Gentrification is rife, but the city council has allocated over $100 million for affordable housing, taxpayers are being asked to ante up another $258.4 million, and impediments to inclusionary zoning have been removed. Portland is also becoming more diverse. In 1940 it was 98 percent white, by 2010 that number had dropped to 76 percent. Sadly decrying Portland’s racism masks the more vexing question: Is Portland’s commitment to sustainability transferable to more racially diverse cities?
Sustainability demands virtue, the ethic limiting personal interests for the public good. Aristotle considered virtue vital to procuring the “good life” cities offered, while Thomas Jefferson saw it as the “social bond” that fused a republic. Portland’s consensual grass-roots politics is predicated on virtue. It plays out in citizen’s support for regulating private development to procure a “good life" that values the public realm, celebrates livability, and prioritizes sustainability. But critics wonder if the consensus that created Portland’s green environs is a product of its whiteness. “It just may take racial homogeneity for an American city to work—not a happy conclusion,” Marshall Berman writes (The Dark Ages: The Final Phase of Empire, 2006, 273).
Berman’s assertion forces the issue that sustainability may be a “white thing,” and Portland is the testing ground. In the 1970s, disruptions to the national economy coupled with a faltering lumber industry to send the city into a tailspin. Between 1970 and 1980 its population dropped by 4.7 percent, and needless to say gentrification was not an issue. When Portland re-emerged as a model green city in the early 1990s, “dumpies” was the term for “downwardly mobile professionals” who traded the city’s unique quality of life for less pay. A desire for the good life rather than the goods life made it possible to reframe the nation’s hyper-consumption on more sustaining lines. Transit options, a vibrant regional food culture, energy efficiency, extensive bike and park networks, a vibrant downtown, and the legalization of marijuana and assisted suicide were procured, but the Ecotopian “less is more” lifestyle does not have universal appeal.
In an article, "Contesting Sustainability: Bikes, Race and Politics in Portlandia," Portland State University sociologists Amy Lubitow and Thaddeus R. Miller contend that sustainability is “a political concept,” that must be “constantly negotiated” and “contested.” For them, sustainability is a process—not a set of principles—where aggrieved parties can procure a political solution. The Koch Brothers and Exxon are also invested in this logic, which they have used to stall efforts to mitigate climate change.
In 1993, Portland was the first city in the United States to adopt a plan to reduce its carbon footprint. Since then, population has increased by 14 percent while carbon emmissions have dropped by 31percent. Biking and walking are the most ecological forms of transportation, and reducing automobile dependency is key to Portland's initiative. Equity is also a concern, as the 2015 Climate Action noted, “Low-income populations and communities of color often have less access to healthy and energy efficient housing, transit, or safe bicycling and walking routes. Consequently, any strategies to reduce carbon emissions must seek to remedy these deficiencies.” https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/583501
In 2011, a plan to improve bicycle safety on Williams Avenue, Portland’s busiest bicycle commuter route, was contested by residents of bordering Albina, a gentrifying historic African-American neighborhood. Lobrik and Miller contend the controversy revealed the need to advance “the notion of a more political sustainability.” The issue, however, was not about sustainability, it was about history.
For African-Americans, gentrification and bicycling were intertwined. For some bicycling was an act of white privilege, but the overriding issue was inclusion. Citizens, who felt powerless, wanted a say in the project. In the 1950s and 1960s, highway and urban renewal projects had eviscerated the community, while calculated racism (e.g red-lining, deed covenants) had depleted trust. Improving pedestrian and bicycle safety on Williams Avenue was "a test," a activist stated, “to determine whether some of the lessons have been learned from previous projects where the outcomes have been really, really poor." http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/its-not-about-the-bikes/Content?oid=5619639
Lessons were learned. The outcome did not, however, as Miller and Lubitow claim, “alter the actual technological design.” The authors never assessed the project's design, which added five pedestrian crossings and a new buffered bike lane. But the lethal legacy of racism was addressed, as funds were allocated to commemorate the neighborhood’s history through a series of art projects.
Respecting the past in a period of rapid change is essential, and Williams Avenue is now a place of slower movement and more reflection. Providing for the safe travel of pedestrians and bicyclists is not only good for the environment, it is good for humans. It allows for more personal face-to-face interaction, which builds trust and solidifies diversity through common experience. These actions are the essence of the good life, and they define the politics of sustainability.
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