For the next 100 years, racism informing the original plan, remained in place and informed, directed and controlled development from then on. Today, the results are plainly visible throughout the city. Driving across Chicago today, is like driving across a 100 year old planning map — you can actually “see” the racism hidden in the zoning maps.
In short, the use of zoning in the land-use system created “ghettos” — not the people who live in them. Of course, no one at the time knew how bad it would get, or even why it would get so bad. Like snowballs rolling downhill, bad intentions, low morals and ignorance at the start, created the bad outcomes we live with today.
Four. Local government entities, including schools and all the jobs within these agencies, depend on local property taxes to support themselves. To assure this support, power brokers and officials need to satisfy voters in order to remain in power. Thus, the property taxation system was designed to follow the money. Enforcing zoning enabled city officials to re-distribute tax dollars where the money was — meaning white communities.
The wealthier the neighborhood the more powerful the constituency. Keeping these wealthy neighborhoods happy required subsidies (meaning all city taxpayers contributed to the support of these wealthy neighborhoods). Today, cost of development studies illustrate that wealthy neighborhoods cannot support themselves and are completely dependent on taxpayer subsidies.
Five. By the 1930s, Chicago’s developers wanted more space to grow. Moving black people into concentrated low-income housing projects, offered the solution. First, it would move black people off valuable land that developers wanted to build on while various schemes — including building condemnations and eminent domain — would reduce their high value land, to dirt cheap land. This scheme also enabled the city to gain control of property that was currently owned by black people — and move more black people onto each parcel.
To make room for concentrated housing blocks, self-supporting black communities were condemned, seized and every home and business was bulldozed to the ground. The new zoning was ‘residential only” thereby eliminating any future competition from the black community for retail, commercial, restaurant, industry and business customers. Moreover, the new zoning also forced black people to travel to white business districts for everything they needed — from a quart of milk, to a newspaper, clothes and shoes. With a bulldozer, the city had handed white businesses thousands of new customers. It had also transferred resale and property taxes once earned by black communities to white only business districts. Without their businesses, black residents were no longer capable of supporting their communities.
With the federal government subsidizing and capitalizing these low-income projects, builders could reap large profits by keeping construction costs at the bare minimum. They went bare all the way. Cement brick walls in apartments — not drywall. Steel stairwells — not wooden stairways. Windowless steel doors — not wooden doors with windows. Cheap, aluminum windows that could not open– not paned glass windows with a view and a breeze. Cement floors — not wood, tile or carpet. Narrow hallways — one bare lightbulb per hallway — not light fixtures, or sconces, let alone chandeliers. Higher density zoning — four children to a bedroom — not one each. You get the picture. Cement rabbit warrens — that looked and felt like prisons, not homes. I spent time in the projects and I swear to you, they were horrific.
2011 The last of these building was torn down in 2011. 2011! That’s how long the racism embedded in the land-use system remained in place.
So no, I do not buy the argument that the Civil Rights Act ended racism in this country. Just as Supreme Court rulings did not end racism in land-use law in the early 1900s, the Civil Rights Act did not end it in 1965.
The problem right now, is how many Americans have no idea what a system is, let alone how even one system works.
Until people learn how systems work, we have no hope of gaining control of them. In fact, we keep entrenching these racist systems, by electing local officials who have no idea how these systems work. As a result, these so-called public official sit in their chairs, listening to constituents, then vote the way the city manager, school district superintendent, or county controller tells them they “have” to vote.
I could go on for hours, but I will spare you. Please let me know your thoughts. I am sincerely interested.
