Policy Version ................................................................................................................................................ 3
1AC ............................................................................................................................................................ 4
Observation One: Status quo federal policy fails.................................................................................. 5
Plan text: ............................................................................................................................................... 6
Observation Two: The Harms ............................................................................................................... 7
Observation Three: Economic Competitiveness ................................................................................. 19
Observation Four: Change in the direction of federal transportation infrastructure investment is key
to solving the harms............................................................................................................................ 20
Kritik Version ............................................................................................................................................... 23
1AC .......................................................................................................................................................... 24
Justice has been permanently differed…. ........................................................................................... 25
Colored Bodies are Disposable ........................................................................................................... 30
Advocacy Statement: .......................................................................................................................... 38
Solvency .............................................................................................................................................. 39
Extensions ................................................................................................................................................... 43
Inherency ................................................................................................................................................ 44
No/Little Investment Now .................................................................................................................. 45
SQ Racists ............................................................................................................................................ 48
Transportation Infrastructure Racists ................................................................................................. 59
Transportation racism=segregation .................................................................................................... 70
Segregation Now ................................................................................................................................. 76
Environmental Racism ........................................................................................................................ 78
Harms ...................................................................................................................................................... 80
Pollution/Disease ................................................................................................................................ 81
Pollution/Global Warming .................................................................................................................. 85
Vehicular Accidents............................................................................................................................. 88
Environmental Racism ........................................................................................................................ 90
Congestion causes pollution ............................................................................................................... 91
Pollution and Disease (policy) ............................................................................................................. 95
US Leadership and Economic Competitiveness ................................................................................ 100
Transportation Racism = segregation ............................................................................................... 102
Housing ............................................................................................................................................. 113
Poverty .............................................................................................................................................. 115
Crime ................................................................................................................................................. 120
White supremacy/Privilege............................................................................................................... 124
Whiteness and Structural Racism ..................................................................................................... 128
A2: Segregation a Choice .................................................................................................................. 131
A2: Politics ......................................................................................................................................... 133
A2: Capitalism K ................................................................................................................................ 134
A2: Segregation decreasing in SQ ..................................................................................................... 135
A2: Race-Bio K ................................................................................................................................... 136
A2: Liberalism.................................................................................................................................... 137
A2: Black/White Binary K of the aff .................................................................................................. 138
Solvency ................................................................................................................................................ 139
Mass Transit solves Pollution ............................................................................................................ 140
Mass Transit creates accessibility to jobs ......................................................................................... 148
Mass Transit solves for employment ................................................................................................ 151
Mass Transit helps manufacturing .................................................................................................... 154
Transit Key to Fiscal Savings.............................................................................................................. 156
Transit Systems stimulate the economy ........................................................................................... 158
Transit key to reduce oil dependency ............................................................................................... 159
Transit Key to Global competiveness ................................................................................................ 163
BRT Solvency ..................................................................................................................................... 165
LRT Solvency...................................................................................................................................... 168
Must solve structure ......................................................................................................................... 170
Grassroots Movements ..................................................................................................................... 177
Community Involvement .................................................................................................................. 179
Environment...................................................................................................................................... 182
Eco-Urbanism .................................................................................................................................... 183
Diversity Solve Resource Inequity ..................................................................................................... 184
Federal Action needed ...................................................................................................................... 185
Educating the Youth .......................................................................................................................... 191
Infrastructure solves poverty ............................................................................................................ 195
Performance ......................................................................................................................................... 200
White Privilege .................................................................................................................................. 201
History and Race ............................................................................................................................... 203
Student Activism good ...................................................................................................................... 205
Solvency ............................................................................................................................................ 208
Reject the State ................................................................................................................................. 210
Neg Answers .............................................................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.
Harms Answers ...................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
Transit Not Solve Warming .................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
Bus Rapid Transit Not Solve ................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
AT: White Privilege................................................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.
Capitalism K Links ................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
Policy Version
1AC
Observation One: Status quo federal policy fails
Federal transportation dollars for highways instead of public transit makes it harder
for people of color to access jobs which only increase the unemployment rate in inner
cities.
Center for Social Inclusion 2012 [National public policy intermediary, serving as a bridge between
policy research and grassroots activism to create more effective strategies for equity and opportunity by
dismantling structural racism. Access date: July 19, 2012;
http://www.centerforsocialinclusion.org/about-us/our-work/]
Federal transportation dollars favor highways over public transit, making good jobs harder to access
for poor people of color, many of whom do not have access to a car. Because many poor people of
color live in concentrated poverty neighborhoods that lack good jobs, without a car and without
adequate public transit, they cannot get to the good jobs and are at a higher risk of being
jobless.Highway spending outpaced public transit spending by a 5 to 1 ratio over the past six decades.9
Under the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), public transit gets one-fifth the
federal dollars granted to highway construction.10 When federal highway funds were available on a
flexible basis for states and localities to transfer to public transit projects, only $4.2 billion of the $33.8
billion available (12.5%) was actually transferred.11 Consider the Gulf Coast even before the 2005
hurricane season:
Transportation spending programs do not benefit all population equally.
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 5 (Winter 2005,
Robert D., Moving the Movement for Transportation Justice Vol. 12 No. 1, “All Transit is Not Created
Equal,” Google Scholar, DV)
Follow the transportation dollars and one can tell who is important and who is not. While many
barriers to equitable transportation for low-income and people of color have been removed, much more
needs to be done. Transportation spending programs do not benefit all populations equally. The lion's
share of transportation dollars is spent on roads, while urban transit systems are often left in
disrepair. Nationally, 80 percent of all surface transportation funds is earmarked for highways and 20
percent for public transportation. Generally, states spend less than 20 percent of federal transportation
funding on transit. Some 30 states even restrict the use of the gas tax revenue—the single largest source
of transportation funding—to funding highway programs only. In the real world, all transit is not
created equal. In general, most transit systems tend to take their low-income “captive riders” for
granted and concentrate their fare and service policies on attracting middle-class and affluent riders.
Hence, transit subsidies disproportionately favor suburban transit and expensive new commuter bus
and rail lines that serve wealthier “discretionary riders.”
Plan text:
Observation Two: The Harms
Scenario One: Pollution, Disease and Disposable Bodies
Economically disadvantaged and low-income minority communities suffer from
proximity to air pollution, resulting in hazardous health effects.
Springs 2007(Mary Alice, “Inequity in Transport: The Problem with Auto Hegemony.” Chrestomathy:
Annual Review of Undergraduate Researcher, Annual Review of Undergraduate Research, School of
Humanities and Social Sciences, School of Languages, Cultures, and World Affairs Volume 6, 2007:
198-209; http://chrestomathy.cofc.edu/archives/volume6.php). SJ
Economically disadvantaged communities not only suffer from limited access to transportation, but
they also suffer another terrible side effect of our “love affair with the automobile.” Because
highways are more likely to be built through these communities, these residents are more likely to
suffer physical ailments and higher rates of mortality associated with vehicular air pollution and
pedestrian-auto collisions. According to Douglas Houston et sal., “Vehicle traffic remains a major and
often dominant source of air pollution” (566). The authors further argue recent scientific research
shows a positive correlation between vehicular air pollution and a variety of adverse medical conditions
(566). Such medical conditions include eye irritation, lung cancer, asthma, upper respiratory tract
irritation and infection, exacerbation of and increased mortality from cardio-respiratory diseases, low
birth weight, and cancer. Studies have shown the prevalence of health disparities between different
demographic groups as they relate to their neighborhood proximity to high volume traffic
roadways. William Shutkin writes, “People of color, who live in cities to a far greater extent than whites,
are disproportionately exposed to urban air pollution” (75). It has been stated that low-income
minority groups tend to suffer more frequently from asthma and, as a result, are hospitalized and have a
higher mortality rate than other demographic groups (Houston et al. 568). Houston et al. add to this
discussion by noting that environmental justice research has confirmed a relationship “ between a
neighborhood’s racial and socioeconomic composition and proximity to hazardous air pollution” in Los
Angeles (568). A study done by Michelle Wilhelm and Beate Ritz shows that air pollution from vehicles
not only affects the living but unborn children as well. Wilhelm and Ritz found a ten to twenty
percent increase in the occurrence of low birth weight and pre-term births of infants of mothers
“living close to heavily traveled roadways” (211). In a study of 5,000 people, “those who lived near a
major road or highway were twice as likely to die from cardiovascular or respiratory disease as those
who did not” (Hoek et al. 1203). There has also been evidence that suggests that children who live in
close proximity to heavy traffic roads face a higher risk of childhood cancer, particularly leukemia
(Pearson et al. 179). Hence, there is a growing amount of empirical evidence suggesting that people
who live in close proximity to high volume traffic roads are at a higher risk for a number of health
complications and lower life expectancy. As property values of these typically undesirable home sites
are lower, low-income minority residents are more likely to live in these areas and thus suffer the
most from the traffic related air pollution to which they do not contribute.
Destruction of the environment due to the pollution in the modern world from
economic development harms those from traditionally lower-income communities.
Efforts to mediate population growth and development have not been able to combat
world poverty brought by economic development and lack of environmental
protection services in the twenty-first century. Current international problems show
that widespread poverty only leads to world disequilibrium. Environmental racism
produces disposable populations who are sacrificed for the whims of the majority
Bunyan Bryant, (Professor in the School of Natural Resources and Environment, and an adjunct
professor in the Center for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan, has
a Ph.D from the University of Michigan, has founded and is director of the Environmental
Justice Initiative as well as helped establish University of Michigan’s Environmental Justice
Program and has published over 20 books on the topic, 1995, Environmental Justice: Issues,
Policies, and Solutions, p. 209-212 REM)
Although the post-World War II economy was designed when environmental consideration was not a
problem, today this is no longer the case; we must be concerned enough about environmental
protection to make it a part of our economic design. Today, temporal and spatial relations of pollution
have drastically changed within the last 100 years or so. A hundred years ago we polluted a small spatial
area and it took the earth a short time to heal itself. Today we pollute large areas of the earth – as
evidenced by the international problems of acid rain, the depletion of the ozone layer, global warming,
nuclear meltdowns, and the difficulties in the safe storage of spent fuels from nuclear power plants.
Perhaps we have embarked upon an era of pollution so toxic and persistent that it will take the earth
in some areas thousands of years to heal itself. To curtail environmental pollutants, we must build new
institutions to prevent widespread destruction from pollutants that know nogeopolitical boundaries. We
need to do this because pollutants are not respectful of international boundaries; it does little good if
one country practices sound environmental protection while its neighbors fail to do so. Countries of the
world are intricately linked together in ways not clear 50 years ago; they find themselves victims of
environmental destruction even though the causes of that destruction originated in another part of
the world. Acid rain, global warming, depletion of the ozone layer , nuclear accidents like the one at
Chernobyl, make all countries vulnerable to environmental destruction .The cooperative relations
forged after World War II are now obsolete. New cooperative relations need to be agreed upon –
cooperative relations that show that pollution prevention and species preservation are inseparably
linked to economic development and survival of planet earth. Economic development is linked
to pollution prevention even though the market fails to include the true cost of pollution in its pricing of
products and services; it fails to place a value on the destruction of plant and animal species. To date,
most industrialized nations, the high polluters, have had an incentive to pollute because they did not
incur the cost of producing goods and services in a nonpolluting manner. The world will have to pay for
the true cost of production and to practice prudent stewardship of our natural resources if we are to
sustain ourselves on this planet. We cannot expect Third World countries to participate in debt-fornature swaps as a means for saving the rainforest or as a means for the reduction of greenhouse gases,
while a considerable amount of such gases come from industrial nations and from fossil fuel
consumption. Like disease, population growth is politically, economically, and structurally determined.
Due to inadequate income maintenance programs and social security, families in developing countries
are more apt to have large families not only to ensure the survival of children within the first five years,
but to work the fields and care for the elderly. As development increases, so do education, health,
and birth control. In his chapter, States that ecological development and substantial debt forgiveness
would be more significant in alleviating Third World environmental degradation (or population
problems) than ratification of any UNCED biodiversity or forest conventions. Because population control
programs fail to address the structural characteristics of poverty, such programs for developing
countries have been for the most part dismal failures. Growth and development along ecological lines
have a better chance of controlling population growth in developing countries than the best population
control programs to date. Although population control is important, we often focus a considerable
amount of our attention on population problems of developing countries. Yet there are more people
per square mile in Western Europe than in most developing countries. “During his/her lifetime an
American child causes 35 times the environmental damage of an Indian child and 280 times that of a
Haitian child (Boggs, 1993: 1). The addiction to consumerism of highly industrialized countries has to be
seen as a major culprit, and thus must be balanced against the benefits of population control in Third
World countries. Worldwide environmental protection is only one part of the complex problems we
face today. We cannot ignore world poverty; it is intricately linked to environmental protection. If this
is the case, then how do we deal with world poverty How do we bring about lasting peace in the world
Clearly we can no longer afford a South Africa as it was once organized, or ethnic cleansing by Serbian
nationalists. These types of conflicts bankrupt us morally and destroy our connectedness with one
another as a world community. Yet, we may be headed on a course where the politically induced
famine, poverty, and chaos of Somalia today will become commonplace and world peace more difficult,
particularly if the European Common Market, Japan, and the United States trade primarily among
themselves, leaving Third World countries to fend for themselves. Growing poverty will lead only to
more world disequilibrium to wars and famine– as countries become more aggressive and cross
international borders for resources to ward off widespread hunger and rampant unemployment. To
tackle these problems requires a quantum leap in global cooperation and commitment of the highest
magnitude; it requires development of an international tax, levied through the United nations or some
other international body, so that the world community can become more involved in helping to deal
with issues of environmental protection, poverty, and peace. Since the market system has been bold
and flexible enough to meet changing conditions, so too must public institutions. They must, indeed, be
able to respond to the rapid changes that reverberate throughout the world. If they fail to change,
then we will surely meet the fate of the dinosaur. The Soviet Union gave up a system that was
unworkable in exchange for another one. Although it has not been easy, individual countries of the
former Soviet Union have the potential of reemerging looking very different and stronger. Or they could
emerge looking very different and weaker. They could become societies that are both socially and
environmentally destructive or they can become societies where people have decent jobs, places to live,
educational opportunities for all citizens, and sustainable social structures that are safe and nurturing.
Although North Americans are experiencing economic and social discomforts, we too will have to
change, or we may find ourselves engulfed by political and economic forces beyond our control. In 1994,
the out-sweeping of Democrats from national offices may be symptomatic of deeper and more
fundamental problems. If the mean-spirited behavior that characterized the 1994 election is carried
over into the governance of the country, this may only fan the flames of discontent. We may be
embarking upon a long struggle over ideology, culture, and the very heart and soul of the country. But
despite all the political turmoil, we must take risks and try out new ideas – ideas never dreamed of
before and ideas we thought were impossible to implement. To implement these ideas we must
overcome institutional inertia in order to enhance intentional change. We need to give up tradition and
“business as usual.” To view the future as a challenge and as an opportunity to make the world a better
place, we must be willing to take political and economic risks. The question is not growth, but what
kind of growth, and where it will take place. For example, we can maintain current levels of productivity
or become even more productive if we farm organically. Because of ideological conflicts, it is hard for us
to view the Cuban experience with an unjaundiced eye; but we ask you to place political differences
aside and pay attention to the lyrics of organic farming and not to the music of Communism. In other
words, we must get beyond political differences and ideological conflicts; we must find success stories of
healing the planet no matter where they exist – be they in Communist or non-Communist countries,
developed or underdeveloped countries. We must ascertain what lessons can be learned from them,
and examine how they would benefit the world community. In most instances, we will have to chart a
new course. Continued use of certain technologies and chemicals that are incompatible with the
ecosystem will take us down the road of no return. We are already witnessing the catastrophic
destruction of our environment and disproportionate impacts of environmental insults on
communities of color and low-income groups. If such destruction continues, it will undoubtedly deal
harmful blows to our social, economic, and political institutions. As a nation, we find ourselves in
a house divided, where the cleavages between the races are in fact getting worse. We find ourselves in
a house divided where the gap between the rich and the poor has increased. We find ourselves in a
house divided where the gap between the young and the old has widened. During the 1980s, there were
few visions of healing the country. In the 1990s, despite the catastrophic economic and environmental
results of the 1980s, and despite the conservative takeover of both houses of Congress, we must look
for glimmers of hope. We must stand by what we think is right and defend our position with passion.
And at times we need to slow down and reflect and do a lot of soul searching in order to redirect
ourselves, if need be. We must chart out a new course of defining who we are as a people, by redefining
our relationship with government, with nature, with one another, and where we want to be as a nation.
We need to find a way of expressing this definition of ourselves to one another. Undeniably we are a
nation of different ethnic groups and races, and of multiple interest groups, and if we cannot live in
peace and in harmony with ourselves and with nature it bodes ominously for future world relations.
Because economic institutions are based upon the growth paradigm of extracting and processing
natural resources, we will surely perish if we use them to foul the global nest. But it does not have
to be this way. Although sound environmental policies can be compatible with good business practices
and quality of life, we may have to jettison the moral argument of environmental protection in favor
of the self-interest argument, thereby demonstrating that the survival of business enterprises is
intricately tied to good stewardship of natural resources and environmental protection. Too often we
forget that short-sightedness can propel us down a narrow path , where we are unable to see the longterm effects of our actions. The ideas and policies discussed in this book are ways of getting ourselves
back on track. The ideas presented here will hopefully provide substantive material for discourse. These
policies are not carved in stone, nor are they meant to be for every city, suburb, or rural area.
Municipalities or rural areas should have flexibility in dealing with their site-specific problems. Yet we
need to extend our concern about local sustainability beyond geopolitical boundaries, because
dumping in Third World countries or in the atmosphere today will surely haunt the world tomorrow.
Ideas presented here may irritate some and dismay others, but we need to make some drastic changes
in our lifestyles and institutions in order to foster environmental justice. Many of the policy ideas
mentioned in this book have been around for some time, but they have not been implemented. The
struggle for environmental justice emerging from the people of color and low-income communities
may provide the necessary political impulse to make these policies a reality. Environmental justice
provides opportunities for those most affected by environmental degradation and poverty to
make policies to save not only themselves from differential impact of environmental hazards, but to
save those responsible for the lion’s share of the planet’s destruction. This struggle emerging from the
environmental experience of oppressed people brings forth a new consciousness – a new consciousness
shaped by immediate demands for certainty and solution. It is a struggle to make a true connection
between humanity and nature. This struggle to resolve environmental problems may force the nation to
alter its priorities; it may force the nation to address issues of environmental justice and, by doing so, it
may ultimately result in a cleaner and healthier environment for all of us. Although we may never
eliminate all toxic materials from the production cycle, we should at least have that as a goal
Scenario Two: Global Warming
First, transportation is the largest proximate cause of warming and pollution
Jehanno 2011 (Aurélie Jehanno, November 2011, “High Speed Rail and Sustainability,” International
Union of Railways, http://goo.gl/6mQfM)
4.1 HSR has a lower impact on climate and environment than all other compatible transport modes. To
compare the overall environmental performance of HSR with other competitive transport modes, all
environmental impacts must be considered. These are, mainly: energy consumption and the
combustion of fossil fuels; air pollutant emissions and noise; and environmental damage like land use
and resource depletion. These impacts occur during the construction, operation and maintenance of
HSR. The following chapter focuses on the most significant, and on-going, phase, the operation of HSR,
and shows how HSR brings solutions to global challenges. 4.1.1 Energy consumption and GHG
emissions. The reality of global warming is commonly admitted among the scientific community. The
works of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are unequivocal on the question that
climate change is happening and that human activities are largely responsible for it. Global warming is
a consequence of the well-known Greenhouse Effect, and the non-natural part of it especially is caused
mainly by carbon emissions due to human activity. Anthropogenic emissions have been growing
continuously since the 19th century (see Figure 4). The IPCC predicts temperature rises of between 1°
a nd 6° Centigrade from current levels by 2100, depending on the levels of future greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions. If the higher estimates are accurate, there could be catastrophic consequences, so
decisive action is required. The Kyoto Protocol regulates five GHGs beside CO2: methane (CH4), nitrous
oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6).
International efforts are now focused on reducing GHG emissions from the activities of modern society
to avoid unprecedented impacts from climate change. In March 2007, as part of a wide-ranging
attempt to cut emissions, European heads of state agreed to set legally binding targets to reduce
Europe-wide GHG emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020 (increased to 30% with a strong global
agreement), (EC, 2010) f . The European Commission has further stated that work must begin
immediately on a longer-term target of a 50% cut in global emissions by 2050. In July 2008, the
European Commission published its ‘Greening Transport’ package which included a series of proposals
to make the transport sector more environmentally-friendly and to promote sustainable mobility. Yet
the measures agreed so far are not sufficient to contain the negative environmental effects of transport
growth. Furthermore, there is still no coherent ‘roadmap’ to reduce emissions from transport. Figure 5
shows total GHG emissions for the EU 27 countries, including international maritime and aviation
“bunkers” g , projected on linear trajectory towards 80% and 95% reduction targets, alongside total
transport emissions (including bunkers) assuming current trends continue. This shows that if the
current growth in transport emissions continues, then even if all other sectors achieve a 100%
reduction, targets for total emissions will be exceeded by transport alone by 2050. Transport has a key
role to play within solutions to climate change as current transport structures are responsible for
extreme pressures on energy resources and ecosystems through a high dependence on fossil fuels
(80% of energy consumption is derived from fossil fuels). Producing 23% of all worldwide CO2
emissions, transport is the second largest source of man-made CO2, after energy production (see
Figure 6). Among all sectors, the transport sector is the only one in which emissions are continuing to
increase in spite of all the technological advances. Moreover, transport emissions, for instance in
Europe, increased by 25% between 1990 and 2010. By contrast emissions from the industrial and
energy sectors are falling. 9 Reducing transport emissions is therefore one of the most crucial steps in
combating global warming and securing our future. In the interests of people and the environment, the
rail sector strongly recommends that transport policies in the EU and elsewhere start to make more use
of the energy efficiency of railways in order to progress towards the 2020 CO2 reduction targets
Railways already offer the most energy efficient performance and are constantly improving in terms of
energy use per passenger km (pkm). HSR IS PART OF THE SOLUTION TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE The
alarming performance of the transport sector is largely due to road traffic, which accounts for 73% of
global transport emissions (see Figure 7). If domestic and international aviation is combined then it is
the second largest emitter accounting for 13% of global transport emissions. By contrast, the rail sector
accounts for just 2% of total transport emissions. In Europe rail accounts for only 1.6% of emissions,
while it transports 6% of all passengers and 10% of all freight. 10 This is a clear indicator that railways
can do more for less. A modal shift from road and air towards rail is one obvious way to reduce CO2
emissions. There are three primary strategy responses to the challenge of reducing the environmental
impact of transport (Dalkmann and Brannigan, 2007): Avoid - transport is reduced or avoided
altogether; such as by land-use planning and public transport integration in order to enable efficient
interconnectivity and reductions in km travelled. Shift - journeys are made by lower CO2 per passenger
emitting modes such as public transport (including rail), walking and cycling. Improve - efficiency of
current transport modes is improved e.g. by innovations in technology. 16 In the context of rail the two
most relevant strategies are ‘shift’ and ‘improve’, however rail does have a part to play in ‘avoid’
strategies within integrated land use and spatial planning. 12 HSR IS MORE ENERGY EFFICIENT THAN
ALL OTHER TRANSPORT MODES Rail in general is widely acknowledged as the most carbon efficient
form of mass transport as Figure 8 illustrates. Calculations for HSR using the average European
electricity mix, a 75% load factor and the electric consumption of a Alstom AGV (0.033 kwh/seat.km) h
show a crucial advantage in terms of carbon emissions over air and road transport with around 17g CO2
per pkm. Although average emissions depend upon many factors the graph indicates the benefits of
railways. Thus, in addition to not being a significant contributor to the transport sector’s problems in
terms of emissions, rail needs to be given more attention because of its crucial role as an important
part of the solution. In particular, efficient, 100% electric HSR can play a leading role in reducing
transport related emissions and contribute to climate protection. HSR offers the best performance in
terms of energy consumption and materials use. HSR offers attractive alternatives to short-haul flights
and long distance car journeys. Replacing short haul flights with HSR would release capacity constraints
at airports, reduce the need for additional expansion whilst helping to tackle the challenges of climate
change.
Warming is real and human induced – consensus is on our side – numerous studies
prove
Rahmstorf 8 – Professor of Physics of the Oceans
Richard, of Physics of the Oceans at Potsdam University, Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto, Edited
by Ernesto Zedillo, “Anthropogenic Climate Change?,” pg. 42-4
It is time to turn to statement B: human activities are altering the climate. This can be broken into two
parts. The first is as follows: global climate is warming. This is by now a generally undisputed point
(except by novelist Michael Crichton), so we deal with it only briefly. The two leading compilations of
data measured with thermometers are shown in figure 3-3, that of the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) and that of the British Hadley Centre for Climate Change. Although they differ in
the details, due to the inclusion of different data sets and use of different spatial averaging and quality
control procedures, they both show a consistent picture, with a global mean warming of 0.8°C since
the late nineteenth century. Temperatures over the past ten years clearly were the warmest since
measured records have been available. The year 1998 sticks out well above the longterm trend due to
the occurrence of a major El Nino event that year (the last El Nino so far and one of the strongest on
record). These events are examples of the largest natural climate variations on multiyear time scales
and, by releasing heat from the ocean, generally cause positive anomalies in global mean temperature.
It is remarkable that the year 2005 rivaled the heat of 1998 even though no El Nino event occurred
that year. (A bizarre curiosity, perhaps worth mentioning, is that several prominent "climate skeptics"
recently used the extreme year 1998 to claim in the media that global warming had ended. In Lindzen's
words, "Indeed, the absence of any record breakers during the past seven years is statistical evidence
that temperatures are not increasing.")33 In addition to the surface measurements, the more recent
portion of the global warming trend (since 1979) is also documented by satellite data. It is not
straightforward to derive a reliable surface temperature trend from satellites, as they measure radiation
coming from throughout the atmosphere (not just near the surface), including the stratosphere, which
has strongly cooled, and the records are not homogeneous' due to the short life span of individual
satellites, the problem of orbital decay, observations at different times of day, and drifts in instrument
calibration.' Current analyses of these satellite data show trends that are fully consistent with surface
measurements and model simulations." If no reliable temperature measurements existed, could we be
sure that the climate is warming? The "canaries in the coal mine" of climate change (as glaciologist
Lonnie Thompson puts it) ~are mountain glaciers. We know, both from old photographs and from the
position of the terminal moraines heaped up by the flowing ice, that mountain glaciers have been in
retreat all over the world during the past century. There are precious few exceptions, and they are
associated with a strong increase in precipitation or local cooling.36 I have inspected examples of
shrinking glaciers myself in field trips to Switzerland, Norway, and New Zealand. As glaciers respond
sensitively to temperature changes, data on the extent of glaciers have been used to reconstruct a
history of Northern Hemisphere temperature over the past four centuries (see figure 3-4). Cores drilled
in tropical glaciers show signs of recent melting that is unprecedented at least throughout the
Holocene-the past 10,000 years. Another powerful sign of warming, visible clearly from satellites, is the
shrinking Arctic sea ice cover (figure 3-5), which has declined 20 percent since satellite observations
began in 1979. While climate clearly became warmer in the twentieth century, much discussion
particularly in the popular media has focused on the question of how "unusual" this warming is in a
longer-term context. While this is an interesting question, it has often been mixed incorrectly with the
question of causation. Scientifically, how unusual recent warming is-say, compared to the past
millennium-in itself contains little information about its cause. Even a highly unusual warming could
have a natural cause (for example, an exceptional increase in solar activity). And even a warming within
the bounds of past natural variations could have a predominantly anthropogenic cause. I come to the
question of causation shortly, after briefly visiting the evidence for past natural climate variations.
Records from the time before systematic temperature measurements were collected are based on
"proxy data," coming from tree rings, ice cores, corals, and other sources. These proxy data are generally
linked to local temperatures in some way, but they may be influenced by other parameters as well (for
example, precipitation), they may have a seasonal bias (for example, the growth season for tree rings),
and high-quality long records are difficult to obtain and therefore few in number and geographic
coverage. Therefore, there is still substantial uncertainty in the evolution of past global or hemispheric
temperatures. (Comparing only local or regional temperature; as in Europe, is of limited value for our
purposes,' as regional variations can be much larger than global ones and can have many regional
causes, unrelated to global-scale forcing and climate change.) The first quantitative reconstruction for
the Northern Hemisphere temperature of the past millennium, including an error estimation, was
presented by Mann, Bradley, and Hughes and rightly highlighted in the 2001 IPCC report as one of the
major new findings since its 1995 report; it is shown in figure 3_6.39 The analysis suggests that, despite
the large error bars, twentieth-century warming is indeed highly unusual and probably was
unprecedented during the past millennium. This result, presumably because of its symbolic power, has
attracted much criticism, to some extent in scientific journals, but even more so in the popular media.
The hockey stick-shaped curve became a symbol for the IPCC, .and criticizing this particular data analysis
became an avenue for some to question the credibility of the IPCC. Three important things have been
overlooked in much of the media coverage. First, even if the scientific critics had been right, this would
not have called into question the very cautious conclusion drawn by the IPCC from the reconstruction by
Mann, Bradley, and Hughes: "New analyses of proxy data for the Northern Hemisphere indicate that the
increase in temperature in the twentieth century is likely to have been the largest of any century during
the past 1,000 years." This conclusion has since been supported further by every single one of close to a
dozen new reconstructions (two of which are shown in figure 3-6).Second, by far the most serious
scientific criticism raised against Mann, Hughes, and Bradley was simply based on a mistake. 40 The
prominent paper of von Storch and others, which claimed (based on a model test) that the method of
Mann, Bradley, and Hughes systematically underestimated variability, "was [itself] based on incorrect
implementation of the reconstruction procedure."41 With correct implementation, climate field
reconstruction procedures such as the one used by Mann, Bradley, and Hughes have been shown to
perform well in similar model tests. Third, whether their reconstruction is accurate or not has no bearing
on policy. If their analysis underestimated past natural climate variability, this would certainly not argue
for a smaller climate sensitivity and thus a lesser concern about the consequences of our emissions.
Some have argued that, in contrast, it would point to a larger climate sensitivity. While this is a valid
point in principle, it does not apply in practice to the climate sensitivity estimates discussed herein or to
the range given by IPCC, since these did not use the reconstruction of Mann, Hughes, and Bradley or any
other proxy records of the past millennium. Media claims that "a pillar of the Kyoto Protocol" had been
called into question were therefore misinformed. As an aside, the protocol was agreed in 1997, before
the reconstruction in question even existed. The overheated public debate on this topic has, at least,
helped to attract more researchers and funding to this area of paleoclimatology; its methodology has
advanced significantly, and a number of new reconstructions have been presented in recent years.
While the science has moved forward, the first seminal reconstruction by Mann, Hughes, and Bradley
has held up remarkably well, with its main features reproduced by more recent work. Further progress
probably will require substantial amounts of new proxy data, rather than further refinement of the
statistical techniques pioneered by Mann, Hughes, and Bradley. Developing these data sets will require
time and substantial effort. It is time to address the final statement: most of the observed warming
over the past fifty years is anthropogenic. A large number of studies exist that have taken different
approaches to analyze this issue, which is generally called the "attribution problem." I do not discuss the
exact share of the anthropogenic contribution (although this is an interesting question). By "most" I
imply mean "more than 50 percent.”The first and crucial piece of evidence is, of course, that the
magnitude of the warming is what is expected from the anthropogenic perturbation of the radiation
balance, so anthropogenic forcing is able to explain all of the temperature rise. As discussed here, the
rise in greenhouse gases alone corresponds to 2.6 W/tn2 of forcing. This by itself, after subtraction of
the observed 0'.6 W/m2 of ocean heat uptake, would Cause 1.6°C of warming since preindustrial times
for medium climate sensitivity (3"C). With a current "best guess'; aerosol forcing of 1 W/m2, the
expected warming is O.8°c. The point here is not that it is possible to obtain the 'exact observed
number-this is fortuitous because the amount of aerosol' forcing is still very' uncertain-but that the
expected magnitude is roughly right. There can be little doubt that the anthropogenic forcing is large
enough to explain most of the warming. Depending on aerosol forcing and climate sensitivity, it could
explain a large fraction of the warming, or all of it, or even more warming than has been observed
(leaving room for natural processes to counteract some of the warming). The second important piece of
evidence is clear: there is no viable alternative explanation. In the scientific literature, no serious
alternative hypothesis has been proposed to explain the observed global warming. Other possible
causes, such as solar activity, volcanic activity, cosmic rays, or orbital cycles, are well observed, but
they do not show trends capable of explaining the observed warming. Since 1978, solar irradiance has
been measured directly from satellites and shows the well-known eleven-year solar cycle, but no trend.
There are various estimates of solar variability before this time, based on sunspot numbers, solar cycle
length, the geomagnetic AA index, neutron monitor data, and, carbon-14 data. These indicate that solar
activity probably increased somewhat up to 1940. While there is disagreement about the variation in
previous centuries, different authors agree that solar activity did not significantly increase during the
last sixty-five years. Therefore, this cannot explain the warming, and neither can any of the other factors
mentioned. Models driven by natural factors only, leaving the anthropogenic forcing aside, show a
cooling in the second half of the twentieth century (for an example, See figure 2-2, panel a, in chapter 2
of this volume). The trend in the sum of natural forcings is downward.The only way out would be either
some as yet undiscovered unknown forcing or a warming trend that arises by chance from an
unforced internal variability in the climate system. The latter cannot be completely ruled out, but has
to be considered highly unlikely. No evidence in the observed record, proxy data, or current models
suggest that such internal variability could cause a sustained trend of global warming of the observed
magnitude. As discussed, twentieth century warming is unprecedented over the past 1,000 years (or
even 2,000 years, as the few longer reconstructions available now suggest), which does not 'support the
idea of large internal fluctuations. Also, those past variations correlate well with past forcing (solar
variability, volcanic activity) and thus appear to be largely forced rather than due to unforced internal
variability." And indeed, it would be difficult for a large and sustained unforced variability to satisfy the
fundamental physical law of energy conservation. Natural internal variability generally shifts heat
around different parts of the climate system-for example, the large El Nino event of 1998, which
warmed, the atmosphere by releasing heat stored in the ocean. This mechanism implies that the ocean
heat content drops as the atmosphere warms. For past decades, as discussed, we observed the
atmosphere warming and the ocean heat content increasing, which rules out heat release from the
ocean as a cause of surface warming. The heat content of the whole climate system is increasing, and
there is no plausible source of this heat other than the heat trapped by greenhouse gases. ' A
completely different approach to attribution is to analyze the spatial patterns of climate change. This is
done in so-called fingerprint studies, which associate particular patterns or "fingerprints" with different
forcings. It is plausible that the pattern of a solar-forced climate change differs from the pattern of a
change caused by greenhouse gases. For example, a characteristic of greenhouse gases is that heat is
trapped closer to the Earth's surface and that, unlike solar variability, greenhouse gases tend to warm
more in winter, and at night. Such studies have used different data sets and have been performed by
different groups of researchers with different statistical methods. They consistently conclude that the
observed spatial pattern of warming can only be explained by greenhouse gases.49 Overall, it has to
be considered, highly likely' that the observed warming is indeed predominantly due to the humancaused increase in greenhouse gases. ' This paper discussed the evidence for the anthropogenic increase
in atmospheric CO2 concentration and the effect of CO2 on climate, finding that this anthropogenic
increase is proven beyond reasonable doubt and that a mass of evidence points to a CO2 effect on
climate of 3C ± 1.59C global-warming for a doubling of concentration. (This is, the classic IPCC range; my
personal assessment is that, in-the light of new studies since the IPCC Third Assessment Report, the
uncertainty range can now be narrowed somewhat to 3°C ± 1.0C) This is based on consistent results
from theory, models, and data analysis, and, even in the absence-of any computer models, the same
result would still hold based on physics and on data from climate history alone. Considering the
plethora of consistent evidence, the chance that these conclusions are wrong has to be considered
minute. If the preceding is accepted, then it follows logically and incontrovertibly that a further
increase in CO2 concentration will lead to further warming. The magnitude of our emissions depends
on human behavior, but the climatic response to various emissions scenarios can be computed from the
information presented here. The result is the famous range of future global temperature scenarios
shown in figure 3_6.50 Two additional steps are involved in these computations: the consideration of
anthropogenic forcings other than CO2 (for example, other greenhouse gases and aerosols) and the
computation of concentrations from the emissions. Other gases are not discussed here, although they
are important to get quantitatively accurate results. CO2 is the largest and most important forcing.
Concerning concentrations, the scenarios shown basically assume that ocean and biosphere take up a
similar share of our emitted CO2 as in the past. This could turn out to be an optimistic assumption; some
models indicate the possibility of a positive feedback, with the biosphere turning into a carbon source
rather than a sink under growing climatic stress. It is clear that even in the more optimistic of the shown
(non-mitigation) scenarios, global temperature would rise by 2-3°C above its preindustrial level by the
end of this century. Even for a paleoclimatologist like myself, this is an extraordinarily high temperature,
which is very likely unprecedented in at least the past 100,000 years. As far as the data show, we would
have to go back about 3 million years, to the Pliocene, for comparable temperatures. The rate of this
warming (which is important for the ability of ecosystems to cope) is also highly unusual and
unprecedented probably for an even longer time. The last major global warming trend occurred when
the last great Ice Age ended between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago: this was a warming of about 5°C
over 5,000 years, that is, a rate of only 0.1 °C per century. 52 The expected magnitude and rate of
planetary warming is highly likely to come with major risk and impacts in terms of sea level rise (Pliocene
sea level was 25-35 meters higher than now due to smaller Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets), extreme
events (for example, hurricane activity is expected to increase in a warmer climate), and ecosystem loss.
The second part of this paper examined the evidence for the current warming of the planet and
discussed what is known about its causes. This part showed that global warming is already a measured
and-well-established fact, not a theory. Many different lines of evidence consistently show that most
of the observed warming of the past fifty years was caused by human activity. Above all, this warming
is exactly what would be expected given the anthropogenic rise in greenhouse gases, and no viable
alternative explanation for this warming has been proposed in the scientific literature. Taken together.,
the very strong evidence accumulated from thousands of independent studies, has over the past
decades convinced virtually every climatologist around the world (many of whom were initially quite
skeptical, including myself) that anthropogenic global warming is a reality with which we need to deal.
AND, historic data proves that co2 causes warming
The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), staff, STRATEGIC SURVEY v. 107 n. 1, September
2007, pp. 33-84
The link between CO2 concentration and temperature over the past 650,000 years is well established
both theoretically and empirically. It is reasonable to assume that the unprecedented levels of and
continued rise in CO2 and other greenhouse-gas concentrations generated by human activity will
cause a similarly unprecedented warming. However, because this is uncharted territory, models or
simulations of future climate have been developed. These can be run under various assumptions for the
rate and level of greenhouse gas emissions. Most projections, including those in the IPCC reports and
the Stern Report, use a set of standard scenarios published in the IPCC's Special Report on Emissions
Scenarios (SRES). These scenarios incorporate different assumptions about future population trends and
development of the global
Climate change will be abrupt and rapid—like flipping a switch
John Carey, journalist, “Global Warming,” BUSINESS WEEK, 8—30—04, p. 48.
More worrisome, scientists have learned from the past that seemingly small perturbations can cause
the climate to swing rapidly and dramatically. Data from ice cores taken from Greenland and
elsewhere reveal that parts of the planet cooled by 10 degrees Celsius in just a few decades about
12,700 years ago. Five thousand years ago, the Sahara region of Africa was transformed from a
verdant lake-studded landscape like Minnesota's to barren desert in just a few hundred years. The
initial push -- a change in the earth's orbit -- was small and very gradual, says geochemist Peter B.
deMenocal of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. ``But the climate response was
very abrupt -- like flipping a switch.'' The earth's history is full of such abrupt climate changes. Now
many scientists fear that the current buildup of greenhouse gases could also flip a global switch. ``To
take a chance and say these abrupt changes won't occur in the future is sheer madness,'' says Wallace
S. Broecker, earth scientist at Lamont-Doherty. ``That's why it is absolutely foolhardy to let CO2 go up to
600 or 800 ppm.'' Indeed, Broecker has helped pinpoint one switch involving ocean currents that
circulate heat and cold (table, page 68). If this so-called conveyor shuts down, the Gulf Stream stops
bringing heat to Europe and the U.S. Northeast. This is not speculation. It has happened in the past,
most recently 8,200 years ago. Can it happen again? Maybe. A recent Pentagon report tells of a
``plausible...though not the most likely'' scenario, in which the conveyor shuts off. ``Such abrupt climate
change...could potentially destabilize the geopolitical environment, leading to skirmishes, battles, and
even war,'' it warns.
Now is the key time to act- within decades the death toll from climate change will
skyrocket because of heat stroke, natural disasters, pollution, disease, food scarcity,
lack of water, wildfires, and flooding
Weiss & Pam, 08 (Daniel, Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy, Robin, Center for American
Progress, “The Human side of Global Warming,” 5/10/08,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/04/human_side.html)
More illness and death resulting from heat waves. Increased frequency and severity of heat waves will
lead to more heat stroke and other heat-related illness and death. Senior citizens and children are
particularly vulnerable to these effects. The world has already seen the effects of heat on human health:
The summer 2003 heat wave in Europe that claimed 35,000 lives was likely made worse by global
warming, and in the summer of 2007, Greece suffered a massive heat wave and record wildfires. Eleven
of the past 12 years rank among the hottest on record, and the Centers for Disease Control reports that
heat waves already account for more deaths annually in the United States than hurricanes, tornadoes,
floods, and earthquakes combined. The death toll is projected to increase as heat waves become more
frequent. Worsening air pollution causes more respiratory and cardiovascular disease. Air pollution
worsens as temperatures increase, and higher levels of ozone smog and other pollutants have been
directly linked with increased rates of respiratory and cardiovascular disease, including asthma and
cardiac disarryhthmia. Pediatric asthma has already increased over the past 25 years, and global
warming will only exacerbate children’s suffering. Global warming is projected to most heavily affect the
level of ground-level ozone in U.S. cities in the Northeast, Midwest, and West. Vector-borne disease
infections will rise. Currently, malaria, diarrhea, malnutrition, and floods related to climate change
cause about 150,000 worldwide deaths annually, according to the World Health Organization. The
range of malaria-carrying mosquitoes is spreading, too, to cooler places that have never before seen the
disease, such as South Korea and the highlands of Papua New Guinea. With warming temperatures, the
breeding cycle of malaria-carrying mosquitoes is shortening, which means more mosquitoes—and
malaria—each year. The same effects will likely be seen with other vector-borne diseases, such as
Dengue fever, which has infected 60,000 people in one outbreak in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro this year
alone. In the United States, viruses such as West Nile, Hantavirus, and Lyme disease could increase their
ranges or spread more quickly with changing weather, and formerly prevalent malaria or Dengue fever
could re-emerge. Changing food production and security may cause hunger. Rising temperatures and
varying rainfall patterns could affect staple crop production and food security, while aiding the
migration and breeding of pests that can devastate crops. Farmers in the tropical developing world will
likely see decreases in production. Such changes could be devastating to people in poor countries, even
while some cold climate nations, such as Canada, may expand their arable land. With the prices of
wheat, rice, and other staples already rising rapidly, the developing world can ill afford any
production decreases at home. In addition, more severe weather, such as monsoons or hurricanes, can
destroy crops and leave entire communities without food. And if hunger wasn't bad enough already, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently concluded that up to 250 million more Africans
could be left without potable water due to climate-related stresses within the decade. More severe
and frequent wildfires will threaten more people. Severe heat can also increase the frequency and
intensity of wildfires, which threaten homes, lives, and livelihoods, and cause poor air quality. Last
autumn’s wildfires in California that displaced more than 1 million people were linked to the record
southern California drought. And those were only the beginning. The Nobel Prize-winning
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has determined that “a warming climate encourages
wildfires through a longer summer period that dries fuels, promoting easier ignition and faster
spread…North America very likely will continue to suffer serious loss of life and property.” Flooding
linked to rising sea levels will displace millions. Rising sea levels make coastal areas more susceptible to
storm surges and flooding that result from severe weather. The most susceptible areas are densely
populated river deltas and coastal cities in Asia—the Ganges River Delta, the Mekong River Delta, islands
in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific. Just last year, almost 7 million people were displaced by flooding
in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and in 2004, floods there killed more than 700. With displacement comes
increased transmission of water-borne disease from stagnant water, the challenge of feeding and
sheltering the displaced, sewage backups and squalid conditions, and strained disaster relief resources.
In the 1990s, more than 600,000 deaths occurred worldwide as a result of weather-related disasters.
WHO now says that 150,000 deaths annually are attributable to the effects of climate change. Further,
as Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis noted at the House Select Committee hearing on global warming and
public health, these effects “will disproportionately affect the sick, poor, elderly, and communities of
color."
Observation Three: Economic Competitiveness
Observation Four: Change in the direction of federal transportation
infrastructure investment is key to solving the harms
Improving inner city transportation infrastructure is key – Need a federal stimulus
package with mass transit as the center
Global Outlook, 12 (4/1/12, Global Outlook, “Transport – Unclogging inner-city arteries,” LexisNexis
Academic)
Alongside the economic shift from west to east, the early 21st century may also be remembered for its
rapid urbanisation. By 2030, according to UN estimates, 60% of the world's population, or 5 billion
people, will live in cities, putting unprecedented pressure on city infrastructures. There is little surprise,
therefore, that in both developed and developing cities, transport networks - the arteries that transmit
the daily pulse of workers from home to workplace and back again - are clogging up. Most large cities
suffer daily gridlock, despite the fact that in North American urban areas, roads and car parks can
account for up to 60% of the cities' surface area. Cities in developing countries, many of which have
grown faster, have similar or worse problems. Improving inner-city transport has never been more
important and levels of investment are slowly starting to rise, particularly in Asia, but also in Latin
America where new thinking on transport has started to have a positive impact. In 2011, half a dozen
developing country cities, including Bangalore (India), Algiers (Algeria), Xi'an (China), Almaty
(Kazakhstan) and Lima (Peru), opened inner-city metro lines.] In the US, a growing lobby is calling for a
1930s-style New Deal stimulus package with public transport investment at its heart. In 2011, a
number of urban transport schemes were approved in North America, including one in the US city of
Cincinnati, Ohio, and another in the Waterloo region in Canada's province of Ontario, which both
committed to mass light-rail projects.
And adoption of public transit vital to reduce the greenhouse gases that cause climate
change
Shapiro et al., 2002 (7/02, Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, Managing Director of Sonecon, LLC, a nonresident Fellow of the Brookings Institution and the Progressive Policy Institute, Economic
Counselor to the U.S.Conference Board, and a director of the Axson-Johnson Foundation, Dr.
Kevin A. Hassett, Resident Scholar of the American Enterprise Institute, Dr. Frank S. Arnold,
President of Applied Microeconomics, Inc., columnist for The Environmental Forum, report
commissioned by American Public Transportation Association, “Conserving Energy and
Preserving the Environment: The Role of Public Transportation”, Lexis Nexis Database) CJC
The role of transportation in our nation’s energy consumption and environmental quality is immense.
Americans use more energy and generate more pollution in their daily lives than they do in the
production of all the goods in the economy, the operations of all commercial enterprises, or the running
of their homes. Any serious effort to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and make significant
environmental progress must address the way Americans travel. The vital role of public transportation
in improving energy efficiency and the environment is often under-appreciated. With its fuel and
pollution advantages, increased use of transit offers the most effective strategy available for reducing
energy consumption and improving the environment without imposing new taxes, government
mandates, or regulations on the economy or consumers. Public transportation needs to be an essential
element in sound national energy and environmental policies. Potential threats to the supply and
price of foreign oil as a result of terrorism, conflicts in the Middle East, and OPEC decisions underscore
the need for a public transportation strategy that reduces our nation’s dependence on imported oil.
Likewise, ongoing efforts to reduce harmful emissions from our air can be more effective when they
include ways to increase use of public transportation. “Conserving Energy and Preserving the
Environment: The Role of Public Transportation” demonstrates that traveling by transit, per person and
per mile, uses significantly less energy and produces substantially less pollution than comparable
travel by private vehicles. The findings provide clear and indisputable evidence that public
transportation is saving energy and reducing pollution in America today -- and that increased usage
could have an even greater impact in the future. At our current levels of use, the study found public
transportation is reducing Americans’ energy bills and keeping the air cleaner. For example: Energy
savings from public transportation contribute to our national and economic security by making America
less dependent on foreign oil or on new sources for drilling. Public transportation saves more than 855
million gallons of gasoline a year, or 45 million barrels of oil. These savings equal about one month’s oil
imports from Saudi Arabia and three months of the energy that Americans use to heat, cool and operate
their homes, or half the energy used to manufacture all computers and electronic equipment in
America. For every passenger mile traveled, public transportation uses about one-half the fuel of private
automobiles, sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and light trucks. Even at current rates of usage, public
transportation produces large environmental benefits. For every passenger mile traveled, public
transportation produces only a fraction of the harmful pollution of private vehicles: only 5 percent as
much carbon monoxide, less than 8 percent as many volatile organic compounds, and nearly half as
much carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Compared to private vehicles, public transportation is
reducing annual emissions of the pollutants that create smog, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and
nitrogen oxides (NOx), by more than 70,000 tons and 27,000 tons respectively. These reductions equal:
-- nearly 50 percent of all VOCs emitted from the dry cleaning industry, a major source of this pollutant;
-- 45 percent of VOCs emitted from the industrial uses of coal; -- 50 percent of NOx from the industrial
uses of coal; -- more than 33 percent of the NOx emitted by all domestic oil and gas producers or by the
metal processing industry. The reduced VOC and NOx emissions that result from public transportation
use save between $130 million and $200 million a year in regulatory costs. Public transportation is
reducing emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) by nearly 745,000 tons annually. This equals nearly 75
percent of the CO emissions by all U.S. chemical manufacturers. Public transportation is also reducing
emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), which contributes to global warming, by more than 7.4 million
tons a year.
Investment in urban transport key to economic development
Global Outlook, 12 (4/1/12, Global Outlook, “Transport – Unclogging inner-city arteries,” LexisNexis
Academic)
Planning experts say this level of investment in urban transport schemes is vital to sustain current
levels of urban development. Mr Porter says: "Transport investment is very important for
development, in fact it is fundamental. People need to be able to get to jobs, and employers need
access to a labour force. Improving transport effectively increases the size of the labour pool."
Diversity is key to solving American apartheid
Talen 08 HOUSING POLICY DEBATE VOLUME 19 ISSUE METROPOLITAN INSTITUTE AT VIRGINIA TECH.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. AFFORDABILITY IN NEW URBANIST DEVELOPMENT: PRINCIPLE, PRACTICE, AND
STRATEGY EMILY Arizona State University
Social critics are mostly united in the view that diversity in residential areas is important for equity
reasons. Social divisions are manifested in spaces and landscapes that reflect separation, and in turn
these spaces and landscapes further reinforce social divisions. Lack of social diversity creates
neighborhoods that experience concentrated poverty leading to disinvestment in the built
environment. In turn, poor physical conditions and lack of facilities play a role in perpetuating
“American apartheid” (Massey & Denton, 1993), since it is unlikely that higher-income social groups
will be attracted to places with bad physical conditions and few facilities. Building up diversity through
various social mixing programs and policies is a strategy based on the belief that revitalizing poor
neighborhoods solely through community development has “almost universally failed” (Downs, 1999,
p. 967).
Kritik Version
1AC
Justice has been permanently differed….
Freeway transportation re-entrenches stereotypes about urban communities and
permits selective access to city resources. Government policies that claim to counter
structural racism actually reinforces the exclusionary aspect of the Highway Machine.
Kuswa, Director of Debating at the University of Richmond, 2 (Winter 2002, Kevin Douglas, The Journal
of Law in Society, “Suburbification, Segregation, and the Consolidation of the Highway Machine,” vol.
31, no. 3, LexisNexis, JS)
Significant to enabling this coalition was the postwar subsidization of the suburban white life-style,
including the construction of interstate freeways. The other side of white suburban security was the
entrenchment of poor people of colour in central cities, and....the role freeway construction played in
this entrenchment. Freeway and suburban segregation also creates the distancing which allows the
distorted narrative of the inner city described in the first section to become widely accepted. n46
Fotsch initially contends "the freeway is part of dominant narratives which view African-American and
Latino residents of the central city as largely responsible for the conditions of poverty and violence
amidst which they live." n47 The pincer movement occurs when the urban highway materializes the
stratification of groups based on race and class. The rhetoric of blame-creating a status of victim by
arguing that certain people deserve their immobility-is Page 7 3 J.L. Soc'y 31, *47 complemented by a
highway machine that allows an extreme differentiation between living conditions within a limited
region. It becomes natural to blame people for inadequate living conditions in order to justify
inaction. Fotsch concentrates on Los Angeles and urban California, but the same process marks the
history of Houston, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit and many other east coast cities. Charting the way
interstate throughways divided Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Richmond,
and Atlanta is but one string of examples. During the 1950s the "auto freeway transportation
system...helped to create the ghettos," n48 [*50] and now those same highways have joined a
technological narrative that helps to legitimate the ghettos. The state continues to invade the
formation of the suburb and the urban fringe by allocating resources in selective ways. State policies
attempt to capture transportation and residential planning, simultaneously entrenching certain racist
practices. Urban highways after 1956, in particular, were constructed according to fairly uniform
standards set up by the Bureau of Public Roads in the Yellow Book. The urban highway is, simply, a
wide path of limited access roadway, usually raised with at least two lanes available in each direction.
The effects of these highways are severe and physical, especially their "connection to the suburban
goal of escaping urban populations." n49 More pernicious than the urge to escape, the connection to
suburbia made it easy to label urban populations as "poor" and "radical" and constitutive of a culture
of new immigrants. n50 The logic of the suburbs implied that the run-down areas of a city were
regions occupied by minorities. In instances where the actual suburb was not predominantly inhabited
by whites, those places still tended to be racially homogenous and the suburb was always a means of
separating economic classes. The city polarized into a few high rent districts and a number of highly
populated low rent districts. The highway generated an explicitly racist boundary by isolating large
numbers of people from one another. Certainly buses and consumer spots at highway exits offered
locations for human contact, but not the same type of human interchange that previously occurred on
trains. The place of the highway displaced residents through isolation, while simultaneously displacing
urban communities by racing and subordinating certain populations. All this was done in addition to
the highway's absorption of a vast amount of already limited land. Thus, the suburb carries along with it
a distancing of its occupants-a distancing generated by the individualized nature of urban freeways. The
distance between people justified itself by demonizing the congestion of the city, associating that
congestion with poverty and [*51] violence and essentializing minority populations as dangerous. The
suburbs constructed the city as inherently violent, an unpredictable instability that could not "be
contained on public transit." n51 The urban freeway permitted selective access to city resources for
suburbanites, but also put up an arbitrary shield between the productive output of the highway and
the violent residents of surrounding neighborhoods. Compared to subways, trains, buses, and other
mass transit, the freeway shaped "a particular distracted experience of everyday life" and became "a
symbol of isolation and isolatability." n52 Car-jackings, drive-by shootings, and high-speed chases all add
risks to the highway cocoon, but urban freeways still stretch endlessly into the suburbs, promising the
security and luxury of home (for some) at a comfortable distance from the city. Demonizing minority
communities as poor and violent simultaneously charts the suburb as white and wealthy. The highway
machine has directly assisted in, and perhaps even been constitutive of, a segregated metropolis.
Fotsch argues that from the beginning of the 1900s, the suburb has drained the city of its life and
marginalized the city's radiant diversity. Suburban residents continued to enter the central city even
though they no longer paid taxes to urban governments, draining it of its resources and contributing
less and less to its maintenance. The highway facilitated this siphoning, placing a suction cup over the
vitality of the city's core. Fotsch also points out that these effects of the suburb were based on race as
well as income: "As southern blacks began to migrate to northern and western cities during and after
the First World War," isolationist whites diverted their capital to nearby suburbs. n53 Race intensified as
a factor when the economy expanded after World War II and large numbers of white Americans were
able to take advantage of a conjunction between suburban highways and the Federal Housing
Administration (FHA). Catapulted by two decades of restrictive [*52] covenants that prohibited renting
or selling property to blacks in certain neighborhoods, the FHA was able to continue practices of overt
discrimination. A disciplinary array of containment mechanisms collected themselves within housing,
transportation, and public expenditures. Less than equal provisions were allocated to low-income and
minority zones, districts, quadrants, or any other complex descriptor for the various "wrong" sides of
the track. The racial grids for dwelling acted to capture human territories and integrate multiple forms
of exclusion into an apparatus of geographic privilege. Since its inception in 1934, the Federal Housing
Administration began granting long-term amortized mortgages for the purchasing of homes. These loans
were federally insured and were generally granted "for home purchases in the suburbs" which were
already being subsidized by federal spending on urban highways. n54 The FHA also rejected loans in
minority areas Page 8 3 J.L. Soc'y 31, *49 even though the Supreme Court struck down racial covenants
in 1948. n55 Well into the 60s, "FHA policy and overt discrimination on the part of banks and real estate
agents helped keep suburbs exclusively white." n56 Citing a comprehensive study of the making of the
underclass in the United States, Fotsch reports that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 n57 prohibited housing
discrimination. Massey and Denton are quick to note that the de jure prohibition of discrimination did
not translate into de facto equality. Making discrimination illegal, as in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, n58
did not reverse institutional and structural racism. If anything, the Department of Housing and Urban
Development was simply a mask on top of pernicious racism. n59 Indeed, the FHA was never given the
[*53] legal authority to prosecute (or even investigate) discrimination. Massey and Denton assert that
because of the weak detection powers of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, realtors
and banks continued to block attempts by minorities to buy property in white suburbs. n60 It is here
where Fotsch's historical narrative of housing discrimination crosses paths with the highway machine
and the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. This juxtaposition marks a racist consolidation of interests
and arrangements. If nothing else, the energy and social mobilization of the 1960s was a cumulative
reaction to forms of segregation approaching pre-Civil War extremes. Geographic constrictions on
property ownership and residency, not to mention the limited access of highways, played (and play)
immense roles in physical banishment and racial oppression in America. Most discussions of the
Federal-Aid Highway Act omit a direct consideration of racism and possible racist deployments of
highways and suburbs. Gleaning perspective from these varied histories, it is important to add
considerations of race to any map of the suburbs. The middle-class whites of the suburbs were able to
increase their living standards by enjoying consumer spending fueled by equity in their homes and the
deduction of property taxes from their income taxes. Housing and highways intertwined to
perpetuate white privilege. When urban renewal projects did take place, they encouraged
gentrification and high-rent commercial development. In some instances, the city was re-colonized
when the highway tore apart minority communities and city planners re-built infrastructure that did not
benefit the shattered neighborhoods. Fotsch claims "'urban renewal' came to be understood as a
euphemism for 'negro removal.'" n61 In sum, a governing apparatus operating through housing and the
highway machine implemented policies to segregate and maintain the isolation of poor, minority, and
otherwise outcast populations. The accounts of segregation and isolation continue to this day. Some
suburbs have diversified from some angles (multi-cultural [*54] communities), but maintained their
stratifying function from other angles (gated fortresses protecting pockets of elitist wealth). Working
through discourses of containment and the perspectives of critical whiteness can offer a challenge to
such arrangements, however, if only by adding to our understandings of the highway machine, suburbia,
and the urban environment.
Many people of color and lower income groups are trapped as “captive” transit
dependents in the inner city, as a direct result of the lack of public transit. This
exacerbates social, economic and racial isolation.
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 4 (October 2004,
Robert D., 31 Fordham Urban Law Journal 1183, “THIRTEENTH ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM ON
CONTEMPORARY URBAN CHALLENGES: URBAN EQUITY: CONSIDERATIONS OF RACE AND THE ROAD
TOWARDS EQUITABLE ALLOCATION OF MUNICIPAL SERVICES: ADDRESSING URBAN TRANSPORTATION
EQUITY IN THE UNITED STATES,” LexisNexis, JS)
In Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity, the authors chronicle community
leaders from New York City to Los Angeles who are demanding an end to transportation policies that
compel the flight of people, jobs, and development to the suburban fringe. n74 The private automobile
is still the most dominant travel mode of every segment of the American population, including the
poor and people of color. n75 Clearly, private automobiles [*1191] provide enormous employment
access advantages to their owners. Car ownership is almost universal in the United States, with 91.7%
of American households owning at least one motor vehicle. n76 According to the 2001 National
Household Travel Survey ("NHTS"), released in 2003, 87.6% of whites, 83.1% of Asians and Hispanics,
and 78.9% of blacks rely on the private car to get around. n77 Lack of car ownership and inadequate
public transit service in many central cities and metropolitan regions with a high proportion of
"captive" transit dependents exacerbate social, economic, and racial isolation, especially for lowincome people of color - residents who already have limited transportation options. n78 Nationally,
only 7% of white households do not own a car, compared with 24% of African American households,
17% of Latino households, and 13% of Asian-American households. n79 People of color are fighting to
get representation on transportation boards and commissions, and to get their fair share of transit
dollars, services, bus shelters and other amenities, handicapped accessible vehicles, and affordable
fares. Some groups are waging grassroots campaigns to get "dirty diesel" buses and bus depots from
being dumped in their neighborhoods. n80 The campaign to "Dump Dirty Diesels" is about the right to
breathe clean air and protect public health. n81 Such efforts are not "sexy" campaigns; they are life
and death struggles. Rosa Parks would have a difficult time sitting on the front or back of a Montgomery
bus today, since the city dismantled its public bus system - which served mostly blacks and poor people.
n82 The cuts were made at the same time that federal tax dollars [*1192] boosted the construction of
the region's extensive suburban highways. n83 The changes in Montgomery took place amid growing
racial geographic segregation and tension between white and black members of the city council. n84
The city described its actions "publicly as fiscally necessary, even as Montgomery received large federal
transportation subsidies to fund renovation of non-transit improvements." n85
Federal transportation dollars are used for highways instead of public transit, which
makes it harder for people of color to access jobs which only increase the
unemployment rate in inner cities.
Center for Social Inclusion 2012 [National public policy intermediary, serving as a bridge between
policy research and grassroots activism to create more effective strategies for equity and opportunity by
dismantling structural racism. Access date: July 19, 2012;
http://www.centerforsocialinclusion.org/about-us/our-work/]
Federal transportation dollars favor highways over public transit, making good jobs harder to access
for poor people of color, many of whom do not have access to a car. Because many poor people of
color live in concentrated poverty neighborhoods that lack good jobs, without a car and without
adequate public transit, they cannot get to the good jobs and are at a higher risk of being
jobless.Highway spending outpaced public transit spending by a 5 to 1 ratio over the past six decades.9
Under the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), public transit gets one-fifth the
federal dollars granted to highway construction.10 When federal highway funds were available on a
flexible basis for states and localities to transfer to public transit projects, only $4.2 billion of the $33.8
billion available (12.5%) was actually transferred.11 Consider the Gulf Coast even before the 2005
hurricane season:
Current transportation racism remains a civil rights issue. Transportation equity
movements reflect those of Rosa Parks and the Freedom Riders and demand a redress
of the discriminatory practices that perpetuate racial disparity.
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 04( Robert D., Ph.D.
Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity) SJ
More than one hundred years ago, in the foreword to his classic book The Souls of Black Folks, W. E.
B. DuBois declared that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.'*
DuBois*s diagnosis came seven years after the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson US Supreme Court
decision codified "separate but equal" as the law of the land. Sadly, in the twenty-first century, the
problem persists. Highway Robbery weighs in a half-century after the landmark US Supreme Court
Brown v. Board of Education decision overturned Plessy and outlawed "separate but equal" in 1954.
Unfortunately, decades of court rulings and civil rights laws have not eradicated the historic
disparities between races or the discrimination that perpetuates them.1 The United States remains a
racially divided nation where extreme inequalities continue to persist in housing, schools,
employment, income, environmental protection, and transportation. The struggle against
transportation racism has always been about civil rights, social justice, equity, and fair treatment. For
more than a century, African Americans and other people of color have struggled to end
transportation racism. Harbingers of the modern civil rights movement. Rosa Parks and the
Montgomery Bus Boycott of the 1950s challenged transportation racism. Later, the Freedom Riders of
the 1960s defied "Jim Crow" on interstate transportation. Despite the heroic efforts of many and the
monumental human rights gains over the past five decades, transportation remains a civil rights and
quality of life issue. Unfortunately, it appears that transportation-civil rights issues have dropped off
the radar screens of many mainstream civil rights and social justice organizations at a time when
racist political forces disguised as "conservatives" attempt to roll back and dismantle many hard-won
civil rights gains. It is time to refocus attention on the role transportation plays in shaping human
interaction, economic mobility, and sustainability. From New York City to Los Angeles, and a host of
cities in between, people of color are banding together to challenge unfair, unjust, and illegal
transportation policies and practices that relegate them to the back of the bus. From Rosa Parks and
the brave souls who risked their lives in the Montgomery Bus Boycott to John Lewis and the Freedom
Riders, individual and organizational frontal assaults on racist transportation policies and practices
represent attempts to literally dismantle the infrastructure of oppression. Natural heirs of the civil
rights legacy, the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union in the 1990s and hundreds of grassroots groups in the
early years of the new millennium have taken to our nation's buses, trains, streets, and highways and
joined the battle against transportation racism. Transportation racism hurts people of color
communities by depriving their residents of valuable resources, investments, and mobility. This book
represents a small but significant part of the transportation equity movement—a movement that is
redefining transportation as an environmental, economic, civil, and human right.
Colored Bodies are Disposable
The urban highway subjugates those who cannot access the highway and keeps them
contained in a trap of poverty.
Kuswa, Director of Debating at the University of Richmond, 2 (Winter 2002, Kevin Douglas, The Journal
of Law in Society, “Suburbification, Segregation, and the Consolidation of the Highway Machine,” vol.
31, no. 3, LexisNexis, JS)
One of the devastating memories of the highway and suburbia during the middle of the last century
concerns race and class and the ways many impoverished and minority people were segregated and
contained in certain city regions. How is power exercised in these instances How can these histories be
tied together to critique the effects of the highway machine A relational notion of power can assist
critical whiteness in confronting any attempts to govern through a spatial control of mobility and
housing that promotes race and class divisions. Power no longer constitutes authority in a bipolar
way, for the exercise of power produces positive and negative effects. More specifically, the racing
and placing of populations occurs through the highway machine's exercise of pastoral power, not
through a barricade set up by the military or forced internment. A concept like pastoral power turns
away from analyzing situations in terms of "those with power" against "those without." Pastoral power,
for Foucault, involves the individualization and totalization of power's objects: the subject and the
flock. n62 Civil [*55] institutions took it upon themselves to save and improve the citizenry, rather than
simply governing the larger social body. Individuals are subject to rigid norms and groups are subjugated
by state policies and enforcement. In a less abstract sense, the urban highway subjugates communities
that are not able to access the highway, while people who do have access are subject to its
restrictions and its path. The subject, or driver, desires easy access to employment as well as a
domestic escape from the perceived dangers of city life. Meanwhile, the flock, or abstracted
community, desires security and the comforts of modernity. The underside of the subject and the
flock is, of course, the non-citizen and the non-community-the elements that must be purged and
sanitized for the smooth functioning of society. This is how pastoral power produces subjectivities at
the same time that it subjugates others. Through the highway machine, the Page 9 3 J.L. Soc'y 31, *52
non-citizen emerges as the residue of circulation and distribution-the immobile person contained in a
trap of poverty and walled-in by the very structures designed to expand society's possibilities of
travel. The have-nots become the move-nots, resigned to remain within a crowded cage contrasted
with the adjacent freedom of superhighways and airports. Through the highway machine, the noncommunity emerges as the residue of out-migration and gentrification, effectively raising and
depressing property rates to squeeze some people in and some people out. Drawing an analogy to a
more popularized form of containment will serve to highlight the process. Greene relates the discourse
of containment to United States foreign policy in the "third world," by showing how poverty and
overpopulation had to be contained in the [*56] name of democracy. n63 The borderlines between
North and South (the North South gap) and between East and West (the East West divide or the Iron
Curtain) became regions where containment worked to place and displace particular territories and
populations. These logics appeared across the globe in the form of proxy wars (Angola, Nicaragua,
Vietnam, Afghanistan); in the emergence of spheres of influence (the bear in the backyard and the
domino theory); and in the separation of worlds into the industrialized first world, the industrializing or
communist-bloc second world, and the underdeveloped or newly independent third world. Containment
worked in these contexts to isolate conditions of political instability, poverty, and rapid population
growth. These conditions then marked places that could breed communism or pose a potential threat to
the West. Greene focuses on how the population control apparatus adopted containment rhetoric to
further birth control, family planning, and health promotion in the so-called third world. This article uses
Greene's concept to make a brief comment on the tropes of "cleanliness," "the pristine," "health,"
and "whiteness" operating within containment. n64 From there, we turn toward the ways these
discourses produce racial divisions within American cities. Early in his account of the population
apparatus, Greene notes "discourse strategies offer the means for making the conduct of a population
visible as a problem" and "a discourse strategy exists as a norm for evaluating [*57] the welfare of a
population." n65 We recognize, though, that these discursive strategies are material and not just
descriptive, that rhetorical positioning operates alongside ethical judgment, and that discursive
foundations allow the exercise of power to be enabling and disabling at any given moment. n66 Many
strategies circulate together to make certain populations visible and judge their productivity. Deploying
the need for health, for instance, discursive strategies began to associate the health of the individual
with the health of the nation and the health of the social body. A number of techniques combine to
determine which populations are unhealthy and how those populations can be distinguished, separated,
and contained. The health of a given population works figuratively and literally (metaphorically and
physically). As Greene contends: "the individual health/social health couplet allows the language of
public health and disease to be deployed in order to pathologize particular practices as 'unhealthy' for
both the individual and the social body." n67 Greene's link between the discourse of health and
containment is clear in the emergence of a Malthusian couple and state promotion of birth control,
making the notion of "racing and placing populations" a significant one to import to the intersection
between the suburb and whiteness. n68
Economically disadvantaged and low-income minority communities suffer from
proximity to air pollution, resulting in hazardous health effects
Springs 2007(Mary Alice, “Inequity in Transport: The Problem with Auto Hegemony.” Chrestomathy:
Annual Review of Undergraduate Researcher, Annual Review of Undergraduate Research, School of
Humanities and Social Sciences, School of Languages, Cultures, and World Affairs Volume 6, 2007:
198-209; http://chrestomathy.cofc.edu/archives/volume6.php). SJ
Economically disadvantaged communities not only suffer from limited access to transportation, but
they also suffer another terrible side effect of our “love affair with the automobile.” Because
highways are more likely to be built through these communities, these residents are more likely to
suffer physical ailments and higher rates of mortality associated with vehicular air pollution and
pedestrian-auto collisions. According to Douglas Houston et al., “Vehicle traffic remains a major and
often dominant source of air pollution” (566). The authors further argue recent scientific research
shows a positive correlation between vehicular air pollution and a variety of adverse medical conditions
(566). Such medical conditions include eye irritation, lung cancer, asthma, upper respiratory tract
irritation and infection, exacerbation of and increased mortality from cardio-respiratory diseases, low
birth weight, and cancer. Studies have shown the prevalence of health disparities between different
demographic groups as they relate to their neighborhood proximity to high volume traffic
roadways. William Shutkin writes, “People of color, who live in cities to a far greater extent than
whites, are disproportionately exposed to urban air pollution” (75). It has been stated that lowincome minority groups tend to suffer more frequently from asthma and, as a result, are hospitalized
and have a higher mortality rate than other demographic groups (Houston et al. 568). Houston et al.
add to this discussion by noting that environmental justice research has confirmed a relationship “
between a neighborhood’s racial and socioeconomic composition and proximity to hazardous air
pollution” in Los Angeles (568). A study done by Michelle Wilhelm and Beate Ritz shows that air
pollution from vehicles not only affects the living but unborn children as well. Wilhelm and Ritz found a
ten to twenty percent increase in the occurrence of low birth weight and pre-term births of infants of
mothers “living close to heavily traveled roadways” (211). In a study of 5,000 people, “those who lived
near a major road or highway were twice as likely to die from cardiovascular or respiratory disease as
those who did not” (Hoek et al. 1203). There has also been evidence that suggests that children who
live in close proximity to heavy traffic roads face a higher risk of childhood cancer, particularly leukemia
(Pearson et al. 179). Hence, there is a growing amount of empirical evidence suggesting that people
who live in close proximity to high volume traffic roads are at a higher risk for a number of health
complications and lower life expectancy. As property values of these typically undesirable home sites
are lower, low-income minority residents are more likely to live in these areas and thus suffer the
most from the traffic related air pollution to which they do not contribute.
We are in the middle of an era of pollution so toxic and persistent that we face the
catastrophic destruction of our environment if we do not take responsibility for the
lion’s share of our planet’s destruction. Pollution disproportionately affects people of
color and lower income groups, as they are marginalized by our government and
society. Environmental racism casts people of color and people in poverty as
disposable bodies. We need to foster environmental justice beyond geopolitical
boundaries if we are to reverse the trend towards world disequilibrium and the fate of
the dinosaurs.
Bunyan Bryant, (Professor in the School of Natural Resources and Environment, and an adjunct
professor in the Center for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan,
1995, Environmental Justice: Issues, Policies, and Solutions, p. 209-212 REM)
Although the post-World War II economy was designed when environmental consideration was not a
problem, today this is no longer the case; we must be concerned enough about environmental
protection to make it a part of our economic design. Today, temporal and spatial relations of pollution
have drastically changed within the last 100 years or so. A hundred years ago we polluted a small spatial
area and it took the earth a short time to heal itself. Today we pollute large areas of the earth – as
evidenced by the international problems of acid rain, the depletion of the ozone layer, global warming,
nuclear meltdowns, and the difficulties in the safe storage of spent fuels from nuclear power plants.
Perhaps we have embarked upon an era of pollution so toxic and persistent that it will take the earth
in some areas thousands of years to heal itself. To curtail environmental pollutants, we must build new
institutions to prevent widespread destruction from pollutants that know nogeopolitical boundaries. We
need to do this because pollutants are not respectful of international boundaries; it does little good if
one country practices sound environmental protection while its neighbors fail to do so. Countries of the
world are intricately linked together in ways not clear 50 years ago; they find themselves victims of
environmental destruction even though the causes of that destruction originated in another part of
the world. Acid rain, global warming, depletion of the ozone layer , nuclear accidents like the one at
Chernobyl, make all countries vulnerable to environmental destruction .The cooperative relations
forged after World War II are now obsolete. New cooperative relations need to be agreed upon –
cooperative relations that show that pollution prevention and species preservation are inseparably
linked to economic development and survival of planet earth. Economic development is linked
to pollution prevention even though the market fails to include the true cost of pollution in its pricing of
products and services; it fails to place a value on the destruction of plant and animal species. To date,
most industrialized nations, the high polluters, have had an incentive to pollute because they did not
incur the cost of producing goods and services in a nonpolluting manner. The world will have to pay for
the true cost of production and to practice prudent stewardship of our natural resources if we are to
sustain ourselves on this planet. We cannot expect Third World countries to participate in debt-fornature swaps as a means for saving the rainforest or as a means for the reduction of greenhouse gases,
while a considerable amount of such gases come from industrial nations and from fossil fuel
consumption. Like disease, population growth is politically, economically, and structurally determined.
Due to inadequate income maintenance programs and social security, families in developing countries
are more apt to have large families not only to ensure the survival of children within the first five years,
but to work the fields and care for the elderly. As development increases, so do education, health,
and birth control. In his chapter, States that ecological development and substantial debt forgiveness
would be more significant in alleviating Third World environmental degradation (or population
problems) than ratification of any UNCED biodiversity or forest conventions. Because population control
programs fail to address the structural characteristics of poverty, such programs for developing
countries have been for the most part dismal failures. Growth and development along ecological lines
have a better chance of controlling population growth in developing countries than the best population
control programs to date. Although population control is important, we often focus a considerable
amount of our attention on population problems of developing countries. Yet there are more people
per square mile in Western Europe than in most developing countries. “During his/her lifetime an
American child causes 35 times the environmental damage of an Indian child and 280 times that of a
Haitian child (Boggs, 1993: 1). The addiction to consumerism of highly industrialized countries has to be
seen as a major culprit, and thus must be balanced against the benefits of population control in Third
World countries. Worldwide environmental protection is only one part of the complex problems we
face today. We cannot ignore world poverty; it is intricately linked to environmental protection. If this
is the case, then how do we deal with world poverty How do we bring about lasting peace in the world
Clearly we can no longer afford a South Africa as it was once organized, or ethnic cleansing by Serbian
nationalists. These types of conflicts bankrupt us morally and destroy our connectedness with one
another as a world community. Yet, we may be headed on a course where the politically induced
famine, poverty, and chaos of Somalia today will become commonplace and world peace more difficult,
particularly if the European Common Market, Japan, and the United States trade primarily among
themselves, leaving Third World countries to fend for themselves. Growing poverty will lead only to
more world disequilibrium to wars and famine– as countries become more aggressive and cross
international borders for resources to ward off widespread hunger and rampant unemployment. To
tackle these problems requires a quantum leap in global cooperation and commitment of the highest
magnitude; it requires development of an international tax, levied through the United nations or some
other international body, so that the world community can become more involved in helping to deal
with issues of environmental protection, poverty, and peace. Since the market system has been bold
and flexible enough to meet changing conditions, so too must public institutions. They must, indeed, be
able to respond to the rapid changes that reverberate throughout the world. If they fail to change,
then we will surely meet the fate of the dinosaur. The Soviet Union gave up a system that was
unworkable in exchange for another one. Although it has not been easy, individual countries of the
former Soviet Union have the potential of reemerging looking very different and stronger. Or they could
emerge looking very different and weaker. They could become societies that are both socially and
environmentally destructive or they can become societies where people have decent jobs, places to live,
educational opportunities for all citizens, and sustainable social structures that are safe and nurturing.
Although North Americans are experiencing economic and social discomforts, we too will have to
change, or we may find ourselves engulfed by political and economic forces beyond our control. In 1994,
the out-sweeping of Democrats from national offices may be symptomatic of deeper and more
fundamental problems. If the mean-spirited behavior that characterized the 1994 election is carried
over into the governance of the country, this may only fan the flames of discontent. We may be
embarking upon a long struggle over ideology, culture, and the very heart and soul of the country. But
despite all the political turmoil, we must take risks and try out new ideas – ideas never dreamed of
before and ideas we thought were impossible to implement. To implement these ideas we must
overcome institutional inertia in order to enhance intentional change. We need to give up tradition and
“business as usual.” To view the future as a challenge and as an opportunity to make the world a better
place, we must be willing to take political and economic risks. The question is not growth, but what
kind of growth, and where it will take place. For example, we can maintain current levels of productivity
or become even more productive if we farm organically. Because of ideological conflicts, it is hard for us
to view the Cuban experience with an unjaundiced eye; but we ask you to place political differences
aside and pay attention to the lyrics of organic farming and not to the music of Communism. In other
words, we must get beyond political differences and ideological conflicts; we must find success stories of
healing the planet no matter where they exist – be they in Communist or non-Communist countries,
developed or underdeveloped countries. We must ascertain what lessons can be learned from them,
and examine how they would benefit the world community. In most instances, we will have to chart a
new course. Continued use of certain technologies and chemicals that are incompatible with the
ecosystem will take us down the road of no return. We are already witnessing the catastrophic
destruction of our environment and disproportionate impacts of environmental insults on
communities of color and low-income groups. If such destruction continues, it will undoubtedly deal
harmful blows to our social, economic, and political institutions. As a nation, we find ourselves in
a house divided, where the cleavages between the races are in fact getting worse. We find ourselves in
a house divided where the gap between the rich and the poor has increased. We find ourselves in a
house divided where the gap between the young and the old has widened. During the 1980s, there were
few visions of healing the country. In the 1990s, despite the catastrophic economic and environmental
results of the 1980s, and despite the conservative takeover of both houses of Congress, we must look
for glimmers of hope. We must stand by what we think is right and defend our position with passion.
And at times we need to slow down and reflect and do a lot of soul searching in order to redirect
ourselves, if need be. We must chart out a new course of defining who we are as a people, by redefining
our relationship with government, with nature, with one another, and where we want to be as a nation.
We need to find a way of expressing this definition of ourselves to one another. Undeniably we are a
nation of different ethnic groups and races, and of multiple interest groups, and if we cannot live in
peace and in harmony with ourselves and with nature it bodes ominously for future world relations.
Because economic institutions are based upon the growth paradigm of extracting and processing
natural resources, we will surely perish if we use them to foul the global nest. But it does not have
to be this way. Although sound environmental policies can be compatible with good business practices
and quality of life, we may have to jettison the moral argument of environmental protection in favor
of the self-interest argument, thereby demonstrating that the survival of business enterprises is
intricately tied to good stewardship of natural resources and environmental protection. Too often we
forget that short-sightedness can propel us down a narrow path , where we are unable to see the longterm effects of our actions. The ideas and policies discussed in this book are ways of getting ourselves
back on track. The ideas presented here will hopefully provide substantive material for discourse. These
policies are not carved in stone, nor are they meant to be for every city, suburb, or rural area.
Municipalities or rural areas should have flexibility in dealing with their site-specific problems. Yet we
need to extend our concern about local sustainability beyond geopolitical boundaries, because
dumping in Third World countries or in the atmosphere today will surely haunt the world tomorrow.
Ideas presented here may irritate some and dismay others, but we need to make some drastic changes
in our lifestyles and institutions in order to foster environmental justice. Many of the policy ideas
mentioned in this book have been around for some time, but they have not been implemented. The
struggle for environmental justice emerging from the people of color and low-income communities
may provide the necessary political impulse to make these policies a reality. Environmental justice
provides opportunities for those most affected by environmental degradation and poverty to
make policies to save not only themselves from differential impact of environmental hazards, but to
save those responsible for the lion’s share of the planet’s destruction. This struggle emerging from the
environmental experience of oppressed people brings forth a new consciousness – a new consciousness
shaped by immediate demands for certainty and solution. It is a struggle to make a true connection
between humanity and nature. This struggle to resolve environmental problems may force the nation to
alter its priorities; it may force the nation to address issues of environmental justice and, by doing so, it
may ultimately result in a cleaner and healthier environment for all of us. Although we may never
eliminate all toxic materials from the production cycle, we should at least have that as a goal
Whites embrace a color-blind theology while reaping the benefits of white privilege Many pay lip service to the goals of the civil rights movement while fighting against
the real political measures needed to achieve results
Bonilla-Silva, 06- professor of sociology at Duke University (Eduardo, Racism without Racists: second
edition) SJ
Most whites in the United States rely on the ideology of color-blind racism to articulate their views (by
relying on the frames of the ideology), present their ideas (by using the style of the ideology), and
interpret interactions with people of color (by sharing the racial stories of the ideology). They believe
blacks are culturally deficient, welfare-dependent, and lazy. They regard affirmative action and
reparations as tantamount to ‘‘reverse discrimination.’’ And because whites believe discrimination is a
thing of the past, minorities’ protestations about being racially profiled, experiencing discrimination in
the housing and labor markets, and being discriminated against in restaurants, stores, and other social
settings are interpreted as ‘‘excuses.’’ Following the color-blind script, whites support almost all the
goals of the Civil Rights Movement in principle, but object in practice to almost all the policies that
have been developed to make these goals a reality. Although they abhor what they regard as blacks’
‘‘self-segregation,’’ they do not have any problem with their own racial segregation because they do
not see it as a racial phenomenon. Finally, although they sing loudly the color-blind song, as I showed in
the previous chapter, they live a white color-coded life.
Avoiding the discussion of privilege shores up white supremacy – Building counterhegemonic discourse is impossible in a white, colorblind society
Leonardo 04Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2004 © 2004 Philosophy of Education
Society of Australasia Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK
and 350 Main Street, Malden, The Color of Supremacy Original Articles 000 1236April 2004 © 2004
Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia 0013-1857 Educational Philosophy and Theory EOxford,
UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd PATThe Color of Supremacy: Beyond the discourse of ‘white
privilege’California State University Zeus
Communities of color have constructed counter-discourses in the home, church, and informal school
cultures in order to maintain their sense of humanity. They know too well that their sanity and
development, both as individuals and as a collective, depend on alternative (unofficial) knowledge of the
racial formation. By contrast, white subjects do not get these same counter-hegemonic racial
understandings because their lives also depend on a certain development; that is, colorblind strategies
that maintain their supremacy as a group. Like their non-white counterparts, white students are not
taught anti-racist understandings in schools; but, unlike non-whites, whites invest in practices that
obscure racial processes. State sponsored curricula fail to encourage students of all racial backgrounds
to critique white domination. In other words, schools may teach white students to naturalize their
unearned privileges, but they also willingly participate in such discourses, which maintains their sense
of humanity. White humanity is just that humanity of whites. So it is not only the case that whites are
taught to normalize their dominant position in society; they are susceptible to these forms of
teachings because they benefit from them. It is not a process that is somehow done to them, as if they
were duped, are victims of manipulation, or lacked certain learning opportunities. Rather, the colorblind discourse is one that they fully endorse.
Students should use these discussions as a technology of power to counter the system
Giroux, McMaster University Global Television Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies, 86 (1986,
Henry A., “Radical Pedagogy and the Politics of Student Voice,” Vol. 17, No. 1, Google Books, REM)
If language is inseparable from lived experience and from how people create a distinctive voice, it is
also connected to an intense struggle among different groups over what will count as meaningful and
whose cultural capital will prevail in legitimating particular ways of life. Within schools, discourse
produces and legitimates configurations of time, space, and narrative, placing particular renderings of
ideology, behavior, and the representation of everyday life in a privileged perspective. As a
"technology of power," discourse is given concrete expression in the forms of knowledge that
constitute the formal curriculum as well as in the structuring of classroom social relations that
constitute the hidden curriculum of Schooling. Needless to say, these pedagogical practices and forms
are "read" in different ways by teachers and students.
Advocacy Statement:
Solvency
The public needs to be more involved in transportation planning in order to ensure
racial equality in transportation infrastructure - Prior federal legislation on
transportation instituted public and community input in the planning and decisionmaking phase for new projects - Our affirmative will follow suit
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 04( Robert D., Ph.D.
Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity) SJ
Much of transportation planning is about the flow of dollars—billions of dollars. Who gets what, when,
where, why, and how much is not rocket science but political science. Why do some communities get
transit while others are left out Why do some communities get light rail while others get buses Why are
clean-fuel vehicles sent to one community and not another Why are higher subsidies paid to one group
of transit riders while other riders are shortchanged What institutional changes are needed to build
transportation equity into regional plans and programs What progress have we made in eliminating
racial discrimination in transportation decision-making What community-organizing and legal strategies
arc effective in combating transportation racism These and other transportation questions and issues
are addressed in this book. The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) and its
iterations frame the context for understanding the government-imposed political and fiscal parameters
within which transportation activist’s work. Congress passed ISTEA in 1991 to develop and improve
public transportation in order "to achieve national goals for improved air quality, energy conservation,
international competitiveness, and mobility for elderly persons, persons with disabilities, and
economically disadvantaged persons in urban and rural areas of the country."7 ISTEA also promised to
build intermodal connections between people, jobs, goods and markets, and neighborhoods. ISTEA was
written to expire in 1997. unless reviewed, updated, and reauthorized. In 1998. ISTEA was renewed as
the Transportation Efficiency Act of the twenty-first century (TEA-21). TEA-21 was the largest
infrastructure-funding bill ever passed. It included policy provisions for funding highways and transit
programs through 2003. ISTEA and TEA-21 changed the way federal transportation dollars are allocated,
ensuring greater local control over what is funded and not funded. They also made advances toward the
inclusion of the public into significant transportation decisions via input throughout the planning
process. Despite the advances, transportation advocates continue to call for strong public support,
public participation, and public accountability for transportation agencies in the development of
transportation projects. With the scheduled expiration of TEA-21 in September 2003, and the passing of
TEA-3, the third incarnation of ISTEA was born.* Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP) outlined
the four challenges of the TEA-3: "Fix it first; create better transportation choices; build more livable
communities; and learn to serve people."4 Essentially, to be effective. TEA-3 must better involve
stakeholders and the public.
And, as proven by current government-sponsored urban development, it is normal
means to consult community organizers and build community-based initiatives that
respond to the needs of the people
Hodson and Marvin, ’10. (Mike Hodson and Simon Marvin, June 2010, “Urbanism in the
Anthropocene: Ecological Urbanism or Premium Ecological Enclaves”, City, Volume 14, Number 3, June
2010. Pg. 307 [SJW])
There are also other debates about relocalisa- tion that include wider sets of social interests and try to
put other social objectives on the urban policy agenda. These include Low Impact Urban
Developments, Transition Towns and Relocalisation movements being developed as local social and
behavioural responses in a number of urban contexts in the UK and USA. Low Impact Urban
Development (LID) encompasses a range of community-based initiatives that seek to internalise
infrastructure and resource flows. LID is important as a site of practical innovation and attempts at
low-carbon living (Pickerill and Maxey, 2009). Although there are important similarities between LIDs
and the more commercially and governmen- tally oriented integrated eco-developments outlined—in
particular, the emphasis on autonomy, the development of local technol- ogies, circular metabolisms
and the aspiration for greater self-reliance—there are also some significant differences. In particular,
LIDs stress local and community control of infra- structure and raise wider issues about ensur- ing
more equitable access to environmental resources for low-income households. There are now dozens
of Transition Towns in the UK which operate on the basis of a shared methodology to develop a locally
‘coordi- nated range of projects across all these areas of life [that] leads to a collectively designed
energy descent pathway’.6 Such strategies seem to imply a more collective approach to innovation
around climate change and resource constraints not solely oriented around technical fixes, and a
more socially and culturally driven approach to new solutions and configura- tions. Critically, these are
designed in context and cut across all aspects of urban life. A key focus is on resource reduction rather
than reproducing the productivist bias of commer- cial approaches. To take another example, a US
network draws together over 172 urban post-carbon groups worldwide.7 How particularly we
understand inte- grated eco-urbanism—as what sorts of artifi- cial reconstructions of nature and
ecology through design and technology—is critical. That is to say, it is what specific responses amount
to that is important: whether they are responses to a set of specific historic– geographic pressures, a
new means of politi- cal–economic reproduction or a cultural representation of a more ethical urbanism.
Our point is that they represent a specific spatial and temporal project in which ecol- ogy and
economy merge around technosci- entific design. To understand why this is the case, we need to
locate eco-urbanism within a wider understanding of what is happening to global urbanism.
Alternatively, improving urban transportation infrastructure will help urban residents
access employment and services.
Dodson, Urban Research Program, 06 (2006, Jago, “Investing in the Social Dimensons of Transport
Disadvantage—I. Toward New Concepts and Methods,” Vol. 24, No. 4, 433–453, Google Books, REM)
Changing social, economic and environmental imperatives are shifting scholarly and policy attention
towards ensuring urban transport systems provide for accessibility. This marks a shift away from earlier
perceptions which actually limited mobility (Cervero, 1989; Newman & Kenworthy, 1999). Previously,
typical transport studies sought to ensure the mobility of urban populations, with a focus biased
towards private vehicles as the primary mode of travel. Models of travel behavior have been
deployed to assess which activities stimulate travel and how the transport system provides for this
mobility. By comparison, the alternative concept of accessibility denotes the ease and capacity of
urban residents to access employment and services at the local and regional scale of analysis.
Student and other forms of activism are key to fight “new racism” practices and colorblind idiocy.
Bonilla-Silva, 06- professor of sociology at Duke University (Eduardo, Racism without Racists: second
edition) SJ
If this new civil rights movement begins a concerted campaign to fight ‘‘new racism’’ practices and
color-blind idiocy, this movement has a chance. If the leaders of this movement begin to say to
America, ‘‘We will no longer accept poverty and urban decay, substandard schools and housing,
inferior jobs, old- as well as new-fashioned discrimination, and racial profiling, in short, we will no
longer accept second-class citizenship in this country,’’ then this movement has a chance. If liberal,
progressive, and radical organizations join in this new civil rights movement to eliminate racial disparity
in the United States once and for all, this movement has a chance. If progressive religious leaders of
various denominations begin to preach about the need to complete the civil rights revolution we started
years ago and derail the forces that want to turn back the racial clock, this movement has a chance. If
the millions of conscientious college students across the nation wake up and do the right thing, as they
did during the Civil Rights era, this movement has a chance. If young people and workers in the United
States realize that racial inequality ultimately helps preserve other forms of inequality,27 this
movement has a chance. Activists and researchers alike need to realize the basic truth in Frederick
Douglass’s words, ‘‘If there is no struggle, there is no progress. . . . Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will.’’ Change is made, not theorized, written about, or orchestrated
by policy makers or researchers. Only by demanding what seems impossible today (equality of results,
reparations, and the end of all forms of racial discrimination), will we be able to achieve genuine racial
equality in the future.
Educating the youth on matters that will benefit them in today’s society, like racism, is
essential to producing effective movements against the racist structural norms of our
government.
Giroux 2003 ("Youth, Higher Education, And The Crisis Of Public Time: Educated Hope And The
Possibility Of A Democratic Future." Social Identities 9.2 (2003): 141. Academic Search Premier. Web. 21
July 2012. HENRY A. Giroux, Giroux has held positions at Boston University, Miami University, and Penn
State University. In 2005, Giroux began serving as the Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural
Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario[2][dead link][3] Giroux has published more than 50
books and over 300 academic articles, and is published widely throughout education and cultural studies
literature.[4] Since arriving at McMaster, Giroux has been a featured faculty lecturer,[5] and has
published nine books,[6] including his most recent work, The University in Chains: Confronting the
Military-Industrial-Academic Complex. JRW)
No longer ‘viewed as a privileged sign and embodiment of the future’ (p. 133), youth are now
demonized by the popular media and derided by politicians looking for quick-fix solutions to crime,
joblessness, and poverty. In a society deeply troubled by their presence, youth prompt a public
rhetoric of fear, control, and surveillance, which translates into social policies that signal the shrinking
of democratic public spheres, the high-jacking of civic culture, and the increasing militarization of
public space. Equipped with police and drug sniffing dogs, though not necessarily teachers or textbooks,
public schools increasingly resemble prisons. Students begin to look more like criminal suspects who
need to be searched, tested, and observed under the watchful eye of administrators who appear to be
less concerned with educating them than with containing their every move. Nurturance, trust, and
respect now give way to fear, disdain, and suspicion. In many suburban malls, young people, especially
urban youth of color, cannot shop or walk around without having appropriate identification cards or
being in the company of a parent. Children have fewer rights than almost any other group and fewer
institutions protecting these rights. Consequently, their voices and needs are almost completely
absent from the debates, policies, and legislative practices that are constructed in terms of their
needs. Instead of providing a decent education to poor young people, American society offers them
the growing potential of being incarcerated, buttressed by the fact that the US is one of the few
countries in the world that sentences minors to death and spends ‘three times more on each
incarcerated citizen than on each public school pupil’ (Wokusch, 2002). Instead of guaranteeing them
decent schools and a critical education, we house too many of our young people in dilapidated buildings
and serve them more standardized tests; instead of providing them with vibrant public spheres, we offer
them a commercialized culture in which consumerism is the only obligation of citizen- ship. But in the
hard currency of human suffering, children pay a heavy price in one the richest democracies in the
world: 20 per cent of children are poor during the first three years of life and more than 13.3 million live
in poverty; 9.2 million children lack health insurance; millions lack affordable child care and decent early
childhood education; in many states more money is being spent on prison construction than on
education; the infant mortality rate in the United States is the highest of any other industrialised nation.
When broken down along racial categories, the figures become even more despairing. For example,
‘In 1998, 36 per cent of black and 34 per cent of Hispanic children lived in poverty, compared with 14
per cent of white children’.2 In some cities, such as the District of Columbia, the child poverty rate is as
high as 45 per cent.3 While the United States ranks first in military technology, military exports,
defence expenditures and the number of millionaires and billionaires, it is ranked 18th among the
advanced industrial nations in the gap between rich and poor children, 12th in the percentage of
children in poverty, 17th in the efforts to lift children out of poverty, and 23rd in infant mortality.4 One
of the most shameful figures on youth as reported by Jennifer Egan, a writer for The New York Times,
indicates that 1.4 million children are homeless in America for a time in any given year ... and these
children make up 40 per cent of the nation’s homeless population. (2002, p. 35)
Extensions
Inherency
No/Little Investment Now
Now is the time to increase transportation infrastructure – cheap and effective now
Source, Date
http://books.google.com/booksid=hFmILCYLm4QC&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=need+to+increase+transp
ortation+infrastructure&source=bl&ots=_mfKDHI4Gx&sig=8w37B_CV9JwfsslunZUOpefFUGo&hl=en&sa
=X&ei=g8UJUOP2LbCS2AWHg9DEBw&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=need%20to%20increase%20t
ransportation%20infrastructure&f=false
An analysis of the economic impact of transportation investment indicates that now is an optimal time
to increase the nation’s investment in transportation infrastructure. This conclusion follows from both
supply and demand factors. Investing in transportation infrastructure would generate jobs to employ
workers who were displaced because of the housing bubble. We estimate that the average
unemployment rate among those who would gain employment in the jobs created by additional
infrastructure investment is currently more than 15 percent. There is also accumulation evidence that
construction costs are currently low because of underutilized resources, so it would be especially costeffective to seize the opportunity to build many of the quality infrastructure projects that are ready to
be built. Historically, we also know that state and local governments are more prone to cut back on
infrastructure spending during tough economic times, despite the growing need and demand for these
projects. Americans overwhelmingly support increasing our infrastructure investment, as evidenced by
consistent support for local investments on ballot initiatives. This is hardly surprising given that our
report documents that the American public is less satisfied with our transportation infrastructure than
residents of most other OECD nations.
Now is key for infrastructure investment
Department of Treasury 3/23
(3/23/12, “TREASURY REPORT: NOW IS THE KEY TIME TO INVEST IN INFRASTRUCTURE”, LexisNexis
Academic, ) SEW
A new report released today by the U.S. Department of Treasury with the Council of Economic Advisers
finds that now is the key time to invest in infrastructure to create middle-class jobs, increase our longterm competiveness, and support a more secure energy future. The President's all-of-the-above
strategy for American energy and his FY2013 Budget proposes a bold plan to renew and expand
America's infrastructure. The plan includes a $50 billion up-front investment connected to a $476
billion six-year reauthorization of the surface transportation program and the creation of a National
Infrastructure Bank.
Complications in the application process means there will be no new mass transit
programs
Chokshi, July 9 (7/9/12, Niraj, Staff Reporter for the National Journal, “Leader’s Remorse in the Highway Deal?”, National Journal http://transportation.nationaljournal.com/2012/07/lenders-remorse-in-the-highway.php?mrefid=site_search) CJC
After months of congressional wrangling, President Obama signed the $105 billion compromise
transportation bill on Friday. And while the road to reauthorization was long and winding, there was
one provision that was never really at risk. It was in the Senate bill and some form would have made it
into the House version, too. It extends loan financing for infrastructure projects and was championed
by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who both pushed for the
provision and was a key architect of the bill. The measure--America Fast Forward--expands the
Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act funding from $122 million a year to $750
million in fiscal year 2013 and $1 billion in fiscal year 2014. That's more than double the amount
proposed by the Bipartisan Policy Center last year. It's been touted as letting a handful of major projects
move forward, including New York's Tappan Zee Bridge replacement project and a set of projects in Los
Angeles. But even the expanded TIFIA program has its critics. Steven Higashide at the Tri-State
Transportation Campaign, for example, criticized lawmakers for having "removed most of the criteria
for judging applications to the program (these criteria had included environmental sustainability,
project significance, use of public-private partnerships, and more), turning it into a rolling application
program instead." The main remaining criterion would be creditworthiness, Streetsblog reported. It may
be easy for big cities like New York and L.A. to prove their good for it, but many (smaller) cities have
lately faced the threat of credit downgrades. Is TIFIA a gift only for cities with good credit? Or is it, as its
champions like to characterize it, a perfect short-term solution for a system in dire need of reform? Did
the compromise hurt its effectiveness? Or is it an example of Congress actually getting something right?
The Federal Government prefers funds to roads even when public transit systems are
in more need.
Gordon, Michael, Funding Urban Mass Transit in the United States (March 23, 2011). Available at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2007981 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2007981 JPT)
The federal government must apportion a significant amount of resources to help sustain urban mass
transit systems. Yet according to Transportation for America, only 18% of the federal transportation
budget goes to public mass transportation, while the government gives the other 82% to roads. This
serves as a clear reminder of how the American public utilizes automobile transportation significantly
more than urban mass transit. Often, the federal government simply gives money to fix roads in
disrepair, but many public transit systems find themselves in a state of disrepair and do not receive
similar funding. As former MBTA General Manager Dan Grabauskas noted, “Mass transit and public
transportation has been held to a much higher standard to demonstrate value. We don’t do the same
thing if a new road is built or paved and say what is the ridership benefit?” The federal government
disproportionately favors auto transportation over urban mass transit in this sense.
Public transportation key to numerous US cities; renewal of costs required to continue
the effectiveness now
Gordon, Michael, Funding Urban Mass Transit in the United States (March 23, 2011. Available at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2007981 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2007981 JPT)
Public transportation in the United States is at a critical juncture as many systems enter the postrecession period with large deficits and debts, and limited funding at their disposal. Urban mass transit
systems across the country provide critical services to their cities and the inhabitants of those cities.
Nearly every major American city relies on some form of urban mass transit, including bus and rail
systems. Many of these transit systems have used funds from the 2009 American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act (ARRA) for capital improvements, yet struggle to cover rising operating costs.
Urban transit effective in the status quo, but funding is required due to service costs.
Transit also reduces road congestion and car use.
Gordon, Michael, Funding Urban Mass Transit in the United States (March 23, 2011. Available at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2007981 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2007981 JPT)
As urban populations continue to grow and roads become more congested, efficient urban mass transit
will become even more important. Many different people rely on the public services of urban mass
transit, including the elderly and the poor, who use it to commute to work. In addition to its other
benefits, urban mass transit reduces congestion by taking cars off the road, which also improves
public health and the environment by reducing pollution. But because systems must provide belowmarket fares to remain accessible to everybody and keep ridership high, fares alone cannot cover
system costs. Instead, many systems utilize federal, state, and local subsidies to provide the difference.
SQ Racists
Minorities are constantly reminded of the effects of institutional racism that forces
them to conform to the cultural norms of whiteness, while being categorized as
secondary citizens.
Barnes, Willima H. Hastie Fellow at the University of Wisconsin School of Law, 90 (June 1990, Robin D.,
130 Harvard Law Review 1864, “Colloquy: Race Consciousness: The Thematic Content of Racial
Distinctiveness in Critical Race Scholarship,” LexisNexis, JS)
This powerful depiction of dual consciousness delineates the conscious perception of people of color
as they are perpetually reminded that their lives, n8 their existence, and their concerns are valued
differently, n9 when at all, by the white majority. Their statements and actions are judged by different
standards of right and wrong, of morality and immorality. Within their critiques of liberalism and
neoconservative justifications for the status of racial minorities, Critical Race scholars pose the
debilitating effects of institutional racism as the longstanding, almost impregnable barrier to minority
self-determination, thus distinguishing the effects of such discrimination from the difficulties
experienced because of the more easily assimilable traits of ethnicity or from status as newly landed in
the United States. Even as people of color are urged to adopt mainstream cultural values, embrace the
perspectives of the dominant society, and tailor our aspirations to accommodate the demands of the
existing social, economic, and political order, we Page 2 103 Harv. L. Rev. 1864, *1864 are invariable
relegated to a position of fighting for that to which whites feel entitled. n10 Throughout our lives we
receive a pervasive message communicating that we do not truly belong. Implicit in the struggle for
equal dignity in our lives and that of our children is the sense that the late nineteenth century doctrine
of "white people only" has been replaced with that of "white people first." [*1867] One writer describes
how as "a black, I have been given by this society a strong sense of myself as already too familiar, too
personal, too subordinate to white people. I have only recently evolved from being treated as threefifths of a human, a subpart of the white estate." n11 Very early on, children of color become aware of
the assumptions and expectations that attempt to mark them categorically as second-class citizens
unworthy of praise. n12 This "other" consciousness is reinforced across the generations in our familial
and community interactions. n13 "We learned from life as well as from books. We learned about
injustice, social cruelty, political hypocrisy and sanctioned terrorism from the mouths of our mothers
and fathers and from our very own experiences." n14 Many of us remember when we first realized that
we were black, and that discovery had a more profound impact than every other thereafter. n15 We do
not escape the reality of our experience as members of a racially oppressed group when we enter the
legal academy.
The segregation of space is necessarily linked to Power - the segregation of racialized
bodies is a material instantiation of the racial exclusions endemic to American culture
- it is an example of the contemporary material construction of white supremacy
Edwards & Bennett, 10 - *Associate Professor at the School of Accountancy and Legal Studies at
Clemson University, AND **Principal at AAG Associates at Beaufort (Principal at AAG Associates, “The
Legal Creation of Raced Space: The Subtle and Ongoing Discrimination Created Through Jim Crow Laws,”
LexisNexis, JS)
Space is a fundamental element of both legal studies and architecture. In both fields, boundaries define
and codify space. The physical built environment mediates the relationships between the boundaries
imposed by law and the experience of space by individuals. Defining space in the legal sense is, for the
most part, an exercise of the mind. A parcel of property is a space which has legally significant
geometric limits and dimensions that may follow some physical feature of the land. Usually there are no
physical manifestations of actual lines that separate different properties. However, these boundaries
have great legal significance because they afford rights and privileges. Jim Crow Laws were unique, in
that the enactments limited African Americans' access to space. During the Jim Crow Era, legally
imposed geopolitical boundaries translated into physical conditions. In Race, Place and the Law, David
Delaney comments, "segregation, integration, and separation are spatial processes ... ghettos and
exclusionary suburbs are spatial entities ... access, [*149] exclusion, confinement, sanctuary, forced or
forcibly limited mobility are spatial experiences." n7 Spatial definition in a segregated environment is
linked to power. The effect of discriminatory ordinances of the Jim Crow Era is that "architecture evokes
and enables certain forms of life while constraining others with both walls and sanctions." n8 In this
context, the built environment embodies and exemplifies the power structure that either produced it or
allowed for its production. Race and racism heavily influenced space in the South. French theorist, Henri
Lefebvre states, "the preconditions of social space have their own particular way of enduring and
remaining actual within space." n9 The purpose of the Jim Crow Laws was to define, control, and
enforce social practices in the early 1900s. These laws, through the manipulation of both property
tenure and property rights, created de facto power for the White majority by classifying space by race.
The racially motivated power structure in the South persists to this day. Many of the small towns
throughout the South continue to reflect segregation laws and practices. Many areas that were once
segregated areas of towns still form central areas of the populations they serve. Commercial areas,
religious centers, and neighborhoods created during the Segregation Era often persist along racial lines.
This power structure and its spatial ramifications are understood not only through social analysis, but
also and more significantly, through the examination of the territorial boundaries that first created
racial confrontations in the communities throughout the United States. Page 3 12 Berkeley J. Afr.-Am.
L. & Pol'y 145, *147 Segregation laws resulted in space that was treated to emphasize the race that
inhabited it. Space continued to change in these instances to reflect the culture and unique social
needs of African Americans. During slavery "[the] planters' landscapes were laid out with straight lines,
right-angle corners, and axes of symmetry, their mathematical precision being considered as a proof of
individual superiority." n10 The physical layout of the plantation system emphasized White dominance
through "centrality" of the White plantation owners, while also providing physical boundaries that acted
as social buffers between the races. n11 Segregation on the other hand, moved beyond the mere
concept of centrality of Whites to a more extreme exclusion of African Americans based on territorial
boundaries. Segregation laws effectively reduced meaningful space to mere forms of occupation. It was
no longer important what the meaning of the space was, only who occupied it and the rights the
occupants had within that space. Space in this sense is abstracted to the fullest, losing any need to
follow symbolic formal expressions. [*150] The physical manifestations of segregation are enormous.
Segregation created an actual "experience" within space that was far more important than the
physicality of the space itself. Kim Dovey states, "place experience and the spatial strategies that
sustain it are not mutually exclusive positions but each contains the necessity of the other." n12 Jim
Crow Laws not only impacted defined space, but more importantly, dramatically altered the social
experience of individuals interacting within that space. During the Jim Crow Era, space did not exist
without preconditions of race. Therefore, access to space was assigned meaning. The translation of Jim
Crow Laws into the built environment was intended to maintain an existing social construct of White
supremacy. However, some African Americans confronted the prevailing social construct in physical
ways through the manipulation of the built environment through access and boundary manipulation.
White Prejudice forces Blacks into the Segregation seen between the inner-cities and
suburbs.
Massey and Denton, 93 (Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, *Professor of Sociology at
Princeton, President of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, AND ** Researcher,
1993, Harvard University Press, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. (pg.
11) https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Stanford%203%20week/Nineteen/Massey%20and%20Denton%20%20American%20Apartheid%20%20Segregation%20and%20the%20Making%20of%20the%20Underclass.pdfw=d278d0b7 [SJW])
These patterns of white prejudice fuel a pat tern of neighborhood resegregation because racially
mixed neighborhoods a re strongly desired by blacks. As the percentage of blacks in a neighborhood
rises, white demand for homes within it falls sharply while black demand rises. The surge in black
demand and the withering of white demand yield a process of racial turnover. As a result, the only
urban are as where Significant desegregation occurred during the 19 70s were those where the black
population was so small that integration could take place without threatening white preference s for
limited contact with blacks. Prejudice alone cannot account for high levels of black segregation,
however, bec au se whites see king to avoid contact with blacks must have somewhere to go. That is,
some all-white neighborhoods must be perpetuated and maintained, which requires the erection of
systematic barriers to black residential mobility. In most urban housing markets, therefore, the effects
of white prejudice are typically reinforced by direct discrimination against black homeseekers.
Housing audits carried out over the past two decades have documented the persistence of
widespread discrimination against black renters and homebuyers, and a recent comprehensive study
carried out by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development suggests that prior work has
understated both the incidence and the severity of this racial bias. Evidence also suggests that blacks
can expect to experience significant discrimination in the allocation of home mortgages as well.
Racial segregation has been belittled and essentially “shelved” when it is a pressing
and widespread problem.
Massey and Denton, 93 (Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, *Professor of Sociology at
Princeton, President of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, AND ** Researcher,
1993, Harvard University Press, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass.
(pg.16) https://dlweb.dropbox.com/get/Stanford%203%20week/Nineteen/Massey%20and%20Denton%20%20American%20Apartheid%20%20Segregation%20and%20the%20Making%20of%20the%20Underclass.pdfw=d278d0b7 [SJW])
Although Americans have been quick to criticize the apartheid system of South Africa, they have been
reluctant to acknowledge the consequences of their own institutionalized system of racial separation.
The topic of segregation has virtually disappeared from public policy debates; it has vanished from the
list of issues on the civil rights agenda; and it has been ignored by social scientists spinning endless
theories of the underclass. Residential segregation has become the forgotten factor of American race
relations, a minor footnote in the ongoing debate on the urban undercIass. Until policymakers, social
scientists, and private citizens recognize the crucial role of America's own apartheid in perpetuating
urban poverty and racial injustice, the United States will remain a deeply divided and very troubled
society.
Black Exceptionalism shows that while other ethnicities can become closer to white
than a colored person could.
Parisi, he Director of the National Strategic Planning & Analysis Research Center, and Lichter,
Director of the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center at Cornell University, 2011 (Domenico and Daniel.
"Multi-Scale Residential Segregation: Black Exceptionalism And America's Changing Color Line." Social
Forces 89.3 (2011): 829-852. Academic Search Premier. Web. 20 July 2012. JRW)
America's growing multiracial population also makes conventional notions of racial and ethnic
identity and inter-group relations seem increasingly anachronistic, especially those framed along a
black-white divide (Bonilla-Silva 2004; Huntington 2004). One common view is that America's new
minorities are actively seeking to become nonblack-thus joining whites-to avoid facing "the seemingly
permanent inferiority that goes with being black."(Gans 1999:375) Blacks cannot become nonblack.
Racial boundaries thus continue to be defined largely by black exceptionalism (i.e., black- nonblack), a
selective assimilation process in which America's new racial and ethnic minorities actively cultivate
social and cultural distinctions from blacks in order to gain access and acceptance into the whitemajority mainstream.^ Our working hypothesis here is that black exclusion from the American
mainstream is reflected both in exceptionally high and persistent levels of neighborhood segregation
from whites and in racial balkanization at other levels of geography. ITie latter refers to macrosegregation, which we define as the unequal geographic distribution of blacks and other racial groups
across places, metro and nonmetro areas, and regions. Macro- segregation is distinguished here from
micro-segregation or neighborhood segregation, which varies from place to place.' Reardon et al.
(2009) argue that the geographic scale-whether blacks or minorities are concentrated in specific
neighborhoods or in many contiguous neighborhoods or even larger areas-represents a distinct
dimension of residential segregation.
Institutional racism hinders the potential for minorities to contribute to modern
society. And if it continues to persist the rules they currently abide by will be changed
and will harm the chances for minorities to get the chance to close the gap.
Hoch 1993 (Charles Hoch 1993 Racism and planning. Journal Of The American Planning Association,
59(4), 451. Professor Hoch studies planning activity across scale and discipline. Struggling with New Left
inspired criticisms of conventional rational planning at UCLA Hoch studied the ideas of American
pragmatist John Dewey. Setting out to discredit pragmatic ideas at their source he became a convert.
Hoch has spent three decades studying and proposing that we treat planning as an inherently pragmatic
enterprise. It is no accident that he taught planning theory and the professional development seminar
for 25 years. Hochs 1994 book, What Planners Do offered a pragmatic interpretation of the urban
planning field. JRW)
The white middle-class voices in the book articulate an emerging moral doubt about the norms and
customs that minimize or ignore racial injustice. These uncertainties are beachheads for renewed
assaults on institutional racism. After all, when individuals become ambivalent about the legitimacy of
the occupational and bureaucratic rules, the support for those rules may begin to shift. Members of
the white majority may not know what it means to suffer the indignity of growing up as an African-
American, but they most know what injustice means. All citizens share certain vulnerabilities imposed
on them in their roles as consumers, clients, and employees of corporate and government
organizations. Unfortunately, the institutional expectations fostered by conventional white, liberal
culture and the moral values integral to the various social classes, races, and groups make efforts to
build solidarity across such affiliations quite difficult, but not impossible. Planners seeking to promote
modest racial reforms within their institutional terrain can find moral support for their efforts by
drawing on civil rights legislation, administrative precedents, and the popular moral language of
individual rights. Implementing fair share practices provides real benefits to those minorities who
would otherwise be disadvantaged. Small reforms may not remedy the institutional and cultural
sources of injustice, but they set precedents and offer examples, while improving the lives of
minorities. However, professionals acting alone to reduce racial discrimination should not expect that
their efforts will change the cultural and social traditions that support or benefit from racial injustice.
The liberal language of human rights does not adequately address the problems imposed by the
stigma of race. Professional norms are not a source of moral guidance here. Instead, planners must turn
to examples of democratic citizenship
Economic instability in the US has destabilized the middle-class – the challenges of
growing poverty in the suburbs is less visible than inner city poverty - It is not just the
poor at risk
Press, Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, 2007 [Eyal, "The New Suburban Poverty."
Nation 284.16 (2007): 18-24. Academic Search Premier. Web. 19 July 2012.]
Stories of downward mobility in America’s suburbs have not exactly cluttered the headlines over the
past decade. Gated communities of dream homes, mansions ringed by man-made lakes and glass-cube
office parks: These are the images typically evoked by the posh, supersized subdivisions built during the
1990s technology boom. Low-wage jobs, houses under foreclosure, families unable to afford food and
medical care are not. But venture beyond the city limits of any major metropolitan area today, and
you will encounter these things, in forms less concentrated—and therefore less visible—than in the
more blighted pockets of our cities perhaps, but with growing frequency all the same. In the three
counties surrounding Greensboro, North Carolina, the city half an hour south of where Johnny Price
lives, the poverty rate has surged in recent years. It now stands at 14.4 percent, only slightly below the
level in New Orleans. Greensboro, it turns out, is not alone. Last December the Brookings Institution
published a report showing that from Las Vegas to Boise to Houston, suburban poverty has been
growing over the past seven years, in some places slowly, in others by as much as 33 percent. “The
enduring social and fiscal challenges for cities that stem from high poverty are increasingly shared by
their suburbs,” the report concludes. It’s a problem some may assume is confined to the ragged fringes
of so-called “inner ring” suburbs that directly border cities, places where the housing stock is older and
from which many wealthier residents long ago departed. But this isn’t the case. “Overall...first suburbs
did not bear the brunt of increasing suburban poverty in the early 2000s,” notes the Brookings report,
which found that economic distress has spread to “second-tier suburbs and ‘exurbs’ ” as well. The result
is a historic milestone that has gone strangely ignored: For the first time ever, more poor Americans
live in the suburbs than in all our cities combined. One reason this shift may not have sunk into public
consciousness is that for as long as suburbs have existed, Americans have tended to envision them as
pristine sanctuaries where people go to escape brushing shoulders with the poor. The most familiar
historical example—much lamented by a generation of progressives who came to associate the
migration to suburbs with racial backlash and urban decline—is the mass exodus of middle-class white
ethnics from the nation’s central cities, which accelerated in the wake of the riots and social unrest of
the 1960s. In more recent years, it’s often assumed, the forces In fact, however, the gentrification of
many urban neighborhoods, from Brooklyn to San Francisco to Washington, has forced many workingclass residents out. In a reversal of the classic migration story, many of these displaced residents have
fled to the suburbs, lured in part by the growing pool of mostly low-wage jobs there—cleaning homes,
mowing lawns, staffing restaurants, strip malls and office plazas. Alan Berube, co-author of the
Brookings Institution study, says the “decentralization of low-wage employment” is one of the main
factors driving suburban poverty rates up.
Neoliberalism has caused old civil right organizations to not have to deal with modern
racial prejudice.
Baca 2008 ("Neoliberalism And Stories Of Racial Redemption." Dialectical Anthropology 32.3 (2008):
219-241. Academic Search Premier. Web. 19 July 2012. George Baca 2008, George Baca is a research
scholar at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. He is the editor of
Nationalism’s Bloody Terrain: Racism, Class Inequality, and the Politics of Recognition, coeditor of
Empirical Futures: Anthropologists and Historians Engage the Work of Sidney W. Mintz, and associate
editor of Dialectical Anthropology. JRW)
Two contradictory ideas proliferate in political discussions in the United States. In the first, Americans of
all political stripes believe that the country’s racial problems have improved. Emboldened by
Hollywood films recounting of poor blacks rising up against Jim Crow repression, many Americans take
the idea of racial progress for granted. However, when Americans move their gaze to issues—often
presumed to be beyond ‘‘race’’—of economics, public education, and civic life they embrace a second,
and seemingly opposed narrative of decline. Social scientists have developed this representation of
social decay into ideas of neoliberalism, which they take to be the state’s steady disinvestment in
public goods like education, healthcare, affordable housing and transportation (e.g. Harvey 2005).
Though the rise of civil rights and neoliberalism have overlapped, social scientists have shown a
determined reluctance to theorize the relations between the two; further, few have been willing to see
the two processes as interwoven and collaborating in the production of the contemporary political
economic landscape.1 Minimally, one can note surface overlaps. As a trope of decline, the idea of
neoliberalism presumes a rupture with the past—often viewed as an idealized Fordist State and its socalled compromise between capital and labor (Baca 2004). This rupture presumably has worsened
conditions for most Americans and African Americans in particular. In this form, neoliberal discourse
has unwittingly functioned to relieve civil rights institutions of any responsibility for current racial
conditions in the US by taking critical attention away from how federal agencies and local politicians
have implemented racial reforms. In this scenario, neoliberalism is to blame for undermining or
retrenching the nation’s commitment to racial equality. The relationship between the two turns out to
much more complex. Putting abstract ideas of racial progress and neoliberal decline aside opens up a
historical perspective that will deepen our understanding about how civil rights reforms have
collaborated with, and embodied, neoliberal policies. Such conjunction belies notions of historical
disjuncture in both neoliberal and civil rights narratives. Linking racial reform and economic policy has
been critical to the evolution of capitalism over the past hundred years. At the turn of the twentiethcentury, southern industrialists used white supremacy campaigns to disfranchise blacks from politics,
only to reincorporate black leadership into its regime of New South political development. Their tactics
were clear. By linking reforms in black education and social advancement to economic policy and
industrial expansion, white supremacists of the South laid the basis for the bureaucratic structure that
local governments and federal agencies would increasingly use to incorporate black politics into wider
pro-growth agenda through the two World Wars and on into the New Deal and Civil Rights eras.
Indeed, by the time federal agencies forced southern politicians to comply with the Civil Right Act, race
reforms were already oriented to the pro-growth politics developed in the South that gave rise to
neoliberalism’s focus on the market and diminution of the social provision of the state (Reed 1999).
We can’t view the acts being passed as helping racial reform we must see it through to
implementation
Baca 2008 ("Neoliberalism And Stories Of Racial Redemption." Dialectical Anthropology 32.3 (2008):
219-241. Academic Search Premier. Web. 19 July 2012. George Baca 2008, George Baca is a research
scholar at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. He is the editor of
Nationalism’s Bloody Terrain: Racism, Class Inequality, and the Politics of Recognition, coeditor of
Empirical Futures: Anthropologists and Historians Engage the Work of Sidney W. Mintz, and associate
editor of Dialectical Anthropology. JRW)
Relations between Civil Rights and Neoliberal reforms challenge anthropologists to dispense with ideas
that simultaneously glorify the civil rights movement and demonize conservative reforms, and treat
them as if they represent opposite trends or stand on two sides of a historical rupture. Rather, much is
to be gained by viewing racial reforms as part of a machinery of governance that has characterized
bureaucratic inclusion and development of southern cities like Fayetteville for much of the twentieth
century, and which have as their backdrop and precedent segregation and violent racial militarism.
Rather than treating racial reforms in the abstract, they must be examined in terms of their
implementation. As we can see, political leaders in Fayetteville have used Federal authorities and race
reforms to readjust the city’s racial system to the changing needs of its political and business system.
Nostalgic glorification of the bygone days of Fordism and Civil Rights has muddied analysis of civil
rights reforms. By the 1960s, federal agencies and local governments like Fayetteville had already
started reorienting civil rights groups like the NAACP to ‘‘economic development’’ and technocratic
models of service provision. Well before the rise of Reagan-style neoliberalism, a mainstream black
political class had been absorbed into a ‘‘developing apparatus of race relations management as either
public officials or quasi-public functionaries’’ (Reed 1999, p. 1). The critical failures of anthropology and
other social sciences is unfortunate as the federal government’s adjustment to the protest of the 1960s
served as a catalyst in universalizing economic development and growth, a topic of much concern in
today’s world, yet which is often dealt with in ahistorical terms. Civil rights reforms in the U.S. fortified a
new pattern of social management which has incorporated opposition movements. Political and
economic elites legitimate their programs by integrating potentially antagonistic forces into the logic of
centralized administration. With the rise of civil rights’ management, these forces have regulated
domination and militated against disruptive political strategies while steadily redirecting limited
public resources. For nearly half a century federal agencies and their local counterparts have
incorporated small numbers of African Americans in ways that have cloaked the very fiscal policies that
have decreased spending on public schools, healthcare, and public transport. And while black economic
success is novel and commendable, the stories of redemption meant to explain their undoing have
unwittingly legitimized conservative politics by drawing attention away from fiscal policies that have
increased racial inequality and constricted black politics to ever more narrow channels of business
development. The careful combining of racial reform and conservative fiscal policies have defused
struggles against racism and recuperated the energy of these struggles to uphold liberal forms of
power in Fayetteville and elsewhere in the U.S. South (Baca 2006). The point is not to demonize black
leadership or discount the gains by African Americans in the civil rights era and since. Instead, I hope
to point out that academic discourse runs close to the sorts of apologetics that were used by southern
whites for much of the twentieth century to domesticate those energies into a model of racial
integration and its metaphor of ‘‘race-relations.’’ These bureaucratic developments point the need to
refocus the debate on class interests, and how they are effaced, rather than the compromises made
by black leaders in Fayetteville. As such, the rise of the current system of race relations management
must not be understood simply in terms of the vaunted demise of ‘‘Fordism’’ and the ‘‘compromise’’
between capital and working class Americans. When these two currents alone are recognized, authors
and politicians dismiss the rise of prison population among blacks or the increasing segregation of our
schools as ‘‘anomalies’’ in the post Civil Rights Era. History shows they are much longer in the making.
Institutional racism hinders the potential for minorities to contribute to modern
society. And if it continues to persist the rules they currently abide by will be changed
and will harm the chances for minorities to get the chance to close the gap.
Hoch 1993 (Charles Hoch 1993 Racism and planning. Journal Of The American Planning Association,
59(4), 451. Professor Hoch studies planning activity across scale and discipline. Struggling with New Left
inspired criticisms of conventional rational planning at UCLA Hoch studied the ideas of American
pragmatist John Dewey. Setting out to discredit pragmatic ideas at their source he became a convert.
Hoch has spent three decades studying and proposing that we treat planning as an inherently pragmatic
enterprise. It is no accident that he taught planning theory and the professional development seminar
for 25 years. Hochs 1994 book, What Planners Do offered a pragmatic interpretation of the urban
planning field. JRW)
The white middle-class voices in the book articulate an emerging moral doubt about the norms and
customs that minimize or ignore racial injustice. These uncertainties are beachheads for renewed
assaults on institutional racism. After all, when individuals become ambivalent about the legitimacy of
the occupational and bureaucratic rules, the support for those rules may begin to shift. Members of
the white majority may not know what it means to suffer the indignity of growing up as an AfricanAmerican, but they most know what injustice means. All citizens share certain vulnerabilities imposed
on them in their roles as consumers, clients, and employees of corporate and government
organizations. Unfortunately, the institutional expectations fostered by conventional white, liberal
culture and the moral values integral to the various social classes, races, and groups make efforts to
build solidarity across such affiliations quite difficult, but not impossible. Planners seeking to promote
modest racial reforms within their institutional terrain can find moral support for their efforts by
drawing on civil rights legislation, administrative precedents, and the popular moral language of
individual rights. Implementing fair share practices provides real benefits to those minorities who
would otherwise be disadvantaged. Small reforms may not remedy the institutional and cultural
sources of injustice, but they set precedents and offer examples, while improving the lives of
minorities. However, professionals acting alone to reduce racial discrimination should not expect that
their efforts will change the cultural and social traditions that support or benefit from racial injustice.
The liberal language of human rights does not adequately address the problems imposed by the
stigma of race. Professional norms are not a source of moral guidance here. Instead, planners must turn
to examples of democratic citizenship
There are still several opportunities for people to discriminate against the black
community and they occur whether hidden or in the open.
Mendenhall 2010 ("The Political Economy Of Black Housing: From The Housing Crisis Of The Great
Migrations To The Subprime Mortgage Crisis." Black Scholar 40.1 (2010): 20-37. Academic Search
Premier. Web. 20 July 2012. Ruby Mendenhall 2010. Ruby Mendenhall is an Assistant Professor in
Sociology and African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2004,
Mendenhall received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy program from Northwestern
University in Evanston, Illinois. For her dissertation, Black Women in Gautreaux’s Housing
Desegregation Program: The Role of Neighborhoods and Networks in Economic Independence, she used
administrative welfare and employment data, census information, and in-depth interviews to examine
the long-run effects of placement neighborhood conditions/resources on economic independence. JRW)
Segregated housing in the United States is not a function of individuals' preferences expressed in a freemarket with perfect or near-perfect information. During various periods of history and under different
stages of capitalism, the U.S. government, business organizations, the residential finance industry,
neighborhood organizations, and individuals have engaged in covert and overt practices to actively
create racially segregated, inferior, and higher-cost housing. These practices often include federal and
state laws, municipal ordinances, assessment practices, private deed restrictions, racial steering,
redlining and disinvestment, block busting, urban renewal, location of public housing, and individual
and group terrorism.' I argue that economic and political systems must be understood as structural
forces that confine African Americans' life chances, including access to material resources like housing.
When discussing life chances in the U.S., sociologists Robert Perrucci and Earl Wysong argue that
"Inequality is contained within a class system that resembles a game of monopoly that is 'rigged' so
that only certain players have a chance to own Park Place, and a great many others go directly to jail.
"^ I will show how racialized social processes that are inherent in markets shape and reinforce
inequality. I will theoretically "unpack" the contradictory relation between the use-value and
exchange-value of housing as a commodity of the American Dream.
Segregation of black and white exists in all of society from property to politics, every
other minority was placed above blacks.
Mendenhall 2010 ("The Political Economy Of Black Housing: From The Housing Crisis Of The Great
Migrations To The Subprime Mortgage Crisis." Black Scholar 40.1 (2010): 20-37. Academic Search
Premier. Web. 20 July 2012. Ruby Mendenhall 2010. Ruby Mendenhall is an Assistant Professor in
Sociology and African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2004,
Mendenhall received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy program from Northwestern
University in Evanston, Illinois. For her dissertation, Black Women in Gautreaux’s Housing
Desegregation Program: The Role of Neighborhoods and Networks in Economic Independence, she used
administrative welfare and employment data, census information, and in-depth interviews to examine
the long-run effects of placement neighborhood conditions/resources on economic independence. JRW)
By 1930, efforts to segregate blacks were largely successful as the average black Chicagoan lived in a
majority (66 percent) black community. The level of black segregation and isolation was significantly
different from ethnic immigrant communities. This is significant because Burgess, a founder of the
"Chicago School" of urban sociology (at the University of Chicago) argued that the level of segregation
in ethnic ghettoes was similar to levels in the black community. Ernest Burgess and Robert Park, both
members of the "Chicago School," worked on models of assimilation that explained the mobility
pathways for European immigrants. For instance, German, Irish, Italian, Russian, Polish, Swedish
immigrants used their neighbor- hoods as temporary areas of residency and as springboards for social
mobility. During this time, many scholars and those in the general public believed that blacks had the
same access to mobility pathways as immigrants, and if they did not show the same mobility
performance, then it was due to some inherent failures of black migrants. One of the most effective
strategies used by neighborhood organizations was restrictive covenants or agreements between
property owners not to rent or sell to blacks or to let them occupy property. As part of these social
forces of structural discrimination, some real estate agents would purchase homes and sell or rent them
to blacks in an often profitable process called blockbusting. As blacks moved into these neighborhoods,
whites started to sell their homes at lower prices to realtors who then charged blacks inflated prices far
in excess of the assessed value of the real estate. Not only did blacks pay more for the price of these
houses, they also paid more to borrow the money, regardless of their credit history. Decades before the
subprime market came into existence, racially segmented credit markets existed. Due to blacks' almost
nonexistent access to bank credit, realtors often served as bankers, charging them higher interest rates
and demanding larger down payments.'^ When families defaulted after a few months, realtors
(sometimes partnering with mortgage bankers) sold the property to another black family. Profits
mounted as houses were sold several times within a year; the financial health of these institutions
depended on speed and volume, not the value of the property." African Americans resisted many of
these efforts to confine them to segregated areas and to unfairly manipulate housing exchange
(buying and selling) processes. One specific act of resistance involved Dr. Ossian Sweet and his family
who returned gunshot fire and killed an individual in order to defend themselves and their home
against a riotous mob of about 1,000 white individuals in Detroit, Michigan in 1925. In the end Dr.
Sweet's brother, who fired the shots, was acquitted and charges were dropped against other family
members. Another act of resistance involved the case of J.D. Shelley and his wife using the courts to
nullify restrictive covenants by arguing they violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed
equal protection under the law.39 Their 1948 Supreme Court victory made it harder for whites to
enforce restrictive covenants and represented additional fuel to the emerging 1950s Civil Rights
Movement.
Blacks are still most likely to be segregated of all minorities, and mobility plays a key
role in combating segregatation
Parisi, the Director of the National Strategic Planning & Analysis Research Center, and Lichter,
Director of the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center at Cornell University, 2011 (Domenico and Daniel.
"Multi-Scale Residential Segregation: Black Exceptionalism And America's Changing Color Line." Social
Forces 89.3 (2011): 829-852. Academic Search Premier. Web. 20 July 2012. JRW)
A less optimistic view is that black neighborhood segregation remains exceptionally high, exceeding
segregation rates of other racial or ethnic groups from whites (Massey and Dentón 1993; Logan, Stults
and Farley 2004). Wilkes and Iceland's (2004) analyses of 298 metropolitan areas in 2000 showed that
blacks were consider- ably more likely than Asians or Hispanics to be hypetsegregated, meaning that
blacks are highly segregated along several distinct dimensions (i.e., unevenness, exposure,
concentration, clustering and centralization). Black exceptionalism is also reflected in putative
increases in the racial homogeneity of many suburban communities, metro places and rural areas.
Indeed, blacks and whites (as well as othet minority groups) may be sorting themselves out differently
over larger geographic or political units.^ To illustrate this point, consider Calumet City, Illinois, a small
city bordering to the south of Chicago. It has undergone extraordinarily rapid change in its racial makeup
over the recent past. The 2000 decennial census indicated that the city was majority- minority; only 34.4
percent of its population was non-Hispanic white.'' In 1990, the population of Calumet City was 69.4
percent white. Over the same 10-year period, the segregation index declined from 53.2 to 49.7. In this
case, it is difficult to assign a positive interpretation to declining racial segregation (as a measure of
declining social distance) when, over the same period. Calumet City experienced an unprecedented shift
in its racial composition. As with processes of micro-segregation, such as "white flight" (Bruch and Mare
2006; Crowder and South 2005; Frey and Farley 1996), racial differentials in geographic mobility have
played a key role in changing patterns of macro-segregation. Historical and contemporary examples
abound. Past patterns of interregional migration, such as the "Great Migration" of blacks to the
Northern industrial cities during the first half of the 20* century (White et al. 2005; Fligstein 1981),
greatly diminished regional disparities in black population concentration, even as neighborhood
segregation was increasing in many big cities (e.g., Chicago, Detroit or Cleveland). Racially motivated
white suburbanization or exurbanization (outside utbanized areas) have left behind blacks and other
minorities in declining cities, a demographic process that has contributed to growing macrosegregation characterized by the uneven spatial distribution of blacks and whites across communities.
x These suburbs are often characterized by eroding tax bases, aging physical infrastrucrures, high
crime rates and other undesirable factors (e.g., transient populations) that sometimes typify poor
communities. Racial residential segregation in the suburbs has increased with the rise in the
percentage of blacks living in them and the flight of whites to exurban areas even farther removed
from the inner city (Farrell 2008; Fischer 2008). Changing patterns of micro- and macro-segregation are
inextricably linked.
While whites try to blame the poor for a culture of poverty they ignore the impact of
institutional racism
Bonilla-Silva, 06- professor of sociology at Duke University (Eduardo, Racism without Racists: second
edition) SJ
Although Ann’s arguments seem ‘‘reasonable’’ (poor people may have a different set of priorities than
other people based on their economic situation), her explanation is wanting because it avoids
mentioning the institutional effects of discrimination in the labor, housing, and educational markets and
the well-documented impact that discrimination has on middle- and upper-middle-class blacks. More
significantly, Ann’s failure to recognize how old- and new-fashioned discrimination affects blacks’ life
chances is not an argumentative slip, but the way in which most whites construe the situation of blacks,
as evidenced by how respondents in both samples used similar arguments in answering questions about
blacks’ status.
Transportation Infrastructure Racists
The number of “captive” transit dependents in the inner city exacerbates social,
economic and racial isolation.
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 4 (October 2004,
Robert D., 31 Fordham Urban Law Journal 1183, “THIRTEENTH ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM ON
CONTEMPORARY URBAN CHALLENGES: URBAN EQUITY: CONSIDERATIONS OF RACE AND THE ROAD
TOWARDS EQUITABLE ALLOCATION OF MUNICIPAL SERVICES: ADDRESSING URBAN TRANSPORTATION
EQUITY IN THE UNITED STATES,” LexisNexis, JS)
In Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity, the authors chronicle community
leaders from New York City to Los Angeles who are demanding an end to transportation policies that
compel the flight of people, jobs, and development to the suburban fringe. n74 The private automobile
is still the most dominant travel mode of every segment of the American population, including the
poor and people of color. n75 Clearly, private automobiles [*1191] provide enormous employment
access advantages to their owners. Car ownership is almost universal in the United States, with 91.7%
of American households owning at least one motor vehicle. n76 According to the 2001 National
Household Travel Survey ("NHTS"), released in 2003, 87.6% of whites, 83.1% of Asians and Hispanics,
and 78.9% of blacks rely on the private car to get around. n77 Lack of car ownership and inadequate
public transit service in many central cities and metropolitan regions with a high proportion of
"captive" transit dependents exacerbate social, economic, and racial isolation, especially for lowincome people of color - residents who already have limited transportation options. n78 Nationally,
only 7% of white households do not own a car, compared with 24% of African American households,
17% of Latino households, and 13% of Asian-American households. n79 People of color are fighting to
get representation on transportation boards and commissions, and to get their fair share of transit
dollars, services, bus shelters and other amenities, handicapped accessible vehicles, and affordable
fares. Some groups are waging grassroots campaigns to get "dirty diesel" buses and bus depots from
being dumped in their neighborhoods. n80 The campaign to "Dump Dirty Diesels" is about the right to
breathe clean air and protect public health. n81 Such efforts are not "sexy" campaigns; they are life
and death struggles. Rosa Parks would have a difficult time sitting on the front or back of a Montgomery
bus today, since the city dismantled its public bus system - which served mostly blacks and poor people.
n82 The cuts were made at the same time that federal tax dollars [*1192] boosted the construction of
the region's extensive suburban highways. n83 The changes in Montgomery took place amid growing
racial geographic segregation and tension between white and black members of the city council. n84
The city described its actions "publicly as fiscally necessary, even as Montgomery received large federal
transportation subsidies to fund renovation of non-transit improvements." n85
Freeway transportation re-entrenches stereotypes about urban communities and
permits selective access to city resources. Government policies to counter structural
discrimination mask the pernicious racism present.
Kuswa, Director of Debating at the University of Richmond, 2 (Winter 2002, Kevin Douglas, The Journal
of Law in Society, “Suburbification, Segregation, and the Consolidation of the Highway Machine,” vol.
31, no. 3, LexisNexis, JS)
Significant to enabling this coalition was the postwar subsidization of the suburban white life-style,
including the construction of interstate freeways. The other side of white suburban security was the
entrenchment of poor people of colour in central cities, and....the role freeway construction played in
this entrenchment. Freeway and suburban segregation also creates the distancing which allows the
distorted narrative of the inner city described in the first section to become widely accepted. n46
Fotsch initially contends "the freeway is part of dominant narratives which view African-American and
Latino residents of the central city as largely responsible for the conditions of poverty and violence
amidst which they live." n47 The pincer movement occurs when the urban highway materializes the
stratification of groups based on race and class. The rhetoric of blame-creating a status of victim by
arguing that certain people deserve their immobility-is Page 7 3 J.L. Soc'y 31, *47 complemented by a
highway machine that allows an extreme differentiation between living conditions within a limited
region. It becomes natural to blame people for inadequate living conditions in order to justify
inaction. Fotsch concentrates on Los Angeles and urban California, but the same process marks the
history of Houston, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit and many other east coast cities. Charting the way
interstate throughways divided Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Richmond,
and Atlanta is but one string of examples. During the 1950s the "auto freeway transportation
system...helped to create the ghettos," n48 [*50] and now those same highways have joined a
technological narrative that helps to legitimate the ghettos. The state continues to invade the
formation of the suburb and the urban fringe by allocating resources in selective ways. State policies
attempt to capture transportation and residential planning, simultaneously entrenching certain racist
practices. Urban highways after 1956, in particular, were constructed according to fairly uniform
standards set up by the Bureau of Public Roads in the Yellow Book. The urban highway is, simply, a
wide path of limited access roadway, usually raised with at least two lanes available in each direction.
The effects of these highways are severe and physical, especially their "connection to the suburban
goal of escaping urban populations." n49 More pernicious than the urge to escape, the connection to
suburbia made it easy to label urban populations as "poor" and "radical" and constitutive of a culture
of new immigrants. n50 The logic of the suburbs implied that the run-down areas of a city were
regions occupied by minorities. In instances where the actual suburb was not predominantly inhabited
by whites, those places still tended to be racially homogenous and the suburb was always a means of
separating economic classes. The city polarized into a few high rent districts and a number of highly
populated low rent districts. The highway generated an explicitly racist boundary by isolating large
numbers of people from one another. Certainly buses and consumer spots at highway exits offered
locations for human contact, but not the same type of human interchange that previously occurred on
trains. The place of the highway displaced residents through isolation, while simultaneously displacing
urban communities by racing and subordinating certain populations. All this was done in addition to
the highway's absorption of a vast amount of already limited land. Thus, the suburb carries along with it
a distancing of its occupants-a distancing generated by the individualized nature of urban freeways. The
distance between people justified itself by demonizing the congestion of the city, associating that
congestion with poverty and [*51] violence and essentializing minority populations as dangerous. The
suburbs constructed the city as inherently violent, an unpredictable instability that could not "be
contained on public transit." n51 The urban freeway permitted selective access to city resources for
suburbanites, but also put up an arbitrary shield between the productive output of the highway and
the violent residents of surrounding neighborhoods. Compared to subways, trains, buses, and other
mass transit, the freeway shaped "a particular distracted experience of everyday life" and became "a
symbol of isolation and isolatability." n52 Car-jackings, drive-by shootings, and high-speed chases all add
risks to the highway cocoon, but urban freeways still stretch endlessly into the suburbs, promising the
security and luxury of home (for some) at a comfortable distance from the city. Demonizing minority
communities as poor and violent simultaneously charts the suburb as white and wealthy. The highway
machine has directly assisted in, and perhaps even been constitutive of, a segregated metropolis.
Fotsch argues that from the beginning of the 1900s, the suburb has drained the city of its life and
marginalized the city's radiant diversity. Suburban residents continued to enter the central city even
though they no longer paid taxes to urban governments, draining it of its resources and contributing
less and less to its maintenance. The highway facilitated this siphoning, placing a suction cup over the
vitality of the city's core. Fotsch also points out that these effects of the suburb were based on race as
well as income: "As southern blacks began to migrate to northern and western cities during and after
the First World War," isolationist whites diverted their capital to nearby suburbs. n53 Race intensified as
a factor when the economy expanded after World War II and large numbers of white Americans were
able to take advantage of a conjunction between suburban highways and the Federal Housing
Administration (FHA). Catapulted by two decades of restrictive [*52] covenants that prohibited renting
or selling property to blacks in certain neighborhoods, the FHA was able to continue practices of overt
discrimination. A disciplinary array of containment mechanisms collected themselves within housing,
transportation, and public expenditures. Less than equal provisions were allocated to low-income and
minority zones, districts, quadrants, or any other complex descriptor for the various "wrong" sides of
the track. The racial grids for dwelling acted to capture human territories and integrate multiple forms
of exclusion into an apparatus of geographic privilege. Since its inception in 1934, the Federal Housing
Administration began granting long-term amortized mortgages for the purchasing of homes. These loans
were federally insured and were generally granted "for home purchases in the suburbs" which were
already being subsidized by federal spending on urban highways. n54 The FHA also rejected loans in
minority areas Page 8 3 J.L. Soc'y 31, *49 even though the Supreme Court struck down racial covenants
in 1948. n55 Well into the 60s, "FHA policy and overt discrimination on the part of banks and real estate
agents helped keep suburbs exclusively white." n56 Citing a comprehensive study of the making of the
underclass in the United States, Fotsch reports that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 n57 prohibited housing
discrimination. Massey and Denton are quick to note that the de jure prohibition of discrimination did
not translate into de facto equality. Making discrimination illegal, as in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, n58
did not reverse institutional and structural racism. If anything, the Department of Housing and Urban
Development was simply a mask on top of pernicious racism. n59 Indeed, the FHA was never given the
[*53] legal authority to prosecute (or even investigate) discrimination. Massey and Denton assert that
because of the weak detection powers of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, realtors
and banks continued to block attempts by minorities to buy property in white suburbs. n60 It is here
where Fotsch's historical narrative of housing discrimination crosses paths with the highway machine
and the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. This juxtaposition marks a racist consolidation of interests
and arrangements. If nothing else, the energy and social mobilization of the 1960s was a cumulative
reaction to forms of segregation approaching pre-Civil War extremes. Geographic constrictions on
property ownership and residency, not to mention the limited access of highways, played (and play)
immense roles in physical banishment and racial oppression in America. Most discussions of the
Federal-Aid Highway Act omit a direct consideration of racism and possible racist deployments of
highways and suburbs. Gleaning perspective from these varied histories, it is important to add
considerations of race to any map of the suburbs. The middle-class whites of the suburbs were able to
increase their living standards by enjoying consumer spending fueled by equity in their homes and the
deduction of property taxes from their income taxes. Housing and highways intertwined to
perpetuate white privilege. When urban renewal projects did take place, they encouraged
gentrification and high-rent commercial development. In some instances, the city was re-colonized
when the highway tore apart minority communities and city planners re-built infrastructure that did not
benefit the shattered neighborhoods. Fotsch claims "'urban renewal' came to be understood as a
euphemism for 'negro removal.'" n61 In sum, a governing apparatus operating through housing and the
highway machine implemented policies to segregate and maintain the isolation of poor, minority, and
otherwise outcast populations. The accounts of segregation and isolation continue to this day. Some
suburbs have diversified from some angles (multi-cultural [*54] communities), but maintained their
stratifying function from other angles (gated fortresses protecting pockets of elitist wealth). Working
through discourses of containment and the perspectives of critical whiteness can offer a challenge to
such arrangements, however, if only by adding to our understandings of the highway machine, suburbia,
and the urban environment.
Transit authorities make race-conscious decisions, reacting to “white fear,” a remnant
of the Plessy era.
Seymore, J.D. at Notre Dame Law School, 5 (Winter 2005, Sean B., 16 George Mason University Civil
Rights Law Journal 57, “Set the Captives Free!: Transit Inequity in Urban Centers, and the Laws and
Policies which Aggravate the Disparity,” LexisNexis, JS)
The link between race and transportation policies and practices is inescapable. But does modern-day
transit inequity create or exacerbate the racial divide, or is it simply a manifestation of America's race
problem This Article shows that all three are likely true. Highway construction and restrictive federal
funding programs laid the foundation for the disparity. n359 Commuter rail lines exist because,
without them, choice riders may abandon mass transit. Since capital costs for rail service far eclipse
those for bus lines, n360 the choice riders can often [*111] sway transit expenditures. Choice riders,
therefore, can determine "what they get" and "where it goes." n361 This Article has shown that
captive riders often do not "get what they pay for." n362 Government policies allow low-income riders
of the urban core to cross-subsidize transit fares for commuter rail. n363 With one major exception,
n364 cross-subsidization has survived Title VI scrutiny because the courts have deferred to the business
judgment of transit agencies. n365 All disparate impacts on low-income minorities are not rooted in
racism. n366 But, at the very least, transit authorities clearly make race-conscious decisions. These
include: (1) where to place routes; (2) which neighborhoods will be served by a particular route; (3)
who gets trains and who gets buses; and (4) which type of vehicle (diesel or CNG buses) will be
assigned to a particular route or location. These decisions are not purely economic; choice riders "get
what they want," and captive riders "get what they get." n367. L.J. 57, *109 "White fear" is real, n368
and transit agencies know it. White discomfort with black riders can be traced back to the Plessy era,
where racial separation in transportation promoted "public order, peace, and comfort." n369 The
same notion persists in public transportation today. Transit agencies know that whites and blacks
often cannot share a bus [*112] or train due to racism, elitism, "class differences," a perceived lack of
safety, discomfort, resentment, or "white guilt." n370 Justice Clarence Thomas has argued that Plessy
receives little scholarly attention, possibly because of its "complete rejection by our society." n371
Although we have rejected Jim Crow laws, n372 it is not clear that we have completely abandoned
Plessy's precepts. For example, many transit routes are racially identifiable as "black" or "white." n373
White passengers will stand on a crowded train rather than sit in an empty seat next to a young black
professional. n374
Federal transportation dollars for highways instead of public transit makes it harder
for people of color to access jobs which only increase the unemployment rate in inner
cities.
Center for Social Inclusion 2012 [National public policy intermediary, serving as a bridge between
policy research and grassroots activism to create more effective strategies for equity and opportunity by
dismantling structural racism. Access date: July 19, 2012;
http://www.centerforsocialinclusion.org/about-us/our-work/]
Federal transportation dollars favor highways over public transit, making good jobs harder to access
for poor people of color, many of whom do not have access to a car. Because many poor people of
color live in concentrated poverty neighborhoods that lack good jobs, without a car and without
adequate public transit, they cannot get to the good jobs and are at a higher risk of being
jobless.Highway spending outpaced public transit spending by a 5 to 1 ratio over the past six decades.9
Under the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), public transit gets one-fifth the
federal dollars granted to highway construction.10 When federal highway funds were available on a
flexible basis for states and localities to transfer to public transit projects, only $4.2 billion of the $33.8
billion available (12.5%) was actually transferred.11 Consider the Gulf Coast even before the 2005
hurricane season:
Transportation spending programs do not benefit all population equally.
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 5 (Winter 2005,
Robert D., Moving the Movement for Transportation Justice Vol. 12 No. 1, “All Transit is Not Created
Equal,” Google Scholar, DV)
Follow the transportation dollars and one can tell who is important and who is not. While many
barriers to equitable transportation for low-income and people of color have been removed, much more
needs to be done. Transportation spending programs do not benefit all populations equally. The lion's
share of transportation dollars is spent on roads, while urban transit systems are often left in
disrepair. Nationally, 80 percent of all surface transportation funds is earmarked for highways and 20
percent for public transportation. Generally, states spend less than 20 percent of federal transportation
funding on transit. Some 30 states even restrict the use of the gas tax revenue—the single largest source
of transportation funding—to funding highway programs only. In the real world, all transit is not
created equal. In general, most transit systems tend to take their low-income “captive riders” for
granted and concentrate their fare and service policies on attracting middle-class and affluent riders.
Hence, transit subsidies disproportionately favor suburban transit and expensive new commuter bus
and rail lines that serve wealthier “discretionary riders.”
Transportation apartheid has trapped minorities is debilitating city infrastructures
with little hope for equal access to housing, education or employment
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 04( Robert D., Ph.D.
Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity) SJ
This book represents a small but significant part of the transportation equity movement—a movement
that is redefining transportation as an environmental, economic, civil, and human right. The need for
transportation touches every aspect of our lives and daily routines. The course of one day could
necessitate a range of activities: working, shopping, visiting friends, attending church, or going to the
doctor. Furthermore, transportation provides access to opportunity and serves as a key component in
addressing poverty, unemployment, and equal opportunity goals while ensuring equal access to
education, employment, and other public services. Lest anyone dismiss transportation as a tangential
expense, consider that except for housing, Americans spend more on transportation than any other
household disbursement, including food, education, and health care. The average American household
spends one fifth of its income—or about S6,000 a year—for each car that it owns and operates.2 It is not
uncommon for many low-income, people of color households to spend up to one-third of their income
on transportation. This book affirms that transportation is neither a marginal cost nor an irrelevant
need, but a necessity. Highway Robbery focuses on people of color because their struggles unite
transportation and civil rights into one framework: transportation equity. Transportation equity is
consistent with the goals of the larger environmental justice and civil rights movements. We emphasize
issues of justice, fairness, and equity. We define transportation equity as a basic right, a right worth
fighting for. Transportation systems do not spring up out of thin air. They are planned—and, in many
cases, planned poorly when it comes to people of color. Conscious decisions determine the location of
freeways, bus stops, fueling stations, and train stations. Decisions to build highways expressways, and
beltways have far-reaching effects on land use, energy policies, and the environment. Decisions by
county commissioners to bar the extension of public transit to job-rich economic activity centers in
suburban counties and instead spend their transportation dollars on repairing and expanding the
nation's roads have serious mobility implications for central city residents. Together, all these
transportation decisions shape United States metropolitan areas, growth patterns, physical mobility,
and economic opportunities.3 These same transportation policies have also aided, and in some cases
subsidized, racial, economic, and environmental inequities as evidenced by the segregated housing and
spatial layout of our central cities and suburbs. It is not by chance that millions of Americans have been
socially isolated and relegated to economically depressed and deteriorating central cities and that
transportation apartheid has been created.
Minorities face economic inequities as a result of transportation policies oriented
toward travel by car
Sanchez, Director and Associate Professor Urban Affairs and Planning Program Virginia Tech –
Alexandria Center and Brenman Executive Director Washington State Human Rights Commission,
2007 (Thomas W. and Marc; “Transportation Equity and Environmental Justice: Lessons from Hurricane
Katrina:: Environmental Justice 1(2): March 29, p. 73-80) SJ
Americans have become increasingly mobile and more reliant on automobiles to meet their travel
needs, due largely to transportation policies adopted after World War II that emphasized highway
development over public transportation. According to Census 2000 data, less than 5 percent of trips to
work in urban areas were made by public transit; however, this varies significantly by race and location.2
Minorities, however, are less likely to own cars than whites and are more often dependent on public
transportation. The “transit-dependent” must often rely on public transportation not only to travel to
work but also to get to school, obtain medical care, attend religious services, and shop for basic
necessities such as groceries. The transit-dependent are often people with low incomes, and thus, in
addition to facing more difficulties getting around, they face economic inequities as a result of
transportation policies oriented toward travel by car. Surface transportation policies at the local,
regional, state, and national levels have a direct impact on urban land use and development patterns.
The types of transportation facilities and services in which public funds are invested provide varying
levels of access to meet basic social and economic needs. The way communities develop land dictates
the need for certain types of transportation, and, on the other hand, the transportation options in which
communities invest influence patterns of urban development.
Transportation planning does not investigate the social dimensions of travel.
Dodson, Urban Research Program, 06 (2006, Jago, “Investing in the Social Dimensons of Transport
Disadvantage—I. Toward New Concepts and Methods,” Vol. 24, No. 4, 433–453, Google Books, REM)
Accessibility focuses on the ease of achievement of the ends rather than the ease of achievement of
the means of mobility. This entails a shift from a focus on traffic flows through road networks towards
a focus on employment, goods and services and travel to these via multiple modes. This focus shift
towards accessibility requires giving consideration to how urban systems are planned at the local and
regional scale to ensure that households are not forced into long automobile trips by the spatial
distribution of land- use activities or suffer long travel times due to inadequate public transport.
Transport planning has typically not investigated the social dimensions of travel and the differing
levels of access for different social groups. There have, however, been some specific exceptions.
Studies on physical mobility and disability have often included different social dimensions. Gleeson’s
(1999) study of disability, for example, engages directly with the constitutedness of mobility and
disability. However, our concern in this study is not with the physical disablement constructed by the
urban environment but with broader socio-economic relations, some of which may be physically
expressed, that constitute the urban travel opportunities of various social groups.
Transport modeling is auto-dominated, ignoring travelers who can’t afford their own
vehicles.
Dodson, Urban Research Program, 06 (2006, Jago, “Investing in the Social Dimensions of Transport
Disadvantage—I. Toward New Concepts and Methods,” Vol. 24, No. 4, 433–453, Google Books, REM)
Most urban transport modeling has been auto-dominated and focused on the needs and desires of
auto-dependent transport users (Graham & Marvin, 2001). Social disadvantage however has been
rarely addressed via conventional transport modeling. There is much potential for the development of
models that more closely address issues of transport disadvantage. However, there are few readily
available models that can be used to assess the links between social status and transport
disadvantage. Recent activity-based transport models offer some opportunities to illuminate
accessibility patterns in urban areas (McNally, 2000; Wang & Cheng, 2001).
Highway construction uproots minority families.
Hill, National Labor Secretary at the NAACP, 67 (1967, Herbert, “Demographic Change and Racial
Ghettoes,” 44 J. Urb. L. 231, HeinOnline, REM)
Highway construction frequently occurs in areas where the majority of the residents are Negroes.
Although provisions to move displaced persons into decent, safe, and sanitary housing are provided in
the eligibility requirements for new construction, no assurance is given that new housing will be
constructed to house the displaced population. The legally required protections for displaced families
are often nullifled by social conditions as displaced persons are confined to ghetto areas. Although Los
Angeles and San Francisco both have ordinances against discrimination in redevelopment projects, real
estate boards continue blatant discriminatory policies and a shortage of low-rent housing exists.
Overcrowding continues to persist and daily becomes a more serious problem.
Inner city residents have limited access to jobs as a result of high transportation costs.
Hill, National Labor Secretary at the NAACP, 67 (1967, Herbert, “Demographic Change and Racial
Ghettoes,” 44 J. Urb. L. 231, HeinOnline, REM)
Data reveals that half of all new industrial buildings and stores built in the last 16 years were
constructed outside the central city of the nation's metropolitan areas. "As a result many residents of
the central city-whose incomes tend to be low-will find travel to and from work in the suburbs more
expensive and time consuming," the Bureau said. The Report stated that public transit costs increased
at twice the rate during the last 16 years as the costs for owner operated automobiles. The Bureau of
Labor Statistics concluded that, "tending to work and live in the central city, Negroes have median
earnings considerably below those of suburban residents and are more apt to use public
transportation."
Transportation needs for the socially disadvantaged must be met. UK policy
demonstrates the need for social justice research on implications of transportation
projects on social exclusion
Dodson, Urban Research Program, 06 (2006, Jago, “Investing in the Social Dimensions of Transport
Disadvantage—I. Toward New Concepts and Methods,” Vol. 24, No. 4, 433–453, Google Books, REM)
The DTLR study recommended that local authorities undertake a comprehensive survey and planning
process to ensure that the transport needs for socially excluded people were being either met or
ameliorated. Specific recommendations were also made that addressed compounding issues of
improving service coordination, fares and ticketing, and physical accessibility of public transport
services. This transport disadvantage research originated from social exclusion issues, and this basis is
still represented in UK policy approaches dealing with transport disadvantage. The UK Social Exclusion
Unit (2003) has responded to these social disadvantage and transport relationships by promoting the
adoption of ‘accessibility planning’ among that country’s local governments. Accessibility planning
involves detailed assessment and planning at the local scale to improve residents’ access to
employment and services. This has been widely implemented in the UK and has been supported by
central government guidance as to how local councils should undertake planning and assessment
processes (Department for Transport, 2004), including assistance with software tools (Department for
Transport, 2004). Lucas (2004) has noted that while planning policies may develop sophisticated
methods and strategies for improving local accessibility, actual change ‘on the ground’ is less assured.
To date in Australia however, there has been little adoption of the ‘social exclusion’ discourse or
substantive attention to accessibility issues in local government planning. The overall contribution of
transport inequalities to broader processes of social disadvantage remains largely unconsidered by
Australian policy makers.
Women, the poor, elderly, and other special groups are more likely to be harmed by
transportation policy
Dodson, Urban Research Program, 06 (2006, Jago, “Investing in the Social Dimensions of Transport
Disadvantage—I. Toward New Concepts and Methods,” Vol. 24, No. 4, 433–453, Google Books, REM)
Distributional impacts are not only spatially expressed. Several societal groups have been identified as
more likely to experience transport disadvantage or transport-related social exclusion than others
(Denmark, 1998; Wu & Hine, 2003). Various authors have noted the effects of automobile-dominated
transport policies on groups who are either unable to drive or who cannot afford automobile ownership
(Bostock, 2001). Schaeffer & Sclar (1975) detailed the various privations suffered by the poor, the
elderly and the young in terms of their access to transportation. Black’s (1995) work on public
transport planning also noted ‘special groups of users’ or the ‘transport-disadvantaged’ including the
poor, elderly, disabled people, the intellectually disabled and women. Hine & Mitchell (2003) reported
that in Scotland, women were more transport disadvantaged than men, rental households suffered
greater disadvantage than owner-occupiers/purchasers, and that lower income groups in terms of
their income paid more for their public transport, as well as having longer travel times to access the
same services as higher income groups.
Cars are an exclusive form of transportation.
Mercier, Professor at Université Laval, 09 (2009, Jean, Equity, Social Justice, and Sustainable Urban
Transportation in the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 145–163, Google Books, REM)
Comparing land use that is more favorable to public transit, walking, or cycling to land use that is
more favorable to the personal automobile, it is easy to see that the first group of transportation
media is inclusive and the second is exclusive. Almost by definition, the personal car separates and
isolates individuals, and it also reduces public space in favor of private space. Let us now look at some
of the other characteristics of the massive use of the automobile, in terms of social relations. First, the
construction of the private automobile requires a tremendous amount of resources, resources that
are used up for the one individual that usually uses it—resources that, as we are increasingly aware,
are finite and consequently unavailable for other uses. For example, the construction of an
automobile requires tremendous amounts of water, at different phases of its construction, from the
mining of the metals, to the painting of its body, and to different cooling devices. All in all, the total
amount of water used in these different processes is huge and has been estimated at as much as
500,000 liters (Barlow & Clarke, 2002, p. 8). Admittedly, there can be large discrepancies in the
estimates, but even the smaller estimates leave us with a substantial quantity of water that is
devoted to the urban mobility of, most often, a single person. And then, of course, there are the
consequences of the use (as distinct from its construction) of the private automobile. If, as Marshall
McLuhan suggested, “the medium is the message,” then we can ask ourselves what is the message
sent by the use of the car. The automobile is a very private medium, probably the most private mode
of transportation imaginable. The message is that we do not want to share, and that we build a
moving wall around us in order to assure our privacy. The word privé in French, more or less
equivalent to the word private in English, may convey the meaning more clearly: privé means that I
can exclude another person from enjoying what I enjoy myself. With my car, I have built a space that
is privé, which others cannot invade. Moreover, the logic of the car, its private appropriation of vast
quantities of resources, in its construction and in its use, compels it to become a “positional good”: a
good the enjoyment of which is derived from the fact that it confers status and from the feeling that
“what I have, others don’t have.” It becomes an essential element of the race for status and
differentiation. In this race for status, there are amenities of the automobile which, in themselves, we
do not really appreciate, or need, but we know we have them, and others do not, and that is an
important source of satisfaction. We do not really need all that is offered by the sport utility vehicle,
but, sitting above other vehicles, its driver sees the road more clearly, even though the driver blocks
the view for others; the driver is better protected from accidents, even if he or she can cause more
injuries to the passengers of other, smaller vehicles; and the driver may marginally see more clearly at
night with sophisticated new lighting systems, even though he or she may diminish the view of the
dozens of oncoming cars that will be faced during a single trip.
Transportation racism still exists in the SQ
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 04( Robert D., Ph.D.
Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity) SJ
In my fifty-five years as a black male, having grown up in the small town of Elba, Alabama, in the 1950s
and 1960s, I can recall the double standards forced onto African Americans by Jim Crow laws. In the
South, blacks and whites lived close to one another—though in separate neighborhoods. I remember
walking on paved streets in the white neighborhoods that suddenly became dirt or gravel roads in the
black community. Many of the roads in the black community did not have street signs, sidewalks, or
streetlights. Blacks paid taxes just like whites, but black residents received few benefits. In the 1960s, I
remember the faded "Colored,, and "White Only" signs in the bus stations in Troy, Montgomery,
Birmingham, and Huntsville, as I made my three-hundred-mile journey from South Alabama to North
Alabama to attend college at the predominately black A & M University. By the time I graduated in 1968,
the signs were taken down. However, some blacks still would not enter the formerly "White Only"
waiting rooms. In reality, "invisible" markers lingered, masking black denial and white privilege. While
most of the overt cases of transportation racism may have faded into history, the last vestiges of
racial discrimination in transportation planning have not been totally eradicated. When I travel back
to Montgomery and Birmingham, across the South, and to other regions of the country, it is clear that
remnants of transportation racism linger. People of color still do not have equal access to
transportation benefits, but receive more than their fair share of transportation externalities with
"dirty" diesel buses, bus barns, refueling stations, railroad tracks, and highways disrupting and
dividing their communities. Since writing Just Transportation: Dismantling Race and Class Barriers to
Mobility in 1997, not much has changed. Transportation equity issues continue to be major concerns
among low-income and people of color groups around the country. Discrimination still places an extra
"tax" on poor people and people of color who need safe, affordable, and accessible public
transportation. Many root causes of this nation's transportation injustices have not evaporated in the
past six years. Many of this nation's transportation-related disparities accumulated over a century. Even
with sufficient resources and the coordinated commitment of the public in partnership with the
corporations and the government, it will likely take years to dismantle the deeply ingrained legacy of
transportation racism.
Communities do not receive the same benefits of transportation investments
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 04( Robert D., Ph.D.
Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity) SJ
In the United States, all communities do not receive the same benefits from
transportation advancements and investments.' Despite the heroic efforts and the
monumental social and economic gains made over the decades, transportation remains a civil
rights issue.' Transportation touches every aspect of where we live, work, play, and go to
school, as well as the physical and natural world. Transportation also plays a pivotal role in
shaping human interaction, economic mobility, and sustainability. 3
Transportation provides access to opportunity and serves as a
key component in addressing poverty, unemployment, and equal
opportunity goals while ensuring access to education, health care, and other public
services.' Transportation equity is consistent with the goals of the larger civil rights movement and
the environmental justice movement.5 For millions, transportation is defined as a basic right. 6
Transportation is basic to many other quality of life indicators such as health,
education, employment, economic development, access to municipal
services, residential mobility, and environmental quality. 7 The continued residential segregation of
people of color away from suburban job centers (where public transit is inadequate or
nonexistent) may signal a new urban crisis and a new form of "residential apartheid."' 8
Transportation investments, enhancements, and financial resources have provided advantages for
some communities, while at the same time, other communities have been
disadvantaged by transportation decision making. 9 The way public transportation systems are set up
block extension of public lines from minorities Glaeser, Kahn, and Rappaport (2008) calculate that a car
costs $2,000 a year in maintenance, making it a worthwhile investment if one’s time is worth at least $8
per hour; but this rate is below the hourly wage of most workers in central cities. Rapid job growth
should also have made suburbs more attractive to the working poor, yet the concentration of poverty
was 1124 Social Science Quarterly higher in 2000 than in 1970 (Massey and Fischer, 2003). Census data
for 2000 also indicate that Hispanics are less inclined to use public transportation than are blacks,
despite having a higher poverty rate. Glaeser, Kahn, and Rappaport’s model also did not account for
housing price differentials between cities and suburbs, and it is not entirely clear why the issue is one of
central city versus suburbs rather than economic segregation per se, as many suburbs are themselves
quite impoverished (Orfield, 2002). It is also likely that public transportation systems were endogenously
determined by the flight of the affluent to the suburbs, since suburban residents often block the
extension of public lines into their municipalities precisely to forestall the entry of poor minority families
from the inner city (see Fogelson, 2001, 2005).
Transportation racism=segregation
The statistics are glaring – Poor people of color are trapped in poverty stricken
neighborhoods deprived of employment and educational opportunity
Center for Social Inclusion 2012 [National public policy intermediary, serving as a bridge between
policy research and grassroots activism to create more effective strategies for equity and opportunity by
dismantling structural racism. Access date: July 19, 2012;
http://www.centerforsocialinclusion.org/about-us/our-work/]
Poor people of color are much more likely than poor Whites to live in concentrated poverty
neighborhoods that lack opportunities, like good jobs, good schools, and quality services.
Concentrated poverty neighborhoods are neighborhoods where at least 20% (rural) or 40% (urban) of
the population lives at or below the federal poverty level.3 More than two-thirds of people living in
concentrated urban poverty are Black or Latino, even though they are one-fourth of the US
population.4 In rural America, half of poor rural Blacks and Native Americans live in concentrated
poverty and 27% of all poor rural Latinos live in areas of high poverty.5 Gulf Coast states have high rates
of concentrated poverty compared to the rest of the country (26% in Alabama, 41% in Louisiana, and
41% in Mississippi).6More than 1 out of every 10 neighborhoods in New York City is a concentrated
poverty neighborhood (248 total, or 11.2% of all neighborhoods) and these neighborhoods are
predominately people of color (87.5% of these neighborhoods are over 80% non-White). Of the
923,113 people living in concentrated poverty in New York, 37.1% are Black and 49.7% Latino,
compared to 8.4% White.7 (See Appendix A for a map of concentrated poverty in neighborhoods of
color in New York City). Very poor neighborhoods of color have far less to no jobs in their
neighborhoods compared to other areas of the City. (See Appendix B for a map showing the
relationship between concentrated poverty, neighborhoods of color, and location of jobs).
The majority of jobs have shifted to the suburbs where there is no existing
transportation to and from the inner city or urban and rural areas.
Bullard Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 5 (Winter 2005,
Robert D., Moving the Movement for Transportation Justice Vol. 12 No. 1, “All Transit is Not Created
Equal,” Google Scholar, DV)
In recent years, many jobs have shifted to the suburbs and communities where public transportation
is inadequate or nonexistent. The exodus of low skilled jobs to the suburbs disproportionately affects
central city residents, particularly people of color, who often face a more limited choice of housing
location and transportation in growing areas. Between 1990 and 1997, jobs on the fringe of
metropolitan areas grew by 19 percent versus four percent in core areas. The suburban share of the
metropolitan office space is 69.5 percent in Detroit, 65.8 percent in Atlanta, 57.7, percent in Washington
DC, 57.4 percent in Miami, and 55.2 percent in Philadelphia. Getting to these suburban jobs without a
car is next to impossible. It is no accident that Detroit leads in suburban “office sprawl.” Detroit is also
the most segregated big city in the United States and the only major metropolitan area without a
regional transit system. Only about 2.4 percent of metropolitan Detroiters use transit to get to work.
Current Transportation Infrastructure only continues discrimination and segregation in
the inner cities.
Hodson and Marvin, ’10. (Mike Hodson and Simon Marvin, June 2010, “Urbanism in the
Anthropocene: Ecological Urbanism or Premium Ecological Enclaves?”, City, Volume 14, Number 3, June
2010. Pg. 309 [SJW])
There are then a range of critical pressures to re-internalise energy and other infrastructure flows
within the conception of urban development. A new set of eco-technics are attempting to develop
internalised metabolisms that are simultaneously an attempt to build ecological security for the few
and to create new mobile financial products as integrated urban development as a new opportunity
for capitalist reproduction. Our argument is that the dominant logic of neo- liberal responses is about
the creation of ‘bounded’ security in new ecological enclaves for premium users that ignore wider
distributional questions about uneven access to resource politics. These are the ecologically secure
gated communities of the 21st century that seek to internalise ecological resources and build strategic
protection from climate change and wider resource constraints. Consequently, at the moment
markets for new eco-developments are likely to only exist in premium sites—that is, world cities—
where the premium product that is produced is largely irrelevant to the claims of reproducibility
made by their proponents. It is likely that eco-funding through bailouts may be used to accelerate the
development of such solutions in an attempt to reconfigure capitalist urban development. Of course,
such premium ecological environments have relatively little to offer the real challenge of reengineering and systemically retrofitting existing urban environments to reduce energy and water
use, accelerate low-carbon technologies, and provide affordable energy for all users. At the same time
it is not even clear if the claims made about the new self-reliant and autonomous developments are
achievable. There is a long history of eco-buildings and districts not achieving the savings claimed for
them as users behave in unanticipated ways. In any case we are usually only talking about forms of
greater autonomy and self-reliance— therefore only relative forms of ‘by-pass’. Will centralised
infrastructure networks act as the provider of last resort when local technologies fail? Critically, what
about forms of mobility—especially internationally—how will these be provided? In contrast to these
conventional responses there are alternative movements that are less commercially focused, more
locally based, less technologically fixated that are also trying to put questions about relocalisation back
onto the urban agenda. Movements such as green jobs, Transitions Towns and Relocalisation are trying
to develop an alternative discourse around greater self-reliance. But what is part of this discourse are
questions of social control—technology for whom by whom—attempts to link investment to local need,
the development of interdependencies and mutuality rather than securitisation, although these are
more marginal and external to the dominant responses. Finally, if we are to build fair cities that
advance collective planetary security we need to think about linking these disconnected logics of
development together. Rather than allowing a dominant security-led approach to sit alongside a much
more marginal set of approaches we need more interaction in the following five ways. First, to bring
together questions about which social interests are involved and excluded—we need to bring users
back into questions about resource futures. Second, to bring together over- technicised and oversocialised responses— we need progressive socio-technical change. Third, to develop knowledge and
expertise that is not just about ‘new-builds’ and security, but about retrofitting the existing city.
Fourth, we need to emphasise questions about need and the politics of interdependencies rather
than bounded security for some. Fifth, it is crucial to develop a debate about the consequences of a
new style of urbanism rather than the creation of new urban eco- technic and financial products as a
response to ecological crisis.
Transportation Infrastructure greatly contributes to the segregation in the United
States.
Brenman, [No Date] (Marc Brenman, Executive Director of Washington State Human Rights
Commission, former senior policy advisor for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Transportation,
author. Human Rights, Vol. 34, #3. “Transportation Inequity in the United States: A Historical Overview”
[SJW])
Three major kinds of infrastructure in the United States contribute to the separation of races: housing,
education, and transportation. Of these, transportation receives the least attention by those
interested in social justice. Yet people must get from place to place. Social mobility is an important
part of the story we tell ourselves as Americans. But historically, it has not been available to all, or
available only in a way that has channeled some people to specific places and inequitable
opportunities, sometimes involuntarily and even in chains. Ideas and their implications also have to get
from one place to another. The notion of progress, enshrined in liberal thinking, often has not served
people of color when the progress was mechanical. This article sets the context for examining the
inequality caused by, and supported by, transportation. In some cases, existing extreme inequality
make forced transportation impossible to resist. In the first section, a new view is taken, seeing slave
ships as bringing inequality to America, and the Underground Railroad as an important part of
transportation, civil rights history, and the escape from inequality. The next section discusses the legal
context as it relates to transportation inequity. The third joins education to transportation inequity. The
fourth shows how the modern civil rights movement has a transportation base. The fifth ties together
the joining of America by railroads and the civil rights movement. The sixth brings road building and
shipping into the discussion. The last section brings us up to date by referencing Hurricane Katrina and
gasoline prices.
African-Americans are still pushed down by the segregation of Transportation
Infrastructure.
Brenman, [No Date] (Marc Brenman, Executive Director of Washington State Human Rights
Commission, former senior policy advisor for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Transportation,
author. Human Rights, Vol. 34, #3. “Transportation Inequity in the United States: A Historical Overview”
[SJW])
Transportation, education, and housing make up the three-legged stool that continues the vestiges of
previous illegal (and legal) segregation. Today, we still see these vestiges. African American car
ownership is the lowest of any racial or ethnic group in the United States. While some
environmentalists may find this fact delightful, it has real negative implications when disaster strikes.
In Hurricane Katrina in 2005, many African Americans could not evacuate using plans based on cars. At
this writing, polls show that the rapidly rising price of gasoline in the United States is not yet a hardship
for most of those polled. But African Americans, who have far less family wealth and discretionary
income than whites, will inevitably feel the pinch of gasoline prices more than others. The travel of a
group that already travels less than other groups will be restricted further. African Americans have
made progress in the United States, but only from actual shackles on slave ships to the economic
shackles of high gasoline prices, predatory lending, foreclosure, poor inner city schools, continuing job
discrimination, and regressive taxes.
Racial Segregation is now vast and growing. Residents of slums are forced to pay for
more expensive food due to a lack of transportation available to cheaper grocery
stores.
Hill, National Labor Secretary at the NAACP, 67 (1967, Herbert, “Demographic Change and Racial
Ghettoes,” 44 J. Urb. L. 231, HeinOnline, REM)
Racial segregation now exists on a vast and growing scale. The masses of Negroes in the major cities of
the North live in a rigidly segregated society. The tensions of current northern race relations have their
roots in the concentration of Negroes in segregated urban slums. The slums are expanding and are
growing worse. Upon this continuing fact of residential segregation rests the interlocking problems of
race and education, race and employment, and race and political power. Contemporary civil rights
struggles are rooted in three major developments: the accelerated growth of the Negro population, the
increasing mobility of the Negro population, and the rapid urbanization of the Negro population. The
response of American cities to these interrelated developments has been a vast increase in the pattern
of residential segregation. The growth of housing segregation has been accompanied by an extension
of school segregation, slums, exploitation, poverty, and social disorganization. 25 Ghetto residents are
the victims of consumer fraud and overpricing and pay exorbitant rentals for substandard housing.26
An Associated Press survey of prices in seven areas of large supermarket stores in Connecticut stated
that "people in low income neighborhoods-mainly Negroes-pay more for food." The results of the
survey as reported on the front page of the Hartford Courant, August 15, 1966, under the headline
"Poor Pay Most for Food" quotes the manager of a food supermarket as saying: Negroes pay more for
food because "they don't have the transportation to get to the shopping plazas. They have to pay what
the local store is charging." The A.P. survey concluded that: The same groceries were found to cost
considerably more in an independent market in a low income area than they did in a similar market in
an upper income area. This despite the fact that the market in the richer neighborhood gave trading
stamps, while the market in the predominantly Negro neighborhood did not.27
The economically disadvantaged depend on public transit in the status quo
Springs 2007(Mary Alice, “Inequity in Transport: The Problem with Auto Hegemony.” Chrestomathy:
Annual Review of Undergraduate Researcher, Annual Review of Undergraduate Research, School of
Humanities and Social Sciences, School of Languages, Cultures, and World Affairs Volume 6, 2007:
198-209; http://chrestomathy.cofc.edu/archives/volume6.php). SJ
Inequity and Discrimination in Current Transportation Policies Rising personal income, increased
automobile availability, low fuel prices, and substantial public investment in highway infrastructure
have combined to reduce the demand for public transit (Garrett and Taylor 6). According to Thomas
Sanchez et al., eighty percent of all surface transportation funds are spent on highways in the U.S.,
while only twenty percent goes towards public transportation (11). Since the establishment of the
Urban Mass Transit Administration in 1964, public transportation has received approximately fifty billion
dollars,while, since 1956, roadway projects have received over two hundred and five billion dollars
(Dittmar and Chen qtd. in Bullard, “Thirteenth” 2). Without adequate funding, public transportation
authorities have had to raise fares to cover their budgets (Sanchez et al. 13). This is having a
substantial impact on “the poorest twenty percent of American households, those earning less than
$13,908 (after taxes) per year, who spend 40.2 percent of their take home pay on transportation”
(Surface Transportation Policy Project). When trying to explain why public transportation services
receive inadequate funding, an analysis of the demographics of transit ridership stirs suspicion of
discrimination. John Pucher and John Renne have analyzed data compiled by the National Household
Travel Survey (NHTS), which examines American travel trends. In their study of the 2001 NHTS data,
they determine that low-income individuals and minorities make up sixty-three percent of the
nation’s transit ridership (49, 67). Pucher and Renne argue that “the poor, racial and ethnic minorities
and the elderly have much lower mobility rates than the general population” (49). The survey showed
that increase in mobility strongly correlates with increasing household income (Pucher and Renne 5 4 ).A
higher proportion of the economically disadvantaged, which features a disproportionately high
number of minorities, therefore depend on public transit.
Our society has moved away from structural explanations of racism to playing the
blame game - it is black culture that is demonized for the lack of progress made by
poor blacks
Mendenhall 2010 ("The Political Economy Of Black Housing: From The Housing Crisis Of The Great
Migrations To The Subprime Mortgage Crisis." Black Scholar 40.1 (2010): 20-37. Academic Search
Premier. Web. 20 July 2012. Ruby Mendenhall 2010. Ruby Mendenhall is an Assistant Professor in
Sociology and African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2004,
Mendenhall received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy program from Northwestern
University in Evanston, Illinois. For her dissertation, Black Women in Gautreaux’s Housing
Desegregation Program: The Role of Neighborhoods and Networks in Economic Independence, she used
administrative welfare and employment data, census information, and in-depth interviews to examine
the long-run effects of placement neighborhood conditions/resources on economic independence. JRW)
As we saw earlier, the economic transition to large-scale heavy industry exerted a powerful pull on
black migrants, attracting them to northern and western cities. However, we see opposing forces
operating in the period of the second migration as workers were attracted to industrial centers at the
same time that automation decreased labor demands. The transition to automated production in largescale industry would soon become the capitalist mechanism for disposing of, instead of employing, black
labor. Post-war federal programs like the GI Bill (while excluding blacks GIs from many of the available
resources) underwrote the construction of predominantly white suburbs and the National Interstate
and Defense Highways Act of 1956 spurred "white flight" from the urban centers. Capital would follow
suit by the 1970s and '80s and migrate to the suburbs. The civil unrest in the 1960s wrought significant
changes in American public policy and the discourse about inequality. Tide VII of the 1964 U.S. Civil
Rights Act prohibited racial discrimination in employment, housing, and other key areas. In addition.
Executive Order 11246 created the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) and what is
often referred to as "affirmative action." The Civil Rights Act and "affirmative action" programs would
by the 1990s and the beginning of the 2F' century be associated with the ideology and belief that
America had become color-blind and that if African Americans still experienced social mobility
problems it was not because of structural barriers of racial discrimination but problems embedded in
their culture and personal values. Some Scholars argued that affirmative action and fair housing laws
allowed middle- and working-class blacks in Chicago (151,000 of them from 1970-1980, in addition to
185,000 from other ethnic groups) to move out of the inner-city and into the suburbs, resulting in a
concentration of poor, unemployed families in inner-city neighborhoods.*^ As a result, the outmigration of middle- and working-class families left the remaining poor with strained neighborhood
institutions and reduced access to job networks. Alternative views suggest that the demo- graphic
changes, due to the exodus of middle- and working-class families, were not that significant because
persistent racial discrimination forced the social class composition of black neighborhoods to remain
relatively mixed.'*'' Persistent discrimination, moreover, is supported by numerous fair housing audits
that reveal differences in treatment by realtors based on race and ethnicity."
Segregation Now
Black-White segregation continues to exist - current research proves that the color line
remains a signficant barrier to interracial interaction
Parisi, the Director of the National Strategic Planning & Analysis Research Center, and Lichter,
Director of the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center at Cornell University, 2011 (Domenico and Daniel.
"Multi-Scale Residential Segregation: Black Exceptionalism And America's Changing Color Line." Social
Forces 89.3 (2011): 829-852. Academic Search Premier. Web. 20 July 2012. JRW)
Our study is not without some limitations. Our empirical approach has been necessarily descriptive,
providing baseline segregation estimates that incorporated the within- and between place
components of racial differences in residence patterns. The United States may be moving rapidly
toward a multicultural and pluralistic society, but blacks and nonblack minorities remain highly
segregated from whites and each other at multiple levels of geography. However, residence patterns
represent only one of many potential indicators of changing racial and ethnic boundaries (Bobo and
Charles 2009). Our focus on persistent residential segregation therefore provides a useful but
incomplete picture of race relations and overall shifts in America's racial boundaries (e.g., racial
attitudes, friendship networks or political representation). Our demographic accounting framework,
based on block data, also prevents us from fully evaluating the many possible causes of changing
segregation nationally or at different levels of geography (i.e., macro- and micro-segregation). It does,
however, identify specific spatial targets (e.g., metro fringe areas or small-town and suburban places)
that are now contributing to increasing racial segregation and that require greater empirical
attention.'** Macro-segregation- the between-area component- rather than micro-segregation may
more strongly shape employment or educational opportunities for minorities, especially if labor markets
or school districts overlap with the geographic areas in which blacks or other minorities live and work
(Reardon et al. 2009). The growth and geographic con- centration of blacks and other racial and ethnic
minority populations in specific places also have important implications for voting, minority
representation in legislative bodies and redistricting (Lublin and Voss 2000; Marschall and Ruhil 2006).
Other researchers have shown that white racism sometimes hides behind town and school district
bound- aries, which can manifest itself in "white flight " and exurbanization, sundown towns and
community processes of invasion and succession (Logan, Alba and Leung 1996; Reardon,Yun and Eitle
2000; McConnell and Miraftab 2009). Clearly, the substantive and policy implications of macrosegregation (as opposed to micro-segregation) require our attention, especially as America moves
toward a majority-minority society (Johnson and Lichter 2010; U.S. Census Bureau 2004). In the end, our
study provides an empirical benchmark that raises new questions about America's changing color line.
As we have shown here, black exceptionalism is reflected in persistent patterns of black residential
segregation at multiple levels of geography. Our study reinforces the conclusions of other studies
concerned with persistent racial boundaries. For example, black-white intermarriage rates lag those
between whites and other minorities (Qian and Lichter 2007). Today's black-white friendship patterns
are also often regarded as "exceptional" if measured against patterns observed for America's other
racial and ethnic minorities (Kao and Joyner 2006; Mouw and Entwisle 2006). Taken together, America
may be moving toward a color-blind or post-racial society, but the pace has been slow. Perhaps
paradoxically, binary racial labels or classifications, such as "people of color," may reinforce the
continuing subordination and separation of nonwhites from whites in American society (for discussion,
see Lee and Bean 2007). More than 100 years ago, W.E.B. DuBois (1997[1903]:45) called our attention
to "the problem of the color line." The issue of America's color line arguably is even more problematic
in today's multiracial society than it was at the start of the 20th century, when DuBois first alerted us
to the legacy of slavery and its aftermath of racial subordination and social injustice.
Suburban sprawl has left fiscal and social problems in the city, taking away jobs and
development from the inner city and increasing poverty for the minority groups living
there
R, P,& E 2010 (Carl Anthony, Staff Writer,RP&E Volume 2, No. 1: Energy, Energy Policy and Inner City
Abandonment, PDF)
White flight to the suburbs has left a host of fiscal and social problems in the inner city. The changes in
older neighborhoods started in the 1950s, when an extensive highway system, cheap gasoline,
and reliable, and relatively inexpensive automobiles made possible dispersion of the population.
White flight shifted the development of housing and jobs out of the cities, into the suburbs. Housing.
By the early years of the decade, the rate of national suburban growth was ten times that of the
central cities. Characteristically, suburbs were designed and built as completely detached single
family dwellings. Zoning and deed restrictions were used to enforce economic and racial
homogeneity. Industry. Between 1947 and 1972 the central cities of the 33 largest metropolitan areas
(based on 1970 census figures) lost 880,000 jobs in manufacturing, at the same time that their suburbs
gained 2.5 million manufacturing jobs. These same cities lost an additional 867,000 jobs in retail and
wholesale trade, while millions of such jobs were added to the economies of their suburban
areas. Fiscal Impact. White flight also created fiscal problems. From 1970 to 1980, the largest 50
cities lost five percent of their populations, while populations in poverty increased by 20 percent.
The result was declining tax bases for cities at precisely the moment when demands for services were
increasing the need for more revenues. Out migration of families increased difficulties of sustaining
basic urban institutions—churches, banks, stores, recreation facilities—in the face of growing
joblessness. At the same time, the demise of these institutions cut off the traditional modes of social
mobility and subjective perceptions of opportunity, resulting in a circular process of downwardly
adjusted hopes and expectations, and increased isolation of poorer urban populations. Yet, spatial
segregation in the metropolitan region cut off suburban populations from any feeling of responsibility
for the less advantaged left behind in the cities. However, past efforts at inner city revitalization
have often brought in their wake gentrification and displacement. Economic development does not
begin with goods. It begins with people, their education, organization and discipline. The same
might be said for energy conservation. To avoid the problems of gentrification we must come to
terms with the historical trend and to address the institutional needs of disadvantaged urban
communities.
Environmental Racism
Race has come to determine who is and isn’t protected from environmental harm.
Feldman and Hsu, scholar of American culture and a lecturer
And Associate professor of English, 07 (2007, Mark B. and Hsuan “Introduction: Race, Environment, and
reproduction,” Volume 29 Numbers 2 & 3 pp. 199-214)
Climate change, deforestation, food and water shortages, and the steady increase in nuclear and
chemical pollutants are just some of the risk factors that might affect the viability of “planetary life.”
Still, as Buell points out, the increasing prominence of ecological catastrophe does not signal a shift
away from the problem of the color line. Race continues to play an active role in distinguishing
between those who are relatively protected from (or compensated for) environmental harm and
“most of the earth’s inhabitants,” who are left with the disproportionate burdens and not the
material benefits of resource depletion, toxic dumping, and climate change. The distribution of
environmental burdens and risks reflects the legacies of racialization and colonialism, and cannot be
analyzed or remedied without attending to problems of racial inequality and geographically uneven
development. If environmental criticism endorses an egocentric outlook or land ethic that includes the
earth itself in our sense of Discourse, 29.2 & 3, Spring & Fall 2007, pp. 199–214. Copyright © 2009
Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309. ISSN 1522-5321. community, it must also
come to terms with Du Bois’s observation that “whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and
ever, Amen!”
Environmental racism is becoming a global pattern - Focusing on local issues crowds
out transnational considerations
Feldman and Hsu, scholar of American culture and a lecturer
And Associate professor of English, 07 (2007, Mark B. and Hsuan “Introduction: Race, Environment, and
reproduction,” Volume 29 Numbers 2 & 3 pp. 199-214, HeinOnline, REM)
Moreover, environmental risk factors regularly cross national boundaries, whether intentionally (as
with the export of toxic waste to host countries in the underdeveloped world) or unintentionally (as
with the rising mercury levels of the open seas or the global threat of climate change). The logic behind
the intentional export of toxic industries and their waste products is summarized in an oft-cited internal
memo by Lawrence Summers—then chief economist for the World Bank—endorsing “more migration
of the dirty industries to the [less developed countries].”36 Given the extent to which the effects of
industry and consumption in developed countries are dispersed abroad, prominent scholars such as
Lawrence Buell and Ursula Heise have stressed the importance of postcolonial and transnational
frameworks for environmental criticism.37 Heise, for example, has noted that environmental criticism’s
tendency to privilege localized spaces and issues poses challenges to the development of transnational
perspectives that sufficiently account for economic, as well as cultural, dimensions of globalization.38 Al
though the contributions we received for this special issue primarily addressed U.S. topics, some of the
essays included here engage transnational issues such as migrant labor, the discursive production of
tropical vacation destinations, and the construction—often by Western environmentalists—of
Chinese industry as toxic and unregulated. In the next section, we consider the challenges that this
expanded scope of environmental activism—which stretches from the microbial to the transnational
scale—poses to representational discourses and media.
Our society has moved away from structural explanations of racism to playing the
blame game - it is black culture that is demonized for the lack of progress made by
poor blacks
Mendenhall 2010 ("The Political Economy Of Black Housing: From The Housing Crisis Of The Great
Migrations To The Subprime Mortgage Crisis." Black Scholar 40.1 (2010): 20-37. Academic Search
Premier. Web. 20 July 2012. Ruby Mendenhall 2010. Ruby Mendenhall is an Assistant Professor in
Sociology and African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2004,
Mendenhall received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy program from Northwestern
University in Evanston, Illinois. For her dissertation, Black Women in Gautreaux’s Housing
Desegregation Program: The Role of Neighborhoods and Networks in Economic Independence, she used
administrative welfare and employment data, census information, and in-depth interviews to examine
the long-run effects of placement neighborhood conditions/resources on economic independence. JRW)
As we saw earlier, the economic transition to large-scale heavy industry exerted a powerful pull on
black migrants, attracting them to northern and western cities. However, we see opposing forces
operating in the period of the second migration as workers were attracted to industrial centers at the
same time that automation decreased labor demands. The transition to automated production in largescale industry would soon become the capitalist mechanism for disposing of, instead of employing, black
labor. Post-war federal programs like the GI Bill (while excluding blacks GIs from many of the available
resources) underwrote the construction of predominantly white suburbs and the National Interstate
and Defense Highways Act of 1956 spurred "white flight" from the urban centers. Capital would follow
suit by the 1970s and '80s and migrate to the suburbs. The civil unrest in the 1960s wrought significant
changes in American public policy and the discourse about inequality. Tide VII of the 1964 U.S. Civil
Rights Act prohibited racial discrimination in employment, housing, and other key areas. In addition.
Executive Order 11246 created the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) and what is
often referred to as "affirmative action." The Civil Rights Act and "affirmative action" programs would
by the 1990s and the beginning of the 2F' century be associated with the ideology and belief that
America had become color-blind and that if African Americans still experienced social mobility
problems it was not because of structural barriers of racial discrimination but problems embedded in
their culture and personal values. Some Scholars argued that affirmative action and fair housing laws
allowed middle- and working-class blacks in Chicago (151,000 of them from 1970-1980, in addition to
185,000 from other ethnic groups) to move out of the inner-city and into the suburbs, resulting in a
concentration of poor, unemployed families in inner-city neighborhoods.*^ As a result, the outmigration of middle- and working-class families left the remaining poor with strained neighborhood
institutions and reduced access to job networks. Alternative views suggest that the demo- graphic
changes, due to the exodus of middle- and working-class families, were not that significant because
persistent racial discrimination forced the social class composition of black neighborhoods to remain
relatively mixed.'*'' Persistent discrimination, moreover, is supported by numerous fair housing audits
that reveal differences in treatment by realtors based on race and ethnicity."
Harms
Pollution/Disease
The goals of eco-urbanism are to integrate environment and Infrastructure.
Hodson and Marvin, ’10. (Mike Hodson and Simon Marvin, June 2010, “Urbanism in the
Anthropocene: Ecological Urbanism or Premium Ecological Enclaves?”, City, Volume 14, Number 3, June
2010. Pg. 308 [SJW])
The new network infrastructure of eco- urbanism seeks to integrate environment and infrastructure
by rebundling architecture, ecology and technology in an attempt to internalise energy, water, food,
waste and material flows within the development. Engineers, systems modellers, material flow
analysts and designers are involved in integrating local production technologies, circular metabolisms
and closed-loop systems to reduce reliance on external centralised infra- structure networks. This
places a particular premium on low-water-use systems, water recycling, reuse of waste water, local
energy production systems, reuse of waste and local food production systems. These responses
strongly echo the early integrated system models of the 1970s; what is different this time is the
extension of these systems to consider carbon flows and the impact of climate change, along with
aspirations to explore new concepts such as carbon neutrality, waste neutrality and water neutrality.
Significantly, there seems to be much less debate in this current period about wider questions of
social and institutional control of these technologies, which, it is largely assumed, will be provided by
the market.
Economically disadvantaged and low-income minority communities suffer from
proximity to air pollution, resulting in hazardous health effects
Springs 2007(Mary Alice, “Inequity in Transport: The Problem with Auto Hegemony.” Chrestomathy:
Annual Review of Undergraduate Researcher, Annual Review of Undergraduate Research, School of
Humanities and Social Sciences, School of Languages, Cultures, and World Affairs Volume 6, 2007:
198-209; http://chrestomathy.cofc.edu/archives/volume6.php). SJ
Economically disadvantaged communities not only suffer from limited access to transportation, but
they also suffer another terrible side effect of our “love affair with the automobile.” Because
highways are more likely to be built through these communities, these residents are more likely to
suffer physical ailments and higher rates of mortality associated with vehicular air pollution and
pedestrian-auto collisions. According to Douglas Houston et al., “Vehicle traffic remains a major and
often dominant source of air pollution” (566). The authors further argue recent scientific research
shows a positive correlation between vehicular air pollution and a variety of adverse medical conditions
(566). Such medical conditions include eye irritation, lung cancer, asthma, upper respiratory tract
irritation and infection, exacerbation of and increased mortality from cardio-respiratory diseases, low
birth weight, and cancer. Studies have shown the prevalence of health disparities between different
demographic groups as they relate to their neighborhood proximity to high volume traffic
roadways. William Shutkin writes, “People of color, who live in cities to a far greater extent than
whites, are disproportionately exposed to urban air pollution” (75). It has been stated that lowincome minority groups tend to suffer more frequently from asthma and, as a result, are hospitalized
and have a higher mortality rate than other demographic groups (Houston et al. 568). Houston et al.
add to this discussion by noting that environmental justice research has confirmed a relationship “
between a neighborhood’s racial and socioeconomic composition and proximity to hazardous air
pollution” in Los Angeles (568). A study done by Michelle Wilhelm and Beate Ritz shows that air
pollution from vehicles not only affects the living but unborn children as well. Wilhelm and Ritz found a
ten to twenty percent increase in the occurrence of low birth weight and pre-term births of infants of
mothers “living close to heavily traveled roadways” (211). In a study of 5,000 people, “those who lived
near a major road or highway were twice as likely to die from cardiovascular or respiratory disease as
those who did not” (Hoek et al. 1203). There has also been evidence that suggests that children who
live in close proximity to heavy traffic roads face a higher risk of childhood cancer, particularly leukemia
(Pearson et al. 179). Hence, there is a growing amount of empirical evidence suggesting that people
who live in close proximity to high volume traffic roads are at a higher risk for a number of health
complications and lower life expectancy. As property values of these typically undesirable home sites
are lower, low-income minority residents are more likely to live in these areas and thus suffer the
most from the traffic related air pollution to which they do not contribute.
Pollutants from automobiles contribute to not only global warming, but also increases
severity of respiratory systems, more medical needs, and an thus an increase of
absences of school.
Frumkin, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Emory University 2002 (Howard,
Urban Sprawl and Public Health, pdf)
In various combinations, the pollutants that originate from cars and trucks, especially nitrogen
oxides, hydrocarbons, ozone, and particulate matter, account for a substantial part of the air
pollution burden of American cities. Of note, the highest air pollution levels in a metropolitan
area may occur not at the point of formation but downwind, due to regional transport. Thus,
air pollution is a problem not only alongside roadways (or in close proximity to other sources)
but also on the scale of entire regions. The health hazards of air pollution are well known.24 Ozone is
an airways irritant. Higher ozone levels are associated with higher incidence and severity of
respiratory symptoms, worse lung function, more emergency room visits and hospitalizations,
more medication use, and more absenteeism from school and work.24 Although healthy people
may demonstrate these effects, people with asthma and other respiratory diseases are
especially susceptible. Particulate matter is associated with many of the same respiratory effects
and, in addition, with elevated mortality.25–27 People who are especially susceptible to the effects
of air pollution include the elderly, the very young, and those with underlying cardiopulmonary disease.
There is a huge link between urban sprawl, amounts of driving, and air pollution.
Reducing the need for motor vehicles is key.
Frumkin 2 - Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Emory University
2002 (Howard, Urban Sprawl and Public Health, pdf)
Thus, the link between sprawl and respiratory health is as follows: Sprawl is associated with high
levels of driving, driving contributes to air pollution, and air pollution causes morbidity and
mortality. In heavily automobile-dependent cities, air pollution can rise to hazardous levels, and
driving can account for a majority of the emissions. Although ongoing research is exploring the
pathophysiology of air pollution exposure and related issues, there are also important research
questions that revolve around prevention. Technical issues include such challenges as the development
of low-emission vehicles and other clean technologies. Policy research needs to identify approaches
to land use and transportation that would reduce the need for motor vehicle travel. Behavioral
research needs to identify factors that motivate people to choose less-polluting travel behaviors, such
as walking, carpooling, or use of more efficient vehicles.
Mass movement of populations to cities by way of highway construction causes
brownfields to develop.
(Hollander, J. (2006). Polluted and Dangerous : America’s Worst Abandoned Properties and What Can
Be done About Them. New Brunswick: Rutgers Press)
Brownfield sites were once productive industrial sites that exist in the industrial sections of cities and
are locations for abandoned factories or commercial buildings, or other previously polluting operations
(Hollander 2006: 2). The causes of brownfield sites are contributed by the deindustrialization and
globalization impact on cities (Hollander, 2006: 14). Through the progression of globalization,
industries and businesses “have spread their activities and production processes throughout the
world,” in order “to take advantage of labor and regulatory cost savings. Another factor on the
development of brownfield sites is the “metro shifts (Hollander, 2006: 14),” which is the occurrence of
“mass migration out of rural areas during the nineteenth century [and] was followed in the midtwentieth century by mass migration out of cities into suburbs (Hollander, 2006: 14). The cause of the
metro-shift in the 20th century was contributed by the federal policy interventions of the postwar
mortgage programs, urban highway building, and urban renewal, thus the decline of economical
development in urban cities, and the “economics of maintaining a property up to code and meeting
environmental obligations exceed potential revenue generation,” in which the owners eventually
abandoned the properties to avoid liability (Hollander, 2006: 15). Through urban decline, these
industrial sites eventually would become contaminated brownfield sites through the deregulations of
manufacturing contamination discharged to water air, and land caused by unregulated activities of
industry manufacturers such as the wasteful and spent of laboratory chemical waste, process waste
water, empty product containers, dirty filters, hydrocarbon spillages, solvents, pesticides, heavy metals
such as lead, tributyltins, and asbestos (DDPA: 1996).
Environmentalism is harmful when discriminatory.
Lazarus, Lawyer and Writer, 01 (2001, Richard J., “Highways and Bi-ways for Environmental Justice,”
Vol.31 Issue 3 pp.569-97, Cumberland Law Review, REM)
What the proposed landfill in Lowndes County reminds us is that environmental protection laws can
also be part of the problem. In a desire to make society as a whole better off in the longer term,
environmental protection laws may make some isolated areas worse off at least in the near term. In
Lowndes County, by literally picking up everyone's garbage, much of the State of Alabama is benefitted
from the elimination of numerous, uncontrolled garbage dumps that historically existed across the
State. Yet, the upshot of these positive efforts towards environmental protection is nonetheless an
aggregation of residual environmental risks somewhere else, typically in one location. No matter how
well regulated that resulting facility, it is far from automatic that the community that houses that facility
and, hence, the associated aggregation of residual environmental risks, is better off. Indeed, that
community may well be worse off.
Pollution/Global Warming
Our current use of urban infrastructure has led to a drastic amount of human induced
environmental effects such as global warming and the extinction of species.
Hodson and Marvin, ’10. (Mike Hodson and Simon Marvin, June 2010, “Urbanism in the
Anthropocene: Ecological Urbanism or Premium Ecological Enclaves?”, City, Volume 14, Number 3, June
2010. Pg. 306 [SJW])
Cities are the material representation of today’s energy-intensive economies where carbon-based
energy systems—oil, electric- ity and mobility systems—have made the huge agglomerations of cities
and modern industrial systems possible. Urbanisation totally dominates the huge metalogistical
systems made up of resource flows, energy, water, waste foods as well as flows of people and goods
that make up the contemporary world. The prefix ‘meta’ helps to view the city as an active
intermediary, which sits as a site of material transformation that anticipates, modifies and excretes the
move- ment of resources, materials and people. Cities are connected through intensive airline networks,
logistical transportation systems, enormous energy and water grids as well as communication and ICT
systems that facili- tate interconnecting markets, production and consumption systems, people,
organisations and governments. Yet in the contemporary period there is now a recognition that these
industrialised systems—not all located in cities, but certainly largely controlled by organisations
located in large global cities— have ecological affects that are beginning to change the global
ecological context within which cities attempt to ensure their contin- ued reproduction (Luke, 2003).
Consequently, geologists have suggested that a new epoch has begun which they call the
anthropocene (see Zalasiewicz et al., 2008). It is proposed that this is the result of human actions
whose critical markers include disturbances of the carbon cycle and global temperature, ocean
acidification, changes to sediment erosion and deposition, and species’ extinctions. This period
coincides clearly with the development of industrialisation and the global growth in urbanisation that
resulted in an estimated 50% of the world’s population living in urban areas by 2000.
Heat waves results in illnesses and deaths
Weiss & Pam, 08 (Daniel, Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy, Robin, Center for American
Progress, “The Human side of Global Warming,” 5/10/08,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/04/human_side.html)
Increased frequency and severity of heat waves will lead to more heat stroke and other heat-related illness and
death. Senior citizens and children are particularly vulnerable to these effects. The world has already seen the effects of
heat on human health: The summer 2003 heat wave in Europe that claimed 35,000 lives was likely made worse by global
warming, and in the summer of 2007, Greece suffered a massive heat wave and record wildfires. Eleven of the past 12
years rank among the hottest on record, and the Centers for Disease Control reports that heat waves already account for
more deaths annually in the United States than hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes combined. The death
toll is projected to increase as heat waves become more frequent.
Pollution from warming increases respiratory and cardiovascular disease
Weiss & Pam, 08 (Daniel, Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy, Robin, Center for American
Progress, “The Human side of Global Warming,” 5/10/08,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/04/human_side.html)
Air pollution worsens as temperatures increase, and higher levels of ozone smog and other pollutants have been
directly linked with increased rates of respiratory and cardiovascular disease, including asthma and cardiac disarryhthmia.
Pediatric asthma has already increased over the past 25 years, and global warming will only exacerbate children’s
suffering. Global warming is projected to most heavily affect the level of ground-level ozone in U.S. cities in the Northeast, Midwest, and
West.
Infection will rise
Weiss & Pam, 08 (Daniel, Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy, Robin, Center for American
Progress, “The Human side of Global Warming,” 5/10/08,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/04/human_side.html)
Currently, malaria, diarrhea, malnutrition, and floods related to climate change cause about 150,000 worldwide
deaths annually, according to the World Health Organization. The range of malaria-carrying mosquitos is spreading, too, to
cooler places that have never before seen the disease, such as South Korea and the highlands of Papua New Guinea.
With warming temperatures, the breeding cycle of malaria-carrying mosquitoes is shortening, which means more
mosquitoes—and malaria—each year. The same effects will likely be seen with other vector-borne diseases, such
as Dengue fever, which has infected 60,000 people in one outbreak in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro this year alone. In the United States,
viruses such as West Nile, Hantavirus, and Lyme disease could increase their ranges or spread more quickly with changing weather, and
formerly prevalent malaria or Dengue fever could re-emerge.
Global warming threatens food production
Weiss & Pam, 08 (Daniel, Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy, Robin, Center for American
Progress, “The Human side of Global Warming,” 5/10/08,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/04/human_side.html)
Rising temperatures and varying rainfall patterns could affect staple crop production and food security, while
aiding the migration and breeding of pests that can devastate crops. Farmers in the tropical developing world will
likely see decreases in production. Such changes could be devastating to people in poor countries, even while some cold climate
nations, such as Canada, may expand their arable land. With the prices of wheat, rice, and other staples already rising rapidly,
the developing world can ill afford any production decreases at home. In addition, more severe weather, such as
monsoons or hurricanes, can destroy crops and leave entire communities without food. And if hunger wasn't bad enough
already, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently concluded that up to 250 million more Africans
could be left without potable water due to climate-related stresses within the decade.
Severe heat causes wildfires and threaten people
Weiss & Pam, 08 (Daniel, Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy, Robin, Center for American
Progress, “The Human side of Global Warming,” 5/10/08,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/04/human_side.html)
Severe heat can also increase the frequency and intensity of wildfires, which threaten homes, lives, and livelihoods, and cause
poor air quality. Last autumn’s wildfires in california that displaced more than 1 million people were linked to the
record southern California drought. And those were only the beginning. The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change has determined that “a warming climate encourages wildfire through a longer summer period that dries fuels,
promoting easier ignition and faster spread…North America very likely will continue to suffer serious loss of life and property.”
Rising sea levels creates flooding displacing millions
Weiss & Pam, 08 (Daniel, Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy, Robin, Center for American
Progress, “The Human side of Global Warming,” 5/10/08,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/04/human_side.html)
Rising sea levels make coastal areas more susceptible to storm surges and flooding that result from severe
weather. The most susceptible areas are densely populated river deltas and coastal cities in Asia—the Ganges River Delta, the Mekong River
Delta, islands in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific. Just last year, almost 7 million people were displaced by flooding in
Dhaka, Bangladesh, and in 2004, floods there killed more than 700. With displacement comes increased
transmission of water-borne disease from stagnant water, the challenge of feeding and sheltering the displaced, sewage backups
and squalid conditions, and strained disaster relief resources. In the 1990s, more than 600,000 deaths occurred worldwide as a
result of weather-related disasters. WHO now says that 150,000 deaths annually are attributable to the effects of
climate change. Further, as Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis noted at the House Select Committee hearing on global warming and public
health, these effects “will disproportionately affect the sick, poor, elderly, and communities of color." Solis urged her
"colleagues to recognize the relationship between our climate and health and to work toward achieving climate justice.” Earlier this week Solis
and Markey introduced a resolution in the House, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) a similar one in the Senate, that calls attention to the public
health effects of global warming. These human effects are real and immediate, but they can also be lessened if the
United States takes the lead in transitioning to a low-carbon economy and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions
now. While the Bush administration has tried to suppress information regarding the human health consequences of its lax approach to climate
change, a 2004 EPA internal memoaffirmed that “climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment.” Four years
later, there is still a lack of decisive action in the United States. The Senate has a golden opportunity to act when it considers the Lieberman
Warner Climate Security Act in early June. But the signs are clear. We can’t afford to wait any longer.
Vehicular Accidents
Automobiles are also the cause for massive amounts of vehicular accidents, which
mass transit systems could avoid.
Frumkin, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Emory University 2002 (Howard,
Urban Sprawl and Public Health, pdf)
Automobiles now claim more than 40,000 lives each year in the United States, a number that
has slowly declined from about 50,000 per year in the 1960s. Rates of automobile fatalities and
injuries per driver and per mile driven have fallen thanks to safer cars and roads, seat belt use,
laws that discourage drunk driving, and other measures, but the absolute toll ofautomobile
crashes remains high. Automobile crashes are the leading cause of death among people 1–24
years old, account for 3.4 million nonfatal injuries annually, and cost an estimated $200 billion
annually.34 The relationship between sprawl and motor vehicle crashes is complex. At the simplest
level, more driving means greater exposure to the dangers of the road, translating to a higher
probability of a motor vehicle crash.35 Suburban roads may be a particular hazard, especially
major commercial thoroughfares and “feeder” roads that combine high speed, high traffic
volume, and frequent “curb cuts” for drivers to use in entering and exiting stores and other
destinations.36 However, available data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) show fatal crashes aggregated into only two categories of roads: urban (accounting for
approximately 60% of fatalities) and rural (approximately 40%).33
Empirically Proven- urban areas with mass transit systems have lower automobile
fatality rates
Frumkin, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Emory University 2002 (Howard,
Urban Sprawl and Public Health, pdf)
The NHTSA data do permit comparison of automobile fatality rates by city.33 In general, denser
cities with more extensive public transportation systems have lower automobile fatality rates
(including drivers and passengers, but excluding pedestrians) than more sprawling cities: 2.45 per
100,000 population in San Francisco, 2.30 in New York, 3.21 in Portland, 6.67 in Chicago, and 5.26
in Philadelphia, compared with 10.08 in Houston, 16.15 in Tampa, 12.72 in Atlanta, 11.35 in
Dallas, and 9.85 in Phoenix.33 (There are notable exceptions to this pattern, such as 5.79
per100,000 population in Los Angeles and 10.93 per 100,000 in Detroit.33)
Urban sprawl has led to an influx of driving, which can cause air pollution, accidents,
and pedestrian casualties.
Frumkin, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Emory University 2002 (Howard, Urban Sprawl and Public Health, pdf)
One of the cardinal features of sprawl is driving, reflecting a well-established, close relationship
between lower density development and more automobile travel.4,13–16 For example, in the
Atlanta metropolitan area, one of the nation’s leading examples of urban sprawl, the average
person travels 34.1 miles in a car each day—an average that includes the entire population, both
drivers and non-drivers.17 More densely populated metropolitan areas have far lower per capita
daily driving figures than Atlanta, e.g., 16.9 miles for Philadelphia, 19.9 for Chicago, and 21.2 for San
Fran-cisco.17 On a neighborhood scale, the same pattern is observed. In the Los Angeles, San Francisco,
and Chicago metropolitan areas, vehicle miles traveled increase as neighborhood density decreases (see
Figure 1).18 Automobile use offers extraordinary personal mobility and independence. However, it
is also associated with health hazards, including air pollution, motor vehicle crashes, and
pedestrian injuries and fatalities.
Environmental Racism
From incinerators in Brooklyn to nuclear colonialism in Taiwan, Environmental Racism
has become matter of life and death.
Feldman and Hsu, scholar of American culture and a lecturer
And Associate professor of English, 07 (2007, Mark B. and Hsuan “Introduction: Race, Environment, and
reproduction,” Volume 29 Numbers 2 & 3 pp. 199-214, HeinOnline, REM)
While it may overlap with scientific, legal, and symbolic constructions of difference, racial difference
as viewed by many environmental justice scholars is primarily a matter of life and death, as Ruth
Wilson Gilmore reminds us by conceptualizing racism as that which results in racially differential
vulnerabilities to premature death.27 Viewing racialization as, in part, a function of differentially
distributed vulnerabilities provides communities at risk with a basis for forming coalitions across the
boundaries of space and skin color. For example, the proposal for the Navy Yard incinerator in
Brooklyn was defeated by a “unique multiracial and multiethnic coalition between Puerto Ricans and
Hasidic Jews that developed”; 28 the “nuclear colonialism” of governments and firms in France,
Britain, Taiwan, and the United States has given rise to an “international network of indigenous rights
and sovereignty” that includes not only the islands represented by the Nuclear-Free and Independent
Pacific Movement, but also Native American groups affected by nuclear testing in the U.S.
Southwest;29 and water privatization worldwide has forged solidarities between embattled groups
throughout Latin America, Africa, India, and the rural United States.
Congestion causes pollution
Humans are too dependent on private transportation, which is causing pollution
K. Zavitsas (Imperial College London and got a: PhD, Operational Research, and MEng in Civil
Engineering), I. Kaparias (Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Transport Engineering, BSc International and
European Economic Studies, and he has a MEng Civil Engineering with a Year Abroad), Professor Micheal
Bell (Professor of Transport Operations, Director of the Transport MSc Programmes) CONDUITS,
Coordination Of Network Descriptors for Urban Intelligent Transport Systems.
2011http://www.conduits.eu/Documents/Deliverables/D%201.1%20%20Transport%20problems%20in%20cities%20-%20v3.pdf (A.A.)
As mentioned in Section 2, in the 1960s and 1970s the car was deemed the transport means of the
future; however, in the last decade’s car dependence has been identified as an issue of paramount
importance for transport planners due to its large economic and social impacts. Namely, car
dependence is one of the main causes of congestion and also has further negative impacts with
respect to environmental and efficiency issues, as cars are linked to several types of environmental
hazards, including air and noise pollution, and the consumption of non-renewable resources.
Private transportation is causing congestion that the existing infrastructure can’t
handle
K. Zavitsas (Imperial College London and got a: PhD, Operational Research, and MEng in Civil
Engineering), I. Kaparias (Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Transport Engineering, BSc International and
European Economic Studies, and he has a MEng Civil Engineering with a Year Abroad), Professor Micheal
Bell (Professor of Transport Operations, Director of the Transport MSc Programmes) CONDUITS,
Coordination Of Network Descriptors for Urban Intelligent Transport Systems. 2011
http://www.conduits.eu/Documents/Deliverables/D%201.1%20%20Transport%20problems%20in%20cities%20-%20v3.pdf (A.A.)
Nevertheless, with more and more households having access to multiple cars and hence increasing car
travel demand that the existing infrastructure cannot support, the problems of congestion and lack of
parking are severely aggravated in cities. Car dependence, therefore, is an undesirable phenomenon
for cities, which look at reducing it as much as possible. The policies and strategies used for that
purpose are similar to the ones used for tackling congestion and are mainly based on car dissuasion.
Car dissuasion and moving to more public mass transit has to be achieved to save our
environment
K. Zavitsas (Imperial College London and got a: PhD, Operational Research, and MEng in Civil
Engineering), I. Kaparias (Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Transport Engineering, BSc International and
European Economic Studies, and he has a MEng Civil Engineering with a Year Abroad), Professor Micheal
Bell (Professor of Transport Operations, Director of the Transport MSc Programmes) CONDUITS,
Coordination Of Network Descriptors for Urban Intelligent Transport Systems. 2011
http://www.conduits.eu/Documents/Deliverables/D%201.1%20%20Transport%20problems%20in%20cities%20-%20v3.pdf(A.A.)
Car dissuasion can be achieved by imposing regulations that restrict car access or increase the cost of
car use. Pricing policies, similar to those used to address road and parking congestion, can play an
important role in the decisions of individuals. In many European cities car use is discouraged through
high taxation on both petrol and car ownership. Furthermore, traffic management measures such as
access control schemes prohibiting car traffic in central urban areas are a common practice aiming to
protect the ambience and the physical infrastructure of a city centre. Pricing schemes such as
imposing tolls for parking and entry to congested parts of a city have been considered by several
cities, as they confer the potential advantages of congestion mitigation and revenue generation. Such
policies let the price regulate demand and most evidence underlines that the drivers are willing to bear
additional toll costs only when car use is linked with their main income [21]. However, car dissuasion
alone cannot bring about the desired reduction in car dependence, as travelers need alternatives.
Namely, discouraging car use but keeping an inadequate public transport infrastructure is likely to not
only fail to achieve the desired reductions, but also to frustrate the public, who will perceive this as an
unpopular policy and will take it into account in the next election. As such, car dissuasion policies can
only be effective if they are coupled with strategies promoting public transport, so as to enable a
modal shift. Overall, the idea of sustainability appears to be gaining ground as it influences transport
policies at a global level. Under the current environmental concerns and the urge for sustainability in
transport, there is now a need for cities to try to improve the performance of their transport systems
in terms of efficiency, while simultaneously improving their residents’ amenity and living
environment. Therefore, it is in the interest of cities to evaluate the individual and perhaps disjointed
policies and strategies they have suggested over the years for helping to alleviate car dependence and
bring them together under the unifying concept of sustainability.
Reducing congestion is key for cars to travel more fuel efficiently
K. Zavitsas (Imperial College London and got a: PhD, Operational Research, and MEng in Civil
Engineering), I. Kaparias (Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Transport Engineering, BSc International and
European Economic Studies, and he has a MEng Civil Engineering with a Year Abroad), Professor Micheal
Bell (Professor of Transport Operations, Director of the Transport MSc Programmes) CONDUITS,
Coordination Of Network Descriptors for Urban Intelligent Transport Systems. 2011
http://www.conduits.eu/Documents/Deliverables/D%201.1%20%20Transport%20problems%20in%20cities%20-%20v3.pdf (A.A.)
As cars are the main contributors to urban emissions, several studies have investigated the conditions
under which cars operate more efficiently, looking into factors such as engine size, speed, etc. The
most valuable finding of researchers has been that cars consume fuel more efficiently when travelling
at around 65 km/h. The driving style also affects fuel efficiency, as abrupt accelerations and
declarations increase fuel consumption. Therefore, considering cars at an individual level, it can be
said that the most fuel-efficient driving style involves maintaining a constant speed at around 70 km/h
throughout a journey. Constant travel velocity can easily be maintained on national roads and
motorways/freeways; however, the velocity profile of urban journeys includes large variations, as
vehicles often come to a halt at intersection traffic lights etc [29]. Congestion also contributes to air
pollution, as cars still consume fuel while being idle or when travelling at low speeds. It is therefore in
the interest of transport planners to ensure smooth uncongested flows in urban areas, as this
influences vehicle emissions.
Emphasizing the use of mass transit is key to stop major pollution harms
K. Zavitsas (Imperial College London and got a: PhD, Operational Research, and MEng in Civil
Engineering), I. Kaparias (Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Transport Engineering, BSc International and
European Economic Studies, and he has a MEng Civil Engineering with a Year Abroad), Professor Micheal
Bell (Professor of Transport Operations, Director of the Transport MSc Programmes) CONDUITS,
Coordination Of Network Descriptors for Urban Intelligent Transport Systems. 2011
http://www.conduits.eu/Documents/Deliverables/D%201.1%20%20Transport%20problems%20in%20cities%20-%20v3.pdf (A.A.)
Similarly to pollution, significant environmental benefits can be achieved through congestion
reduction strategies, and in particular through a modal shift from private to public transport and
through the promotion of fuel-efficient and sustainable modes of travel. Public transport is
considerably more efficient in terms of fuel consumption per traveler than private cars, not only
because of its higher passenger occupancy, but also because it keeps large numbers of vehicles off the
road, thus relieving the network from congestion and ensuring steadier traffic flow conditions. Similar
effects on fuel efficiency has the promotion of walking and cycling, which substitute motorized trips
and hence reduce fuel consumption, as well as the endorsement of “clean” vehicle technologies (e.g.
electric vehicles, hybrid etc), which are energy efficient but do still contribute to congestion.
The fuel used by public transportation creates less pollution than the fuel used by
private vehicles
Shapiro et al., 2002 (7/02, Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, Managing Director of Sonecon, LLC, a non-resident Fellow of the Brookings
Institution and the Progressive Policy Institute, Economic Counselor to the U.S.Conference Board, and a director of the Axson-Johnson
Foundation, Dr. Kevin A. Hassett, Resident Scholar of the American Enterprise Institute, Dr. Frank S. Arnold, President of Applied
Microeconomics, Inc., columnist for The Environmental Forum, report commissioned by American Public Transportation Association,
“Conserving Energy and Preserving the Environment: The Role of Public Transportation”, Lexis Nexis Database) CJC
The Environmental Benefits from the Use of Public Transportation Public transportation also offers
the largest opportunity and the most efficient means for making major strides in environmental
quality without direct government regulation, especially in the urban and densely populated suburban
areas with the worst pollution. The direct environmental benefits of public transportation come
primarily from two factors. First, as we have now established, public transportation systems burn less
fuel on a per person/per mile basis and therefore produce less pollution. Second, the diesel fuel and
electrical power used in public transportation systems are less polluting, unit-by-unit, than the
gasoline used in most private automobiles, SUVs, and light trucks.
The USFG should invest in public mass transit systems to encourage ridership and
reduce pollution.
Randolph, 12 – (1/1/12, Eleanor, Ney York Times, “The Recession Squeeze on Buses and Trains,” Lexis
Nexus Academic)
For the average American driver, the time wasted in traffic jams has more than doubled in 30 years.
The best way of easing that gridlock -- not to mention saving gas, curbing pollution and finally
finishing that novel -- is public transit. Yet, as more Americans are sensibly leaving their cars at home
and opting for the bus or train, mass transit is in deep financial trouble. ''We are going over the cliff,''
Elliot Sander, chairman of the Regional Plan Association, said recently. ''We will be back where we were
in the 1970s and 1980s, where the older systems across the country are literally falling apart.'' That
alarm is not an idle one. But it comes with one piece of good news: the number of trips taken annually
on public transit is now more than 10 billion and rising, compared with 7.8 billion trips in 1995,
outstripping population growth and the number of miles traveled on streets and highways. Ridership,
which dipped during the recession in 2009, is rising again as more baby boomer retirees take buses and
high gas prices push more people to try the thriftier option. Even some cities in areas dominated by cars
-- like Dallas and Salt Lake City -- have expanded their public transit systems. The problem is, financing
for mass transit has not kept pace as cash-strapped state and local governments limit their support.
The federal government, which provides only about 17 percent of financing fortransit systems, should
be doing a lot more, particularly since nearly 60 percent of rides are related to work, with commuters
from every income level. Of the 18.4 cents per gallon federal gas tax, only 2.86 cents goes to public
transit and almost all of the rest is reserved for highways. Although Congress has increased transit
support in recent years, it is still too stingy to maintain stable services in many areas. The Federal Transit
Administration has estimated that to bring all of the nation's networks up to good repair -- not
expanding them, but mostly fixing what's already there -- would take more than $78 billion. Meanwhile,
systems are relying more on fares or state and local money. Many have had to cut back services,
increase fares, raise local taxes, lay off workers, borrow to meet operating costs and put off replacing
old vehicles. The chart below shows how 16 large transit agencies coped with dwindling resources. In
Chicago, the Transit Authority has seen a huge drop in local funding, largely derived from sales taxes
that plunged with the recession. Transit officials borrowed more than $550 million in a four-year period
starting in 2008 to pay day-to-day expenses -- a desperate and costly move. And even with fare
increases, in 2010 bus service was cut 18 percent and rail service 9 percent. In Atlanta, Beverly Scott,
general manager of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, said that her agency faced
''massive, draconian, horrifying'' budget gaps in 2009. It consolidated bus routes and cut train service.
That means more crowding and longer waits, even with higher fares. InBoston ridership is up, but so is
debt; last year, virtually every dollar paid by riders went to debt service. The Metropolitan
Transportation Authority in New York, by far the nation's biggest, managed to balance its budget, but
has also cut services and raised fares for three years. The budget pain comes at a time when more
people are finally realizing that public transit is a better deal than driving. The question is how we turn
that into a broader cultural shift. The president of the American Public Transportation Association,
Michael Melaniphy, predicts that more commuters will reach a choking point and say: ''I can't sit in this
car any longer and waste any more time.'' On a bus, you can text friends legally. On a train, you can keep
your eyes on a Kindle. As riders leave their cars, Congress should reward all of us by financing first-rate
public transportation that saves gas, tempers, time and the environment.
Pollution and Disease (policy)
Air quality in urban areas is below US standards and can induces chronic illness such
as asthma
BBC News 02 (April 1, 2012 BBC News “Urban Air Worsens Asthma”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1897646.stm)
Air which passes US quality standards can still cause breathing problems in children with asthma,
research suggests.The Californian study adds to the body of evidence pointing to the damage caused
by traffic and other air pollution in cities.Other German research - published at the same time - has
found that traffic-related air pollution is linked to coughs in babies and toddlers.The number of
children diagnosed with asthma has increased substantially in many developed countries
Mass Transit reduces CO2 emission
TIBP 2007 (Transportation and Intercity Bus Panel, “Vision for Public and Intercity transportation,”
http://www.transportationvision.org/docs/vision_Transit.pdf)KK
Transportation policy will be critical in helping address national goals including
climate change and reduced dependence on foreign oil. As current law recognizes the consequences
that transpiration plans and investments have on air quality, the time has come to recognize similarly
the implications of transportation planning and investments on long-term energy use and greenhouse
gas emissions. Current use of public transportation directly reduces gasoline consumption by 1.4
billion gallons a year (300,000 fillups each and every day), and CO2 emissions by over 8 million tons a
year, more than the greenhouse gas emissions from transportation in the states of Montana and New
Hampshire. These savings will expand as ridership continues to increase.
In order to solve health problems rampant in urban America and stop them from
spreading to suburban America there must be a concentrated national effort to
revitalize urban communities
PR Newswire, 90 (6/12/90, PR Newswire, “URBAN HEALTH STATUS DETERIORATING; IMMEDIATE
NATIONAL ATTENTION NEEDED, ACCORDING TO SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN HOSPITAL COUNCIL”, Lexis
Nexis Database) CJC
"While there are no easy solutions to the growing poverty, drug abuse, violence, AIDS, teenage
pregnancies, infant mortality, homelessness, pollution and a number of other socioeconomic
problems, we must at least make conscientious efforts to substantively address them," said
Broughton. "If you write off the problems of urban America through half-hearted actions and
symbolic steps, this infestation will grow to consume all of us. And the problems cannot continue to
be dumped at hospitals' doors without society recognizing the impossible role that our hospitals are
being forced to play over and over again." As the report notes, problems that once centered primarily
in the inner cities are spreading beyond the traditional urban areas into many suburban communities
-- including those of southeastern Michigan. "The time to act is now," said Broughton."Urban hospitals
are the backbone of this country's health-care system," said Potter. "They are carrying the burden of
training physicians, nurses and other health-care professionals who go on to serve throughout the
country. Should these hospitals tumble -- as the current trend seems to indicate -- the repercussions
would be far and wide." SEMHC supports recommendations of the CMHA report -- as well as the 10point legislative agenda of the American Hospital Association (AHA) -- as important steps to address the
social pressures on urban residents and their hospitals. According to Broughton: -- "First, the public
must realize that everyone has a stake in preserving urban America. This includes not just the general
public, but especially elected and appointed officials, businesses, clergy, media and other civic
organizations. -- "Second, there must be more public support for prevention of -- and solutions to -the social problems that are wreaking havoc in our communities. AIDS, crime, teenage pregnancies,
infant mortality, homelessness, substance abuse and violence are just a few problems on the long list
of urban woes. -- "And third, it must be realized that the problems of urban residents and the
hospitals serving them are neither separate nor distinct. They are both being affected to the detriment
of our health status."
Socioeconomic factors are the main reason black Americans and other minorities are
more at-risk than whites
Scarponi, Associated Press Writer, 1999 (6/23/99, Diane, The Associated Press, “Study: Minorities
more at-risk than whites for many health problems”, Lexis Nexis Database) CJC
The state Department of Public Health plans to launch small, community-based campaigns to improve
the health of racial minorities. The effort comes after a study by the agency finds that minorities,
especially blacks and Hispanics, are more at-risk than whites for infectious diseases, low birth weights,
asthma, diabetes and other ailments. At the same time, whites are more at-risk than some other races
for heart disease, stroke, injuries and some kinds of cancer, the agency reported Tuesday. The study is
the first time the state has tried to classify the prevalence of health problems along racial lines. "It's
very important and very exciting to have this data about Connecticut. We should be able to make a
difference statewide," said Dr. Mark Mitchell, a leader of the Multicultural Health Initiative. Results of
the study will be used to tailor health programs for specific groups, using local leaders and agencies to
get out the message, said Health Commissioner Dr. Joxel Garcia. "This study is our first step in our plan
to get a healthier Connecticut," Garcia said. "Education and prevention will eliminate some of the
disparities." Mitchell and Garcia said such an approach was needed to address cultural health issues in a
way that minorities would find informative and relevant, instead of using a statewide approach that
would fail to speak directly to them. The study looked at major health problems of whites, blacks,
Hispanics, Asians and American Indians. Because of small sample sizes, some data for Asians and
American Indians were not available. The study found that socioeconomic factors such as poverty,
educational level and occupation are risk factors for disease. Minorities also are at higher risk because
of stress, environmental pollution in the cities, decreased access to health care and lack of health
information directed at their cultures, Mitchell said. Of all racial and ethnic groups, blacks had the most
risk and the most deaths from all health problems in the study, especially AIDS, homicide and
diabetes. These ailments also hit the Hispanic population more than whites or Asians, while diabetes
risk remained high for American Indians. The risk of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and
hepatitis and sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhea and AIDS also hit black and
Hispanic populations harder.
Billions of hidden dollars in public health and environmental impacts are wasted on
pollutants caused by transportation
Sands, 2009 (10/26/09, Derek, Inside Energy with Federal Lands, “Pollution from power plants,
vehicles has huge 'hidden costs,' scientists say”, Lexis Nexis Database) CJC
Pollution from power plants and the transportation sector has cost the US economy billions of dollars
in "hidden" costs to human health and other environmental impacts, according to a report released
last week by the National Research Council. In 2005, the most recent year data was available, pollution
caused by electricity generation, heating and motor vehicle transportation was responsible for $120
billion in damage to health, grain crops and timber yields, as well as damage to recreation and
buildings, according to the report, which was requested by Congress. "Because these effects are not
reflected in energy prices, government, businesses and consumers may not realize the full impact of
their choices. When such market failures occur, a case can be made for government interventions —
such as regulations, taxes or tradable permits — to address these external costs," the report said. It was
prepared by a 19-member committee for the congressionally created NRC. The NRC report, "Hidden
Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use," looked at the cost of human
mortality resulting from pollution, such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, ozone and particulate matter.
"We would characterize our estimate as an underestimate, because that number does not include
climate change effects, it doesn't include some air pollutants, hazardous pollutants like mercury. It
does not include a quantification of ecosystem effects, and it does not include things like national
security effects," said Jared Cohon, president of the Carnegie Mellon University and chairman of the
NRC committee.
The only way to reduce emissions is to focus on production and consumption
Satterhwaite 8 - Senior Fellow at the IIED 2008 ( David, Sep. 26, contributed to the chapters on human settlements within
Working Group II for the Third and Fourth Assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cities’ contribution to global warming: Notes on the
allocation of greenhouse Gas emissions, PDF
In the search for the best ways to reduce total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, a focus both
on the producers and the consumers will be needed. Greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation can
be reduced at the production end by better forest management and by consumption habits that reduce
demand for wood or that use wood products that are certified as having come from forests that are
sustainably managed. There are also many ways in which both food producers and food consumers can
contribute to lower greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions from the fabrication of
consumer goods are more easily reduced at the production end, although information on the goods’
carbon footprint (and, for appliances that use energy, their effi ciency) can encourage consumer choices
that reduce emissions. For electricity generation, action is needed at the production end (for instance,
shifts away from fossil fuels, especially coal, unless carbon capture can be achieved and applied) and
at the consumption end (minimizing electricity use, perhaps incorporating some electricity generation
at the consumption end through the use of photovoltaic cells, and choices made to draw electricity
from non-fossil fuel sources). But it is important that global agreements to limit greenhouse gas
emissions that allocate responsibilities to nations do recognize the limitations (and unfairness) of basing
these only on the locations where emissions are produced.
Mass Transit LRT reduces air pollution from cars, encourages exercise, helps prevent
disease, and lowers health care costs
Topalovic 12 - Center for Engine ering and Public Policy, School of Engineering Practice,
McMaster ,University, 2012 (G. Krantzberg, J. CarterSchool of Geography and Earth Sciences, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street
West, May 08, Light Rail Transit in Hamilton: Health, Environmental and Economic Impact Analysis, http://www.springerlink.com/content/7080610t31612834/)
Recently, studies linking obesity with health care costs have established a direct link between these
two measures. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that, where obesity-related diseases
are concerned, ‘‘80 % of cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes and 40 % of cancers could be
avoided if major risk factors associated with the environment, were eliminated’’ (Metcalfe and Higgins
2009). Public health officials regard the increase in ‘‘chronic disease rates associated with physical
inactivity, sedentary lifestyles, overweight and obesity’’ as an ‘‘epidemic’’ (Williams and Wright 2007).
The cost of direct health expenses as a result of obesity in the United States is estimated to be $75
billion dollars (Finkelstein et al. 2003). When taking into account indirect expenses such as treatment
of chronic diseases and loss of work time, the number raises to $1 trillion (Adams and Corrigan
2003).Modifications to the built environment are predicted to be an important enabler in decreasing
dependence on the automobile and increasing physical activity. The availability of integrated public
transportation systems is a key component in reducing automobile dependence and providing more
opportunity for physical exercise, such as walking or biking to work (Stokes et al. 2008; Crowley et al.
2009; Kitchen et al. 2011). These trends are commonplace in some European cities where a dense,
transit-oriented city designencourages active transportation including walking, biking and transit use;
resulting in lower obesity rates and health issues compared to North American cities (Fig. 2). Recently
in some North American centres such as Charlotte, North Carolina and Calgary, Alberta, a move to
mixed-use residential and commercial development is becoming commonplace. Light rail transit is not
just a component of this new urbanism approach to planning; it has the ability to support this
development by promoting intensification and pedestrian friendly streetscape design (Stokes et al.
2008). According to research estimating the effect of LRT on health care costs (Stokes et al. 2008), LRT
plays a part in decreasing these costs. The study measured the increase in activity rates that will occur
near transit-oriented developments. When people choose rapid transit over the use of single
occupancy vehicles, they walk an average of 30 min more a day than those who drive their car.
Therefore, through modelling it was determined that the increased activity level amongst transit users
would save $12.6 million in the first 9 years of the city of Charlotte, North Carolina’s operation of its
LRT system (Stokes et al. 2008). Research conducted by Kelly-Schwartz et al. (2004), found a correlation
between urban sprawl and occurrence of illness related to sedentary lifestyle for those living further
from 123the urban centre, dependent on car travel (Frank et al. 2007). Craig et al. (2002) found that
urban design elements, which encourage walkable neighbourhoods, have an effect on whether people
walk to work. Frank et al. (2004) compared obesity rates to car travel hours and found that for each
additional hour spent in a car per day correlated to a 6 % increase in the probability of being obese.
Alternatively, each additional kilometre walked each day was found to reduce the odds of being
obese by almost 5 %. Mixed land use, transit oriented development and urban designs encouraging
walkability are believed to be key tools in decreasing obesity and increasing transit use. When
comparing light rail and other rapid transit systems to local bus service, it was found that the best
complement to an intensified land use mix was light rail and bus rapid transit. This can be attributed to
a slightly larger distance between stops, which encourages more walking and the connectivity of the
system which encourages more drivers to leave their cars at home in favour of transit (Stokes et al.
2008).
Urban neighborhood design disadvantages the underclass and results in an epidemic
of obesity.
Mercier, Professor at Université Laval, 09 (2009, Jean, Equity, Social Justice, and Sustainable Urban
Transportation in the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 145–163, Google Books, REM)
Because of these developments in human ecology and New Urbanism, there is a better understanding
of the dynamics of cities, and of large cities in particular, the focus of this paper. For example, it is
now well established that “the way urban neighborhoods are designed is one of the factors
responsible for physical inactivity, and the resulting epidemic of obesity and its health consequences
in the American population” (Demers, 2006, p. 17). Of course, if there are spread out and exclusively
residential suburbs, then operating public transit to serve them is a losing proposition, as efficient
public transit requires a certain degree of density. If land use is oriented toward the car, then there
are consequences for greenhouse gas production and for the environment in general, as the massive
use of the automobile causes much more pollution than any other transport mode. In such a context,
the disadvantaged are obligated to use an underfinanced, discredited, and inefficient bus service, or
alternatively, to spend a sizable proportion of their basic income on reaching relatively distant
locations in automobiles (Brown, 2006, p. 37). Moreover, and as James Howard Kunstler predicts,
there is the possibility that as we get past “peak oil” (Brown, 2006, p. 22; Grazi & van den Bergh, 2008,
p. 633), this social justice and equity problem will become much more severe in the future, as a
greater and greater proportion of the population might not be able to use the car at all, even for
everyday, normal human activities (Kunstler,
2005, p. 146). The feeling of unfairness, in the face of comfortable transport modes being reserved for
the wealthy, could lead to a crisis without precedent (Grazi & van den Bergh, 2008, p. 633), “a great
scramble to get out of the suburbs” (Brown, 2006, p. 37), and even to vandalism, physical abuse, and
violence (Kunstler, 2005, p. 320).
US Leadership and Economic Competitiveness
US action key to maintain global leadersihip
Anita Estell 08
united states chamber of commerce (Attorny and policy analyst)
http://www.uschamber.com/publications/reports/0804transportationchallenge
Population is growing, and the location of U.S. economic growth is shifting. Over the next 30
years, the U.S. population is projected to grow by 80 million people, from 300 million today to
nearly 380 million in 2035. The South and West are continuing to grow, and the major metropolitan
areas across the nation are being knit together into massive "megaregions" that are powering
economic growth. Approximately onehalf of the U.S. population is expected to live in metropolitan
areas of more than five million in population by 2035.
Economic activity is increasing. The economy has expanded rapidly—from a $2.7 trillion economy
in 1980 to a $13.2 trillion economy in 2006—and the size of the economy will more than double
over the next 30 years.
The United States is the undisputed leader in the global economy, but other countries—
particularly the developing countries of Asia—are growing quickly, and industries in these
countries are offering formidable competition to U.S. businesses. China is likely to emerge as the
number two global
economy in the coming decades and challenge the United States for the number one position.
Asserting US leadership in transportation infustructure is key
David Burwell December 8, 2011 (director of the Energy and Climate program at the Carnagie
Endowment) Our Global Choice: Asserting U.S. leadership on Climate and Energy
http://carnegieendowment.org/2011/12/08/our-global-choice-asserting-u.s.-leadership-on-climate-andenergy/8kon
In the United States, we have a clear and present opportunity to decarbonize a key sector –
transportation.There are five good reasons the United States should exhibit leadership on
transportation.First, the United States is an oil sponge. America's share of global oil consumption is
ten times its share of global oil reserves. As global oil demand continues to rise, from 87million barrels
per day to nearly 100 million barrels a day in 2035, fierce competition between nations will drive up
oil costs. If, instead of weaning ourselves off oil, the United States turns full bore to Canadian oil sands,
domestic oil shale, and other unconventional North American oils to feed our addiction, the costs to our
economy, communities, and ecology will be unprecedented. The less oil we use, the better for all of
us.Second, we are about to enact a new federal transportation bill that lacks clear national goals and
ignores the current transportation system's entrenched dependence on oil. Fully 94 percent of our
transportation system runs on oil. To ease the transition away from oil, transportation carbon should
be priced, whether it is upstream at the producers or downstream at the pump. Revenue from carbon
pricing should be directed toward building a more efficient system promoting both economic
competitiveness and domestic health and welfare. Carbon pricing plus strategic investment yield net
benefits, not costs.Third, we are a global technology leader on fuels and vehicles. We have identified
several non-food plants that can be processed into high-performance jet fuels, and our airlines have
initiated commercial flights using these biofuels. And, thanks to the new product line of clean, lowcarbon cars now coming off Detroit assembly lines, car sales actually rose during the recent oil price
spike, from 9 million in 2009 to 13 million in the last year. America can, and should, lead the world in
vehicle and fuel innovation.Fourth, we can give ourselves another leg up if we follow through on our
commitment to passenger and commercial fleet fuel efficiency standards -- cars to 54.5 miles per
gallon by 2025 and a 20 percent improvement in heavy truck efficiency by 2018. By aligning our
domestic markets with world demand for energy efficient transportation we have a unique
opportunity to increase our global market share while helping the world wean itself off oil.Fifth, we
must decarbonize urban transportation systems. City by city, a shift is underway. Metropolitan
regions, home to 65 percent of Americans, are increasing in population and productivity. Moreover,
younger residents have the lowest driver license registration in years, shifting travel away from personal
autos. New ways of integrating land use and transportation planning, enhanced by new technology
applications, are gearing up to transform the very fabric of urban mobility.
Transportation Racism = segregation
The creation of the interstate highway system and institutional support gave wealthy
citizens accesses to the fringes of urban areas to escape from the “fears of the city.”
Kuswa, Director of Debating at the University of Richmond, 2 (Winter 2002, Kevin Douglas, The Journal
of Law in Society, “Suburbification, Segregation, and the Consolidation of the Highway Machine,” vol.
31, no. 3, LexisNexis, JS)
How did the Census explain the increase in population that was taking place Mainly, it augmented the
old definition of urban with the notion of the urban fringe. The emergence of an urban fringe marked
an [*42] explicit separation between two types of urbanization: primarily urban and peripherally
urban. Primarily urban regions-once utopian places of commerce and leisure free from the hardships
of rural existence-took on new characteristics of social malaise, such that the urban fringe became a
flight away from the poverty, crime, and inadequate social services of the city. These judgments were
not explicit in the Census definition and neither was the source of the momentum propelling the
changes. In a way, the addition of an urban fringe that might or might not be considered urban was a
reflection of two competing views of the city. n32 Shifts in the classification of urban were not expected
to convey preferences for one form of settlement over another. Other historical factors indicate that
highways and automobiles were serving as (and creating the need for) escape hatches for wealthy
citizens to live outside of the city. It is more than coincidence that the [*43] urban fringe took on a life
of its own at the very same time that highway construction into urban areas was fully funded by
federal revenues. n33 The two inclusions of urban fringe-one being the densely settled regions outside
the city and the other being the very densely settled regions on the city's edge-took different angles,
setting up the transition from fringe to suburbia. The first inclusion required places to be
unincorporated, implying that eventual incorporation would open the possibility of suburban autonomy.
The second inclusion, bypassing concerns of incorporation, referred to a type of fringe that was densely
settled. A dense fringe allowed the Census to distinguish between differing forms of suburban growth. In
both instances, the fringe was poised to take on life of its own, weaning itself away from the city as a
maturing juvenile leaves an aging parent. The fringe worked to segregate itself, with an emphasis on
gate, from fears of the city. The trope of segregation must travel with the suburb, because the fear of
segregation "was not spoken by government officials responsible for administering the nation's social
programs." n34 National trends and sweeping generalizations of the suburb are difficult to defend. No
matter how many theoretical frameworks are applied, "suburbs differ much in the circumstances of
their creation, in price, size, durability, institutional complexity, and in the income, [*44] educational
level, and life style of their residents." n35 Despite all these variables, formations crop up that
transcend the particulars of a given suburb. A few such formations begin to work through segregation
and geographic racism (apartheid) by uniting urban highways with the suburb as a place of white
privilege. The suburb was not a consequence of white people feeling as though they needed to leave
the city (although that could be a factor); rather, institutional forces supported land and
transportation policies that benefited certain groups at the expense of others.
The Highway Machine serves as a mechanism for containment and enforcing the
segregation of people – key resources and social services are being funneled to
wealthy suburbs at the cost of those in the inner city.
Kuswa, Director of Debating at the University of Richmond, 2 (Winter 2002, Kevin Douglas, The Journal
of Law in Society, “Suburbification, Segregation, and the Consolidation of the Highway Machine,” vol.
31, no. 3, LexisNexis, JS)
[*46] The connections between highways and suburbia are only less plentiful than the connections
between suburbia and segregation. This can be diagramed through the highway machine as a
mechanism of containment, population accumulation, sprawl, and what Ronald Greene calls "the
racing and placing of populations." n39 According to Greene, a population control apparatus began
articulating modes of government to the problems of large American cities. Certain governing logics
began to contain these social crises by enforcing the segregation of people based on class and race.
While enforcing this stratification, these governing logics were simultaneously lodging blame for the
inequality firmly on the shoulders of those communities who had been stripped of access and
relegated to the decaying inner city. These moves gestured to a different sense of power than
traditionally deployed. Greene sets up this new intersection of bio-power in two places: the
emergence of the inner city as a threat to the health of the social body, and the ways a governing
apparatus acts to race and place populations. The rise of urban pathologies and the segregation of
"unhealthy" groups of people were made easier by the automobile's facilitation of suburban
communities commuting to predominantly white- collar jobs. Greene borrows from Mitchell Gordon, a
long-time journalist with the Wall Street Journal, to map the emergence of the diseased city. n40
Gordon's work constructs the city as a withering and doomed sign of human destruction, a perspective
advocated in the title, Sick Cities. Gordon's immediate concern involves transformations in
transportation and automobile expansion, as he explains in his conclusion: "More people in more
automobiles, with more time and money to spend keeping them in motion, will speed up the
conquest of urban space on earth and, notwithstanding the huge sums that will be poured into new
concrete carpeting, compound congestion at critical places." n41 [*47] A critique of the city helps to
draw attention to the terrible living conditions in urban areas, but it also contributes to the very sprawl
it abhors by painting a dismal picture of city life. Gordon's alternative to urban blight Page 6 3 J.L. Soc'y
31, *44 lacks muster-he simply encourages state and local governments to take more steps to assist
metropolitan areas in combating major problems-but his critique of urban life during the 1960s adds a
great deal to the residue of suburban flight. For every idyllic suburban community, countless blocks of
city residents were losing access to clean air and water, quality public education, and affordable land
or transportation. Gordon does not use the terminology of race very frequently, but he often engages in
containing discourse, positioning the city as the focal point of racing and placing populations. An
indispensable and primary link between Mitchell Gordon's dystopia and the notion of containment has
to be the full-scale construction of urban highways. Urban highways must be mapped as physical and
discursive arteries of containment, especially as they helped to construct suburbs that compounded
and fostered other signs of sick and diseased cities in the 1960s. Highways made suburban housing
available on one end while destroying urban housing on the other. Housing policy and transportation
policy represent some of the ways institutions have perfected practices that discriminate against
groups based on race. The racist effects of the highway, the city, and the suburb cannot be overlooked
because of a fear of ideological criticism or identity politics. Intersectional and interlocking
arrangements of oppression warrant criticism from as many directions as possible, including both
depth and breadth. By firming up the genealogy of the racist manifestations of the highway machine in
conjunction with the place of the suburb and the practices of state-regulated housing, it becomes clear
that critical whiteness is one crucial way to map the highway machine in this country. One place of
racism generated by suburbs and urban highways is the "black ghetto." Often cited as a reason for
fleeing the city by industries and white middle- class suburbanites, the black ghetto is about more
than stereotypes and discrimination. The black ghetto became the territory that was contained by
articulations between suburban growth, highway construction, and new housing opportunities for
many white [*48] families. According to Massey and Denton: "The black ghetto was constructed
through a series of well-defined institutional practices, private behaviors, and public policies by which
whites sought to contain growing urban black populations." n42 Instead of describing the extensive
examples of racism within American society in a bipolar way, a map of a particular arrangement of
domination makes criticism possible and more pertinent. Showing how the highway machine and
housing policy contributed to the oppression of non-whites demonstrates how institutions can further
racist goals with tacit consent by the white majority. In Paul Fotsch's writing on urban transportation
forms, he argues the link between freeways and housing segregation. n43 According to Fotsch, race
infuses these issues. And the details of how institutional racism governs many of the effects of
highways and suburbia is the key. This memory needs resurrecting. n44 Connecting the alignment
between the highway machine and housing segregation to the alignment between land development
and modes of transportation generates a line between institutional advancement and segregation.
Combined with the flow of resources being used to construct highways, changes in demography and
housing patterns manifested themselves in the oppressive deployment of white privilege. Urban and
suburban landscapes were polarizing, particularly on race and class lines. Through the 1960s and early
1970s in America, the map of spatial segregation continued to overwhelm many urban and suburban
regions. Deploying the Gramscian tropes of maneuverability and consolidation, Fotsch speaks of a
"hegemonic bloc" that works to align "large capital interests" with the "white working and middle class"
to create a top-down coalition. n45 The components of this bloc include roaduser coalitions, truckers,
steel workers, oil and gas industries, rubber [*49] manufacturers, hotel and restaurant chains. Fotsch's
standpoint provides a valuable back-drop to the exploitation left in the wake of the highway's
purposeful organization of spaces and places. Notice how the trope of security takes on racial
dimensions as the city is conflated with "poor people of colour:"
Minority groups’ lack of access to the outskirts of the city legitimized and perpetuated
the marginalization of groups and widened the gap between the rich and poor.
Kuswa, Director of Debating at the University of Richmond, 2 (Winter 2002, Kevin Douglas, The Journal
of Law in Society, “Suburbification, Segregation, and the Consolidation of the Highway Machine,” vol.
31, no. 3, LexisNexis, JS)
An auto journal in the 1920s noted: "illiterate, immigrant, Negro and other families" remained
predominantly outside the market for motorcars. n36 The fact that automobiles were available to
some American families and not others had severe ramifications on class and race politics.
Configurations of automobile ownership and automobile use joined with the newly entrenched
terrain of the suburb to legitimize and perpetuate the marginalization of certain groups. It is important
that we expand our focus to include the areas affected by the suburb and not just the suburb itself.
Many minority and lower income neighborhoods were excluded from the suburbification of America;
instead occupying limited land replete with collapsing infrastructure and urban pollution. These
conditions, especially the segregation and differentiation of social status based on borders within the
city, are not new phenomena. When horses performed many of the transportation roles in the city,
pollution was just as extreme in the form of excrement and disease. Usually the large stables were
located away from the privileged or well-to-do neighborhoods. On the other hand, it is important to
note that the suburb continued these practices and may have intensified them. [*45] Detailing the
suburb as a primary mechanism for the segregation of people, Lewis Mumford targets the metropolis
and its co-option by the military and the state. Citing overvalued land, increasing congestion, a lack of
space for recreation, a perpetual cycle of growth and decay, and an elitist distribution of social
services, Mumford contends: "The metropolitan regime opposes these domestic and civic functions: it
subordinates life to organized destruction, and it must therefore regiment, limit, and constrict every
exhibition of real life and culture." n37 Mumford's articulation of a regimented urban reality was
compounded by the massive expansion of road building following World War II and the 1956
solidification of the highway machine. The rise of the suburb-a place partially produced by (and fueling)
the highway's ability to connect the pristine periphery to the central business district-temporarily
resolved Mumford's concerns of density and congestion, only to displace those problems with more
severe environmental and human costs. Regardless of the organization of the suburb, the construction
of highways in urban areas was a traumatic and oppressive event for the people uprooted by the
highway's swath. The suburb also exacerbated the human displacement wrought by the highway
because the resources necessary to soften the blow of urban construction were being consumed by
suburban areas. The suburbs were typically beyond the reach of the poorest residents of the city, a
barrier to entry that widened the gap between the rich and the poor, particularly when the poor
neighborhoods were often the same neighborhoods torn up by the highway. The paradox was that
the highways and the vehicles that traversed them were being promoted under the banners of
maximum choice, individual access, and personal mobility. n38 These ideals were used to build more
highways, increasing the demand for automobiles, and removing choice from the inhabitants of the city.
Personal and individual choice could not exist on a large scale when part of the process necessitated a
destructive dissection of urban areas.
A car is the most dominant mode of transportation in America, a lack of car ownership
to low income families only increases racial isolation
Bullard 6, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 5 (Winter 2005,
Robert D., Moving the Movement for Transportation Justice Vol. 12 No. 1, “All Transit is Not Created
Equal,” Google Scholar, DV)
The private automobile is still the most dominant mode of transportation for every segment of the
American population and provides enormous employment access advantages to its owner.
Automobile ownership is almost universal in the United States with 91.7 percent of households owning
at least one vehicle. According to the 2001 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) released in 2003,
87.6 percent of white people, 83.1 percent of Asians and Hispanics, and 78.9 percent of African
Americans rely on the private car to get around. Clearly then, a lack of car ownership especially among
low-income people of color combined with an inadequate public transit service in many central cities
and metropolitan regions only serve to exacerbate social, economic, and racial isolation. Living near a
seven-lane freeway is not much of a benefit for someone who does not have access to a car.
Nationally, only seven percent of white households do not own a car, compared to 24 percent of
African American households, 17 percent of Latino households, and 13 percent of Asian American
households. African Americans are almost six times as likely as whites to use transit to get around. In
urban areas, African Americans and Latinos comprise over 54 percent of transit users (62 percent of
bus riders, 35 percent of subway riders, and 29 percent of commuter rail riders).
The discursive understanding of alternative rhetoric is the reason why the current
system stigmatizes people of color as poor
Wallace 09. professor and chair of the Department of English at the University of Central Florida,
09 [“Alternative Rhetoric and Morality:Writing from the Margins:” David L. C C C 6 1 : 2.
This discursive understanding of alternative rhetoric builds on linguist James Paul Gee’s notion of
language as existing only in Discourses, which he defines as “ways of being in the world; they are
forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as
gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes” (6–7). Gee sees Discourses as integrally bound up with
identity: “A Discourse is a sort of ‘identity kit’ which comes complete with the appropriate costume
and instructions on how to act, talk, and often write, so as to take on a particular role that others will
recognize” (7). Alternative rhetoric not only recognizes that language, rhetoric, and discourse are
intimately bound up with identity but also that they are not neutral—that the dominant versions of
each are systematically detrimental to some groups. For example, Muñoz argues that traditional
notion of masculinity (and the many discursive practices that enforce it in our society) “is calibrated to
shut down queer possibilities and energies” (58). Thus, at the age of thirteen when I hear my father say
to me, “you walk like a girl in those sandals,” language is being used to call me to account for
transgressing a male/female binary, and, in retrospect, I see my father as participating in a larger
system of compulsory heteronormativity—the purpose of which is to socialize boys and girls not only
into narrowly defined gender roles but to stigmatize and marginalize any behaviors or individuals that
fall outside of the supposed norms. The central question for alternative rhetoric, then, is how does
one resist such a system: how does one challenge a stigmatized identity while simultaneously
redefining the features of the Discourse that make it possible to meaningfully articulate that identity?
Policymakers have traditionally been blind to the consequences of racialized
segregation - Blacks have been condemned to a life of poverty as the norm
Massey and Denton, 93 (Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, *Professor of Sociology at
Princeton, President of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, AND ** Researcher,
1993, Harvard University Press, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. (pg.
2) https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Stanford%203%20week/Nineteen/Massey%20and%20Denton%20%20American%20Apartheid%20%20Segregation%20and%20the%20Making%20of%20the%20Underclass.pdfw=d278d0b7 [SJW])
If policymakers , scholars, and the public have been reluctant to acknowledge segregation's
persistence. they have likewise been blind to its consequences for American blacks. Residential
segregation is not a neutral fact; it systematically undermines the social and economic well-being of
blacks in the United States. Because of racial segregation. a significant share of black America is
condemned to experience a social environment where poverty and joblessness are the norm, where a
majority of children are born out of wedlock, where most families are on welfare, where educational
failure prevails. and where social and physical deterioration abound. Through prolonged exposure to
such an environment, black chances for social and economic success are drastically reduced.
Transportation development disproportionately harms poor minorities while
benefiting a middle-class white majority. Persistently the federal government has
subsidized highway projects that encourage segregation and suburbanization resulting
in the isolation of the inner city from job, housing and educational opportunity
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 04( Robert D., Ph.D.
Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity, C.A.) SJ
The disparity of fruits borne by various transportation development projects is a grim story of a stolen
harvest with disproportionate burdens and costs paid for in diminished health and life opportunities by
poor people and people of color. Many federally subsidized transportation construction and
infrastructure projects cut wide paths through low-income and people of color neighborhoods. They
physically isolate residents from their institutions and businesses, disrupt once-stable communities,
displace thriving businesses, contribute to urban sprawl, subsidize infrastructure decline, create traffic
gridlock, and subject residents to elevated risks from accidents, spills, and explosions from vehicles
carrying hazardous chemicals and other dangerous materials. Adding insult to injury, cutbacks in mass
transit subsidies have the potential to further isolate the poor in inner-city neighborhoods from areas
experiencing job growth—compromising what little they already have. So while some communities
receive transportation benefits, others pay the costs. Some communities get roads, while others are
stuck with the externalities such as exhaust fumes from other people's cars. Public transit and roads are
not created equal. Generally, public transit in the US is often equated with the poor and the less
successful. On the other hand, roads are associated with private automobiles, affluence, and success. In
reality, both transit and roads are subsidized and form the heart of our public transportation
infrastructure. The lion's share of transportation dollars is spent on roads, while urban transit systems
are often left in disrepair or are strapped for funds. Public transit has received roughly $50 billion since
the creation of the Urban Mass Transit Administration over thirty years ago, while roadway projects
have received over $205 billion since 1956.6 Opaque transportation policy obscures the truth:
transportation dollars are aiding and abetting the flight of people, jobs, and development to the
suburban fringe. The subsidies paid on behalf of suburban commuter transit riders, when compared
with inner-city transit riders, illustrate the extreme lack of parity within transit project funding. Transit
providers routinely respond differently to their urban, inner-city, transit-dependent riders and their
suburban "choice" riders who have cars. Attempts to lure white suburban commuters out of their cars
and onto transit often compete with providing quality services for urban transit-dependent people of
color, handicapped, and elderly transit riders. There also appears to be an unwritten rule that the poor
and people of color transit riders deserve fewer transit amenities than white suburbanites who own
cars. Whether intended or unintended, some transit providers bend over backward to accommodate
their mostly white suburban commuters with plush, air conditioned, clean-fuel and handicappedaccessible buses and trains, while inner-city transit riders are saddled with dilapidated, "dirty" diesel
buses. Enticing suburban commuters out of their cars will relieve congestion and improve air quality for
all and should be compatible with allocating equitable transportation dollars to urban transit needs.
Public policy is a critical component in maintaining transportation racism - White
American not only condones but actively maintains a separation between white
middle class America and the dark people in the city
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 04( Robert D., Ph.D.
Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity) SJ
Although the US has made tremendous strides in civil rights, race still matters in America.12 In his classic
book Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison illustrated that white racism not only harms individuals, but it also
renders black people and their communities invisible.11 By one definition, white racism is the "socially
organized set of attitudes, ideas, and practices that deny African Americans and other people of color
the dignity, opportunities, freedoms, and rewards that this nation offers white Americans."14 Racism
combines with public policies and industry practices to provide benefits for whites while shifting costs
to people of color.15 Many racist acts and practices are institutionalized informally —and in some
cases become standard public policy. For decades, it was legal and common practice for transit
agencies to operate separate and unequal systems for whites and blacks and for city, county, and state
government officials to use tax dollars to provide transportation amenities for white communities while
denying the same services to black communities. American cities continue to be racially polarized.
Residential apartheid is the dominant housing pattern for most African Americans —still the most
segregated ethnic group in the country. Nowhere is this separate society contrast more apparent than
in the nation's central cities and large metropolitan areas. Urban America 'fies the costly legacy of
slavery. Jim Crow, and institutionalized discrimination.16 America's dirty secret, institutionalized racism
is part or our national heritage.17 Racism is a potent tool for sorting people into their physical
environment.18 St. Claire Drake and Horace R. Cayton, their' 1945 groundbreaking Black Metropolis,
documented the role racism played in creating Chicago's South Side ghetto.19 In 1965, chologist
Kenneeth Clark proclaimed that racism created our nation's "dark ghettos."20 In 1968, the National
Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, the Kerner Commission, reported that "white society is deeply
implicated in the ghetto" and that "white institutions created it. white institutions maintain it, and
white society condones it":i The black ghetto is kept contained and isolated from the larger white
society through well-defined institutional practices, private actions, and government policies.22 Even
when the laws change, some discriminatory practices remain Some contend that "racism is an integral,
permanent, and indestructible component of this society."25 Permanent or not, racism continues to be
a central factor in explaining the social inequality, political exploitation, social isolation, and the poor
health of people of color in the United States. Furthermore, contemporary race relations in America
can no longer be viewed in the black-white paradigm. Racism makes the daily life experiences of most
African Americans, Latino Americans, Native Americans, and Asian and Pacific Islander Americans very
different from that of most white Americans. Modern racism must be understood as an everyday lived
experience.24 Not having reliable public transportation can mean the difference between gainful
employment and a life of poverty in the ghettos and barrios. Since most do not have cars,
transportation is even more crucial for the vulnerable population that is moving from welfare to work.
Training, skills, and jobs are meaningless if millions of Americans can't get to work. Of course, it would
be ideal if job centers Were closer to the homes of inner-city residents, but few urban core
neighborhoods have experienced an economic revitalization that can rival the current jobs found in the
suburbs. Transportation remains a major stumbling block for many to achieve self-sufficiency. It boils
down to "no transportation, no job," and, more often than not. public transportation does not connect
urban residents to jobs. Transportation policies did not emerge in a race- and class-neutral society.
Transportation-planning outcomes often reflected the biases of their originators with the losers
comprised largely of the poor, powerless, and people of color. Transportation is about more than just
land use. Beyond mapping out the paths of freeways and high transportation policies determine the
allocation of funds and benefit^ the enforcement of environmental regulations, and the siting 0f'
facilities. Transportation planning affects residential and commercial patterns, and infrastructure
development.25 White racism shapes transportation and transportation-related decisions, which have
consequently created a national transportation infrastructure that denies many black Americans and
other people of color the benefits freedoms, opportunities, and rewards offered to white Americans.
In the end, racist transportation policies can determine where people of color live, work, and play.26
Federal transportation policy is the key to maintaining transportation apartheid - the
government invests in roads at 80% to the 20% allocated to public transportation
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 04( Robert D., Ph.D.
Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity) SJ
While some progress has been made since Just Transportation: Dismantling Race and Class Barriers to
Mobility in 1997 much remains the same. Discrimination still places an extra "tax" on poor people and
people of color who need safe, affordable, and accessible public transportation. Many of the barriers
that were chronicled in Just Transportation have not disappeared overnight or evaporated with time.
Transportation spending programs do not benefit all populations equally. n27 Follow the
transportation dollars and one can tell who is important and who is not. The lion's share of
transportation dollars is spent on roads, while urban transit systems are often left in disrepair. n28
Nationally, 80% of all surface transportation funds is earmarked for highways and 20% is earmarked
for public transportation. Public transit has received roughly $ 50 billion since the creation of the
Urban Mass Transit Administration over thirty years ago, n30 while roadway projects have received
over $ 205 billion since 1956. On average, states spend just $ 0.55 per person of their federal
transportation funds on pedestrian projects, less than 1% of their total federal transportation dollars.
Average spending on highways came to $ 72 per person.
Transportation apartheid has trapped minorities is debilitating city infrastructures
with little hope for equal access to housing, education or employment
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 04( Robert D., Ph.D.
Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity) SJ
This book represents a small but significant part of the transportation equity movement—a movement
that is redefining transportation as an environmental, economic, civil, and human right. The need for
transportation touches every aspect of our lives and daily routines. The course of one day could
necessitate a range of activities: working, shopping, visiting friends, attending church, or going to the
doctor. Furthermore, transportation provides access to opportunity and serves as a key component in
addressing poverty, unemployment, and equal opportunity goals while ensuring equal access to
education, employment, and other public services. Lest anyone dismiss transportation as a tangential
expense, consider that except for housing, Americans spend more on transportation than any other
household disbursement, including food, education, and health care. The average American household
spends one fifth of its income—or about S6,000 a year—for each car that it owns and operates.2 It is not
uncommon for many low-income, people of color households to spend up to one-third of their income
on transportation. This book affirms that transportation is neither a marginal cost nor an irrelevant
need, but a necessity. Highway Robbery focuses on people of color because their struggles unite
transportation and civil rights into one framework: transportation equity. Transportation equity is
consistent with the goals of the larger environmental justice and civil rights movements. We emphasize
issues of justice, fairness, and equity. We define transportation equity as a basic right, a right worth
fighting for. Transportation systems do not spring up out of thin air. They are planned—and, in many
cases, planned poorly when it comes to people of color. Conscious decisions determine the location of
freeways, bus stops, fueling stations, and train stations. Decisions to build highways expressways, and
beltways have far-reaching effects on land use, energy policies, and the environment. Decisions by
county commissioners to bar the extension of public transit to job-rich economic activity centers in
suburban counties and instead spend their transportation dollars on repairing and expanding the
nation's roads have serious mobility implications for central city residents. Together, all these
transportation decisions shape United States metropolitan areas, growth patterns, physical mobility,
and economic opportunities.3 These same transportation policies have also aided, and in some cases
subsidized, racial, economic, and environmental inequities as evidenced by the segregated housing and
spatial layout of our central cities and suburbs. It is not by chance that millions of Americans have been
socially isolated and relegated to economically depressed and deteriorating central cities and that
transportation apartheid has been created.
Minorities face economic inequities as a result of transportation policies oriented
toward travel by car
Sanchez, Director and Associate Professor Urban Affairs and Planning Program Virginia Tech –
Alexandria Center and Brenman Executive Director Washington State Human Rights Commission,
2007 (Thomas W. and Marc; “Transportation Equity and Environmental Justice: Lessons from Hurricane
Katrina:: Environmental Justice 1(2): March 29, p. 73-80) SJ
Americans have become increasingly mobile and more reliant on automobiles to meet their travel
needs, due largely to transportation policies adopted after World War II that emphasized highway
development over public transportation. According to Census 2000 data, less than 5 percent of trips to
work in urban areas were made by public transit; however, this varies significantly by race and location.2
Minorities, however, are less likely to own cars than whites and are more often dependent on public
transportation. The “transit-dependent” must often rely on public transportation not only to travel to
work but also to get to school, obtain medical care, attend religious services, and shop for basic
necessities such as groceries. The transit-dependent are often people with low incomes, and thus, in
addition to facing more difficulties getting around, they face economic inequities as a result of
transportation policies oriented toward travel by car. Surface transportation policies at the local,
regional, state, and national levels have a direct impact on urban land use and development patterns.
The types of transportation facilities and services in which public funds are invested provide varying
levels of access to meet basic social and economic needs. The way communities develop land dictates
the need for certain types of transportation, and, on the other hand, the transportation options in which
communities invest influence patterns of urban development.
Land use oriented toward the use of cars feeds segregation.
Mercier, Professor at Université Laval, 09 (2009, Jean, Equity, Social Justice, and Sustainable Urban
Transportation in the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 145–163, Google Books, REM)
There are three other points we would like to make in this section, which we have not yet touched
upon. The first point is that a land use strongly oriented toward the car and suburban living naturally
leads to strong segregation patterns, so much so that “the powerful concept of segregation [may]
perhaps [be] the strongest push factor in land use-transportation” (Levinson & Krizek, 2008, p. 56).
The rich will generally prefer to be with other wealthy people, and blacks and whites will usually be
reluctant to be the only family of their race in a given neighborhood (Levinson & Krizek, 2008, p. 57)—
a land-use and transportation reform would not substantially change these preferences. However, the
present land use in most North American cities, leaving the poorer inner cities exclusively to the
disadvantaged, has the effect of worsen- ing social inequality, simply because the wealthy, living far
away from the city center, do not have a strong stake in its condition, which would not be the case if
they lived closer by.
Transportation economics contribute to class segregation
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 04( Robert D., Ph.D.
Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity) SJ
One possible explanation for variation in class segregation focuses on the economics of
transportation. Glaeser, Kahn, and Rappaport (2008) identify a large gap in poverty rates between
central cities and suburbs, especially in older metropolitan areas with subway systems. They account
for this gap in terms of the price of transportation and the opportunity costs of travel, with the low
price of public transport attracting the poor to central cities and the high opportunity costs driving the
affluent to suburbs. Despite the seeming logic of this account, it nonetheless has certain empirical
problems.
Regulation of housing production causes income segregation.
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 04( Robert D., Ph.D.
Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity) SJ
In the 1990s, researchers documented an increase in class segregation within U.S. metropolitan areas
but did not address its causes other than to point out the obvious fact that more income inequality
creates more potential for segregation (Massey and Eggers, 1993; Jargowsky, 1997; Watson, 2006).
However, a new data set on land-use regulations created by Pendall allows us to examine the degree to
which the political regulation of housing production contributes to income segregation measured both
in terms of evenness and exposure. To the extent that housing units differ in price, in a competitive
market, people will sort themselves into different homes based on ability to pay. If high-priced
housing units are located in different neighborhoods than low-priced housing units, economic
segregation will inevitably occur.
Political decisions contribute to class segregation
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 04( Robert D., Ph.D.
Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity) SJ
Zoning originally developed in the 1920s in rural settlements on the outskirts of growing cities, and
became more prominent as industrialization, black migration, and immigration increased the density of
central cities. Residents of suburban jurisdictions had strong fiscal incentives, buttressed by racial and
class prejudice, to maintain the character of their towns by blocking dense residential development. As a
result, poverty became concentrated in dense areas with affordable housing, mostly in central cities,
and surrounding suburbs became enclaves of low-density affluence. In sum, class segregation is as
much a product of politics as of markets. Although markets allocate people to housing based on
income and price, political decisions allocate housing of different prices to different neighborhoods
and thereby turn the market into a mechanism for class segregation.
Housing
Residential segregation occurs as a result of racial and class inequality in the U.S.
Rothwell and Massey, 10 (Jonathan T.- Brookings Institution; Princeton University - Woodrow
Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and Douglas S- Princeton University - Department of Sociology
."Density Zoning and Class Segregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas Density Zoning and Class Segregation
in U.S. Metropolitan Areas Density Zoning and Class Segregation." Social Science Quarterly 91, no. 5:
1123-1143. Academic Search Premier, (accessed July 18, 2012[SR1] )). SJ
Objectives. Socioeconomic segregation rose substantially in U.S. cities during the final decades of the
20th century, and we argue that zoning regulations are an important cause of this increase. Methods.
We measure neighborhood economic segregation using the Gini coefficient for neighborhood income
inequality and the poor-affluent exposure index. These outcomes are regressed on an index of density
zoning developed from the work of Pendall for 50 U.S. metropolitan areas, while controlling for other
metropolitan characteristics likely to affect urban housing markets and class segregation. Results. For
both 2000 and changes from 1990 to 2000, OLS estimates reveal a strong relationship between density
zoning and income segregation, and replication using 2SLS suggests that the relationship is causal. We
also show that zoning is associated with higher interjurisdictional inequality. Conclusions. Metropolitan
areas with suburbs that restrict the density of residential construction are more segregated on the
basis of income than those with more permissive density zoning regimes. This arrangement
perpetuates and exacerbates racial and class inequality in the United States.
White privilege in American society results in new forms of racism resulting in
housing and employment segregation
Bonilla-Silva, 06- professor of sociology at Duke University (Eduardo, Racism without Racists: second
edition) SJ
Color-blind racism became the dominant racial ideology as the mechanisms
and practices for keeping blacks and other racial minorities ‘‘at the
bottom of the well’’ changed. I have argued elsewhere that contemporary
racial inequality is reproduced through ‘‘New Racism’’ practices that are
subtle, institutional, and apparently nonracial.19 In contrast to the Jim
Crow era, where racial inequality was enforced through overt means (e.g.,
signs saying ‘‘No Niggers Welcomed Here’’ or shotgun diplomacy at the
voting booth), today racial practices operate in ‘‘now you see it, now you
don’t’’ fashion. For example, residential segregation, which is almost as
high today as it was in the past, is no longer accomplished through
overtly discriminatory practices. Instead, covert behaviors such as not
showing all the available units, steering minorities and whites into certain
neighborhoods, quoting higher rents or prices to minority applicants, or
not advertising units at all are the weapons of choice to maintain separate
communities.20 In the economic field, ‘‘smiling face’’ discrimination (‘‘We
don’t have jobs now, but please check later’’), advertising job openings in
mostly white networks and ethnic newspapers, and steering highly educated
people of color into poorly remunerated jobs or jobs with limited
opportunities for mobility are the new ways of keeping minorities in a
secondary position.Politically, although the Civil Rights struggles have
helped remove many of the obstacles for the electoral participation of
people of color, ‘‘racial gerrymandering, multimember legislative districts,
election runoffs, annexation of predominantly white areas, at-large
district elections, and anti–single-shot devices (disallowing concentrating
votes in one or two candidates in cities using at-large elections) have
become standard practices to disenfranchise’’ people of color.22 Whether
in banks, restaurants, school admissions, or housing transactions, the
maintenance of white privilege is done in a way that defies facile racial
readings. Hence, the contours of color-blind racism fit America’s new racism
quite well.
White supremacy causes residential segregation, contributing to racial isolation
Bonilla-Silva, 06- professor of sociology at Duke University (Eduardo, Racism without Racists: second
edition) SJ
Despite whites’ belief that residential and school segregation, friendship, and attraction are natural
and raceless occurrences, social scientists have documented how racial considerations affect all these
issues. For example, residential segregation is created by white buyers searching for white
neighborhoods and aided by realtors, bankers, and sellers.31 As white neighborhoods develop, white
schools follow—an outcome that further contributes to the process of racial isolation. Socialized in a
‘‘white habitus’’ (see chapter 5) and influenced by the Eurocentric culture, it is no wonder whites
interpret their racialized choices for white significant others as ‘‘natural.’’ They are the ‘‘natural’’
consequence of a white socialization process.
Poverty
The urban highway subjugates those who cannot access the highway and keeps them
contained in a trap of poverty.
Kuswa, Director of Debating at the University of Richmond, 2 (Winter 2002, Kevin Douglas, The Journal
of Law in Society, “Suburbification, Segregation, and the Consolidation of the Highway Machine,” vol.
31, no. 3, LexisNexis, JS)
One of the devastating memories of the highway and suburbia during the middle of the last century
concerns race and class and the ways many impoverished and minority people were segregated and
contained in certain city regions. How is power exercised in these instances How can these histories be
tied together to critique the effects of the highway machine A relational notion of power can assist
critical whiteness in confronting any attempts to govern through a spatial control of mobility and
housing that promotes race and class divisions. Power no longer constitutes authority in a bipolar
way, for the exercise of power produces positive and negative effects. More specifically, the racing
and placing of populations occurs through the highway machine's exercise of pastoral power, not
through a barricade set up by the military or forced internment. A concept like pastoral power turns
away from analyzing situations in terms of "those with power" against "those without." Pastoral power,
for Foucault, involves the individualization and totalization of power's objects: the subject and the
flock. n62 Civil [*55] institutions took it upon themselves to save and improve the citizenry, rather than
simply governing the larger social body. Individuals are subject to rigid norms and groups are subjugated
by state policies and enforcement. In a less abstract sense, the urban highway subjugates communities
that are not able to access the highway, while people who do have access are subject to its
restrictions and its path. The subject, or driver, desires easy access to employment as well as a
domestic escape from the perceived dangers of city life. Meanwhile, the flock, or abstracted
community, desires security and the comforts of modernity. The underside of the subject and the
flock is, of course, the non-citizen and the non-community-the elements that must be purged and
sanitized for the smooth functioning of society. This is how pastoral power produces subjectivities at
the same time that it subjugates others. Through the highway machine, the Page 9 3 J.L. Soc'y 31, *52
non-citizen emerges as the residue of circulation and distribution-the immobile person contained in a
trap of poverty and walled-in by the very structures designed to expand society's possibilities of
travel. The have-nots become the move-nots, resigned to remain within a crowded cage contrasted
with the adjacent freedom of superhighways and airports. Through the highway machine, the noncommunity emerges as the residue of out-migration and gentrification, effectively raising and
depressing property rates to squeeze some people in and some people out. Drawing an analogy to a
more popularized form of containment will serve to highlight the process. Greene relates the discourse
of containment to United States foreign policy in the "third world," by showing how poverty and
overpopulation had to be contained in the [*56] name of democracy. n63 The borderlines between
North and South (the North South gap) and between East and West (the East West divide or the Iron
Curtain) became regions where containment worked to place and displace particular territories and
populations. These logics appeared across the globe in the form of proxy wars (Angola, Nicaragua,
Vietnam, Afghanistan); in the emergence of spheres of influence (the bear in the backyard and the
domino theory); and in the separation of worlds into the industrialized first world, the industrializing or
communist-bloc second world, and the underdeveloped or newly independent third world. Containment
worked in these contexts to isolate conditions of political instability, poverty, and rapid population
growth. These conditions then marked places that could breed communism or pose a potential threat to
the West. Greene focuses on how the population control apparatus adopted containment rhetoric to
further birth control, family planning, and health promotion in the so-called third world. This article uses
Greene's concept to make a brief comment on the tropes of "cleanliness," "the pristine," "health,"
and "whiteness" operating within containment. n64 From there, we turn toward the ways these
discourses produce racial divisions within American cities. Early in his account of the population
apparatus, Greene notes "discourse strategies offer the means for making the conduct of a population
visible as a problem" and "a discourse strategy exists as a norm for evaluating [*57] the welfare of a
population." n65 We recognize, though, that these discursive strategies are material and not just
descriptive, that rhetorical positioning operates alongside ethical judgment, and that discursive
foundations allow the exercise of power to be enabling and disabling at any given moment. n66 Many
strategies circulate together to make certain populations visible and judge their productivity. Deploying
the need for health, for instance, discursive strategies began to associate the health of the individual
with the health of the nation and the health of the social body. A number of techniques combine to
determine which populations are unhealthy and how those populations can be distinguished, separated,
and contained. The health of a given population works figuratively and literally (metaphorically and
physically). As Greene contends: "the individual health/social health couplet allows the language of
public health and disease to be deployed in order to pathologize particular practices as 'unhealthy' for
both the individual and the social body." n67 Greene's link between the discourse of health and
containment is clear in the emergence of a Malthusian couple and state promotion of birth control,
making the notion of "racing and placing populations" a significant one to import to the intersection
between the suburb and whiteness. n68
White actions and decisions created and maintained the residential structures known
as ghettoes.
Massey and Denton, 93 (Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, *Professor of Sociology at
Princeton, President of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, AND ** Researcher,
1993, Harvard University Press, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass.
(pg.18-19) https://dlweb.dropbox.com/get/Stanford%203%20week/Nineteen/Massey%20and%20Denton%20%20American%20Apartheid%20%20Segregation%20and%20the%20Making%20of%20the%20Underclass.pdfw=d278d0b7 [SJW])
The term "ghetto" means different things to different people. To some observers it simply means a
black residential area; to others it connotes an area that is not only black but very poor and plagued
by a host of social and economic problems. In order to distinguish clearly between race and class in
discussing black residential patterns, our use of the term "ghetto" refers only to the racial make-up of
a neighborhood; it is not intended to describe anything about a black neighborhood's class
composition. For our purposes, a ghetto is a set of neighborhoods that are exclusively inhabited by
members of one group, within which virtually all members of that group live. By this definition, no
ethnic or racial group in the history of the United States, except one, has ever experienced
ghettoization, even briefly. For urban blacks, the ghetto has been the paradigmatic residential
configuration for at least eighty years. The emergence of the black ghetto did not happen as a chance
by-product of other socioeconomic processes. Rather, white Americans made a series of deliberate
decisions to deny blacks access to urban housing markets and to reinforce their spatial segregation.
Through its actions and inactions, white America built and maintained the residential structure of the
ghetto. Sometimes the decisions were individual, at other times they were collective, and at still other
times the powers and prerogatives of government were harnessed to maintain the residential color
line; but at critical points between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the passage of the Fair Housing
Act in 1968, white America chose to strengthen the walls of the ghetto .
When geographically concentrated poverty occurs it threatens the success of a
community, and when resources can be targeted to them or they can reach a better
situation it greatly improves their conditions.
Price 2011 (Hayling Price A Seat at the Table: Place-Based Urban Policy and Community Engagement.
Harvard Journal Of African American Public Policy, 1765-73. JRW)
On the federal level, urban policy has come to address “the twin problems of poverty and racism and
their progeny in U.S. cities,” which generates geographically concentrated poverty (Persons 2004).
This socioeconomic polarization has been proven to have “deleterious consequences for individuals
and entire communities, generating spatial inequality and threatening the fiscal viability of central
cities” (Zonta 2005). Accounting for the residential segregation that isolates low-income, inner-city
populations, some policy makers have advocated for a place-based approach to urban policy in order
to alleviate severe economic distress. Such a strategy is geared toward specific geographic areas,
“focusing resources in targeted places and drawing on the compounding effect of well-coordinated
action” (White House 2009). Observers have noted that the Obama administration is the first
executive branch to openly embrace a comprehensive strategy for urban revitalization since such
reforms were institutionalized under former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society platform,
which included the War on Poverty (Lester 2009). While urban renewal and other early place-based
initiatives emphasized infrastructure over human development, efforts informed by the Johnson
administration’s approach have understood the “ecological sensibility that recognizes that problems
are multifaceted and require holistic solutions” (Ryan 2008). This work has taken on a broader context
and come to encompass physical and social revitalization since Johnson’s historic reforms were
initiated in the 1960s. The Great Society agenda in the 1960s, including the Comprehensive Employment
Training Act, Job Corps, Head Start, and Model Cities, shifted the paradigm of urban policy from placecentric to people-oriented. However, since the twilight of Johnson’s Great Society policy platform,
there remained a significant dearth of strategic federal investment in urban communities for decades.
With decreased dependency on the votes of African Americans (who were the primary target population
of these programs), political support for this agenda waned during the 1970s and 1980s (Persons 2004).
The resulting divestment left inner cities without much-needed funding to leverage local capital or
investment. While the federal government returned to making strategic investments directly in inner
cities during the 1990s, it lacked a comprehensive approach to urban revitalization until President
Barack Obama took office.
Urban Transportation is a key social justice and equity issue. Poverty is now spreading
to the suburbs, resulting in a substantial growth in the urban poor.
Mercier, Professor at Université Laval, 09 (2009, Jean, Equity, Social Justice, and Sustainable Urban
Transportation in the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 145–163, Google Books, REM)
During the era of cheap and abundant oil, coming to an end within the next few decades, and when
environmental matters fell under the radar, urban transportation was not seen as an important social
justice and equity issue. Often, engineers were in charge of this area of public administration, and the
engineering answer to urban transport was generally to build more and more roads, to satisfy the
growing demand. The emphasis was on offering more supply, and not on trying to shape or affect
demand. Public administration concentrated its efforts on trying to work on congestion, without
putting into question the basic premises of our urban transportation system. In the past few years,
partly because of a better understanding of our limited resources, and because we now see more clearly
that a resource used by one group of persons is unavailable to another, transportation, and
transportation in large cities in particular, is becoming a more contentious issue. As we move further
and further away from peak production of oil and gas, and as these resources become rarer and,
consequently, more expensive, urban mobility, that is to say the capacity to move from one point to
another in large cities, will become an equity and a social justice challenge. Because cities have
extended far into the suburbs, a substantial number of jobs are now situated in the suburbs, making it
more and more challenging for the inner-city poor to reach the job market. But there is a relatively
new angle to the problem, and that is that poverty may extend to the suburbs, as gas prices rise to the
point that a new form of poverty becomes more and more familiar: the suburban poor.
The US exhibits record high-income differentials that are equivalent to those in
developing countries. A continuation of this trend will result in the destruction of
human societies.
Mercier, Professor at Université Laval, 09 (2009, Jean, Equity, Social Justice, and Sustainable Urban
Transportation in the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 145–163, Google Books, REM)
At this point, it is important to address some other elements of the context. These new mobility
challenges, increasingly different for the poor than for the wealthy, appear in the context of a growing
gap between the wealthy and the less wealthy. In many developing countries, and also in the United
States, income differentials between the wealthy and the less wealthy are reaching record highs, and
executive compensation in large companies may only be the tip of the iceberg. This situation may
become even more contentious if, as Hervé Kempf (2007) suggests, the lifestyle of the very rich, and
the desire of all the rest of us to follow suit as best we can, are putting the survival of the planet at
high risk. Because of these different factors, there is the possibility that in the third millennium, we will
see large differences in revenue and in access to natural resources, giving way to social tensions, and
even the possible destruction of human and sustainable societies (Kunstler, 2005, p. 24).
Underprivileged children are disadvantaged by a transportation system that harms the
poor - limiting their access to proper schooling.
Dodson, Urban Research Program, 06 (2006, Jago, “Investing in the Social Dimensions of Transport
Disadvantage—I. Toward New Concepts and Methods,” Vol. 24, No. 4, 433–453, Google Books, REM)
Young people constitute a further group at risk of transport disadvantage. Brownlee & McDonald (1992)
suggest that transport disadvantage relating to the school journey, and to entertainment and leisure
trips, is a significant problem for outer urban youth in Australia. This conclusion is supported by Winter’s
study which suggests that inadequate transport constrains the educational and social opportunities for
this group. Ridgewell et al. (2005) demonstrated that children’s school travel is highly constrained
depending on where they live within the urban system. In recent years ‘walking school buses’ have
emerged to address the lack of safe pedestrian routes between home and school. This response to the
transport exclusion faced by young children attests to the extent to which the transport needs of this
group are often not met (Mackett et al., 2003; Timperio et al., 2004).
Gentrification reduces access to employment and transportation.
Dodson, Urban Research Program, 06 (2006, Jago, “Investing in the Social Dimensions of Transport
Disadvantage—I. Toward New Concepts and Methods,” Vol. 24, No. 4, 433–453, Google Books, REM)
The differentiation of social status, and accordingly, opportunity across urban space has become a major
feature of recent inquiry. Observation of the labor market and housing divisions that have opened up in
Australia’s major cities (Burke & Hayward, 2000; O’Connor & Healy, 2002; Dodson, 2004), reflect similar
reports for other metropolitan areas (Freestone & Murphy, 1998; Randolph, 2002). Such shifts have
received much conceptual and empirical attention from urban researchers, and there has been a
particular emphasis, informed by overseas reports, on the concept of the spatially ‘divided city’
(Fainstein et al., 1992; van Kempen & Marcuse, 1997; O’Connor et al., 2001). Divided cities display high
degrees of spatial differentiation between different socio-economic groups, and these distinctions can
be observed in spatial housing and labor market patterns (Fainstein et al., 1992). The related
phenomenon of gentrification is one example of such processes re-shaping urban areas under the
processes described above. Gentrification involving the movement of high-income and high labor
market status populations to previously declining inner urban locations, results in housing market
price shifts displacing the existing less advantaged residents (Smith, 1996). Such housing market shifts
have been prominent features of urban socio-spatial change in recent decades (Logan, 1985; Zukin,
1988). This has been the case, particularly in many European and Australian cities, where the middle
class has demonstrated a willingness to return to residing in the inner city. This shift has had
important consequences for the distribution of access to important social resources, such as highvalue employment (O’Connor & Healy, 2002) as well as transport services (Morris et al., 2002).
Social exclusion prevents lower classmen from accessing employment and housing
through public transportation.
Dodson, Urban Research Program, 06 (2006, Jago, “Investing in the Social Dimensions of Transport
Disadvantage—I. Toward New Concepts and Methods,” Vol. 24, No. 4, 433–453, Google Books, REM)
As changing socio-economic urban spatial patterns became increasingly prominent during the 1990s,
policy makers began to dedicate greater attention to the broader social, economic and policy
consequences of these sharpened distinctions. In response to growing policy imperatives the
phenomenon ‘social exclusion’ received much scholarly and policy attention, becoming an object of
research. Social exclusion broadly captures the situation in which socio-economic circumstances
prevent individuals or households, typically those at the lowest socio-economic level, and who are the
most vulnerable to spatial restructuring processes, from accessing employment, adequate housing,
and other social and community services (Peace, 2001). Characteristically, studies of social exclusion
incorporate a strong spatial dimension. This can be seen in the segregation from those at the lower end
of the wealth spectrum, from high quality housing markets, high-value labor markets and from good
access to public services. For example, housing is most affordable in poorer, outer suburban areas of
Melbourne (Wulff & Reynolds, 2000), however, these less advantaged locations are not likely to be
well served by public transport (Dodson, 2004).
Crime
Higher employment levels will decrease crime rates
Associated Press 2012 (Kathy Barth Hoffman 3/8/2012, “Snyder plan would have troopers fight city crime”,
LexixNexis ) SEW
Snyder also wants the state to pursue crime prevention and intervention. He plans to set aside $15
million in the budget year that starts Oct. 1 to provide job training for 15- to 29-year-olds and exoffenders in cities with the worst crime. "We need a comprehensive approach to public safety that
offers increased economic activity for our children and their parents in our distressed communities to
break the cycle of crime," he said. Flint Police Chief Lavern Lock said the approach makes a lot of sense.
The cash-strapped city has struggled with increasing violent crime after being forced to lay off large
numbers of police officers and firefighters. The city will be able to reopen its jail with $4.5 million from
the state proposed by Snyder, but Lock said finding more jobs for people in a city with a 16.8 percent
seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate also will help. "If they're working and providing for their
families, they're not out committing crimes," he said. "Statistics show that the more employed people
are, the less crime that they commit."
Poverty levels linked with high and violent crime rates
Hinterland Gazette 2011 (Janet Shan, 5/30/11, “Detroit & Flint Top List of 10 Most Dangerous Cities
in U.S. Where Violence Linked with Poverty” ) SEW
A 24/7 Wall St. review of 2010 FBI crime data shows violent crime rose in several of the largest and
poorest cities in the U.S., particularly those which have been in decline for some time. Even when crime
rates dropped, older urban areas still had more violent crime than other cities. Philadelphia, Pa.,
Cleveland, Ohio, Buffalo, N.Y., and Hartford, Conn., finished high on the FBIs list but failed to make the
final 24/7 Wall St. ranking.
Even while crime rates fall in the city, domestic violence reports increase.
USA TODAY (Kevin Johnson, 4/30/12, “Police tie domestic violence, economy”, LexisNexis, ) SEW
Domestic violence is not a separate category of crime tracked in the FBI's annual crime report, which
has recorded a sustained decline in overall violence since the financial collapse in 2008. Even so, the
survey concludes, police are responding to more domestic incidents, regardless of whether charges
are filed. In Camden, N.J., police responded to 9,100 domestic incidents in 2011, up from 7,500 calls in
2010. Camden Police Chief Scott Thomson said it was "impossible'' to separate the economy from the
domestic turmoil in the city where unemployment is 19%. Thomson said domestic-related aggravated
assaults increased nearly 10% in 2011 from levels in 2010. The chief said the department has been
tracking the calls closely because of the time and personnel they draw from a force that has been
depleted in the past two years with layoffs of about 200 employees, another consequence of the poor
economy.
"When stresses in the home increase because of unemployment and other hardships, domestic
violence increases," Thomson said. "We see it on the street."
Eugene, Ore., Police Chief Pete Kerns said troubling increases in assaults have coincided with the
timing of the financial crisis and the slow recovery. In 2011, aggravated assaults increased to 234, up
from 188 in 2010. Simple assaults also were up in 2011 to 1,552, from 1,440 in 2010.
Kerns said, more of the assaults are taking place in residential communities in addition to nightclubs and
other traditional trouble spots.
The police survey appears to corroborate findings in 2009 by the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
Katie Ray-Jones, president of the hotline, said that financial stress was a factor in "intensifying and
escalating" reported abuse.
Mass Transit reduces Casualties and Pollution
Litman, 10 (Todd, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, “Evaluating Public Transportation Health Benefits,” 06/10/10,
http://www.apta.com/resources/reportsandpublications/Documents/APTA_Health_Benefits_Litman.pdf)
KK
Traffic casualty rates tend to decline as public transit travel increases in an area. Residents of transitoriented communities have only about a quarter the per capita traffic fatality rate as residents of
sprawled, automobile-dependent communities. Public transit reduces pollution emissions per
passenger-mile, and transit-oriented development provides additional emission reductions by
reducing per capita vehicle travel.
The USFG should invest in greater safety measures for rail systems.
Hedgpeth, 11 (06/25/11, Dana, The Washington Post, “Metro Crime Worries Grow,” Lexus Nexis
Academic)
Crime is being driven from the District's streets into the region's rail system, and Metro needs more
officers to deal with the problem, D.C. and Transit Police testified Friday during a congressional hearing
on Metro security and safety. "We've been really successful driving crime down in the city, but our
success is creating problems for Metro," D.C Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said. "They're going to the
easiest place to carry on with crimes and get away." Her statement came during the hearing before the
House subcommittee on Health Care, District of Columbia, Census and the National Archives. Lanier
testified along with Metro General Manager Richard Sarles, -Transit Police Chief Michael Taborn and
Fairfax County Executive Anthony H. Griffin. In the hearing, congressional leaders questioned the four
officials on topics including the -Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's efforts to combat
terrorist threats, improve its safety operations after the -2009 Red Line crash that killed nine people,
and deal with assaults on Metro's bus drivers. The hearing, titled "WMATA: Is there a Security Gap,"
comes after recent reports of -attacks on three bus drivers-http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/drgridlock/post/metro-union-details-attacks-on-bus-drivers/2011/06/22/AG77USgH_blog.html and a bomb scare last week at the Rockville Station on the Red Line. Sarles told lawmakers that the transit
agency has received commitments of $108 million in grants in the past four years to help improve its
security. Of that, only $24 million has been used because of cumbersome rules from the -Federal
Emergency Management Agency and the -Department of Homeland Security to spend the money,
Metro officials said. Sarles said Metro collaborates with more than 40 federal, state and local law
enforcement agencies. Metro's Transit Police division has 20 sworn police officers who serve on Metro's
anti-terrorism team and work closely with federal air marshals and the- Transportation Security
Administration to "develop new strategies and techniques for combating acts of terror," Sarles said. The
Metro system has 7,078 closed-circuit cameras, Sarles said. Of those, 81 percent are working, and
Transit Police have "begun the process of identifying the locations of non-operational cameras."
Homeland security grants are also being used to buy new cameras for the entrances of all of Metro's 86
stations. Metro's new rail cars - the 7000 series, which is in the design phase - will come equipped with
built-in cameras, Sarles said. Metro officials said Transit Police responded to 339 calls for suspicious
packages and persons or bomb threats in the first six months of this year, compared with 451 calls
received in all of 2010. Taborn said he thinks the numbers have risen because of a campaign to
encourage riders to be more aware of their surroundings and to report suspicious activities. "Sharing
information is crucial," Taborn said. "It's taxing because we have to respond and investigate, and you
don't know if what they're saying is true, but it is important." Sarles emphasized that getting more
money from the federal government is crucial to the upkeep of Metro's security and safety measures.
Delegate -Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said she worries that getting $150 million more from the
federal government for Metro is going to become a "difficult fight." The federal government has agreed
to provide -Metro $150 million a year for 10 years to make capital improvements. In exchange, the
government gets to appoint two members and two alternates to Metro's board of directors. The
District, Maryland and Virginia also have to provide a total of $150 million a year in matching funds. If
Metro doesn't receive more federal money in the coming year, Sarles said, the system could "slide
backwards" in its efforts to make improvements; riders would have to endure longer wait times as
tracks will not be replaced and trains will have to run more slowly. After the hearing, Lanier elaborated
on the migration of criminal activity to Metro's underground system. Last year, she assigned a 10-person
detail to Metro's Chinatown stop because of a spate of stabbings and fights, but "now the problem is
down in the train at Gallery Place," she said. "We push them off the aboveground, public space and they
go down into the train," she said, adding that she thinks Taborn "needs more cops." Metro reported this
year that -crime in the transit system had hit a five-year high in 2010. But Taborn said Friday that crime
is down 10 percent on Metro's bus and rail lines for the first quarter of the year, compared with 2010.
The problem, police officials said, is that Metro gives criminals a means of escape. "If you have a raucous
crowd aboveground, we're a mode of transportation that can take people from Gallery Place to Largo,
Pentagon City and Silver Spring," Taborn said. Sarles said Metro's fiscal 2012 budget calls for the system
to hire 30 police officers for its "special police division," which has 153 officers who monitor rail and bus
yards and other Metro facilities. Hiring additional officers in that unit will "free up" 15 to 30 officers to
patrol Metro's bus and rail systems, Sarles said
Rapid suburbanization isolates central city neighborhoods, leading to poverty and
crime
Jargowsky & Park 8 - University of Texas at Dallas (September 2008 Crime & Delinquency January 2009 vol. 55 no. 1 28-50
http://cad.sagepub.com/content/55/1/28.full.pdf+html JPT)
In the United States, metropolitan areas have been suburbanizing rapidly for many decades. Both
residential and commercial activities have moved toward greater spatial dispersion and lower
population densities. Inner-city crime is often cited as a motivating factor for middle-class flight, and
there- fore, crime is a potential cause of suburbanization. Movement of the middle and upper classes
to the suburbs, in turn, leaves behind and isolates the poor in central-city ghettos and barrios and
reduces the fiscal capacity of central cities to address social and economic problems. Rapid
suburbanization and large-scale urban blight have caused declining tax bases in central cities, shrinking
federal subsidies (based in part on population size), and poor public services. Sociologists and
criminologists have long argued that the concentration of poverty creates an environment within
which criminal behavior can become normative, leading impressionable youth to adopt criminal
lifestyles. Moreover, from the perspective of routine activity theory, the deterioration of social capital in
high-poverty areas reduces the capacity for guardianship. For these reasons, suburbanization may also
cause crime indirectly by causing the social and economic isolation of inner-city neighborhoods.
Suburbanization causes economic isolation in poverty stricken neighborhoods, which
leads to high crime in inner city areas.
Jargowsky & Park 8 - University of Texas at Dallas (September 2008 Crime & Delinquency January 2009 vol. 55 no. 1 28-50
http://cad.sagepub.com/content/55/1/28.full.pdf+html JPT)
These findings suggest that suburbanization may lead indirectly to higher levels of crime through its
effect on economic segregation and the creation of high-poverty neighborhoods in the inner city.
However, the majority of literature has not dealt with the causal effect of suburbanization on centralcity crime in direct way. Historically, the criminology literature has focused on the relationship between
crime and population density, based on the notion that suburbanization leads to lower population
density. Many pre- vious studies before the 1980s focused on analysis of simple correlations between
population density and crime, but their results were not consistent.
White supremacy/Privilege
Avoiding the discussion of privilege shores up white supremacy – Building counterhegemonic discourse is impossible in a white, colorblind society
Leonardo 04Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2004 © 2004 Philosophy of Education
Society of Australasia Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK
and 350 Main Street, Malden, The Color of Supremacy Original Articles 000 1236April 2004 © 2004
Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia 0013-1857 Educational Philosophy and Theory EOxford,
UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd PATThe Color of Supremacy: Beyond the discourse of ‘white
privilege’California State University Zeus
Communities of color have constructed counter-discourses in the home, church, and informal school
cultures in order to maintain their sense of humanity. They know too well that their sanity and
development, both as individuals and as a collective, depend on alternative (unofficial) knowledge of the
racial formation. By contrast, white subjects do not get these same counter-hegemonic racial
understandings because their lives also depend on a certain development; that is, colorblind strategies
that maintain their supremacy as a group. Like their non-white counterparts, white students are not
taught anti-racist understandings in schools; but, unlike non-whites, whites invest in practices that
obscure racial processes. State sponsored curricula fail to encourage students of all racial backgrounds
to critique white domination. In other words, schools may teach white students to naturalize their
unearned privileges, but they also willingly participate in such discourses, which maintains their sense
of humanity. White humanity is just that humanity of whites. So it is not only the case that whites are
taught to normalize their dominant position in society; they are susceptible to these forms of
teachings because they benefit from them. It is not a process that is somehow done to them, as if they
were duped, are victims of manipulation, or lacked certain learning opportunities. Rather, the colorblind discourse is one that they fully endorse.
Our society has moved away from structural explanations of racism to playing the
blame game - it is black culture that is demonized for the lack of progress made by
poor blacks
Mendenhall 2010 ("The Political Economy Of Black Housing: From The Housing Crisis Of The Great
Migrations To The Subprime Mortgage Crisis." Black Scholar 40.1 (2010): 20-37. Academic Search
Premier. Web. 20 July 2012. Ruby Mendenhall 2010. Ruby Mendenhall is an Assistant Professor in
Sociology and African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2004,
Mendenhall received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy program from Northwestern
University in Evanston, Illinois. For her dissertation, Black Women in Gautreaux’s Housing
Desegregation Program: The Role of Neighborhoods and Networks in Economic Independence, she used
administrative welfare and employment data, census information, and in-depth interviews to examine
the long-run effects of placement neighborhood conditions/resources on economic independence. JRW)
As we saw earlier, the economic transition to large-scale heavy industry exerted a powerful pull on
black migrants, attracting them to northern and western cities. However, we see opposing forces
operating in the period of the second migration as workers were attracted to industrial centers at the
same time that automation decreased labor demands. The transition to automated production in largescale industry would soon become the capitalist mechanism for disposing of, instead of employing, black
labor. Post-war federal programs like the GI Bill (while excluding blacks GIs from many of the available
resources) underwrote the construction of predominantly white suburbs and the National Interstate
and Defense Highways Act of 1956 spurred "white flight" from the urban centers. Capital would follow
suit by the 1970s and '80s and migrate to the suburbs. The civil unrest in the 1960s wrought significant
changes in American public policy and the discourse about inequality. Tide VII of the 1964 U.S. Civil
Rights Act prohibited racial discrimination in employment, housing, and other key areas. In addition.
Executive Order 11246 created the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) and what is
often referred to as "affirmative action." The Civil Rights Act and "affirmative action" programs would
by the 1990s and the beginning of the 2F' century be associated with the ideology and belief that
America had become color-blind and that if African Americans still experienced social mobility
problems it was not because of structural barriers of racial discrimination but problems embedded in
their culture and personal values. Some Scholars argued that affirmative action and fair housing laws
allowed middle- and working-class blacks in Chicago (151,000 of them from 1970-1980, in addition to
185,000 from other ethnic groups) to move out of the inner-city and into the suburbs, resulting in a
concentration of poor, unemployed families in inner-city neighborhoods.*^ As a result, the outmigration of middle- and working-class families left the remaining poor with strained neighborhood
institutions and reduced access to job networks. Alternative views suggest that the demo- graphic
changes, due to the exodus of middle- and working-class families, were not that significant because
persistent racial discrimination forced the social class composition of black neighborhoods to remain
relatively mixed.'*'' Persistent discrimination, moreover, is supported by numerous fair housing audits
that reveal differences in treatment by realtors based on race and ethnicity."
Your authors’ only want to cover up the real problems inner-city people face the goal
is not to remove our identity but to end discrimination and oppression of the people
of color.
Warren 02PERFORMING WHITENESS DIFFERENTLY RETHINKING THE ABOLITIONIST PROJECT
Department of Interpersonal Communication Bowling Green State University John T EDUCATIONAL
THEORY / Fall 2001 / Volume 51 / Number 4 0 2002 Board of Trustees / University of Illinois.
First, it seems important to note that these authors are once again defining the ultimate goal of racial
equality without the voices of people of color. I have yet to come across any radical racial theorists of
color who take seriously the desire to end race as a meaningful category. Not only is this goal an
illusion maintained by white power, it is a goal that is based in the Western (white) desire for
individualism. Perhaps, just perhaps, people of color do not want to erase race as a meaningful
distinction. Perhaps, just perhaps, they want to retain their cultural heritage and their racial specificity
without the discrimination and oppression that comes along with racism. With the abolishment of race
itself, not only whiteness gets erased but so do the concomitant racial categories with which people of
color identify. To give up race is to give up an important component of self. In fact, the denial of racial
identity itself is a key rhetorical strategy of whiteness in maintaining its privilege. Thomas Nakayama and
Robert Krizek note that “the emphasis on the ideology of individualism over subjectivity is significant
in the way it masks whiteness.
People of color aren’t inherently apart of these egalitarian policies for the
redistribution of wealth
Ginsburg 98 Dec 1 Institutional racism and local authority housing DOI:
10.1177/026101838800802401 Critical Social Policy 1988 8: 4NormanVersion of Record For them too, ‘race, class and gender discrimination are not minor aberrations within a generally
equitable or egalitarian allocation system, but rather they are an inherent part of that system. For this
reason the implications for policy and practice cannot be stated merely in terms of minor
adjustments’ They also recognize that real change will only occur when the prevailing social climate
which nourishes racism is altered. Yet they suggest that explicit anti-racist policies in housing
allocation can be an effective part of changing the climate and creating more political space for Black
people to press their housing needs. Such policies in the field of education have achieved some positive
changes. Henderson and Kam spell out in more radical detail than the CRE how monitoring, staffing,
equal opportunities, training, disciplinary and other procedures could be mobilized in their view to
create real change in housing departments. Many of these kinds of strategies have been adopted in
recent years by inner city local authorities in social services and education departments particularly.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, Henderson and Yam’ report met with a ’hostile reception’ (p 283) from the
Birmingham Housing Department which initially sought to deny the existence of institutional racism in
their work. More modest CRE style reforms were adopted by Birmingham some years later according to
a terse Appendix to the book from a senior officer, but there is no published account of the success or
otherwise of their implementation.
Ignoring the white privilege view from nowhere will only elide the power of racial
discourse
Warren 02PERFORMING WHITENESS DIFFERENTLY RETHINKING THE ABOLITIONIST PROJECT
Department of Interpersonal Communication Bowling Green State University John T EDUCATIONAL
THEORY / Fall 2001 / Volume 51 / Number 4 0 2002 Board of Trustees / University of Illinois.
Alice McIntyre coined one of the most significant concepts for looking at the ways white subjects
perpetuate racism, even without realizing they are doing it, when she argued that the white women
teachers in her study consistently used ”white talk” or talk by whites that “serves to insulate white
people from examining their/our individual and collective role(s) in the perpetuation of racism. ”16
McIntyre’s concept has been useful for scholars as they attempt to uncover the ways white folks
reinforce whiteness without necessarily knowing it, sketching out other possibilities for discursive
action.17The scholars who are now engaged in the white abolitionist movement, while not necessarily
citing McIntyre’s work, do discuss the subtle ways that whiteness permeates our talk, our economy, and
our political structures. One of the key ways McIntyre sees white talk being played out in her study of
white women teachers was through the citation of individualism, noting that many times these teachers
continued to cling to the notion that through individualized effort one can make a difference, often
ignoring the larger and systemic dimensions of racism.]* The refusal to acknowledge the power of
cultural systems in defining self, relying only on individual face-to-face interaction, serves to elide the
power of racial discourse on our understanding of nonwhite people. The ability to focus on the
individual is a product and privilege of whiteness, for only a white subject whose racial identity is
effectively absent in racial discourse can really be treated (and feel secure in that treatment) as
equally individual:
Limited progress has been made post the dream of the Civil Rights movement – Black
rights continue to be sacrificed for the maintenance of white interests
Bell90 RACISM: A PROPHECY FOR THE YEAR 2000https://www.copyright.com/ccc/basicSearch.do?
&operation=go&searchType=0 &lastSearch=simple&all=on&titleOrStdNo=0036-0465
Citation: 42 Rutgers L. Rev. 93 1989-1990Derrick. Rev. 94 1989--The gift of prophecy, when practiced by earthly oracles, entails a risky willingness to predict future
events based on an examination of the present using the insight provided by an evaluation of the past.
Dr. Martin Luther King1 was a prophet, and each year we commemorate his birth and his vision of a
better America, articulated in his "I Have a Dream" speech.2 But Dr. King was hated, feared, and
ultimately killed3 because he attempted to realize his dreams with a movement that mobilized the
downtrodden, giving the hopeless reason to have faith and to translate that faith into action. During
the February 1989 celebration of Black History month, a great deal of attention was appropriately
devoted to considering a world without racism. Predictably, far less attention was given to
acknowledging the role of racism in the world as it is. For despite progress, African-Americans
continue to struggle to survive this society's readiness to sacrifice black rights to further white
interests.
Whiteness and Structural Racism
Race colors all of American life – from housing discrimination to racial profiling,
minorities are positioned at “the bottom of the well”
Bonilla-Silva, 06- professor of sociology at Duke University (Eduardo, Racism without Racists: second
edition) SJ
But regardless of whites’ ‘‘sincere fictions,’’ racial considerations shade almost everything in America.
Blacks and dark-skinned racial minorities lag well behind whites in virtually every area of social life;
they are about three times more likely to be poor than whites, earn about 40 percent less than
whites, and have about an eighth of the net worth that whites have.6 They also receive an inferior
education compared to whites, even when they attend integrated institutions.7 In terms of housing,
black-owned units comparable to white-owned ones are valued at 35 percent less.8 Blacks and
Latinos also have less access to the entire housing market because whites, through a variety of
exclusionary practices by white realtors and homeowners, have been successful in effectively limiting
their entrance into many neighborhoods.9 Blacks receive impolite treatment in stores, in restaurants,
and in a host of other commercial transactions.10 Researchers have also documented that blacks pay
more for goods such as cars and houses than do whites. Finally, blacks and dark-skinned Latinos are the
targets of racial profiling by the police that, combined with the highly racialized criminal court system,
guarantees their overrepresentation among those arrested, prosecuted, incarcerated, and if charged for
a capital crime, executed.12 Racial profiling on the highways has become such a prevalent
phenomenon that a term has emerged to describe it: driving while black.13 In short, blacks and most
minorities are, ‘‘at the bottom of the well.’’
White privilege garners material benefits that maintains racial inequality
Bonilla-Silva, 06- professor of sociology at Duke University (Eduardo, Racism without Racists: second
edition) SJ
But why are racial structures reproduced in the first place Would not humans, after discovering the folly
of racial thinking, work to abolish race as a category as well as a practice Racial structures remain in
place for the same reasons that other structures do. Since actors racialized as ‘‘white’’—or as members
of the dominant race—receive material benefits from the racial order, they struggle (or passively receive
the manifold wages of whiteness) to maintain their privileges. In contrast, those defined as belonging to
the subordinate race or races struggle to change the status quo (or become resigned to their position).
Therein lies the secret of racial structures and racial inequality the world over.58 They exist because
they benefit members of the dominant race.
In a system where whites seek domination, people of color are prevented from
achieving equality.
Bonilla-Silva, 06- professor of sociology at Duke University (Eduardo, Racism without Racists: second
edition) SJ
The central component of any dominant racial ideology is its frames or set paths for interpreting
information. These set paths operate as cul-de-sacs because after people filter issues through them,
they explain racial phenomena following a predictable route. Although by definition dominant frames
must misrepresent the world (hide the fact of dominance), this does not mean that they are totally
without foundation. (For instance, it is true that people of color in the United States are much better off
today than at any other time in history. However, it is also true—facts hidden by color-blind racism—
that because people of color still experience systematic discrimination and remain appreciably behind
whites in many important areas of life, their chances of catching up with whites are very slim.)
Dominant racial frames, therefore, provide the intellectual road map used by rulers to navigate the
always rocky road of domination and, as I will show in chapter 6, derail the ruled from their track to
freedom and equality.
A common misconception of minorities’ standing in society blames them for their
position.
Bonilla-Silva, 06- professor of sociology at Duke University (Eduardo, Racism without Racists: second
edition) SJ
Pierre-Andre´ Taguieff has argued that modern European racism does not rely on an essentialist
interpretation of minorities’ endowments.33 Instead, it presents their presumed cultural practices as
fixed features (hence he labels it as the ‘‘biologization of racism’’) and uses that as the rationale for
justifying racial inequality. Thus, Europeans may no longer believe Africans, Arabs, Asian Indians, or
blacks from the West Indies are biologically inferior, but they assail them for their presumed lack of
hygiene, family disorganization, and lack of morality.34 This cultural racism frame is very well
established in the United States. Originally labeled as the ‘‘culture of poverty’’ in the 1960s, this
tradition has resurfaced many times since, resurrected by conservative scholars such as Charles Murray
and LawrenceMead, liberals such as William Julius Wilson, and even radicals such as Cornel West.36 The
essence of the American version of this frame is ‘‘blaming the victim,’’ arguing that minorities’
standing is a product of their lack of effort, loose family organization, and inappropriate values.
Segregation is the gatekeeper that keeps blacks and whites separated - government
policy locks minorities into economic disadvantage and cultural oppression
Hoch 1993 (Charles Hoch 1993 Racism and planning. Journal Of the American Planning Association,
59(4), 451. Professor Hoch studies planning activity across scale and discipline. Struggling with New Left
inspired criticisms of conventional rational planning at UCLA Hoch studied the ideas of American
pragmatist John Dewey. Setting out to discredit pragmatic ideas at their source he became a convert.
Hoch has spent three decades studying and proposing that we treat planning as an inherently pragmatic
enterprise. It is no accident that he taught planning theory and the professional development seminar
for 25 years. Hochs 1994 book, What Planners Do offered a pragmatic interpretation of the urban
planning field.)
Many African-Americans lead relatively marginal socioeconomic lives in segregated neighborhoods.
Therefore, contact between middle-class American whites and less prosperous African-Americans is
minimal. The legacy of geographic segregation, socioeconomic discrimination, and cultural oppression
continues to insulate the majority of whites from the African-American population, even after the
significant political and legal reforms of the civil rights movement. The boundaries are no longer as thick,
nor the gatekeepers as violent as in the past, but the barriers remain.[2] America has always been a
multicultural nation, although, according to Andrew Hacker: Events elsewhere should remind us that we
are not the only such society: Where we differ from most other countries is the degree to which we
impose an apartheid on our major minority race. Even successful middle-class black Americans find they
have a narrow choice of neighborhoods and few social contacts with members of other races. When all
is said and done, black children and adults spend more of their lives among themselves than almost any
other group, including recent immigrants. To be sure, this isolation is to some degree voluntary; yet the
central reality is that white America wants black America kept apart. Federal measures to outlaw the use
of local police powers for purposes of racial discrimination have discouraged official acts of
discrimination, but have not eliminated the more subtle and indirect forms of exclusion. Jurisdictions
still cloak the exclusion of low-income minorities in justifications that appeal to other planning goals. For
example, officials might argue for the retention of large lot zones to ensure the character of a residential
community. In spite of the persistence of these subtle forms of discrimination, the issue of race has
moved to the margins of professional concern. The implementation of civil rights legislation slowed in
the 1980s and critics of liberal race relations programs shifted policy debates away from questions of
institutional reforms and toward an emphasis on personal responsibility and moral desert.
A2: Segregation a Choice
Racial segregation in the United States continues to disempower and oppress segregation isn’t a choice, it is an example of political fragmentation enforced by the
rule of law. Poverty ensures little political influence and removes the socio-economic
politics of isolation that characterizes contemporary American society
Ford, Assistant Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, 94 (June 1994, Richard Thompson, 107
Harvard Law Review 1843, “The Boundaries of Race: Political Geography in Legal Analysis,” LexisNexis,
JS)
It is now passe' to speak of racial segregation. In an America that is facing the identity crisis of
multiculturalism, where racial diversity seems to challenge the norms and values of the nation's most
fundamental institutions, to speak of segregation seems almost quaint. The physical segregation of
the races would seem to be a relatively simple matter to address; indeed many believe it has already
been addressed. Discrimination in housing, in the workplace, and in schools is illegal. Thus it is
perhaps understandable that we have turned our attention to other problems, on the assumption
that any segregation that remains is either vestigial or freely chosen. But even as racial segregation
has fallen from the national agenda, it has persisted. Even as racial segregation is described as a natural
expression of racial and cultural solidarity, a chosen and desirable condition for which government is not
responsible and that government should not oppose, segregation continues to play the same role it
always has in American race relations: to isolate, disempower, and oppress. Segregation is oppressive
and disempowering rather than desirable or inconsequential because it involves more than simply the
relationship of individuals to other individuals; it also involves the relationship of groups of individuals
to political influence and economic resources. Residence is more than a personal choice; it is also a
primary source of political identity and economic security. n2 Likewise, residential segregation is more
than a matter of social distance; it is a matter of political fragmentation and economic stratification
along racial lines, enforced by public policy and the rule of law. Segregated minority communities have
been historically impoverished and politically powerless. Today's laws and institutions need not be
explicitly racist to ensure that this state of affairs continues -- they need only to perpetuate historical
conditions. In this Article, I assert that political geography -- the position and function of jurisdictional
and quasi-jurisdictional boundaries n3 -- helps to promote a racially separate and unequal distribution of
political influence and economic resources. Moreover, these inequalities fuel the segregative effect of
political boundaries in a vicious circle of causation: each condition contributes to and strengthens the
others. Thus, racial segregation persists in the absence of explicit, legally enforceable racial [*1845]
restrictions. Race-neutral policies, set against an historical backdrop of state action in the service of
racial segregation and thus against a contemporary backdrop of racially identified space -- physical space
primarily associated with and occupied by a particular racial group -- predictably reproduce and
entrench racial segregation and the racial-caste system that accompanies it. Thus, the persistence of
racial segregation, even in the face of civil rights reform, is not mysterious.
Whites embrace a color-blind theology while reaping the benefits of white privilege Many pay lip service to the goals of the civil rights movement while fighting against
the real political measures needed to achieve results
Bonilla-Silva, 06- professor of sociology at Duke University (Eduardo, Racism without Racists: second
edition) SJ
Most whites in the United States rely on the ideology of color-blind racism to articulate their views (by
relying on the frames of the ideology), present their ideas (by using the style of the ideology), and
interpret interactions with people of color (by sharing the racial stories of the ideology). They believe
blacks are culturally deficient, welfare-dependent, and lazy. They regard affirmative action and
reparations as tantamount to ‘‘reverse discrimination.’’ And because whites believe discrimination is a
thing of the past, minorities’ protestations about being racially profiled, experiencing discrimination in
the housing and labor markets, and being discriminated against in restaurants, stores, and other social
settings are interpreted as ‘‘excuses.’’ Following the color-blind script, whites support almost all the
goals of the Civil Rights Movement in principle, but object in practice to almost all the policies that
have been developed to make these goals a reality. Although they abhor what they regard as blacks’
‘‘self-segregation,’’ they do not have any problem with their own racial segregation because they do
not see it as a racial phenomenon. Finally, although they sing loudly the color-blind song, as I showed in
the previous chapter, they live a white color-coded life.
A2: Politics
Public supports transportation infrastructure investment
Halsey, 12- Washington Post reporter (04/24/12, Ashley, “On infrastructure, a cry for consensus,
action,” Section A, pg. A04, Suburban Edition, The Washington Post, Lexis Nexis Academic)
A coalition of leading transportation experts hopes to marshal public pressure on Congress and the
presidential contenders to address the nation's infrastructure needs.
With long-term transportation-funding measures languishing on Capitol Hill and infrastructure getting
little notice in the presidential campaign, "the tradition of broad bipartisan support for investments in
surface transportation has largely broken down," the group said.
The plan to energize public support was outlined Monday in a report by transportation experts brought
together by the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. After a conference in November, the group
concluded that most Americans are aware of the infrastructure crisis and support spending to address
it.
"Recent public-opinion surveys have found overwhelming support for the idea of infrastructure
investment," the report said. "After the 'bridge to nowhere' controversies of recent years, the public
has become sensitized to issues of pork-barrel spending and understandably demands to see a clear
connection between federal expenditures, actual transportation needs, and economic benefits."
Despite apprehension about wasteful spending, the report said, more than two-thirds of voters
surveyed by the Rockefeller Foundation said infrastructure improvement was important and 80
percent said spending on it would create millions of jobs.
A2: Capitalism K
Whiteness prevents coalition building within the working-class – Race privilege results
in assumptions of superiority (This is an answer to the cap K or class more important
than race)
Bell90 RACISM: A PROPHECY FOR THE YEAR 2000https://www.copyright.com/ccc/basicSearch.do?
&operation=go&searchType=0 &lastSearch=simple&all=on&titleOrStdNo=0036-0465
Citation: 42 Rutgers L. Rev. 93 1989-1990Derrick L. Rev. 94 1989--In my view, policy decisions that sacrifice black rights sustain those whites who lack wealth and power
in their sense of racial superiority. The subordination of blacks seems to reassure whites
that they do indeed hold title to a kind of property right in their"whiteness." Like all such rights under
a government created andsustained primarily for the purpose of preserving property, this
right is recognized by society and upheld by the courts. This phenomenon is best observed in its
original manifestation, the beginning of slavery in the American colonies. According to historians such as
Edmund Morgan3" and David Brion Davis, 1 working-class whites did not oppose slavery when it took
root in the colonies in the mid-1660's. They identified with the white planters who could afford slaves,
even though they were economically subordinate to them. The creation of a black subclass enabled
poor whites to identify with and support the policies of the upperclass Owners of large tracts of land,
secure in the economic advantage provided by their slaves, willingly granted poor whites a larger role in
the political process. Thus, paradoxically, black enslavement led to comparatively greater freedom for
poor whites. Slavery also provided unpropertied whites with an endowment in their whiteness.
However disadvantaged, poor whites could feel superior to the Africans in their midst.
Even when controlling for class, racism is the primary function that keeps AfricanAmericans in poverty.
Massey and Denton, 93 (Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, *Professor of Sociology at
Princeton, President of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, AND ** Researcher,
1993, Harvard University Press, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. (pg.
9) https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Stanford%203%20week/Nineteen/Massey%20and%20Denton%20%20American%20Apartheid%20%20Segregation%20and%20the%20Making%20of%20the%20Underclass.pdfw=d278d0b7 [SJW])
Middle-class households-whether they are black, Mexican, Italian, Jewish, or Polish-always try to
escape the poor. But only blacks must attempt their escape within a highly segregated, racially
segmented housing market. Because of segregation, middle-class blacks are less able to escape than
other groups, and as a result are exposed to more poverty. At the same lime, because of segregation
no one will move into a poor black neighborhood except other poor blacks. Thus both middle-class
blacks and poor blacks lose compared with the poor and middle class of other groups: poor blacks live
under unrivaled concentrations of poverty and affluent blacks live in neighborhoods that are far less
advantageous than those experienced by the middle class of other groups.
A2: Segregation decreasing in SQ
The idea that black-white segregation is decreasing now is false, there is rather a
larger influx of blacks in the neighborhood of major cities.
Parisi, the Director of the National Strategic Planning & Analysis Research Center, and Lichter,
Director of the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center at Cornell University, 2011 (Domenico and Daniel.
"Multi-Scale Residential Segregation: Black Exceptionalism And America's Changing Color Line." Social
Forces 89.3 (2011): 829-852. Academic Search Premier. Web. 20 July 2012. JRW)
America's changing color line is perhaps best expressed in shifting patterns of residential segregationthe geographic separation of races (Charles 2003). As we argue in this article, the optimism associated
with recent declines in black-white neighborhood segregation may be dampened by evidence of racial
and ethnic geographic balkanization at other levels of geography. Indeed, many of the nation's largest
cities (e.g., Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Baltimore) now have majority-minority populations,
reflecting the massive influx of blacks and other groups over recent decades as well as accelerated
white flight to the suburbs and beyond (Quillian 2002). For example, Detroit today is more than 80
percent black-up from 62 percent in 1980. Over the same period, black-white neighborhood segregation
nonetheless declined from 67.5 to 62.1 (Logan 2008). Blacks are increasingly living in the same
neighborhoods as whites, but in Detroit, as in other cities, the population is becoming more and more
racially black. Likewise, America's suburbs-especially those in close physical proximity to inner citieshave become more racially diverse at the same time that whites have moved even farther from the
urban core. Racial segregation has declined at some levels of geography (e.g., neighborhood racial
segregation) but may have increased at other spatial scales (e.g., place-to-place or regional
differences). The singular focus on declining big-city neighborhood racial segregation, as a measure of
social distance or changing racial boundaries, is incomplete at best and misleading at worst (Marrow
2009; Licbter et al. 2007a). Unlike previous studies, our fundamental objective is to identify the multiple
geographical sources of residential segregation between blacks and other racial and ethnic groups (i.e.,
whites, Hispanics and Asians). We provide, for the first time, a single geographically inclusive national
estimate of black residential segregation from whites and other minority groups using the Theil Index
(H), which can then be additively decomposed into its within (e.g., segregation within places) and
between components (e.g., racial differences between places, which in turn are nested within specific
met- ropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas and regions). Specifically, we (I. document the divergent
residential patterns of blacks from whites and other nonblack minorities at several different levels of
geography and (2. evaluate whether recent declines in black neighborhood segregation within cities
have occurred in tandem with increases in segregation at other levels of geography Our approach
complements previous metropolitan-level research by providing a broader, more geographically
inclusive approach to studying racial differences in residence patterns..
A2: Race-Bio K
Contemporary society is fundamentally shaped by racism - Racial domination is the
norm of American society - While race may be a social construction it has real material
consequences for non-white people
Mills, John Evans Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, 97 (1997, Charles W , “The Racial
Contract,” part 1, Google Books, REM)
If there is a key point, a common theoretical denominator, it is the simultaneous recognition of the
centrality of race and the unreality of race, its socio-political rather than biological character. The cliché´
that has come to express this insight is that race is not natural but ‘constructed’. So race is made,
unmade, and remade; race is a product of human activity, both personal and institutional, rather than
DNA; race is learned, rehearsed, and performed. People’s race is contingent, the result of being socially
categorized one way rather than another, and as such people can change race by moving from one
country to another or even by having the racial rules change in their own country. But this volatility
should not be taken to imply the unquailed unreality of race. Rather, as critical race theorists are quick
to emphasize, race is both constructed and real, embedded in legal decisions, social mores, networks
of belief, folkways, institutions, structures of economic privilege and disadvantage. The reality is a
social reality — perhaps better, a socio-political reality —but within this sphere, it is real enough.
Moreover, it is a reality that is structured through and through by relations of domination. Subordinated
groups do to a certain extent modify their ‘racial’ identities, but for the most part, this is reactive: the
identity has been imposed on them. The modern world is a world created by European expansionism
— settlement, slavery, colonialism— and as such it is fundamentally shaped by the fact of white over
non-white domination.
A2: Liberalism
Whites use liberalism as a method to appear reasonable in addressing race-related
issues, while opposing practical ways to approach racial inequality.
Bonilla-Silva, 06- professor of sociology at Duke University (Eduardo, Racism without Racists: second
edition) SJ
The frame of abstract liberalism involves using ideas associated with political liberalism (e.g., ‘‘equal
opportunity,’’ the idea that force should not be used to achieve social policy) and economic liberalism
(e.g., choice, individualism) in an abstract manner to explain racial matters. By framing race-related
issues in the language of liberalism, whites can appear ‘‘reasonable’’ and even ‘‘moral,’’ while
opposing almost all practical approaches to deal with de facto racial inequality. For instance, the
principle of equal opportunity, central to the agenda of the Civil Rights Movement and whose extension
to people of color was vehemently opposed by most whites, is invoked by whites today to oppose
affirmative-action policies because they supposedly represent the ‘‘preferential treatment’’ of certain
groups. This claim necessitates ignoring the fact that people of color are severely underrepresented in
most good jobs, schools, and universities and, hence, it is an abstract utilization of the idea of ‘‘equal
opportunity.’’ Another example is regarding each person as an ‘‘individual’’ with ‘‘choices’’ and using
this liberal principle as a justification for whites having the right of choosing to live in segregated
neighborhoods or sending their children to segregated schools. This claim requires ignoring the
multiple institutional and state-sponsored practices behind segregation and being unconcerned about
these practices’ negative consequences for minorities.
Individual choice only benefits the advantaged group in the status quo.
Bonilla-Silva, 06- professor of sociology at Duke University (Eduardo, Racism without Racists: second
edition) SJ
Individualism today has been recast as a justification for opposing policies to ameliorate racial
inequality because they are ‘‘group based’’ rather than ‘‘case by case.’’ In addition, the idea of
individual choice is used to defend whites’ right to live and associate primarily with whites
(segregation) and for choosing whites exclusively as their mates. The problem with how whites apply
the notion of individualism to our present racial conundrum is that a relation of dominationsubordination still ordains race relations in the United States (see chapters 1 and 4 in my White
Supremacy and Racism in the Post–Civil Rights Era). Thus, if minority groups face group-based
discrimination and whites have group-based advantages, demanding individual treatment for all can
only benefit the advantaged group. And behind the idea of people having the right of making their
own ‘‘choices’’ lays the fallacy of racial pluralism—the false assumption that all racial groups have the
same power in the American polity. Because whites have more power, their unfettered, so-called
individual choices help reproduce a form of white supremacy in neighborhoods, schools, and society
in general.
A2: Black/White Binary K of the aff
We do not limit our discussion of the intersection between race and class with a focus
on blacks - instead we understand that the black/white binary as a source of racial
stratification operates to position many poor racial and ethnic minorities into a
“collective black” racial strata
Bonilla-Silva, 06- professor of sociology at Duke University (Eduardo, Racism without Racists: second
edition) SJ
Secondly, this new civil rights movement, unlike the old one, will have to deal with issues of class and
racial diversity in a more straightforward manner. It is no longer possible for the black middle-class,
who led the struggle of the past, to present their issues as the issues of all blacks and it is no longer
possible for blacks to continue believing they are the most important minority group in this
country.11 On the former, the issues before us are, more than ever, the issues of the black, Latino,
and Asian working class, i.e., the need for adequate and decent schools, jobs, social services, medical
care, housing, and transportation. In this sense, the old framework of the struggle—the idea of equal
opportunity—is not, if it ever was, enough. What this large segment of the minority community, a
segment I claim is slowly becoming ‘‘the collective black’’ racial strata, need is a movement that deals in
a straight manner with their class/race issues; what these folks need is not ‘‘equality of opportunity’’ but
‘‘equality of results!’’ The ‘‘collective black’’ segment suffers not just because it is comprised of mostly
dark-skinned minority folks, but also because most of its members belong to the second-tier of the
working class.12 Therefore, understanding how the race/class nexus affects this growing segment in
the United States and developing policies to address its concerns is the central task of the new civil
rights movement.
Solvency
Mass Transit solves Pollution
And, though transit in the status quo provides great benefits, they pale in comparison
to the multitude of advantages reaped by an increase in public transit- such as energy
savings, environmental gains, elimination of foreign oil dependency, reduction in
harmful pollutants that cause health problems in urban areas and cause climate
change, and millions of dollars saved
Shapiro et al., 2002 (7/02, Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, Managing Director of Sonecon, LLC, a non-resident
Fellow of the Brookings Institution and the Progressive Policy Institute, Economic Counselor to the
U.S.Conference Board, and a director of the Axson-Johnson Foundation, Dr. Kevin A. Hassett, Resident
Scholar of the American Enterprise Institute, Dr. Frank S. Arnold, President of Applied Microeconomics,
Inc., columnist for The Environmental Forum, report commissioned by American Public Transportation
Association, “Conserving Energy and Preserving the Environment: The Role of Public Transportation”,
Lexis Nexis Database) CJC
As great as the current advantages are, far greater energy and environmental benefits could be
derived through increased use of public transportation. Based on our findings, the study concludes
that greater use of public transportation offers the single most effective strategy currently available
for achieving significant energy savings and environmental gains, without creating new government
programs or imposing new rules on the private sector. If Americans increase their use of public
transportation, the study found dramatic benefits in energy conservation and a healthier environment.
For example, if Americans used public transportation at the same rate as Europeans -- for roughly ten
percent of their daily travel needs -- the United States would: Reduce its dependence on imported oil
by more than 40 percent or nearly the amount of oil we import from Saudi Arabia each year; Save
more energy every year than all the energy used by the U.S. petrochemical industry and nearly equal
the energy used to produce food in the United States. Reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than
25 percent of those directed under the Kyoto Agreement. Reduce CO pollution by three times the
combined levels emitted by four high polluting industries (chemical manufacturing; oil and gas
production; metals processing; and industrial use of coal). Reduce smog across the country by cutting
NOx emissions by 35 percent of the combined NOx emissions from the four industries cited above, and
cut VOC pollution by 84 percent of the combined VOC emissions from these four industries. If Americans
used public transportation at the same rate as Canadians -- for roughly seven percent of their daily
travel needs -- the United States would: Reduce its oil dependence by an amount equal to more than a
half year’s oil imports from Saudi Arabia. Save nearly the amount of energy used by the entire
petrochemical industry every year. Reduce CO pollution by twice the combined levels emitted by the
four high polluting industries (chemical manufacturing; oil and gas production; metals processing; and
industrial use of coal). Reduce NOx emissions by 25 percent of the combined NOx emissions from the
four industries cited above, and cut VOC pollution by almost 60 percent of the combined VOC emissions
from these four industries. Help prevent global warming by cutting CO2 emissions by amounts equal to
nearly 20 percent of the CO2 emitted from fuel burned for residential uses or more than 20 percent of
all CO2 emitted by commercial enterprises. Even modest increases in the use of public transportation
would produce great reductions in hazardous pollution in congested areas where pollution now poses
the greatest risk. For example, almost half of the 35 largest public transportation systems, serving 26
metropolitan areas, are located in areas currently failing to meet EPA air-quality standards for CO or
smog. In these highly-populated, urban and suburban “non-attainment areas,” the pollution
reductions that public transit can deliver would go directly to the environmental bottom line.
Achieving a genuine measure of energy independence and cleaner air by investing in our public
transportation systems has significant economic advantages. While this study measured current and
potential benefits of public transportation, the findings lead us to believe that achieving greater energy
savings and environmental gains by significantly increasing the passenger loads would be less costly
than continuing to expand the fleet of private vehicles, build and maintain more roads and highways
to accommodate them, and absorb the rising energy, environmental and congestion expenses of this
approach.
More public transportation leads to better living conditions – lowers population
density and improves living condition
Masi, ’00
http://books.google.com/books?id=WjS7fEScxqYC&pg=PA102&lpg=PA102&dq=inner+city+disease+transportation&source=bl&ots=VUVH2TmD
hi&sig=oD96rpftrxY5_Ls8BbwgeNM53W0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=tgFUIOqGoGgrAHK6YHXCA&sqi=2&ved=0CEEQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=inner%20city%20disease%20transportation&f=false
Transportation investments have in the past been among society’s most important contributors to
environmental improvement, but today transportation programs and projects are more often of
concern as sources of major environmental problems. Over the past 30 years, since the enactment of
the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) and the first Clean Air Act Amendments, the
relationship between transportation planning and environmental policy making has continuously
become more complex and problematic. The first national conference on city planning and the problems
of congestion was held in Washington, D.C., in 1909. The conference was characterized by many
speeches in which intellectuals of the day insisted that the environmental challenges of their time – the
disease, poverty, darkness, and vice of the North American city – were caused by the scourge of highdensity living and that it was the job of urban transportation planners to build public transit routes to
outlying areas for the explicit purpose of lowering density and improving living conditions. Subways to
new outlying communities were urged, combined with low flat fares, so that low-income people could
afford to live at low density at the edge to benefit from environmental improvement and to avoid the
pitfalls of inner-city living. The transportation system was the key to environmental betterment. The
relationship between transportation and the environment at this time was an intimate one, as it is now,
but there was greater emphasis on policy discussions about transportation as a provider of
environmental benefits instead of a source of environmental pollutants.
Education and community organization key to solve for pollution and institutionalized
racism
Antlfinger 5 - Associated Press Writer, 2005 (12/13/05, Carrie, The Associated Press, “Analysis:
State's blacks more likely to live in polluted areas”, Lexis Nexis Database) CJC
Repeated studies during the 1980s and 1990s found that blacks and poor people were far more likely
than whites to live near hazardous waste disposal sites, polluting power plants or industrial parks. The
disparities were blamed on a lack of political clout by minorities to influence land use decisions. The
studies brought charges of racism. Clinton responded in 1993 by issuing an "environmental justice" order requiring
federal agencies to ensure that minorities and poor people aren't exposed to more pollution and other
environmental dangers than other Americans. But recent reports suggests little has changed. Henry Hamilton III,
a co-chairman of the environmental justice task force for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People in Milwaukee, said the group wants to create a coalition to educate people about pollution and to fight it.
He said area blacks aren't educated about what's in the air or they are more worried about short-term
problems, like unemployment, he said. "In poorer areas the lobby to fight industrial polluters ... is
going to be much weaker than the lobby to fight industrial pollution in suburban areas," he said. The
state enacted two recent laws that environmentalists opposed. One law, passed in 2004, streamlined and sped up
the process for granting businesses and landowners permits for projects that affect air and water quality.The most
recent law took effect at the end of August. It exempts some companies from needing construction permits for
projects. It also allows the state Department of Natural Resources to issue air pollution permits that don't expire.
Anne Sayers, program director at the environmental group Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters, said the first
law rolled back air and water protections and the second lessened restrictions on pollution and how close facilities
can build near neighborhoods, water resources and schools. "It's surprising that at this time in the state's history,
being so progressive in the past, we are watching our state legislators roll back protections for clean air,"
she said. Pugh and other supporters countered the changes were needed to continue cleaning up Wisconsin's
business regulations to encourage companies to locate here and provide good-paying jobs. Sen. Lena Taylor, a
Milwaukee Democrat whose district includes many minorities, and other city leaders have pushed for a public
health school in the area. Taylor, who voted against the most recent change, said she hears concern from her
constituency about asthma. "There's an epidemic in public health issues in the Milwaukee area and this
really just shines the light on it," she said. Writters said he would like to organize neighbors to fight the
pollution in his neighborhood - home to Stainless Foundry and Engineering and a factory that makes chemicals
for paper. But his neighbors aren't activists. "They are concerned but they figure there is no hope," he
said.
Public transit reduces killer pollutants by 95%
Johnson, 2002 (7/22/02, Jim, Waste News, “Bus pass; Emissions better with public transit”, Lexis
Nexis Database) CJC
A new study shows that public transportation generates far less of certain types of air pollution than
private vehicles, including 95 percent less carbon monoxide and 92 percent less volatile organic
compounds per passenger mile. ''Conserving Energy and Preserving the Environment: The Role of Public
Transportation'' is a study authored by three economists -Robert J. Shapiro, Kevin A. Hassett and Frank
S. Arnold - hired by a public transportation trade group to examine the issue. The study also shows
public transportation generates about half as much carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide per passenger
mile when compared to private vehicles. The report suggests that U.S. oil reliance would fall by 40
percent if just 10 percent of the population relied on public transportation on a regular basis. About
10 percent of Europeans use public transportation for their daily travel needs. The study states that
public transportation is twice as fuel-efficient per passenger mile as private cars, sport utility vehicles
and light trucks. If 20 percent of the population regularly used public transportation, carbon monoxide
levels would fall by more than the total amount emitted by the chemical manufacturing and metal
processing industries, the study states.
Cars are a leading source of air pollution- mass transit systems can reduce the
dependency on automobile travel
Frumkin, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Emory University 2002 (Howard, Urban Sprawl and Public Health, pdf)
Motor vehicles are a leading source of air pollution.20 Even though automobile and truck engines
have become far cleaner in recent decades, the sheer quantity of vehicle miles driven results in large
releases of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, particulate matter,nitrogen oxides, and
hydrocarbons into the air.21 Nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons, in the presence of sunlight,
form ozone. Nationwide, “mobile sources” (mostly cars and trucks) account for approximately
30% of emissions of oxides of nitrogen and 30% of hydrocarbon emissions.22 However, in
automobile-dependent metropolitan areas, the proportion may be substantially higher. In the 10
county metropolitan Atlanta area, for example, on-road cars and trucks account for 58% of
emissions of nitrogen oxides and 47% of hydrocarbon emissions, figures that underestimate the full
impact of vehicle traffic because they exclude emissions from related sources, such as fuel storage
facilities and filling stations.
Mass Transit LRT systems can decrease emissions, increase water quality, decrease
obesity caused by automobiles, and help increase overall health
Topalovic 12 - Center for Engineering and Public Policy, School of Engineering Practice,
McMaster ,University, 2012 (G. Krantzberg, J. CarterSchool of Geography and Earth Sciences, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street
West, May 08, Light Rail Transit in Hamilton: Health, Environmental and Economic Impact Analysis, http://www.springerlink.com/content/7080610t31612834/)
Ecological resources act as a natural filter providing clean air and water to the surrounding area. The
estimated economic value of the Great Lakes ecosystem is $80 billion (Krantzberg and de Boer 2008).
Hamilton occupies a significant portion of this ecosystem and benefits greatly from its services. The
city, as a steward of the surrounding area, has a responsibility to ensure the social, environmental and
economic stability of this system. An important part of this stewardship initiative centres on land use
and transit planning. According to the IBI’s Economic Impact Analysis (2009b), annual emissions costs
due to automobile travel could be reduced by 7.5 % ($2 million) annually with the installation of the BLine LRT system. Furthermore, the reduced amount of collisions due to the removal of automobile
traffic from LRT service could reduce collision costs by an additional $2 million. In terms of the
sedentary lifestyles associated with car dependency, Hamilton experiences a higher health concern,
given the amount of sprawl and its corresponding obesity rates. In an analysis conducted by Hamilton
Public Health (2007), it was found that 53 % of Hamilton residents are obese or overweight when
examining BMI self reports. This is above the provincial average of 48.5 %. When exploring the
features of neighbourhoods within the City of Hamilton, Behan et al. (2008) found that most of the new
neighbourhood developments are being built further away from the inner-city and lack transit
connectivity and mixed-use land uses, promoting the use of private vehicles and possibly contributing to
the increased prevalence of obesity within Hamilton. According to census trends occurring between
1996 and 2006, nearly 75 % of 245,000 Hamiltonians employed in the labour force use singleoccupancy vehicles to commute to work and less than 10 % report using public transit as their main
form of commute (Statistics Canada 2006). In addition, while there is a clear decrease in auto use from
76.9 % of the labour force to 74.4 % between 2001 and 2006, walking and cycling to work has also
dropped from 6.7 to 6.3 %. This could contribute to increased obesity risks within the City of Hamilton
as Samimi and Mohammadian (2010) showed increased rates of obesity in people who regularly drive
as it promotes an inactive lifestyle. Transit oriented development, infill development, walkable
neighbourhoods, and increased reliance on transit will play a role in lowering these weights and
encouraging more healthy lifestyles for Hamilton residents. This could result in lower health care costs
for ailments associated with obesity (Stokes et al. 2008). Light Rail Transit will help satisfy the City of
Hamilton Corporate Energy Policy’s energy reduction targets, one of which is to reduce energy use by
20 % by 2020 (City of Hamilton 2007b). Rail does not depend on inefficient and depleting fuel sources
such as diesel or natural gas and it helps eliminate dependence on oil. World oil reserves have
decreased to the point where much of the easily extracted ‘‘peak oil’’ is no longer available. As
reserves continue to be used at unsustainably high rates, the price to extract the crude will increase,
while access to the crude source will become more difficult and unaffordable (Deffeyes 2004). There is a
possibility that this crisis could drive the municipal, provincial and personal energy budgets to
unsustainable levels and jeopardize government’s ability to provide services, programs and
infrastructure maintenance. Light rail is energy efficient and displaces automobiles from city roads,
thereby providing a two- factor strategy to reduce energy dependence. LRT reduces the impact of
fueling public vehicles, since most areas of the city would be rail or rapid transit accessible. Strategies
could then be implemented to encourage employees to use transit rather than corporate vehicles,
eliminating a significant portion of the fleet. According to Shapiro, Hassett and Arnold (2002), travel
on various modes of transit compared to automobiles, P. Topalovic et al. 123uses half the energy and
produces 5 % as much CO, 8 % as much VOCs and half the CO2 per passenger-mile. When light rail is
isolated, the amount of CO2 emitted is nearly zero, especially if the electricity to power the vehicles
come from renewable sources. Furthermore, rail can help lower the amount of congestion on City
streets, thereby helping to conserve energy and reduce emissions (VTPI 2007).
Mass Transit systems can reduce carbon monoxide levels, the heat island effect, and
reduces traffic- the 1996 Olympic Games experiment proves
Friedman 1 - MD, Brooklyn, NY, Cardiology, Internal Medicine 2001 ( Michael , Kenneth E. Powell, MD,
MPH; Lori Hutwagner, MS; LeRoy M. Graham, MD; W. Gerald Teague, MDFebruary 21, Impact of Changes in Transportation and Commuting Behaviors During
the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta on Air Quality and Childhood Asthma, http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=193572)
During the Olympic period, Atlanta additionally experienced significant reductions in daily carbon
monoxide levels (1.26 vs 1.54 ppm, 18.5% decrease; P = .02) and PM10 concentrations (30.8 vs 36.7
µg/m3, 16.1% decrease; P = .01). Nitrogen dioxide levels decreased 6.8% (36.5 vs 39.2 ppb; P = .49),
whereas sulfur dioxide levels increased 22.1% (4.29 vs. 3.52 ppb; P = .65). Figure 3 summarizes these
findings relative to the EPA National Ambient Air Quality Standards for each of these pollutants.35 Data
for the baseline period are divided into pre- and post-Olympic time periods demonstrating the
uncharacteristic decrease in air pollution levels during the Olympic Games. Mean daytime weather
conditions in Atlanta were determined for both the Olympic and baseline periods. Temperature
decreased 0.67°C, wind speed increased 0.19 m/sec, and solar radiation decreased 29.6 W/m2 during
the Olympic Games. These changes were not statistically significant. Barometric pressure did not
change. Total mold counts did not differ significantly during the Olympic vs the baseline period (daily
mean, 597 vs 551 molds/m3; P = .58; Figure 2). Moreover, mold counts were not correlated with sameday asthma events (average r = −0.15). Weekday 1-hour morning peak traffic counts decreased 22.5%
overall during the Olympic Games (range, 17.5%-23.6%; P<.001 for all 4 sites). This amounted to a
reduction of 4260 vehicle trips during the peak morning traffic hour on these 4 roads. Weekend morning
peak traffic counts decreased 9.7% overall (range, 3.6%-12.3%), although only the change in traffic
counts at the site closest to downtown was significant. Weekday total 24-hour traffic counts decreased
2.8% overall (range, 1.3%-3.6%), with the significant changes occurring at the 2 sites closest to
downtown. Public transportation ridership increased 217% (190% on weekdays; 334% on weekends)
during the Olympic Games. A total of 17.5 million more trips occurred on public transportation
throughout the Olympic Games than would be expected based on the baseline period ridership.
Mass Transit systems can help improve air quality, reduce traffic, and reduce gas
consumption – 1996 Olympics prove
Friedman 1 - MD, Brooklyn, NY, Cardiology, Internal Medicine 2001 ( Michael , Kenneth E. Powell, MD,
MPH; Lori Hutwagner, MS; LeRoy M. Graham, MD; W. Gerald Teague, MDFebruary 21, Impact of Changes in Transportation and Commuting Behaviors During
the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta on Air Quality and Childhood Asthma, http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=193572)
The more immediate question is what accounted for this change in air quality. We suggest that it was
caused by changes in both meteorological conditions and automobile emissions, with decreases in
peak morning rush hour traffic playing a major role. Weather conditions during the Olympic Games
(increased wind speed and decreased temperature and solar radiation) favored less accumulation of
ozone, but the degree of weather improvements was measurably small and not statistically significant.
Even when controlling for these weather variables in a multivariate regression model, ozone levels in
Atlanta during the Olympic Games were reduced 13% whereas the changes in ozone levels at the
other 3 Georgia sites with the same prevailing weather patterns were reduced between 2% and 7%.
Other indirect evidence supports our conclusion. The concentration of carbon monoxide, which is
primarily emitted directly from automobiles and is much less dependent on weather conditions for its
accumulation in the lower atmosphere, decreased significantly during the Olympic Games. The small
increase in sulfur dioxide levels (far below health hazard levels) during the Olympic Games is
consistent with the increased use of diesel-powered buses,31 - 32 and should not have increased if
the prevailing weather conditions had indeed prevented the normal accumulation of air pollutants in
Atlanta. The amount of emissions from stationary sources (eg, power plants and industry) did not
change during the Olympic Games.31 - 32 The additional electrical needs required during the Olympic
Games came from power stations outside the immediate Atlanta area and, therefore, would not have
caused the increase in sulfur dioxide observed. Evidence of changes in automobile traffic and emissions
include the marked decreases in weekday and weekend morning peak traffic counts at all 4 trafficcount sites, the statistically significant decreases in weekday total traffic counts at the 2 traffic-count
sites closest to downtown Atlanta, the statistically significant correlation between weekday morning
peak and 24-hour total traffic counts and that day's peak ozone concentration, the 3.9% decrease in
statewide gasoline sales in July compared with June and August, and the 217% increase in overall
public transportation use. These traffic data probably underestimate the impact of the alternative
transportation strategies on local residents of Atlanta because they include automobile use by the
estimated 1 million visitors during the Olympic intervention period. Using this same logic, however,
the increase in public transportation use is probably an overestimation of the behaviors of local
residents since it also includes use by visitors to Atlanta. The science of ozone formation helps explain
our findings. The moderate alterations in morning traffic levels (and probably traffic flow) experienced
during the Olympic Games would have decreased the buildup of ozone precursors emitted into the
atmosphere from 7 AM through 2 PM. Without sufficient atmospheric concentrations of these
precursors being present during this time of maximum sunlight and heat, rapid ozone production and
accumulation could not occur, thus leading to lower than anticipated peak ozone levels. During a
period of 17 days, this appeared to have contributed to the improved respiratory health of children
with asthma residing in Atlanta. What motivated businesses and individuals to change their
transportation and commuting behaviors temporarily is a crucial question, which has not been
properly addressed. Fear of traffic and lack of parking, and social pressures to conform certainly
played a role. How this can be adapted to more routine conditions remains a major public health
challenge. For example, Atlanta's Clean Air Campaign43 (largely initiated after the Olympic Games) has
been shown to increase use of alternative commuting methods within 3 companies that promoted
this.44 But the effects of this citywide campaign on air pollution to date appear to be small compared
with what was observed during the Olympic Games.
Investment in mass transit is key to eliminating pollution from urban areas.
Layton, 02 – Washington Post Staff Writer (07/17/02, Lyndsey, Washington Post, “Study
Lists Mass Transit Benefits,” Lexus Nexis Academic)
The fastest and most effective way to reduce air pollution and dependence on foreign oil is to get more
people out of cars and onto trains or buses, according to a new study released today by the transit
industry. The study, written by economists from the Brookings Institution and American Enterprise
Institute and funded by the American Public Transportation Association, is the first scientific analysis
that compares mass transit with private vehicles in terms of the fuel they burn and the pollution they
spew. "Everybody's got an intuition that public transit uses less energy and produces less pollution than
private vehicles," said Robert J. Shapiro, an economist and fellow at Brookings. "I don't know of any
previous study that has actually quantified it. The environmental advantages are really very striking
because they're so great." For every passenger mile traveled, public transportation uses about half the
fuel of private automobiles, sport-utility vehicles and light trucks, the study found. Private vehicles emit
about 95 percent more carbon monoxide, 92 percent more volatile organic compounds and about
twice as much carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide than public vehicles for every passenger mile
traveled, it said. Those conclusions have particular significance for Washington, one of 16 major cities in
violation of federal clean-air standards. The region produces too much nitrogen oxide, which mixes
with sunlight to produce unhealthful levels of ground-level ozone. Local leaders must find ways to cut
pollution or the region risks losing millions of dollars in federal transportation funding. The study's
authors say that if people in the Washington region used transit for 7 percent of their daily trips, it
would make a significant difference in air quality and help the region meet federal standards.
Residents in the Washington region now use transit for about 4.5 percent of all daily trips, a rate four
times the national average, according to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. "I'm
perfectly willing to accept that if you can make those changes, you'd get substantial impact on energy
consumption and emissions," said Ronald F. Kirby, chief transportation planner for the council. "The
question is, how do you make that happen?" Transportation association President William Millar said
the answer is more public investment in transit and land-use policies that connect jobs and homes to
transit. "If it's convenient and you make transit available, people will use it," he said. The association will
use the study as it lobbies for more transit funding when Congress reauthorizes the country's
transportation spending plan next year, Millar said.
Mass transit reduces air pollution
Stern, 04 – Assistant Professor of environmental planning at Pratt Institute (11/7/04, Ira
A., NY Times, “To Alleviate Air Pollution, Do Something About Auto Traffic,” Lexis Nexis
Academic)
In our regional planning class, we have familiarized ourselves with the alternatives analysis for the
enhancement of the Tappan Zee Bridge/I-287 corridor. The county could make a dent in a high-priority
local source of air pollution -- automobile traffic -- by embracing light or commuter rail in the corridor
and encouraging and adopting land-use controls and incentives to focus growth on the use of mass
transit. This is a regional opportunity to address air problems.
The federal government needs to invest in light rail to alleviate poor air quality in
urban areas.
Olson, 03 – College Park City Council member (07/23/03, Eric C., The Washington Post,
“Congress Can Help Us Breathe Easy,” Lexis Nexis Academic)
[Last summer, this region had 28 unhealthy ozone days. The American Lung Association has given the
metropolitan area an "F" for air quality, and we are in violation of federal air quality standards. While
local and state officials can and should do more to address this issue, federal officials also can help
alleviate poor air quality here and throughout the nation. During the next few months, Congress will
develop its massive transportation bill, "TEA-3," which will guide spending priorities for the next six
years. The potential is there to build upon the investments of the past decade to improve transit,
monitor and improve air quality, and preserve and protect communities. Unfortunately, although
vehicles are a major source of ground-level ozone pollution in this area, some in Congress and the
administration would use this year's bill to take us back toward a focus on road-building. Sen. John
Warner (R-Va.) could make a difference. As a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works
Committee, where large portions of the bill will originate, he could champion air quality and public
health when crafting this legislation. Area members of the House Transportation Committee -- D.C. Del.
Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.) -- also could help
shape the bill's priorities. Our local delegation should focus on key issues. First, it must keep the existing
air-quality protections in place. This includes opposing a proposal to reduce the frequency of the
regional air quality checkups and to limit requirements to review the 20-year effects of projects. Second,
the delegation should try to protect and augment the transit program. More than a million daily trips
are made on the Metro system, which removes 325,000 cars -- and thousands of tons of air pollutants -from the region's roads every day. Schemes that would destabilize transit funding to finance more roadbuilding would make it more expensive for communities to expand public transit to meet demand. The
top regional priority should be to build the Purple Line as light rail. Our region's federal representatives
need to impress on Congress that cleaner air -- especially in the nation's capital -- is vital. After all,
Capitol Hill breathes our air, too.
Mass Transit creates accessibility to jobs
We need to find a solution, the American Jobs Act isn’t passing.
Bilerico Project 12 (Terrance Heath, 7/11/12, “We Got Your Jobs Bills Right Here”, LexisNexis, ) SEW
The political world has all but forgotten the American Jobs Act, but it remains on the table as Obama s plan
for juicing the economy. If passed in full, the Jobs Act would cut payroll taxes for businesses, double the size of
the payroll tax cut for individuals, give aid to states to prevent public sector layoffs, and increase infrastructure
spending. All together, the Jobs Act would create 1.9 million jobs over the next year.
Let s place blame where blame is due, Congress did act. Senate Republicans successfully filibustered it, but
eventually allowed the Senate to pass one small piece of it. House Republicans whittled it almost down to
sawdust, and then passed what was left.
To be fair, Republicans got their usual assists from depressingly predictable Democratic bickering and cowardice.
But most of the blame belongs to the GOP. Republicans should consult a mirror, if they re looking for someone to
blame for inaction on jobs and the consequences.
Despite public clamoring for action on jobs, congressional Republicans reflexively killed the American Jobs
Act, saying it was unnecessary. The House wouldn t bring it up for a vote, and a Republican filibuster killed it in
the Senate. For GOP policymakers, this was a time when Washington should stop investing in job creation and start
focusing on austerity lower the deficit, take capital out of the economy, and everything would work out fine.
Investment in public transportation boosts mobility and economy; multiple warrants
Weisbrod & Reno, 09 (Part of Economic Development Research Group and Cambridge Systematics,
“Economic Impact Of Public Transportation Investment,” October 2010,
http://www.apta.com/resources/reportsandpublications/Documents/economic_impact_of_public_tran
sportation_investment.pdf)KK
Investment in public transportation expands service and improves mobility, and, if sustained over time,
can potentially affect the economy by providing travel and vehicle ownership cost savings for public
transportation passengers and those switching from automobiles, leading to shifts in consumer
spending; reduced traffic congestion for those traveling by automobile and truck, leading to further
direct travel cost savings for businesses and households; business operating cost savings associated
with worker wage and reliability effects of reduced congestion; business productivity gained from
access to broader labor markets with more diverse skills, enabled by reduced traffic congestion and
expanded transit service areas; and additional regional business growth enabled by indirect impacts
of business growth on supplies and induced impacts on spending of worker wages. At a national level,
cost savings and other productivity impacts can affect competitiveness in international markets.
Investment in urban transport key to economic development
Global Outlook, 12 (4/1/12, Global Outlook, “Transport – Unclogging inner-city arteries,” LexisNexis
Academic)
Planning experts say this level of investment in urban transport schemes is vital to sustain current
levels of urban development. Mr Porter says: "Transport investment is very important for
development, in fact it is fundamental. People need to be able to get to jobs, and employers need
access to a labour force. Improving transport effectively increases the size of the labour pool."
Improved mass transit increases agglomeration bolstering the economy
Drennan & Brecher, Spring (Department of urban planning and UCLA and Cornell
University, “Measuring Urban Agglomeration Economies with office rents,” Spring 2012,
http://www.uctc.net/access/40/access40_transiteconomy.shtml)KK
Good mass transit enables large numbers of skilled workers to live in or travel to a small area. Such
concentrations of workers increase the likelihood of agglomeration economies of two types: labor
pooling and knowledge spillovers.Labor pooling is the high concentration of workers with specific skills
in an area. If firms that use highly specialized labor (such as attorneys experienced in corporate
bankruptcies) lose key employees, they are far more likely to find replacements quickly if they are
located near other firms that employ such workers. Good public transportation increases the distances
specialized workers can travel and increases the area from which firms can draw these
workers.Knowledge spillovers refer to the informal sharing of information among those engaged in the
same occupation, whether it be stonework or computer software. Good public transit should increase
the ability of workers to connect with others in their fields, increasing the level of knowledge “in the
air.” Greater concentrations of workers in similar fields make fruitful exchanges more likely. High public
transit use makes such concentrations possible and should increase the likelihood of agglomeration
economies.
Cheap public transit connects poor neighborhoods with work
Gordon, Michael, Funding Urban Mass Transit in the United States (March 23, 2011).
Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2007981 or
http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2007981 JPT)
By serving lower income areas, urban mass transit provides an important service to major cities by
creating a link between these areas and other parts of the city, where the lower-income residents can
find employment. Many of the poorer urban areas cannot provide jobs for the residents, while other
urban areas do not have residents nearby to fill the demand for lower- income jobs. There is a simple
employment mismatch here that requires some form of transportation for lower-income residents to
commute to work. Many of the jobs available lie beyond walking distance, and the lower incomes limit
transportation options. Urban mass transit fills this void by offering transportation at relatively low
fares. However, addressing this equity concern requires the public systems to keep fares low enough
for these citizens.
Mass transit hurts now under new legislation; transit is capable of effective
economic and job growth.
Hanley 12 -International President, Amalgamated Transit Union in DC; Member of the AFL-CIO's Executive Council (July 11, 2012
Huffington Post Business “Public Transportation: A Missed Opportunity to Create Jobs” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-jhanley/public-transportation-jobs_b_1662270.html JPT)
Last week's disappointing June jobs growth report was not welcome news to the thousands of
Americans still out of work. Congress had an opportunity to address the workforce shortage with the
recently passed transportation bill, but squandered that opportunity by failing to fund mass transit in
this legislation. Investment in public transportation can stimulate the economy and create jobs. More
than 570 jobs are created for each $10 million invested in the short term. According to the American
Public Transportation Association (APTA), every $1 billion invested in public transportation creates and
supports 36,000 American jobs. That is real job growth. Mass transit is a stimulant for the economy in
so many ways. Direct investment into transit operations means more public transportation and lower
fares, which in turn helps local businesses. It brings people with jobs to their stores with more money in
their pockets so they can buy things. More jobs and more business. Isn't that the very definition of
economic recovery? Instead, working families will continue to suffer. The American mass transit crisis
will become worse under this legislation with hidden taxes on commuters and transit riders though
increasing fares while forcing cash-strapped transit systems to cut more service. Unfortunately Senate
and House leadership does not understand that, and they blew a real opportunity with the
transportation bill. Until lawmakers support and fund public transportation, we will continue to see
underwhelming job growth numbers.
Public Transit receives funds in California which will improve air quality and
environment and bolster job growth and the economy.
Rocco 9 - Chief of Public Affairs Sacramento, California Area Civil Engineering (August 12, 2009 California Department of
Transportation “Public Transit and Air Quality Projects to Receive $235 Million in Bond Funding”
http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/paffairs/news/pressrel/09pr19.htm JPT)
Public transit and air quality projects across California are receiving bond funds to upgrade transit
service, purchase eco-friendly buses, modernize transit stations, build new park and ride facilities and
for other transit-related purposes that will reduce emissions. All told, 107 projects will receive $235.4
million from Proposition 1B, the 2006 transportation bond, which includes $3.6 billion to improve public
transit in California. "These projects are a direct investment in our state's transportation infrastructure
and will help stimulate the California economy right when we need it the most," said Gov.
Schwarzenegger. "Not only will these projects help stimulate our economy and create jobs, they will also
reduce traffic congestion and transportation-related pollution, improving our air quality and bringing us
another step closer to reaching our emissions-reduction goals." An additional $115 million in bond
transit funding from fiscal year 2008-09 could be released this fall (contingent on bond board approval
of bond sales) along with all or a portion of $350 million in bond transit funding for fiscal year 2009-10.
"We need to immediately put this $235 million to work on projects that will improve public transit and
air quality and keep people on the job," said Caltrans Director Randy Iwasaki.
Mass Transit solves for employment
Transportation can induce more jobs when in use and save money—New York
employer benefit proves
Schumer 12 (Charles E., US Senator, 2/13/12, “SCHUMER INCLUDES EXTENSION OF COMMUTER TAX
BREAK IN HIGHWAY BILL MARK-UP TODAY; PROVISION WOULD EXTEND MASS TRANSIT BENEFIT
THROUGH 2012 AND MAKE RETROACTIVE BACK TO JANUARY; Federal Mass Transit Benefit That Expired
December 31st Covered Up To $230 Worth of Monthly Commuting Costs; Schumer Effort Would Bring
to Parity Benefit Extended to Commuters Who Drive to Work;Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) News
Release “, LexisNexis, ) SEW
Last year, employees whose monthly mass transit fees were less than $230 were able to deduct the
full amount of their commuting costs from their paychecks, tax free, through an employer benefit
program. The cost is pegged to the IRS tax benefit that covers parking for drivers and would be
increased to $240 with the extension offered by Schumer. Until 2009, commuters who drove to work
received a greater tax break than those who took mass transit. In 2009 the mass transit benefit was
almost doubled from $120 per month to $230 per month, creating a savings of over $1000 per year for
commuters. Currently, 500,000 commuters in the Greater New York Metropolitan Area, and 2.7
million commuters nationwide take advantage of the benefit. Schumer was able to have the benefit
extended in 2011, but in year-end negotiations, Congressional Republicans failed to include tax
extenders in a year-end payroll tax cut deal. Schumer also noted that he intends to offer the extension
as part of any final deal for a year-long extension of the payroll tax cut in order to ensure the benefit is
attached to as many legislative vehicles as possible. Schumer authored the original legislation that
passed as part of the economic stimulus package in 2009, that allowed employers to offer their
employees up to $230 per month in transit benefits tax free, equal to what they were offering tax-free
for parking costs. The transit benefit reduces a commuter's transportation costs by a third or more. With
the benefits expiration there is now a greater incentive for people to drive to work rather than take
mass transit. If renewed, a $240 per month mass transit benefit will fully cover the monthly cost of
riding all major mass transit systems in New York City, including subway, bus, and express bus, and will
cover most of Metro North and Long Island Railroad commuting costs. According to TransitCenter, in the
New York metro area, commuters saved over $200 million in 2010 because of the transit benefit and
employers have saved over $45 million since the benefit went into effect in the New York area.
Approximately 15,000 companies in New York offer the transit benefit covering more than a half a
million employees. And in 2010, employers nationwide saved about $300 million in payroll taxes,
money that can be reinvested to create jobs.
Public transportation investment spurs massive job growth
Hanley 12 (International President, Amalgamated Transit Union in DC; Member of the AFL-CIO’s
Executive Council http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-j-hanley/public-transportationjobs_b_1662270.html)
Investment in public transportation can stimulate the economy and create jobs. More than 570 jobs are
created foreach $10 million invested in the short term. According to the American Public Transportation
Association (APTA), every $1 billion invested in public transportation creates and supports 36,000
American jobs. That is real job growth Mass transit is a stimulant for the economy in so many ways.
Direct investment into transit operations means more public transportation and lower fares, which in
turn helps local businesses. It brings people with jobs to their stores with more money in their pockets
so they can buy things.More jobs and more business. Isn't that the very definition of economic
recovery?
Instead, working families will continue to suffer. The American mass transit crisis will become worse
under this legislation with hidden taxes on commuters and transit riders though increasing fares while
forcing cash-strapped transit systems to cut more service.
We need to revamp the re-employment system by increasing building projects
Katz 11 (Laurence F. 9/7/11, Economics professor at Harvard and the chief economist at the Labor
Department in 1993-4, “How to Bring the Jobs Back: Invest in Workers”, LexisNexis, ) SEW
The employment crisis has exacerbated the longer-term trends of rising inequality and a decline in
middle-class jobs. Bold action by the federal government is needed. First, a net job-creation tax credit
for the next two years could provide a powerful incentive for private-sector employers to speed hiring
and create momentum for a jobs recovery. Private employers who increase employment would get a
tax credit to cover a substantial share (say 40 percent) of the payroll costs of net new hires; they
would get a check even if they didn't owe taxes. Such a tax credit would focus the incentives on
expanding businesses, where the new jobs are more likely to persist, even after the subsidy expires.
Second, increased federal spending of at least several hundred billion dollars a year for the next two
years is needed to offset weak private-sector demand and crumbling state and local government
finances. I would emphasize aid to state and local governments to prevent further layoffs and to
increase spending on infrastructure for public schools and community colleges. Recent research shows
that investments in public school infrastructure can raise property values and student performance. The
most promising transportation, research and development and energy-efficiency investments should
also be included. Third, the work force investment and re-employment system needs to be revamped.
Re-employment services can be cost-effective in helping dislocated and disadvantaged workers find
employment more rapidly. The economic rewards from community college and other postsecondary
education remain high for young workers and some dislocated workers. There is much evidence that
well-functioning training and education programs -- like Job Corps, the National Guard Youth
Challenge and Career Academies -- help disadvantaged youths. Existing employment and job-training
systems are fragmented and hard to navigate. We need to make sure all workers have the resources
and information to invest in high-return training. Unemployment insurance should be made more
flexible so that employers have an incentive to shorten workers' hours instead of laying them off.
Jobless workers trying to start new businesses should be eligible for continued unemployment insurance
benefits. Wage-loss insurance should be granted to help buffer the earnings losses of displaced workers
who take new, lower-paid jobs. Industry-specific training programs that prepare disadvantaged
workers for skilled jobs and help connect them to employers have been shown to raise earnings and
should be expanded. These initiatives could start us down the road to a sustained jobs recovery with
more broadly shared prosperity
Infrastructure investment creates jobs
Halsey, 12 – Washington Post reporter (04/24/12, Ashley, “On infrastructure, a cry for consensus,
action,” Section A, pg. A04, Suburban Edition, The Washington Post, Lexis Nexis Academic)
Monday's Miller Center report said that "the right mix of compelling voices on the local and national
stage could spur political leaders to set aside their differences, rise above the current quagmire of
inaction, and take steps to adopt and pursue a vision of transportation policy for the 21st century."
Despite "extreme political polarization and intense resistance to public spending of all kinds," the group
hopes to use social and mainstream media to deliver a message that infrastructure investment will
create jobs and save the United States from a competitive decline in global markets. Their goal is to
link the larger issue to local projects, the benefit of which are more readily apparent to voters.
"It is our belief that once citizens become aware of the significant costs and risks associated with a
compromised transportation system operating at less than optimal capacity, they will feel more
compelled to demand calls for action that will, in turn, prompt policymakers to act," the report said.]
Mass Transit helps manufacturing
With the right policies in place, an expansion of public transportation could help
reindustrialize the United States.
Feldman, associate professor in the department of economic history at Stockholm University, 2009
(Jonathan, Michael,The American Prospect, From Mass Transit to New Manufacturing, )
http://prospect.org/article/mass-transit-new-manufacturing SJS
A new industrial-policy initiative for domestic production of mass-transit products could help the United
States overcome multiple economic challenges. It could provide high-wage jobs, generate tax revenue,
expand exports, and reduce trade deficits. This mass-transit-production strategy requires a new kind of
industrial and planning policy to overcome the limits of traditional public works. It's not enough to lay
more tracks and upgrade rail facilities. The government has to support domestic production of trains,
signals, and related transit hardware and software.According to the Institute for Supply Management,
U.S. manufacturing activity recently fell to its lowest level in 28 years. Manufacturing has also suffered
across the globe. But overseas the downturn reflects mainly the recession, while in the U.S. there is a
long-term manufacturing decline. Traditional public-works outlays alone won't restore Americans
manufacturing -- but they could supply new demand if we had industrial policies in place. Mass transit
could be the incubator for an industrial renaissance, based on new kinds of producers and processes. If
public investment is connected to developing new industries, then government spending will not "crowd
out" private investment. On the contrary, the public outlay could provide demand for new private
investments. But when the market and existing firms fail to make the necessary investments, the
government must fill the void.
There are important niche markets in subways (the primary focus of this article), highspeed rail, local commuter rail, and the growing light-rail industry. Consultants from
the firm IBISWorld, a leading business consulting firm, calculate that today, about 45
percent of revenue within the U.S. train, subway, and transit-car manufacturing sector
is tied to new and rebuilt locomotives and parts, and 27 percent of revenue is tied to
street, subway, and transit cars.
Increase in jobs increases economic activity
Weisbrod & Reno, 09 (*Part of Economic Development Research Group and ** Cambridge Systematics,
“Economic Impact Of Public Transportation Investment,” October 2010,
http://www.apta.com/resources/reportsandpublications/Documents/economic_impact_of_public_transportation
_investment.pdf)KK
Other economic
impacts are associated with the job impacts. Corresponding to the 36,000 jobs is
approximately $3.6 billion of added business output (sales volume), which provides $1.8 billion of GDP
(gross domestic product, or “value added”) -- including $1.6 billion of worker income and $0.2 billion of corporate income. This additional
economic activity generates nearly $500 million in federal, state and local tax revenues. [Note: these figures
should not be added or otherwise combined, because a portion of the business output provides the worker income and other elements of GDP,
which in turn are sources for tax revenues.]
Public Transit provides numerous economic, energy, environmental and social
benefits; critics base arguments on inaccurate reports.
USDoT (US Department of Transportation) 9 - (June 2, 2009, United States Department of
Transportation “Public transportation delivers public benefits”
http://fastlane.dot.gov/2009/06/public-transportation-delivers-public-benefits.html#.UAh_TFWp9k JPT)
One thing I think Americans would
like to see improved is how transportation serves the communities in which they live. We love our cars,
but sometimes there can be a better way to get to work or to the beach, or simply to the drug store. And providing
Americans with those choices can also be good for the economy. In one study done in the San Antonio,
each 1% of regional travel shifted from automobile to public transit increased regional
income about $2.9 million, resulting in 226 additional regional jobs. Other economic benefits
include increased productivity, employment, business activity, investment and
redevelopment. Cities with well-established rail system, according to a study produced for APTA, have
less traffic congestion, lower traffic death rates, lower consumer expenditures on
transportation, significantly higher per capita transit ridership, lower average per capita
vehicle mileage, and higher transit service cost recovery than otherwise comparable cities with less or no
rail transit service. Moreover, whether in Houston, Texas, or Portland, Oregon, rail transit systems not only
provide economic, but social and environmental benefits. Social benefits of transit include
improved public health, greater flexibility in trip planning and accessibility for non-drivers.
Rail travel consumes about a fifth of the energy per passenger-mile as automobile travel.
Electric powered rail produces minimal air and noise emissions. Many criticisms of rail transit
investment are based on inaccurate or incomplete analysis. For example, transit critics often cite
President Obama was elected to harness a national will to do things better.
operating costs. This overlooks the significant returns that rail transit offers. In 2002, for example, rail transit required about
$12.5 billion annually in public subsidy. However, these costs were offset several times over by $19.4 billion in congestion costs
savings, $8.0 billion in roadway cost savings, $12.1 billion in parking cost savings, $22.6 billion in consumer cost saving, and $5.6
Developing public transportation increases choices, for drivers as
well as riders. Developing public transportation makes sense.
billion in reduced crash damages.
Transit Key to Fiscal Savings
Small investments in transit produce huge energy savings and saves millions of dollars
Shapiro et al., 2002 (7/02, Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, Managing Director of Sonecon, LLC, a non-resident
Fellow of the Brookings Institution and the Progressive Policy Institute, Economic Counselor to the
U.S.Conference Board, and a director of the Axson-Johnson Foundation, Dr. Kevin A. Hassett, Resident
Scholar of the American Enterprise Institute, Dr. Frank S. Arnold, President of Applied Microeconomics,
Inc., columnist for The Environmental Forum, report commissioned by American Public Transportation
Association, “Conserving Energy and Preserving the Environment: The Role of Public Transportation”,
Lexis Nexis Database) CJC
Achieving much greater energy savings and environmental benefits by significantly increasing the
passenger loads of existing public transportation systems would require modest new investments, at a
much lower cost than would be required to produce comparable energy and environmental benefits
by other means. Achieving a genuine measure of energy independence and markedly cleaner air by
raising our public transportation use to European levels would require significant financial
commitments, as well as changes in other areas such as land-use planning and the way many public
transportation systems operate. The long-term price tag for substantially expanding the country’s
public transportation infrastructure, especially rail systems, would be less than the cost of continuing
to expand the country’s fleet of private vehicles, build and maintain more roads and highways to
accommodate them, and absorb the rising energy, environmental, and congestion costs of this
approach. Given the limits and risks to our energy supply and the threats to the environment, relying
for the long-term on private cars, SUVs, and light trucks for 99 percent of all daily transportation needs
will be unsustainable The consumption of energy by private automobiles in the United States truly
dwarfs energy consumption by public transportation systems, as would be expected based on their
relative use.
A large scale revamping of transportation helps the economy not only with jobs, but
also with saving money.
Department of Treasury 3/23 (3/23/12, “TREASURY REPORT: NOW IS THE KEY TIME TO INVEST IN
INFRASTRUCTURE”, LexisNexis Academic, ) SEW
As the report's analysis reflects, investment in infrastructure supports middle-class families in a range
of ways. In the short-term, investments in transportation create middle-class jobs - 80 percent of the
jobs created are in the construction sector, the manufacturing sector and the retail and wholesale trade
sectors - where nearly 90 percent of the jobs have middle-class wages. In the long-term, transportation
choices, including public transit and high-speed rail, deliver benefits to families burdened by
fluctuating global oil markets, congested automobile travel, and a lack of transportation options. The
average American family spends more than $7,600 a year on transportation, which is more than they
spend on food and more than twice what they spend on out-of-pocket health care costs. For 90
percent of Americans, transportation costs absorb one out of every seven dollars of income. Multimodal transportation investments are critical to making sure that American families can travel
without wasting time and money stuck in traffic.
Mass transit is efficient and it reduces costs required for road construction
Global Outlook, 12 (4/1/12, Global Outlook, “Transport – Unclogging inner-city arteries,” LexisNexis
Academic)
Research by the US Transportation Research Board concluded that road-based travel breaks down
when more than 2000 cars per hour attempt to travel in a single lane. In striking contrast, a modern
light rail system can move more than 25,000 passengers per hour - the equivalent of an 18-lane
highway. Making the case for large-scale public investment in mass-transit schemes, particularly
expensive inner-city rail systems, during a period of sustained global economic uncertainty may not
be easy, yet the compelling arguments are being heard. Canada's Waterloo region looked at several
European and North American transport systems before confirming its decision in 2011 to build a mass
light-rail system. "We looked at numerous cities for examples of what to and what not to do," says John
Yung, CEO of the region's investment promotion agency Canada's Technology Triangle. Among the
transit systems Waterloo looked at was London's Docklands Light Railway, which carries more than
100,000 people each day and has recently been extended ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games being held
in London. Mr Yung says the decision is already having a positive impact: "The prospect of future rapid
transit is already affecting development. The total value of building permits issued in 2010 for new
construction in the Waterloo region was $1.5bn, an increase of 65% from 2009 values - the highest value
ever recorded in the region." In 2010, 36% of Waterloo's non-residential construction and 29% of
residential construction took place within 800 metres of future rapid transit station areas. "Without
rapid transit, road expansion costs including property would be in the range of $1.4bn to $1.5bn," says
Mr Yung. "Achieving higher transit ridership targets will not eliminate the need for road improvements,
but it can reduce the amount of road construction required and reduce road expansion costs by
$400m to $500m."
Transit Systems stimulate the economy
Public transportation creates economic innovation
Berry 10
If we’d spent as much federal stimulus money on public transportation as we spent on highways, we
would have created twice as much work and put a bigger dent in the unemployment rate. That’s
the analysis of stimulus spending by Smart Growth America, the Center for Neighborhood Technology
and U.S. PIRG, the public-policy lobbying group. Smart Growth America found that every billion
dollars spent on public transportation produced 16,419 job-months, while the same amount spent on
highway infrastructure projects produced 8,781 job-months. Now it is warning that the Jobs for Main
Street Act of 2010 (.pdf), the $154 billion jobs bill the House of Representatives passed last month,
could make the same mistake in funding the wrong priorities.The legislation, which the Senate is
expected to take up early this year, would finance everything from renovating schools to putting more
cops on the street. It is funded in part with money set aside for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, also
known as the Wall Street bailout. The bill allocates $27.1 billion for highways and other surface
transportation and just $8.4 billion for public transportation.
Infrastructure projects stimulate the economy and improve lives.
Cardin 6/29 (Ben W. U.S senator, 6/29/12,
http://www.cardin.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/cardin-says-mountain-maryland-economy-willbenefit-from-renewal-of-federal-transportation-programs LexisNexis, ) SEW
Modernizing and improving transportation infrastructure will help keep Mountain Maryland
competitive, stimulate its economy and improve the lives of all its citizens. I fought hard to ensure that
completing the Appalachian Development Highway System was a priority. Removing the prohibition on
the use of toll credits, increasing the federal cost share, and requiring states to develop ADHS
completion plans are all provisions in this bill that will help make it possible for Maryland to complete
the US-219 portion of the North-South Appalachian Highway, and maintaining the Appalachian Regional
Commissions Local Access Roads program will promote economic development in Western Maryland
and throughout Appalachia.
Investing in our nations highways, bridges, and transportation infrastructure is one of the best federal
investments we can make. The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that for every $1 billion
in federal investment in transportation, 34,700 jobs are created or saved. Improvements to Marylands
roads are no different. Completion of the North-south Appalachian Highway connecting I-68 to the
Pennsylvania Turnpike and Corridor H in West Virginia is expected to create more than 12,000 new
permanent jobs and 20,000 construction jobs in the three affected states. Our economy is still
recovering and these jobs are more important than ever to the region.
The Appalachian Development Highway System (ADHS) is currently authorized at 3,090 miles. By the
end of FY 2011, 2,612.2 miles85.6 percent of the miles authorizedwere open to traffic. Completion of
the ADHS has long been a top priority for ARC.
Transit key to reduce oil dependency
Transit key to reduce foreign oil dependency
Shapiro et al., 2002 (7/02, Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, Managing Director of Sonecon, LLC, a non-resident
Fellow of the Brookings Institution and the Progressive Policy Institute, Economic Counselor to the
U.S.Conference Board, and a director of the Axson-Johnson Foundation, Dr. Kevin A. Hassett, Resident
Scholar of the American Enterprise Institute, Dr. Frank S. Arnold, President of Applied Microeconomics,
Inc., columnist for The Environmental Forum, report commissioned by American Public Transportation
Association, “Conserving Energy and Preserving the Environment: The Role of Public Transportation”,
Lexis Nexis Database) CJC
The most recent data show that the current use of public transportation is a major source of energy
savings. Moving a person over a given distance by public transportation consumes, on average, about
half the energy of moving a person the same distance by private automobile, sports-utility vehicle
(SUV), or light truck.7 Over the 42.5 billion passenger miles traveled on public transportation in 1998,
the energy benefits add up to nearly than 107 trillion British thermal units (Btus). 2 As we will show,
these energy benefits are comparable to the energy consumed by various manufacturing industries. For
example, the energy saved through the use of public transportation is equivalent to half of the energy
used to manufacture computers and electronic equipment in America. These energy savings are also
equal to 99 percent of the energy used by the beverage and tobacco industries, and more than four
times all the energy used to manufacture apparel. Finally, these energy benefits are equivalent to about
one-fourth of the energy used to heat American homes in 1997 (the most recent data). 3 These savings
carry clear significance for our national and economic security. The United States is increasingly
dependent on oil from the Middle East, at a time when dangers from Saddam Hussein, the war against
terrorism, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict all threaten to interrupt the supply of OPEC oil or sharply
increase its price. Greater use of public transportation can offer a powerful conservation strategy that
could substantially reduce our dependence on imported oil. There is no other technology or approach
other than increased use of public transportation that, for every trip it is used, has the energy impact
of nearly doubling the fuel efficiency of automobiles. Table 2 shows that the energy savings
attributable to public transportation in 1998 are equivalent to almost 860 million gallons of gasoline, or
more than 45 million barrels of imported oil; the energy saved by the use of public transit in 1999 was
equal to almost 890 million gallons of gasoline and nearly 47 million barrels of oil. Put another way, the
current use of public transportation reduces our energy dependence by the equivalent of nearly one
month’s imports from Saudi Arabia, which ran a little less than 1.5 million barrels per day in 1998 and
1999, and currently run about 1.6 million barrels per day.
Transit use eliminates dependence on oil from Saudi Arabia
Shapiro et al., 2002 (7/02, Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, Managing Director of Sonecon, LLC, a non-resident
Fellow of the Brookings Institution and the Progressive Policy Institute, Economic Counselor to the
U.S.Conference Board, and a director of the Axson-Johnson Foundation, Dr. Kevin A. Hassett, Resident
Scholar of the American Enterprise Institute, Dr. Frank S. Arnold, President of Applied Microeconomics,
Inc., columnist for The Environmental Forum, report commissioned by American Public Transportation
Association, “Conserving Energy and Preserving the Environment: The Role of Public Transportation”,
Lexis Nexis Database) CJC
The energy savings and environmental benefits derived from public transportation could be much
greater, if Americans used public transit more frequently. In the early 20 th century when cities were
growing rapidly, public and private streetcar and bus lines were established across the country, and
America led the world in mass-transit development and use. Since World War II, private automobiles
have become the dominant means of short-distance travel, even as public transit assumed a larger role
many other countries. Over the last several decades, for example, the number of privately-owned
vehicles has grown more than twice as fast as the population. 9 As shown in Table 4, in 1998 public
transportation logged 42.7 billion passenger miles, compared to nearly 3.9 trillion passenger miles in
private automobiles, SUVs, and light trucks. After more than a decade in which the total number of
passenger miles traveled in private vehicles grew significantly faster than public transportation
passenger miles, the most recent data indicate a turn-around: Since 1995, the use of public transit has
grown both sharply and faster than the use of private vehicles. As shown in Table 5, use of public rail
systems has increased even faster than the use of SUVs and light trucks, the vehicles that dominated the
growth in transportation in the 1980s and early 1990s. Moreover, public bus use has grown faster than
automobile use, and nearly as fast as SUV and light-truck use. Public transportation has also grown at a
faster rate than air travel in recent years. From 1995 to 1998, the number of trips taken on public buses
grew 11.4 percent, and the number of trips taken on public-rail systems increased 16.1 percent:
Together, the number of trips on public transportation increased 13 percent from 1995 to 1998. 12
Over the same period, the number of domestic airline passengers increased 11.9 percent, and the
number of airline departures grew only 2.7 percent. 13 Given its high energy efficiency and low
polluting, public transportation offers the single largest untapped source of energy savings and
environmental gains available to the United States. Throughout much of Europe, people use public
transportation for about 10 percent of their daily travel needs. 14 There, governments have long used
tax, planning, and regulatory policies to encourage the use of public transportation and protect their
urban centers from automobile congestion. Virtually all European governments have also long provided
extensive capital and operating assistance to their bus and rail systems. We will see that if Americans
used public transportation at the same rate as Europeans – if a little more than ten percent of those
who currently use private automobiles shifted to public transportation, or everyone used public
transit for about ten percent of their daily travel needs -- the United States could be virtually energy
independent from Saudi Arabia.
Transit saves more than 855 million gallons of gasoline a year
Shapiro et al., 2002 (7/02, Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, Managing Director of Sonecon, LLC, a non-resident
Fellow of the Brookings Institution and the Progressive Policy Institute, Economic Counselor to the
U.S.Conference Board, and a director of the Axson-Johnson Foundation, Dr. Kevin A. Hassett, Resident
Scholar of the American Enterprise Institute, Dr. Frank S. Arnold, President of Applied Microeconomics,
Inc., columnist for The Environmental Forum, report commissioned by American Public Transportation
Association, “Conserving Energy and Preserving the Environment: The Role of Public Transportation”,
Lexis Nexis Database) CJC
Even though public transportation currently accounts for just 1.1 percent of all the passenger miles
traveled in America, its energy benefits are large. The 106.8 trillion Btus in energy savings in 1998 are
equivalent to more than 855 million gallons of gasoline, or more than 45 million barrels of oil -- a halfmonth’s supply of oil imports from the Persian Gulf. As noted earlier, the energy savings by 1999
amounted to the equivalent of almost 890 million gallons of gasoline or nearly 47 million barrels of oil.
These benefits compare favorably with energy use by various energy-intensive industries. For example,
the energy savings from public transportation are equal to more than twice the energy consumed by the
apparel industry, and half the energy burned by the paper pulp industry or by all manufacturers of
computer and electronic equipment. Public transportation would produce much greater energy savings
if Americans used public transportation at the rates they did once, or at the rates that people in other
countries currently do. Canadians travel on public transportation about seven times more often, on a
passenger mile basis, than Americans, and Europeans use buses and trains about ten times as frequently
as Americans. If we emulated Canadians in our use of public transportation, it would save almost as
much energy as the entire petrochemical industry burns every year, or more than a half-year’s supply
of oil imports from Saudi Arabia. If Americans used public transportation at the rate that Europeans
do, the energy savings would equal nearly all the energy used to produce all the food in the United
States, and the United States could reduce its oil dependence on the Persian Gulf by more than 40
percent.
Even current public transportation saves millions of dollars in oil, reduce harmful
emissions from private vehicles, and reduce American dependence on foreign oil
Shapiro et al., 2002 (7/02, Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, Managing Director of Sonecon, LLC, a non-resident
Fellow of the Brookings Institution and the Progressive Policy Institute, Economic Counselor to the
U.S.Conference Board, and a director of the Axson-Johnson Foundation, Dr. Kevin A. Hassett, Resident
Scholar of the American Enterprise Institute, Dr. Frank S. Arnold, President of Applied Microeconomics,
Inc., columnist for The Environmental Forum, report commissioned by American Public Transportation
Association, “Conserving Energy and Preserving the Environment: The Role of Public Transportation”,
Lexis Nexis Database) CJC
The role of transportation in our nation’s energy consumption and environmental quality is immense.
Americans use more energy and generate more pollution in their daily lives than they do in the
production of all the goods in the economy, the operations of all commercial enterprises, or the running
of their homes. Any serious effort to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and make significant
environmental progress must address the way Americans travel. The vital role of public transportation
in improving energy efficiency and the environment is often under-appreciated. With its fuel and
pollution advantages, increased use of transit offers the most effective strategy available for reducing
energy consumption and improving the environment without imposing new taxes, government
mandates, or regulations on the economy or consumers. Public transportation needs to be an essential
element in sound national energy and environmental policies. Potential threats to the supply and
price of foreign oil as a result of terrorism, conflicts in the Middle East, and OPEC decisions underscore
the need for a public transportation strategy that reduces our nation’s dependence on imported oil.
Likewise, ongoing efforts to reduce harmful emissions from our air can be more effective when they
include ways to increase use of public transportation. “Conserving Energy and Preserving the
Environment: The Role of Public Transportation” demonstrates that traveling by transit, per person and
per mile, uses significantly less energy and produces substantially less pollution than comparable
travel by private vehicles. The findings provide clear and indisputable evidence that public
transportation is saving energy and reducing pollution in America today -- and that increased usage
could have an even greater impact in the future. At our current levels of use, the study found public
transportation is reducing Americans’ energy bills and keeping the air cleaner. For example: Energy
savings from public transportation contribute to our national and economic security by making America
less dependent on foreign oil or on new sources for drilling. Public transportation saves more than 855
million gallons of gasoline a year, or 45 million barrels of oil. These savings equal about one month’s oil
imports from Saudi Arabia and three months of the energy that Americans use to heat, cool and operate
their homes, or half the energy used to manufacture all computers and electronic equipment in
America. For every passenger mile traveled, public transportation uses about one-half the fuel of private
automobiles, sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and light trucks. Even at current rates of usage, public
transportation produces large environmental benefits. For every passenger mile traveled, public
transportation produces only a fraction of the harmful pollution of private vehicles: only 5 percent as
much carbon monoxide, less than 8 percent as many volatile organic compounds, and nearly half as
much carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Compared to private vehicles, public transportation is
reducing annual emissions of the pollutants that create smog, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and
nitrogen oxides (NOx), by more than 70,000 tons and 27,000 tons respectively. These reductions equal:
-- nearly 50 percent of all VOCs emitted from the dry cleaning industry, a major source of this pollutant;
-- 45 percent of VOCs emitted from the industrial uses of coal; -- 50 percent of NOx from the industrial
uses of coal; -- more than 33 percent of the NOx emitted by all domestic oil and gas producers or by the
metal processing industry. The reduced VOC and NOx emissions that result from public transportation
use save between $130 million and $200 million a year in regulatory costs. Public transportation is
reducing emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) by nearly 745,000 tons annually. This equals nearly 75
percent of the CO emissions by all U.S. chemical manufacturers. Public transportation is also reducing
emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), which contributes to global warming, by more than 7.4 million
tons a year.
Transit Key to Global competiveness
Investment in transportation infrastructure key to maintaining global competitiveness
Halsey, 11 (02/2/11, Ashley, The Washington Post, “44% of Md. Roads are in decline, report finds,”
Lexus Nexis)
As U.S. investment in preservation and development of transportation infrastructure lags far behind
that of China, Russia and European nations, they concluded that it will lead to "a steady erosion of the
social and economic foundations for American prosperity in the long run."
In 2009, China spent an estimated $350 billion on infrastructure. Europe spent $350 billion in a five-year
period to modernize seaports, expand airports and high-speed rail lines, and reconfigure city centers.
Brazil has invested more than $240 billion in infrastructure in the past three years and expects to exceed
that amount by $100 billion over the next three years.
Maryland's dilemma, as expressed in the TRIP report, is a microcosm of the national plight.
"Today's business culture demands that an area have well-maintained and efficient roadways and
bridges if it is to remain economically competitive," the TRIP report said. "The quality of a region's
transportation system has become a key component in a business's ability to compete locally,
nationally and internationally."
Investment in transportation infrastructure key to American economic recovery and
global competitiveness
Halsey, 11 (07/28/11, Ashley, The Washington Post, “Neglecting transportation has high price, report
says,” Lexus Nexis Academic)
As Congress debates how to meet the nation's long-term transportation needs, decaying roads, bridges,
railroads and transit systems are costing the United States $129 billion a year, according to a report
issued Wednesday by a professional group whose members are responsible for designing and building
such infrastructure. Complex calculations done for the American Society of Civil Engineers indicate that
infrastructure deficiencies add $97  billion a year to the cost of operating vehicles and result in
travel delays that cost $32 billion. "If investments in surface transportation infrastructure are not
made soon, these costs are expected to grow exponentially," the ASCE said. "Within 10 years, U.S.
businesses would pay an added $430 billion in transportation costs, household incomes would fall by
more than $7,000, and U.S. exports will fall by $28 billion." Deterioration of the U.S. transportation
system has been likened to an iceberg, with just the tip of an enormous obstacle to economic growth
showing above the surface. The ASCE report contends that infrastructure failure already is dramatically
affecting travel and commerce. It is the latest of several reports to predict dire consequences if the
nation does not swiftly address the need to rebuild 60-year-old highway systems and rail lines often far
older than that. In May, a report by the Urban Land Institute warned that the United States is falling
behind three emerging economic competitors: Brazil, China and India. The institute's report put in global
perspective an issue addressed last year by 80 experts led by former transportation secretaries Norman
Y. Mineta and Samuel K. Skinner. That group concluded that as much as $262 billion a year must be
spent on U.S. highways, rail networks and air transportation systems. The infrastructure crisis is not lost
on Congress, but Republicans who control the House and Democrats who control the Senate have
different ideas about how to address it. Unable to agree on long-term aviation funding, Congress proved
incapable last week of passing a simple extension of current funding levels, something it has done 20
times since funding for the Federal Aviation Administration expired in 2007. The agency has been
operating in a partial shutdown since midnight Friday, losing an estimated $30 million a day in airline
ticket tax revenue. There is an equally deep divide between the two houses on a long-term plan for
funding surface transportation. House Republicans favor a six-year planthat would provide about $35
billion a year, an amount that transportation committee Chairman John L. Mica (R-Fla.) says can be
leveraged into about $75 billion through a variety of means, including public-private partnerships.
Mica calls a two-year, $109 billion funding proposal that has won bipartisan support in the Senate "a
recipe for bankruptcy" of the Federal Highway Trust Fund, which bankrolls surface transportation.
Rep. Nick J. Rahall II (W.Va.), ranking Democrat on Mica's committee, said the ASCE report underscored
the folly of efforts to "do more with less.""Today's report provides the cold hard truth that America's
economic recovery and long-term competitiveness will suffer if we continue to under-invest in our
future," Rahall said. "Slashing investments by one-third, as Republicans have proposed to do, will make
the economic impact on America's middle class even worse than the grim predictions by the economists
in this report." The ASCE report predicted that without infrastructure investment, 870,000 jobs would
be lost and economic growth would be stifled to the tune of $3.1 trillion by 2020. To avert that, the
report says, will require an investment of about $1.7  trillion by 2020. It estimated the gap
between what is being spent and what needs to be spent at $94 billion a year.
"The link between a nation's infrastructure and its economic competitiveness has always been
understood," said Kathy J. Caldwell, president of the ASCE. "But today, for the first time, we have data
showing how much failing to invest in our surface transportation system can negatively impact job
growth and family budgets." Thomas J. Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the
necessary spending was "not just transportation for transportation's sake." "Without more robust
economic growth, the U.S. will not create the 20 million jobs needed in the next decade to replace
those lost during the recession and to keep up with a growing workforce," he said. Ultimately,
Americans would get paid less, the ASCE report says. The economy would lose jobs, and the paychecks
of those who are able to find work would be cut by nearly 30 percent. The cost of a crumbling
transportation system was described by Steven Landau of Boston's Economic Development Research
Group, which did the research for the ASCE. "Business will have to divert increasing portions of earned
income to pay for transportation delays and vehicle repairs, draining money that would otherwise be
invested in innovation and expansion," Landau said
BRT Solvency
BRT costs less and brings more riders than LRT - GAO research provesJournal of Public Transportation 2002 (Steven E. Polzin and Michael R. Baltes,Center for Urban
Transportation Research, National Bus. Rapid Transit Institute , A Viable Alternative? PDF,
http://www.gobrt.org/Journal_of_Public_Transport_BRT_Issue.pdf#page=8)
Clearly, the high cost of rail transit limits the possible role it can play in urban mobility even under
radical changes in modal spending priorities. Thus, the pursuit of more moderate infrastructure cost
transit options increases the chances of transit being able to make more meaningful contributions to our
urban mobility. A key characteristic of BRT is the prospect (not yet fully verified) that it can provide a
lower-cost method of providing better performing public transit service that is both able to retain
current and attract new customers as well as garner political and taxpayer support. Evidence provided
by the GAO in its recent report on BRT indicated that the BRT projects reviewed cost less to build than
the LRT projects reviewed, on a per-mile basis (U.S. GAO 2001). In addition, the GAO also points out
that ridership was comparable between the BRT and LRT systems reviewed and compared and that
five of the six BRT projects had higher overall system operating speeds than the LRT projects (U.S.
GAO 2001).
BRT combines transit guideways with flexibility of buses, and are efficient modes of
travel
Wright 2003 ( Lloyd, Institute for Transportaton and Development, GTZ Sourcebook, Bus Rapid
Transit, pdf)
For many people, buses have become a last resort transportation choice due to their apparent
reputation as an undesirable, poorly performing mode. However, as traffic congestion increases and
light rail transit (LRT) construction costs escalate, many transit properties have begun to take
advantage of technological advances and new concepts in vehicle design and corridor development.
BRT combines qualities of fixed-guideway transit with the flexibility of traditional bus systems. A BRT
system can use both general traffic lanes and/or dedicated guideways, smooth-riding vehicles,
improved station amenities, and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technology to enhance the
performance of the system and encourage higher transit usage. By combining attributes of rail and
bus systems, BRT can achieve the benefits of both. The purpose of this corridor analysis is to evaluate
and prioritize BRT elements that are responsive to community needs and the expected travel demand
in Portland, Oregon’s Southeast corridor.
BRT systems are more effective than LRT systems- BRT can handle mixed traffic and
are highly flexible.
Journal of Public Transportation 2002 (Herbert S. Levinson, Transportation Consultant, Samuel
Zimmerman and Jennifer Clinger, DMJM+Harris, C. Scott Rutherford, University of Washington, Bus
Rapid Transit, An Overview, PDF,
http://www.gobrt.org/Journal_of_Public_Transport_BRT_Issue.pdf#page=8)
On the other hand, BRT projects can generally be completed in phases as funding and opportunity
permit; because of service flexibility, even the core segment can be left for last. This incremental
development provides an opportunity to show progress much earlier than with most rail projects.
Ironically, local officials often view the flexibility of BRT service as a drawback. The “permanence” of
rail right-of-way and station development is widely regarded as an irreversible public commitment to
transit service capable of attracting private sector investment supportive of community development
goals and objectives (Buckley and Miller 2000). BRT on exclusive right-of-way does not markedly differ
from rail rapid transit. In most applications, boarding areas are formally developed into stations
complete with passenger flow control and off-vehicle fare collection. Grade separation and crossing
protection from street traffic are usually provided in either instance. One of the biggest limitations of
rail service versus bus service is the high cost of distributing passengers to their ultimate destinations.
As experienced by many rail rapid transit operations before World War II, the expense of operating
branch-line service to neighborhoods often outweighed the revenue generated for the system by
those branch lines (Federal Transit Administration 1994). In addition, the cost of maintenance for
lightly used branch lines is only marginally less than that for heavily used mainlines, a fact not lost on
commuter or freight railroad management. Rail transit operators rely on feeder bus services to
provide this distribution, but time and financial transfer penalties dampen the attractiveness of the
multiple-seat ride and foster the proliferation of park-and-ride lots. BRT operations can overcome
some transfer problems by operating branch service on local streets directly to the mainline. In
general,Characteristics of BRT Projects densely developed linear corridors with readily available
exclusive rights-ofway are better suited for rail rapid transit than BRT. In practice, it would appear
that the effectiveness of BRT applications using advanced signal in mixed traffic exceeds the potential
effectiveness for light rail transit (LRT) operating in the same environment. In these corridors,
operating in mixed traffic may be inevitable, and mixed-traffic operation is within the domain of BRT.
Given the prevailing political and financial climate, exclusive guideway operations are often out of reach
of most transit agencies, even for those corridors with the heavy transit demands. Advances in
automatic vehicle location (AVL) and traffic signal technology offer opportunities to reduce traffic
overflowing into residential areas from the major arterial roads. The primary difficulty is not in the
application of ITS; rather, the greatest problems will be encountered when structural changes required
of transit organizations to effectively deploy the technology and properly market the service are
implemented.
Bus transit is key for economic development potential
Global Outlook, 12 (4/1/12, Global Outlook, “Transport – Unclogging inner-city arteries,” LexisNexis
Academic)
In the past 10 years, a string of Chinese cities have developed rapid bus transit system, including
Guangzhou, Lanzhou, Huizhou, Wuhan, Harbin and Fuzhou. "Bus rapid transit is a way to move a lot of
people efficiently without the same level of capital costs that goes into a subway or rail line," says Mr
Porter. "It is also more flexible than rail." Whether cities invest in high-end metro lines or lower-cost bus
rapid-transit routes, unblocking clogged inner-cities is essential to unlock their economic potential.
BRT systems solve for the economy- several reasons
Journal of Public Transportation 2002 (Herbert S. Levinson, Transportation Consultant, Samuel
Zimmerman and Jennifer Clinger, DMJM+Harris, C. Scott Rutherford, University of Washington, Bus
Rapid Transit, An Overview, PDF,
http://www.gobrt.org/Journal_of_Public_Transport_BRT_Issue.pdf#page=8)
There are many reasons for developing BRT systems, especially in a U.S. context. 1. Central business
districts (CBDs) have continued to prosper and grow in ways that require more transport capacity and
improved access, even though employment in U.S. CBDs is declining as a percentage of overall
regional activity. Given the cost and environmental impacts associated with parking and road
construction and the traditional urban form of most CBDs, improved and expanded public transport
emerges as an important alternative for providing that capacity. In addition, many suburban-edge
cities exceed the aggregate employment base of many bigcity CBDs but do not currently have the focus
and density to make railbased rapid transit a cost-effective investment. 2. BRT systems can often be
implemented quickly and incrementally. 3. For a given distance of dedicated running way, BRT is
generally less costly to build than rail transit. Moreover, where BRT vehicles can reliably operate at
high speeds on high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes or general-purpose highways and streets over
significant proportions of a given route, running way capital costs will be even lower compared to
those for rail modes, which must be purpose-built over the entire distance covered 4. BRT can be the
most cost-effective means of serving a broad variety of urban and suburban environments. BRT
vehicles—whether they are driver-steered or electronically guided—can operate on streets, in
freeway medians, on railroad rights-of-way, on aerial structures, and underground. BRT systems can
also provide a broad array of express, limited-stop, and local all-stop services on a single facility
without complex signal and guideway switching systems. 5. BRT can provide quality performance with
sufficient transport capacity for most corridors in U.S. and Canadian cities. For example, the Ottawa
transitway system’s link to the CBD carries more people in the peak hour than most LRT segments in
North America. The Brisbane South East Busway carries approximately the same number of maximum
load point, peak-hour, peak-direction passengers—about 10,000 per hour. Many BRT lines in South
American cities carry peak-hour passenger flows that equal or exceed those on many U.S. and
Canadian fully grade-separated rail rapid transit lines. For example, Bogota’s TransMillenio system
serves more than 25,000 peak-hour, peak-direction maximum load point riders. 6. BRT is well suited to
extend the reach of rail transit lines providing feeder services to/from areas where densities are too
low to cost effectively extend the rail corridor. Examples of this application are the South Dade Busway
in South Miami-Dade County and the Pie IX Busway in Montreal. 7. BRT can be integrated into urban
environments in ways that foster economic development and transit- and pedestrian-friendly design.
For example, in Boston, Ottawa, and Brisbane, BRT has been part of integrated transit and land-use
strategies.
LRT Solvency
LRT systems can help spur innovation, increase in shopping commerce, new
commercial areas, and influence where growth will take place.
Topalovic, Center for Engineering and Public Policy, School of Engineering Practice, McMaster
,University, 2012 (G. Krantzberg, J. CarterSchool of Geography and Earth Sciences, McMaster University,
1280 Main Street West, May 08, Light Rail Transit in Hamilton: Health, Environmental and Economic
Impact Analysis, http://www.springerlink.com/content/7080610t31612834/)
Development investments influenced by the implementation of an LRT system can include the
creation of new housing, offices, services, and shops. Cities who have successfully implemented LRT
systems have reported an increase in shopping commerce generated adjacent to the transit line,
development of new residential and commercial areas and increased employment nodes, as was the
case with LRT development in San Diego (Crampton 2003). Although urban development has been
reported around many implemented LRT lines, a 1995 report from the Transit Cooperative Research
Program (TCRP) concluded that rail transit may not actually create new growth but simply redistribute
growth that would have otherwise taken place elsewhere without the transit investment (Handy 2005).
However, LRT systems consistently influence and direct where and what kind of growth will take place
(Cervero 1984). Investment in LRT also has the potential to revitalize declining downtown cores (HDR
2005). For example, Portland’s Central Business District was a typical declining downtown with office
vacancy rates rising and retail centres fading. However, when their light rail system, MAX, was
implemented, downtown office vacancy rates declined to levels below those of suburban office parks;
there was an increase in rents; and the development of an attractive retail hub in the downtown. In
fact, Portland has seen over $2 billion of development surrounding the downtown station areas (HDR
2005). Dallas and Denver experienced similar success stories. With the introduction of Dallas Area
Rapid Transit (DART), Dallas has experienced over $1.3 billion in development, while Denver’s Lower
Downtown (LoDo) has been recognized as one of the United States’ most successful new urban
neighbourhoods with the implementation of LRT (Geller 2003). The ability to develop the land and the
physical suitability of the land around stations influence positive land use changes and should be
taken into consideration when alignments and corridors are chosen. Issues have arisen when corridors
were chosen to minimize construction costs instead of maximizing the potential for development
(Handy 2005). During corridor selection, although there may be industrial areas or open land in need of
redevelopment, there must be adequate economic drive to do so. Many new light rail systems have
been designed to service existing development and may consequently limit the net gain of
development (Handy 2005). Therefore the impact of light rail transit on accessibility must be taken
into consideration. The effect of accessibility can either help increase ridership, therefore serving as a
catalyst for redevelopment in selected areas, or it may simply mean a redistribution of development
rather than a net economic gain for the city. Finally, a LRT system will likely only influence changes in
land use if it adds significantly to the accessibility, both geographically and economically, that is
already provided by the roadway system (Handy 2005).
Mass Transit LRT can help residents lower travel costs, decrease oil and fuel use, and a
decrease in need for road improvements
Topalovic, Center for Engineering and Public Policy, School of Engineering Practice, McMaster
,University, 2012 (G. Krantzberg, J. CarterSchool of Geography and Earth Sciences, McMaster
University, 1280 Main Street West, May 08, Light Rail Transit in Hamilton: Health, Environmental and
Economic Impact Analysis, http://www.springerlink.com/content/7080610t31612834/)
Residents who make use of light rail can also benefit from reduced automobile use, just as a city or
business auto fleet can benefit from employees making a larger percentage of trips by transit. The
reduction of oil and fuel use, lower insurance rates, increase in vehicle resale value, decrease in wear
and tear of the vehicle, extension of vehicle life and a decreased risk of accidents are amongst the
many benefits of integrating efficient rapid transit into one’s lifestyle. If the transit system is well
connected and has a high ridership, residents and fleet owners can reduce the amount of cars they
own, which could amount to a decrease in $3000 per year for each displaced vehicle (VTPI 2007).
Furthermore, research conducted by McCann (2000) and Litman (2004), indicated that households in
communities with well established transit systems can reduce transportation costs by $1,000 to
$3,000 per year. In addition to these benefits, fewer cars on the road translate to a decreased need for
road improvements and new roadway projects. The data is summarized in Table 4 In terms of poverty
issues and health, decreasing household costs can help the financial situation of the household, thereby
allowing the costs savings to be allocated to other needs including improved health.
Mass Transit LRT’s can help increase land values and coordinate public and private
interests.
Topalovic, Center for Engineering and Public Policy, School of Engineering Practice, McMaster
,University, 2012 (G. Krantzberg, J. CarterSchool of Geography and Earth Sciences, McMaster
University, 1280 Main Street West, May 08, Light Rail Transit in Hamilton: Health, Environmental and
Economic Impact Analysis, http://www.springerlink.com/content/7080610t31612834/)
Many studies (Hess and Almeida 2007) indicate that land values increase at LRT station nodes as early
as 1 year before station construction or approximately 3 years after station plans are announced.
Plans for LRT can also assist in the coordination of public and private investments, which can improve
social welfare with increased investment and direct spending into dedicated transportation
infrastructure (Knapp et al. 2001). Not only does LRT planning organize the type and nature of
development along corridors, it also intensifies development at nodes to promote smart growth rather
than sprawl, which in turn provides associated health benefits (Frank et al. 2007). This would reduce the
need for infrastructure at the far reaches of the urban boundary and make more effective use of
infrastructure in the core of the city. In an analysis of transit and health impacts, tools that aid in the
reduction of sprawl growth in cities can have positive health impacts (Frank et al. 2007). Smart growth
along these corridors also supports walkable neighborhoods, which P. Topalovic et al.123 provide
incentives for people to choose walking as a form of transport. Walking to and from LRT station nodes
can help people meet the 60 min of required daily physical activity, recommended to be met
incrementally throughout the day by Canada’s physical activity guide (Public Health Agency of Canada
2007).
Must solve structure
Racially identified spaces and segregation is constantly reinforced. Only by addressing
the political space and class-based segregation can we even begin to address the
problem of racially identified spaces.
Ford, Assistant Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, 94 (June 1994, Richard Thompson, 107
Harvard Law Review 1843, “The Boundaries of Race: Political Geography in Legal Analysis,” LexisNexis,
JS)
Empirical study confirms the existence of racially identified space. n30 The foregoing economic model
demonstrates that race and class are inextricably linked in American society, and that both are linked
to segregation and to the creation of racially identified political spaces. Even if racism could be
magically eliminated, racial segregation would be likely to continue, as long as we begin with
significant income polarization and segregation of the races. Furthermore, even a relatively slight,
residual racism severely complicates any effort to eliminate racial segregation that does not directly
address political space and class-based segregation. One might imagine that racism could be
overcome by education and rational persuasion alone: because racism is irrational, it seems to follow
that, over time, one can argue or educate it away. n31 The model shows that even if such a project
were entirely successful, in the absence of any further interventions, racial segregation would remain
indefinitely. n32 [*1857] Contemporary society imposes significant economic costs on non-segregated
living arrangements. In the absence of a conscious effort to eliminate it, segregation will persist in this
atmosphere (although it may appear to be the product of individual choices). The structure of racially
identified space is more than the mere vestigial effect of historical racism; it is a structure that
continues to exist today with nearly as much force as when policies of segregation were explicitly
backed by the force of law. This structure will not gradually atrophy because it is constantly used and
constantly reinforced.
Understanding the practical realities of oppression like the “invisible ceiling” is a
necessary component of reform.
Barnes, Willima H. Hastie Fellow at the University of Wisconsin School of Law, 90 (June 1990, Robin D.,
130 Harvard Law Review 1864, “Colloquy: Race Consciousness: The Thematic Content of Racial
Distinctiveness in Critical Race Scholarship,” LexisNexis, JS)
In contrast to some white Critical scholars who may seek to transform the existing legal and social
order, minorities have insisted on the need to incorporate the concrete, practical realities of
oppressed people into agendas for reform. As Harlon Dalton has stated: "whether out of social concern
or self-preservation, we learned from [*1868] the start to harness our brains to the problems of the day.
We felt the freedom to play with mind puzzles only after the practical intellectual work of the day was
done." n16 The past and present make us sensitive to the fact that any transformation, whether
initiated by those seeking to preserve or to dismantle the status quo, might exact the high price of
further suffering and marginalization. Thus, for example, although conceding that the use of rights
discourse may prove "contradictory, indeterminate, reified and marginally decisive," n17 Critical Race
Theorists contend that for people of color, particularly African-Americans, the symbolic function of
rights has served as a formal sanction against invidious treatment and as a tool for empowerment
that holds a greater significance than it does for whites. n18 Finally, the personal and political
experiences of Critical Race scholars force them to contend with the complex intersection of race and
other characteristics that form the basis for oppression. n19 The discriminatory natures of sexism,
classism, and homophobia are often intensified by the added element of race. In addressing issues of
false consciousness, n20 for example, as charged by those favoring class struggle as well as those who
advocate struggle within the existing order, n21 Critical Race scholars have refused to ignore the
difference between race and class as a basis of oppression. Their focus provides a necessary response
to the overriding view in much of Critical Legal Studies (CLS) that the poor are disempowered,
helpless, and nonculpable co-conspirators in their own oppression and to the tendency of CLS scholars
to imply that the focus upon race is misplaced because it hampers efforts to foster class-based
resistance to what they view as economic oppression. n22 Critical Race scholars know that class
analysis alone cannot account for racial oppression, n23 and they are more likely to focus on such
issues as the "invisible ceiling" -- the discovery that high socio-economic status will not provide
minorities the same freedom and mobility to which whites feel automatically [*1869] entitled. n24
Virtually all people of color in high-salaried and high-status positions have discovered that money
cannot buy everything, not even in the United States. The identity of the purchaser represents as
significant a part of the transaction as does the price. n25 In discussing an impending arrangement to
lease property, one writer recalls that she was "acutely conscious of the likelihood that, no matter what
degree of professional or professor I became, people would greet and dismiss my black femaleness as
unreliable, untrustworthy, hostile, angry, powerless, irrational and probably destitute." n26 The acute
consciousness of minority scholars often serves as an added impetus to seek concrete changes in the
social and political landscape.
We must have a plurality of voices with different perspectives to truly understand
social-political reality.
Barnes, Willima H. Hastie Fellow at the University of Wisconsin School of Law, 90 (June 1990, Robin D.,
130 Harvard Law Review 1864, “Colloquy: Race Consciousness: The Thematic Content of Racial
Distinctiveness in Critical Race Scholarship,” LexisNexis, JS)
The long history of exclusion followed by grudging toleration is not easily forgotten or overcome.
Those who have been the insiders must be sensitive to their unspoken assumptions about the
newcomers. A true acceptance of the differences in background, experience, talent, and intellectual
taste that are represented by the concept of "diversity" will enable all of us to hear and value the many
voices of modern legal education. No one in legal education should pretend this process of acceptance
will be easy. n27 The notion that much of history, legal and otherwise, has been written from a white,
male, Judeo-Christian-centered perspective has prompted Critical Race Theorists to identify distinct
perspectives n28 that explicate the political reality of disempowered people. Critical Race scholars
recognize that the unique perspective of many minority scholars has developed from their experience
and progress in the face of racially invidious treatment and from their empathy with the physical and
psychological conditions of those who have been marginalized. n29 In a post-modern world in which
we have come to realize [*1870] that truth is somewhere, if anywhere, in the symphony of experience,
the development of solid legal principles that vindicate the rights of all Americans requires a platform
for marginalized voices. Social-political reality can be understood only if a plurality of voices
articulates different points of view; understanding suffers when some voices are silenced. Minority
scholars are uniquely positioned to assist in the goal of breaking this silence. After surmounting the
constraints of victimization and witnessing the direct and indirect disparate treatment of those of similar
hue, minority scholars are often moved toward a determination to effect positive change in the world.
Their positions need not be monolithic; their experiences are filtered in varying degrees through both
mainstream and minority cultural viewpoints. Nevertheless, the realization of one's "otherness" in
relation to American culture, and the simultaneous belief in the Constitution and its vision of oneness,
create a valuable prism through which the ideals and reality of this country can be examined. n30 Law
schools must see the inclusion of previously excluded voices as a necessary component for
understanding the legal structure and its impact on this society. Randall Kennedy has charged Derrick
Bell, Mari Matsuda, and Richard Delgado with the intentional use of "misleading rhetorical shortcuts"
n31 that advance "political agenda[s]" n32 and "militariz[e]" discourse. n33 From the perspective of
Critical Race Theorists, it is Kennedy's analysis, with its extended forays into long-discounted notions
of "merit" and "correct" styles of argumentation, that neatly dodges issues of justice and institutional
fairness. Kennedy's narrow insistence on an empirically provable, neatly categorized definition of a
minority perspective leads him to invalidate the experiential knowledge advanced in the narratives that
minorities have developed to articulate the experience of our shared history and quest for solutions.
Kennedy asks: do all African-Americans and Native Americans share this perspective Can they, along
with Latinos and Asian-Americans, prove that it exists If so, can any of them prove that it is "of value
insofar as we prize intellectual diversity" n34 His question, with its emphasis on quantifiable proof and
procedural regularity, recalls the approach of the right-leaning majority of the current Supreme Court.
Like Kennedy's, their methodology has the potential of terminating prematurely any hearing of the
substantive [*1871] claim. Although such questions may conform to the prevailing standards of
"meritorious and rigorous analysis" in these times of retrenchment, they also reflect the cold fact that
many, in the legal academy and beyond, just don't want to hear what Critical Race scholars have to say.
Institutional whiteness allows structural racism to become invisible. We need to
expose the white center to make visible other forms of oppression.
Kuswa, Director of Debating at the University of Richmond, 2 (Winter 2002, Kevin Douglas, The Journal
of Law in Society, “Suburbification, Segregation, and the Consolidation of the Highway Machine,” vol.
31, no. 3, LexisNexis, JS)
[*58] The issue of whiteness and social privilege has been associated with the suburbs for many years.
Gordon writes about the "ominous political shape and sociological form" of the city, where much
destruction and decay can be connected to "well-to-do whites in their suburban cities ringing povertyridden minority groups widening at the core." n69 Critical theories concerning whiteness and racism,
however, have been hesitant to take on long-term structural projects such as the interstate highway
or suburbia. To answer a few questions about the highway and the suburb in the context of white
privilege and segregation, it is worth broadening the map of racism and move beyond a narrow focus on
racist attitudes and individual acts of racism. In addition to the racist person, many more insidious
constructions contribute to the brutal oppression of cultures, ethnicities, and races that are deemed
to be inferior. Institutional or structural racism can be more insidious because it allows the average
person to say, "It's not my fault. I'm not a racist." When highlighting the notion of complicity, it is
crucial to notice how "the extreme segregation of blacks supported by government policies and the auto
has enabled their impoverishment and the simultaneous ignorance on the part of the whites of this
impoverishment." n70 According to George Lipsitz and others, the privilege of whiteness gains value as
a currency that can be exchanged [*59] for institutional benefits. n71 This privilege, although subtle,
manifested as racism when the suburb became a place marked by whiteness. We could critique
institutional and structural manifestations of whiteness for hundreds of pages (without even making a
dent in the potential array of criticism). We could begin with the Washington Monument and the White
House. Then we could move through transnational corporations and the global balance of power,
mapping how whiteness operates on a variety of levels to privilege a Page 10 3 J.L. Soc'y 31, *55 certain
capitalist, heterosexist, male, and bourgeois ideal of society and civilization. On the other hand, it might
be more fruitful to narrow the focus. Where can we apply the "decentering visibility" that critical
whiteness demands Nakayama and Krizek contend that "the social location of 'whiteness' is perceived as
if it had a normative essence." n72 Despite the actuality of a multitude of shifting racial differences,
whiteness often remains the unspoken standard-the litmus test with which society judges and treats
the Other. By connecting identity and materiality to certain strategies of articulation, whiteness
studies can open up new possibilities for critique that challenge racial hierarchies. In the case of [*60]
the highway machine, whiteness must be made visible as part of the hierarchical and racist place of
the suburbs. Fortunately, critics are now turning toward a practice of white critique in an attempt to
break down the normative essence of whiteness. "Whiteness becomes something we both claim
(single out for critique) and avoid." n73 Chambers claims that "whiteness is not itself compared with
anything, but other things are compared unfavorably with it." n74 In other words, whiteness has
attempted to thwart the dissolution and fragmentation of its own racial identity. The inherent risk
with whiteness studies is that its energy can be deployed for conservative ends. As a cushion for white
male educators, the skeptics contend, whiteness distracts attention from more important social issues
and threatens to simply perpetuate the dominance of the white center. E. Ann Kaplan writes: "The
danger in the turn to whiteness in humanities scholarship is that it may retain a binary model of knowing
that does not actually challenge otherness." n75 Viewed through a lens that takes into account the lives
of non-whites, however, it becomes apparent that group relations evolve through deeply embedded
social values surrounding race. n76 These values permit the persistent exclusion [*61] of the non-white
Other by the dominant white culture. n77 In addition to class-based and nation-based explanations for
race, ethnicity theory alone is too narrow in scope to account for the pervasive nature of race in the
political, economic, and social fabric of the country. Despite the fact that ethnicity itself is a critical
component in group relations (through religion, language, culture, etc.), race must enter the picture.
What do we mean by race How does race get deployed [*62] Michael Omi and Howard Winant defend a
definition of race that is dependent on categories that are anywhere from imprecise to completely
arbitrary. They also rightfully contend, however, that race cannot be ignored in any complete analysis
of social conflict or accommodation. Merely rejecting biological determinations of race will not
suffice, for all group relations must weave their way through widely held beliefs concerning race.
Setting the stage for white critique, Omi and Winant reject the imagined utopia of the suburbs and
argue the central position of race must be considered precisely because it is a phenomenon that
defies stagnant definitions: There is a continuous attempt to think of race as an essence, as something
fixed, concrete, and objective....The effort must be made to understand race as an unstable and
decentered complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle. With this in
mind, let us propose a definition: race is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and
interests by referring to different types of human bodies. n78 Practitioners of a critical whiteness studies
admit that such work will not solve racism, will not reverse the effects of discrimination, and will not
eliminate the need to open spaces for marginalized voices. Racial utopia is not being promised, even if
it were feasible. What critical whiteness does strive for, at its very best, is to help make the center
visible. White critique can help to challenge the hegemony of the dominant class by emphasizing an
unfixed perspective of the everyday, and white critique can help to conceive of white as less than
in(di)visible. Whiteness is not exclusively about race or skin color. Certainly race is indispensable to
the formation of whiteness as a discourse, but other forms of identity and identification are also at
play. As whiteness becomes visible, so do systems of patriarchy, capitalism, neocolonialism and other
structures that reinforce a hierarchy of superiority and inferiority. Race, gender, class, sex, age,
religion, physical and mental condition, nationality, and all the other components [*63] of identity are
caught up in a complex process. Our realities swirl through a process of centering and decentering, of
marking and unmarking, and of including and excluding. Thus, whiteness studies can provide a critical
perspective to complement a fragmented notion of subjectivity that is purely celebratory. Critical
whiteness is a rubric that requires an association between institutional and repressive state apparati
such as federal interstate funding and housing policy and racial oppression. The highway is a place of
many dimensions, but the suburb is even more place-based on two levels. First, the suburb does not rely
on motion and movement like the highway does, implying a stagnant location and the defining of
territory. Second, the suburb is inextricably tied to white privilege-a material formation that can be
articulated as a "place of privilege." The suburbs, because of their transformation of the landscape into
a stratified space, also constitute places Page 11 3 J.L. Soc'y 31, *59 outside of the suburb such as the
ghetto or the inner-city. The suburb as a place-effect of the highway cannot remain isolated as a
trajectory of the highway's reach from the fringes of the city to the downtown area. The places
constituted by the highway machine are marked. Through the early 1970s (and, in some places,
continuing to intensify even today), the suburb has been or should be marked as a place that provides,
and is constituted by, subsidized transportation and subsidized living environments at the expense of
areas populated by a proportionately larger number of minorities and economically disadvantaged. The
suburb is an example of a dangerous heterotopia because its utopian backing facilitates a
corresponding dystopia in certain areas of the city. Foucault elaborates further on these many-angled
places: There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places- places that do exist
and that are formed in the very founding of society-which are something like counter-sites, a kind of
effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the
culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all
places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are
absolutely different [*64] from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of
contrast to utopias, heterotopias.
The dominating group uses ideology to institutionalize a particular reality, reinforcing
its political power. We need to stop blaming individuals for racism and focus on
understanding the cultural source of racism to begin to combat it.
Lawrence, Professor of Law at Stanford University, 87 (January 1987, Charles R., 39 Stanford Law
Review 317, “The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection: Reckoning with Unconscious Racism,” LexisNexis, JS)
It may often be appropriate for the legal system to disregard the influence of the unconscious on
individual or collective behavior. But where the goal is the eradication of invidious racial
discrimination, the law must recognize racism's primary source. The equal protection clause requires
the elimination of governmental decisions that take race into account without good and important
reasons. Therefore, equal protection doctrine must find a way to come to grips with unconscious
racism. [*324] In pursuit of that goal, this article proposes a new test to trigger judicial recognition of
race-based behavior. It posits a connection between unconscious racism and the existence of cultural
symbols that have racial meaning. It suggests that the "cultural meaning" n27 of an allegedly racially
discriminatory act is the best available analogue for, and evidence of, a collective unconscious that we
cannot observe directly. This test would thus evaluate governmental conduct to determine whether it
conveys a symbolic message to which the culture attaches racial significance. A finding that the culture
thinks of an allegedly discriminatory governmental action in racial terms would also constitute a finding
regarding the beliefs and motivations of the governmental actors: The actors are themselves part of
the culture and presumably could not have acted without being influenced by racial considerations,
even if they are unaware of their racist beliefs. Therefore, the court would apply strict scrutiny. This
proposal is relatively modest. It does not abandon the judicial search for unconstitutional motives, nor
does it Page 4 39 Stan. L. Rev. 317, *322 argue that all governmental action with discriminatory impact
should be strictly scrutinized. Instead, it urges a more complete understanding of the nature of human
motivation. While it is grounded in the Court's present focus on individual responsibility, it seeks to
understand individual responsibility in light of modern insights into human personality and collective
behavior. In addition, this proposal responds directly to the concern that abandoning the Washington v.
Davis doctrine will invalidate a broad range of legitimate, race-neutral governmental actions. n28 By
identifying those cases where race unconsciously influences governmental action, this new test leaves
untouched nonrace-dependent decisions that disproportionately burden blacks only because they are
overrepresented or underrepresented among the decision's targets or beneficiaries. n29 This effort to
inform the discriminatory intent requirement with the learning of twentieth century psychology is
important for at least three reasons. First, the present doctrine, by requiring proof that the defendant
was aware of his animus against blacks, severely limits the number of individual cases in which the
courts will acknowledge and remedy racial discrimination. Second, the existing intent requirement's
assignment of individualized fault or responsibility for the existence of racial discrimination distorts
our perceptions about the causes of discrimination and leads us to think about racism in a way that
advances the disease rather than combatting it. By insisting that a blameworthy perpetrator be found
before the existence of racial discrimination can be acknowledged, the Court [*325] creates an
imaginary world where discrimination does not exist unless it was consciously intended. And by acting
as if this imaginary world was real and insisting that we participate in this fantasy, the Court and the
law it promulgates subtly shape our perceptions of society. n30 The decision to deny relief no longer
finds its basis only in raw political power or economic self-interest; it is now justifiable on moral
grounds. If there is no discrimination, there is no need for a remedy; if blacks are being treated fairly yet
remain at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, only their own inferiority can explain their
subordinate position. Finally, the intent doctrine's focus on the narrowest and most unrealistic
understanding of individual fault has also engendered much of the resistance to and resentment of
affirmative action programs and other race-conscious remedies for past and continuing discrimination.
n31 If there can be no discrimination without an identifiable criminal, then "innocent" individuals will
resent the burden of remedying an injury for which the law says they are not responsible. n32
Understanding the cultural source of our racism obviates the need for fault, as traditionally conceived,
without denying our collective responsibility for racism's [*326] eradication. We cannot be individually
blamed for unconsciously harboring attitudes that are inescapable in a culture permeated with racism.
And without the necessity for blame, our resistance to accepting the need and responsibility for remedy
will be lessened. n33 Understanding unconscious motivation will also help us comprehend and combat
the hegemony of the ideology of equal opportunity. A considerable body of scholarship from the
academic left has analyzed the law as a hegemonic tool of domination. n34 According to one theory,
domination occurs when the ruling class gains the consent of the dominated classes through a system
of ideas that reinforces the morality or inevitability of the existing order. This "interest theory" sees
ideology as a consciously wielded weapon, an intellectual tool that a group uses to enhance its
political power by institutionalizing a particular view of reality. n35
Racism is both irrational and normal. Laws need to recognize that our entire culture is
afflicted to frame legal theories that can address the problem.
Lawrence, Professor of Law at Stanford University, 87 (January 1987, Charles R., 39 Stanford Law
Review 317, “The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection: Reckoning with Unconscious Racism,” LexisNexis, JS)
[*330] But the body of law and legal theory that governs the application of the equal protection clause
to cases of alleged racial discrimination should not blind itself to what we know about the
unconscious. Racism is in large part a product of the unconscious. It is a set of beliefs whereby we
irrationally attach significance to something called race. I do not mean to imply that racism does not
have its origins in the rational and premeditated acts of those who sought and seek property and power.
But racism in America is much more complex than either the conscious conspiracy of a power elite or
the simple delusion of a few ignorant bigots. It is a part of our common historical experience and,
therefore, a part of our culture. It arises from the assumptions we have learned to make about the
world, ourselves, and others as well as from the patterns of our fundamental social activities. Richard
Wasserstrom has described the significance of race in our culture by contrasting our culture with a
hypothetical one where race is an unimportant characteristic: "In such a culture, race would be largely if
not exclusively a matter of superficial physiology; a matter, we might say, simply of the way one
looked," much like eye color. n51 But race does not function in our culture as does eye color, which is an
irrelevant category, an unimportant cultural fact. n52 Fes of us can recall the color of our best friend's
eyes, but when we pass a complete stranger on the street, we will remember his race. n53 We attach
significance to race even when we are not aware that we are doing so. Racism is irrational in the sense
that we are not fully aware of the meanings we attach to race or why we have made race significant.
It is also arguably dysfunctional to the extent that its irrationality prevents the optimal use of human
resources. In this light it seems an appropriate candidate for study and/or treatment by the
psychoanalyst as well as for exclusion from law, the discipline that attempts to govern or influence the
actions of rational people. But unlike other forms of irrational and dysfunctional behavior, which we
think of as deviant or abnormal, racism is "normal." It is a malady that we all share, because we have all
been scarred by a common history. Racism's universality renders it normal. n54 Racism's ubiquity
underscores the importance of incorporating our knowledge of the unconscious into the legal theory of
equal protection. The law has traditionally used psychological theory to define abnormality in order to
exclude the irrational from the law's protection or sanction. [*331] But where the law's purpose is to
eradicate racial discrimination, it must recognize that racism is both irrational and normal. We must
understand that our entire culture Page 7 39 Stan. L. Rev. 317, *328 is afflicted, and we must take
cognizance of psychological theory in order to frame a legal theory that can address that affliction.
Grassroots Movements
The affirmative stands in solidarity with the nationwide grassroots movements in
inner cities from New York to Los Angeles that are rallying against government
sponsored transportation racism
Bullard Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 5 (Winter 2005,
Robert D., Moving the Movement for Transportation Justice Vol. 12 No. 1, “All Transit is Not Created
Equal,” Google Scholar, DV)
Discrimination still places an extra “tax” on poor people and people of color who need safe,
affordable, and accessible transportation. Many of the nation’s transportation-related disparities
have accumulated over a century, and it will likely take years, great effort, and plenty of resources to
dismantle the deeply ingrained legacy of transportation racism. The effort has begun with grassroots
leaders from New York City to Los Angeles demanding an end to transportation racism. They are
spreading the word that transportation dollars are aiding and abetting the flight of people, jobs, and
development to the suburban fringe. They are fighting for affordable fares, representation on
transportation boards and commissions, and their fair share of transit services, bus shelters,
handicapped accessible vehicles, and other transit-related amenities. Some groups are waging
grassroots campaigns to get “dirty diesel” buses and bus depots out of their neighborhoods.
We need a multifaceted investment in things like transportation and segregated
schools - social movements are better as a means to engage in a national discussion
about race and racial segregation.
Sanchez & Brenman 2008 (Environmental Justice. June 2008, 1(2): 73-80.
doi:10.1089/env.2008.0510.http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/env.2008.0510Thomas W.
Sanchez Chair and Associate Professor of City & Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah, Salt
Lake City. Marc Brenman Executive Director of the Washington State Human Rights Commission,
Olympia. JRW )
Transportation mobility is a hallmark of American society; without it, one cannot be a full member of
this society. The early challenges related to racial discrimination and segregation discussed above
involved discriminatory practices that directly limited transportation access and mobility of people of
color. The effects of limited transportation mobility persist. The lack of mobility helped create ghettos,
de facto segregated schools and housing, and social and community isolation. To cure these ills, many
promises have been made by the leadership of the dominant society. These promises are often
unfulfilled, as have been promises for housing to replace that destroyed in “blight clearing” projects.
These were sometimes referred to as “negro removal,” sometimes considered synonymous with
“urban renewal.” Whites in suburbs have foregone physical mobility for a lack of social cohesion, while
destroyed inner-city neighborhoods have been left with neither mobility nor social cohesion. Efforts to
challenge discrimination, segregation, and inequitable transportation policies have become
increasingly sophisticated to encompass a broad range of related social impacts. The term
transportation equity refers to a range of strategies and policies that aim to address inequities in the
nation’s transportation planning and project delivery system. Across the country, community-based
organizations of low-income and minority residents are organizing to improve their communities, and
they are recognizing the significant role played by transportation in shaping local opportunities and
disinvestment
Advocates for Environmental Justice struggle to draw attention for their cause –
Groups like the Grassroots blame the lack of minority and people of class.
Sanchez & Brenman 2008 (Environmental Justice. June 2008, 1(2): 73-80.
doi:10.1089/env.2008.0510.http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/env.2008.0510Thomas W.
Sanchez Chair and Associate Professor of City & Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah, Salt
Lake City. Marc Brenman Executive Director of the Washington State Human Rights Commission,
Olympia.
JRW)doi:10.1089/env.2008.0510.http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/env.2008.0510Thomas
W. Sanchez Chair and Associate Professor of City & Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah, Salt
Lake City. Marc Brenman Executive Director of the Washington State Human Rights Commission,
Olympia. JRW)
An important example of this tension is reflected in the ongoing struggle of the environmental justice
movement. Proponents of environmental justice have sought for decades to bring attention to the
impact of environmental racism on minority and low-income communities. Dr. Robert Bullard of the
Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, along with a wide range of allies, has
developed a compelling case for how federal, state, and local transportation decision-making
processes have disadvantaged minority and low- income communities. Unfortunately, the broader
environmental community has rarely placed a race-based analysis at the center of its own discussion
around environmental protection. Advocates for environmental justice, as a result, have argued
forcefully that the environmental advocacy community lacks a critical mass of people of color in
positions of leadership who could help frame the relationship between race and environment.
Grassroots organizations grounded in low-income and minority communities, as compared to
environmental advocacy organizations, tend to be grounded in particular communities (either based in
geography or in identity, for example African American). They tend to have access to fewer financial
resources and as a result have been unable to build the same kind of advocacy infrastructure available
to environmental groups, for example, policy expertise, media resources, and access to legal assistance.
Because their constituents tend to have less educational and economic opportunities, their members
tend to have a different relationship to power. Their communities may lack basic services and be
suffering from long- term issues of neglect. As a result, their membership may have a much more
desperate relationship to issues that may determine the ability of their members to get and keep jobs,
feed their families, make medical appointments, and the like. These organizations also spend a great
deal of time focused on empowerment-oriented activities, including educational programs and direct
citizen involvement. If these organizations are also committed to community organizing, a social change
strategy that differs significantly from legal or policy advocacy strategies, they may be more willing to
use tactics that heighten public tension between local residents and policy makers than established
environmental organizations are comfortable using.
Community Involvement
And, as proven by current government sponsored urban development, it is normal
means to consult community organizers and build community-based initiatives that
respond to the needs of the people
Hodson and Marvin, ’10. (Mike Hodson and Simon Marvin, June 2010, “Urbanism in the
Anthropocene: Ecological Urbanism or Premium Ecological Enclaves”, City, Volume 14, Number 3, June
2010. Pg. 307 [SJW])
There are also other debates about relocalisa- tion that include wider sets of social interests and try to
put other social objectives on the urban policy agenda. These include Low Impact Urban
Developments, Transition Towns and Relocalisation movements being developed as local social and
behavioural responses in a number of urban contexts in the UK and USA. Low Impact Urban
Development (LID) encompasses a range of community-based initiatives that seek to internalise
infrastructure and resource flows. LID is important as a site of practical innovation and attempts at
low-carbon living (Pickerill and Maxey, 2009). Although there are important similarities between LIDs
and the more commercially and governmen- tally oriented integrated eco-developments outlined—in
particular, the emphasis on autonomy, the development of local technol- ogies, circular metabolisms
and the aspiration for greater self-reliance—there are also some significant differences. In particular,
LIDs stress local and community control of infra- structure and raise wider issues about ensur- ing
more equitable access to environmental resources for low-income households. There are now dozens
of Transition Towns in the UK which operate on the basis of a shared methodology to develop a locally
‘coordi- nated range of projects across all these areas of life [that] leads to a collectively designed
energy descent pathway’.6 Such strategies seem to imply a more collective approach to innovation
around climate change and resource constraints not solely oriented around technical fixes, and a
more socially and culturally driven approach to new solutions and configura- tions. Critically, these are
designed in context and cut across all aspects of urban life. A key focus is on resource reduction rather
than reproducing the productivist bias of commer- cial approaches. To take another example, a US
network draws together over 172 urban post-carbon groups worldwide.7 How particularly we
understand inte- grated eco-urbanism—as what sorts of artifi- cial reconstructions of nature and
ecology through design and technology—is critical. That is to say, it is what specific responses amount
to that is important: whether they are responses to a set of specific historic– geographic pressures, a
new means of politi- cal–economic reproduction or a cultural representation of a more ethical urbanism.
Our point is that they represent a specific spatial and temporal project in which ecol- ogy and
economy merge around technosci- entific design. To understand why this is the case, we need to
locate eco-urbanism within a wider understanding of what is happening to global urbanism.
The public needs to be more involved in transportation planning in order to ensure
race equality in transportation infrastructure - Prior federal legislation on
transportation instituted public and community input in the planning and decisionmaking phase for new projects - Our affirmative will follow suit
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 04( Robert D., Ph.D.
Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity) SJ
Much of transportation planning is about the flow of dollars—billions of dollars. Who gets what, when,
where, why, and how much is not rocket science but political science. Why do some communities get
transit while others are left out Why do some communities get light rail while others get buses Why are
clean-fuel vehicles sent to one community and not another Why are higher subsidies paid to one group
of transit riders while other riders are shortchanged What institutional changes are needed to build
transportation equity into regional plans and programs What progress have we made in eliminating
racial discrimination in transportation decision-making What community-organizing and legal strategies
arc effective in combating transportation racism These and other transportation questions and issues
are addressed in this book. The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) and its
iterations frame the context for understanding the government-imposed political and fiscal parameters
within which transportation activist’s work. Congress passed ISTEA in 1991 to develop and improve
public transportation in order "to achieve national goals for improved air quality, energy conservation,
international competitiveness, and mobility for elderly persons, persons with disabilities, and
economically disadvantaged persons in urban and rural areas of the country."7 ISTEA also promised to
build intermodal connections between people, jobs, goods and markets, and neighborhoods. ISTEA was
written to expire in 1997. unless reviewed, updated, and reauthorized. In 1998. ISTEA was renewed as
the Transportation Efficiency Act of the twenty-first century (TEA-21). TEA-21 was the largest
infrastructure-funding bill ever passed. It included policy provisions for funding highways and transit
programs through 2003. ISTEA and TEA-21 changed the way federal transportation dollars are allocated,
ensuring greater local control over what is funded and not funded. They also made advances toward the
inclusion of the public into significant transportation decisions via input throughout the planning
process. Despite the advances, transportation advocates continue to call for strong public support,
public participation, and public accountability for transportation agencies in the development of
transportation projects. With the scheduled expiration of TEA-21 in September 2003, and the passing of
TEA-3, the third incarnation of ISTEA was born.* Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP) outlined
the four challenges of the TEA-3: "Fix it first; create better transportation choices; build more livable
communities; and learn to serve people."4 Essentially, to be effective. TEA-3 must better involve
stakeholders and the public.
Moses’ government planning of New York resulted in residential segregation,
pollution, and economic depression stemming from racism and classism. Grassroots
community groups are accredited for current NYC
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 04(Robert D., Ph.D.
Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity) SJ
He oversaw the construction of highways, parkways, parks and playgrounds. Bridges, and housing
developments all over New York and is credited with having shaped the face of the modern American
city more than any other person. But for communities wound up in his path, Robert Moses was the very
symbol of everything wrong with government planning. For these communities, his legacy is one of
racism and classism, forced removals, the splitting of neighborhoods, economic depression, and
pollution. Conservative estimates place the number of people taken from their homes for his highways
at 250.000 a number that jumps to almost half a million when factoring in the homes bulldozed to
make way for "urban renewal" and other projects.2 Not surprisingly poor Latinos and African Americans
made up a disproportionate share of those kicked into the street to make way for Moses’s vision. His
application of federal "urban renewal" and "slum clearance programs reshuffled the neighborhoods of
New York City, creating new housing opportunities for wealthy whites. But the net effect projects was
even greater than could have been imagined and have far-reaching consequences. Moses's celebrated
highways unleashed forces that gutted stratified neighborhoods and sent marginal ones careening over
the edge provided the city's white middle class with an escape route of long, clean stretches of road to
the mythic garden paradise of suburbia just as the city's manufacturing base was beginning to erode the
gap between rich and poor ballooned, and the entire city suffer as statewide political power shifted
north and east, following the white exodus into suburban single-family homes. New York City would be
left isolated for decades with a crumbling infrastructure a traffic-jammed nightmare of roads, and a
deserted population!* found on anyone's agenda at the state. New York City's turnaround over the
years has been portrayed in the wider press as a recent phenomenon, a product of the Giuliani
Administration. But in reality, the city's rebound from the aftermath of the Moses era has been a slow
process of recovery involving a wide spectrum of players. If anyone is to receive credit for NYC it ought
to be, first and foremost, the grassroots community groups that sprang from the ashes of burned-out
apartment buildings and vacant lots to meet the needs that the city and state ignored. Over the years,
many other organizations working to rebuild their communities within the physical limits imposed by
Moses's highways saw developed and joined with those early grassroots groups. Those of us involved
with the NYC environmental movement have found that working around the limits imposed highways
has necessitated a radically different approach. Through open collaborations between communities, we
are attempting to confront the Moses legacy head-on with the shared goal of physical removing the very
highways that have caused so much grief. This chapter tells the story of two NYC neighborhoods one in
South Brooklyn and the other in the South Bronx —their decimal by Moses and their determination to
reclaim and transform their worlds.
Environment
Collaboration between government, developers and the people result in ecologically
sound developmental practices that can benefit the residents
Hodson and Marvin, ’10. (Mike Hodson and Simon Marvin, June 2010, “Urbanism in the
Anthropocene: Ecological Urbanism or Premium Ecological Enclaves”, City, Volume 14, Number 3, June
2010. Pg. 306 [SJW])
A set of emerging responses are primarily concerned with attempts to construct integrated responses
to infrastructure that cut across multiple infrastructure networks— energy, food, water, waste, etc.—
and that are rebundled together at particular scales in the design of new buildings, neighborhoods,
towns, blocks and cities. These usually focus on new-build developments, either entirely new
‘greenfield’ developments such as an eco-city or eco-town or sometimes new standalone developments
that are located adjacent to or within existing cities such as an eco-house or eco-neighborhood. This
style of development is much more concerned with integration at the scale of the development than
with the wider transformation of the existing city or its incumbent infrastructure networks. These
responses have at their core the vision and aspiration that they are able to transcend conventional
notions of ecological constraint—climate change and resource constraint—as they build ecological
security by internally producing their own food, energy and other critical resources, reusing wastes as
resources and reducing reliance on external infrastructures. The examples we detail below and
synthesize draw upon the most ‘exemplary’ illustrations of this new style of urbanism that are claimed
by their developers to offer the new and replicable models of development. We allow the developers—the consultancies, engineers, archi- tects—to describe their concepts and their replicability
through their own words, state- ments and representations of space. A pattern starts to emerge within
which particular coalitions of social interests—consultancies, architects and engineers sometimes with
elements of the green movement—are collab- orating with particular place-based interests in the
development of new infrastructural fixes.
Eco-Urbanism
Eco-Urbanism examines societal implications and creates transformative development
Hodson and Marvin, ’10. (Mike Hodson and Simon Marvin, June 2010, “Urbanism in the
Anthropocene: Ecological Urbanism or Premium Ecological Enclaves?”, City, Volume 14, Number 3, June
2010. Pg. 308 [SJW])
Ecological urbanism provides an opportu- nity to ask important questions about the wider
societal implications and potential long-term consequences for our understand- ing of eco-cities.
As urbanists, our primary interest in this study is in looking behind the interests promoting ecourbanism as a specific temporal and spatial response to the challenges of climate change and
resource limits. What most concerns us is the ques- tionable assumption that eco-urbanism is a
transformative style of development that will allow cities to continue to grow economi- cally
while quite literally transcending envi- ronmental constraints, obviating the need for wider societal
change. Does eco-urbanism represent merely an attempt to create ecolog- ically secure gated
communities, or can it contribute to the development of more collective notions of planetary
security in the face of multiple eco-emergencies?
Diversity Solve Resource Inequity
A diverse neighborhood can ensure that there is more equitable access to resources
for people of color
Talen 08 HOUSING POLICY DEBATE VOLUME 19 ISSUE METROPOLITAN INSTITUTE AT VIRGINIA
TECH. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. AFFORDABILITY IN NEW URBANIST DEVELOPMENT: PRINCIPLE, PRACTICE,
AND STRATEGY EMILY Arizona State University
The idea of calculated social mixing in cities and towns originated in the 19th century with idealists
and social critics who deplored the living conditions of the poor. As refined since then, the goal of
housing type mix is driven by the idea that social mixing ensures more equitable access to resources
(Briggs, 2005), and that social diversity is the basis of a more creative and ultimately more stable
urban environment (Jacobs, 1961). In the sustainability literature, diversity based on income mix is
likely to be seen as a fundamental goal, where the sustainable community is defined as a place in
which “sharp spatial separation or isolation of income and racial groups” is nonexistent (Beatley &
Manning, 1997, p. 36). Empirical studies of stable, diverse neighborhoods have bolstered the belief that
integration (economic as well as racial) can be stabilized (Ellen,
1998; Lee & Wood, 1990; Maly, 2000; Ottensmann, 1995).
Federal Action needed
The Federal and local government have been able to cooperate in recent years in an
effort to bridge the gap and work in unison to solve the issues facing the communities.
With the public’s assistance programs designed to better the communities are able to
go even farther then their original intentions.
Price 2011 (Hayling Price A Seat at the Table: Place-Based Urban Policy and Community Engagement.
Harvard Journal Of African American Public Policy, 1765-73. JRW) In their feedback on the successful
proposal, Department of Education evaluators noted that the DC effort “demonstrated an ability to
attract a diverse perspective by the people serving on the Advisory Board and the engagement of the
community” (U.S. Department of Education 2010a).
The committee’s overall response also indicated that inclusive governance remains a priority for the
selection criteria of federal evaluators. In addition to developing a sound decision-making strategy
reflected in its proposal, the DCPNI has excelled at soliciting feedback and incorporating citizen
concerns into its planning process. While these engagement efforts allay skepticism and encourage
buy-in from residents, they also serve the practical purpose of equipping planners with nuanced
understandings of community needs and assets. Still in the early stages, the program has engaged with
research professionals and volunteer staff to solicit input from families in the community in a variety of
ways. Relying on local institutions and informal networks, the program’s leadership has taken a
culturally competent approach to connecting with citizens that is neither patronizing nor excessively
prescriptive. After reaching out to this population, the DPCNI advisory board has given residents an
opportunity to serve alongside elected officials, policy experts, and funders in ten subject-specific
Results Driven Work Groups. These groups, ranging in topic from student safety to college access, will
continue to meet throughout the planning year “to develop a plan to implement, monitor and collect
data on solutions” (DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative n.d.). The program also hosts monthly
community dinners that update residents while soliciting input and providing newcomers with an
opportunity to get involved. Finally, DCPNI holds periodic workshops and focus groups that directly
engage youth and their families throughout the planning year. These discussions have helped gauge the
assets, challenges, and opportunities facing the community with respect to a proposed “cradle to
college” pipeline of educational and social services. By pursuing these extensive outreach and inclusion
measures, this place-based initiative has earned the trust and goodwill of many local residents while
providing them with an opportunity to authentically contribute to the planning process. While the
leadership has taken proactive steps to remain inclusive, it remains to be seen if this high level of
community participation will continue into the implementation phase. Federal place-based urban
policy must remain committed to local flexibility while addressing the need for consistency in
governance. As the needs of different communities can vary greatly, effective policies under this
umbrella should permit a considerable degree of local autonomy. However, as previous neighborhoodbased efforts have been derailed by local politics that consolidated influence among the political elite,
these policies must provide for long-term, meaningful public participation in unambiguous terms. This
would combat the undemocratic practice of rendering key stakeholders “passive recipients of
information from the regulators or governing bodies” charged with implementing policy (Rowe and
Frewer 2004). By crafting more nuanced legislation that would require extensive and sustained public
participation, federal policy makers can engender high standards of accountability for local governance
and oversight.
The federal government when working with the local governments can accomplish
their own goals and coordinate to bridge the gap between both local and federal
governments.
Price 2011 (Hayling Price A Seat at the Table: Place-Based Urban Policy and Community Engagement.
Harvard Journal Of African American Public Policy, 1765-73. JRW)
The latest phase of urban policy has seen a “democratic devolution revolution” in which “government
serves as a powerful catalyst and largely provides the funds needed to create stable, ongoing,
effective partnerships” (Benson et al. 2007). Leveraging partnerships with different tiers of government
and other institu- tional partners, the interdisciplinary programs call for the convening of numerous local
actors. In all of these efforts, community outreach, input, and leadership will be critical for success. With
the Obama administration making efforts to develop a coherent agenda across federal agencies,
administrators will be guided by the White House’s direction on place-based policy. In a series of joint
statements to the heads of all federal executive departments and agencies, a number of high-ranking
White House officials announced the Obama administration’s commitment to place-based work. These
messages stressed that it would be important for agencies to coordinate with “state, local, and tribal
governments, faith institutions, nonprofit organizations, businesses, and community members atlarge as collaborators” (White House 2009). The mes- sages also affirmed that the federal government
would “continue applying place-based principles to existing policies, potential reforms, and promising
innovations” (White House 2010). These “promising innovations” include an array of programs under
the recently unveiled White House Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative. Building on the previous
federal urban platforms, the agenda is rooted in the belief that “bridging gaps and reducing
duplication will lead to a more efficient delivery of services” (Ryan 2008, 140). The initiative’s key
programs, all of which seek to engage local governments, include: Choice Neighborhoods, Promise
Neighborhoods, Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation, Community Health Centers, Behavioral Health
Services. While federal guidance makes a generic suggestion to include community members in these
efforts, there has not been a targeted or highly visible effort to emphasize public participation in this
work. However, some local efforts engaged in this work can provide examples of how appropriate
community engagement is manifested in practice. Informed by these early successes experienced in
the planning phase, subsequent federal regulations can bolster opportunities for civic inclusion and
ensure that this commitment is authentic and sustainable across project sites nationwide.
Until governments acknowledge race in state enactments, equal rights will not be
guaranteed to all races.
Bonilla-Silva, 06- professor of sociology at Duke University (Eduardo, Racism without Racists: second
edition) SJ
The sure guarantee of the peace and security of each race is the clear, distinct, unconditional
recognition by our governments, National and State, of every right that inheres in civil freedom, and of
the equality before the law of all citizens of the United States without regard to race. State enactments,
regulating the enjoyment of civil rights, upon the basis of race, and cunningly devised to defeat
legitimate results of the [561] war, under the pretence of recognizing equality of rights, can have no
other result than to render permanent peace impossible, and to keep alive a conflict of races, the
continuance of which must do harm to all concerned. This question is not met by the suggestion that
social equality cannot exist between the white and black races in this country. That argument, if it can
be properly regarded as one, is scarcely worthy of consideration; for social equality no more exists
between two races when travelling in a passenger coach or a public highway than when members of the
same races sit by each other in a street car or in the jury box, or stand or sit with each other in a political
assembly, or when they use in common the streets of a city or town, or when they are in the same room
for the purpose of having their names placed on the registry of voters, or when they approach the
ballot-box in order to exercise the high privilege of voting. If evils will result from the commingling of the
two races upon public highways established for the benefit of all, they will be infinitely less than those
that will surely come from state legislation regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of
race. We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to
reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and
degradation upon a large class of our fellow-citizens, our equals before the law. The thin disguise of
"equal" accommodations for passengers in [265] railroad coaches will not mislead any one, nor atone
for the wrong this day done.
The USFG should invest in local incentives for better mass transit.
Replogle, 8 – Transportation Director of Environmental Defense (05/14/08, Michael A.,
New York Times, “Those Gas Prices: Think Outside the Tank,” Lexis Nexus Academic)
Federal transportation financing is both broke and broken. Many state and local governments are still
spending foolishly to expand roads that fuel urban sprawl, traffic and global warming pollution.
Congress in future climate and transportation legislation must encourage innovation at the
community and state levels through new incentives and accountability. Transportation spending
should be tied to cutting traffic growth and greenhouse gas pollution. Congress should promote payas-you-drive insurance to save consumers money and knock down barriers to congestion pricing that
could finance better transit. With today's gas prices, we simply can't afford another transportation bill
that favors highways and sprawl over public transportation and smart growth.]
Federal investment in transportation infrastructure needed to spur US economic
growth
Davidson, 12 Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Newsquest Media Group Ltd. (02/24/12, Paul,
Money, “Mayors call for improved infrastructure,” USA Today)
A projected surge in job-producing U.S. exports by 2020 will not be realized unless the federal
government spends more money to expand congested ports, highways, railways and airports, the U.S.
Conference of Mayors says. The mayors' group is meeting in Washington today and Saturday to form a
strategy for urging Congress to use savings from ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars on infrastructure
upgrades costing hundreds of billions of dollars. "If we're going to build bridges and roadways in faraway
lands, why don't we spend that money on long-term infrastructure growth in the U.S.?" asks Mesa, Ariz.,
Mayor Scott Smith. That's what President Obama proposed in his budget early this month, but the plan
faces stiff resistance from Republicans in Congress who say the country can't afford to add to the federal
debt. An IHS Global Insight report out today says U.S. exports are expected to produce 40% of
economic growth by 2020, up from 27% in the last decade. Exports should grow 79% this decade to
$3.2 trillion in 2020, IHS says. It cites a weaker dollar, which makes U.S. products less expensive in some
countries, explosive growth in emerging markets such as China, and some businesses moving
manufacturing to the U.S. IHS predicts that metro areas whose main trading partner is China or India will
have the sharpest growth, including: Portland, Ore.; Bridgeport, Conn.; Salt Lake City; Greenville, S.C.;
and Miami. But local officials say growth will be limited if ports, railways and roads aren't expanded:
In Mesa, inadequate roads and rail lines at the Mexican border often delay by several days shipments
of electronics, copper and produce to Mexico, Smith says. Ports in Jacksonville and other East Coast
cities contain waters too shallow to accommodate the large ships best suited to transport the steel,
machinery and other heavy-duty products that the U.S. exports, says Paul Anderson, CEO of the
Jacksonville Port Authority. Dredging the ports would cost about $5 billion, he says. The intersection of
highways and rail lines in Riverside, Calif., delays shipments to and from the Port of Long Beach, says
Long Beach, Calif., Mayor Bob Foster. Rail lines must be elevated at a multibillion-dollar cost, he says.
Within the next decade, John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York will need a new runway to
handle more cargo and additional rail lines must be built to area ports to speed deliveries, says Patrick
Foye, head of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. "We're in a fight for economic supremacy
with China," he says.
Congress should invest in a multimodal transportation infrastructure plan in order to
stabilize interstate commerce, security, and global competitiveness.
Yarossi, Chairman of the American Roads and Transportation Builders Association and president of
HNTB Holdings, 12 (02/09/12, Paul, “Look at the return on infrastructure,” Newsday, Lexis Nexis
Academic)
Meeting the nation's infrastructure needs is vital to interstate commerce, safety, security and global
competitiveness. Our best-regarded presidents supported infrastructure and fully understood its ROI.
From George Washington's survey for the first proposed national road from Maryland to Indiana to
Thomas Jefferson's efforts to develop the nation's early canals to Abraham Lincoln's support of the
transcontinental railroad, our greatest political leaders understood that a strong infrastructure
promotes a more nimble military, creates jobs, sparks the economy and advances America's
competitiveness. Contemporary presidents were also infrastructure proponents. President Dwight
Eisenhower signed legislation enabling the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, the
origin of today's U.S. interstate highway system. President Ronald Reagan signed the Surface
Transportation Assistance Act of 1982, and both he and President Bill Clinton increased the gas tax as
part of the Highway Trust Fund. All three presidents saw the need to fund transportation, and their
administrations moved the economy in a positive direction. Congress now has the opportunity to move
our transportation infrastructure program forward with a new, multimodal transportation plan for
highways, rail, air and water. Healthy infrastructure supports a healthy economy, attracting new
employers and improving the overall quality of life in our communities. We consistently see paybacks
along our roads, rails and bridges. These dividends - safe, secure, efficient transportation - pay us back
in our day-to-day lives well in excess of every dollar we invest. Moody's estimates every additional
dollar spent on infrastructure generates a $1.44 increase in gross domestic product. For these reasons
alone, the transportation industry should not accept fewer federal dollars, and the American public
should not accept further deterioration of the infrastructure they rely on. People are willing to pay
when they know what they will get in return. In fact, more than 70 percent of local infrastructure
funding has passed in the last five years. In an era of limited resources, the demand for true
infrastructure investment remains high. It's time to bring all forms of funding, financing and
technology-based tools to the table. We need to keep moving forward, working diligently to keep
America safe, mobile and economically competitive.]
Federal Investment in Transportation bolsters US economic competitiveness
Durbin, July 9th (Senator for Illinois, “Federal Transportation Bill Creates Jobs While Investing In
Illinois Mass Transit, Highways, Durbin Says,” 7/09/12,
http://durbin.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ContentRecord_id=c3c0e835-3bc5-4811ae01-5038617f12a4)
Projects Moving Forward This Construction Season As a Result of Legislation
CHICAGO, IL--(ENEWSPF)--July 9, 2012. Approximately 68,000 Illinois jobs will be created or saved and
the state’s highway and mass transit systems will be improved as a result of the Moving Ahead for
Progress in the 21st Century Act signed into law last Friday, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said at a
news conference at Ogilvie Transportation Center today. Durbin and U.S. Rep. Jerry Costello fought for
Illinois priorities as the only members of the Congressional Delegation appointed to the conference
committee that crafted the final version of the legislation. “The transportation bill shows the federal
government recognizes just how crucial the industries that support tackling the wear and tear on our
roads and mass transit systems are to our economy. By investing $4.1 billion in our state’s highways
and $1.5 billion in our mass transit system, the legislation removes the uncertainly local governments
and transit agencies faced during short-term funding extensions and provides the security necessary
to execute long-term plans that will benefit businesses and passengers alike – all while creating and
saving good paying jobs,” Durbin said today at a news conference. “I was privileged to help negotiate
the final version of the transportation bill between the two chambers of Congress, and I am pleased that
the final legislation retained many of the funding formulas so crucial to Illinois that were included in the
Senate’s version of the bill.”
USFG must invest in high speed rail.
Project Finance, 11 (February 2011, Project Finance, “TIFIA-style funding proposal for US high-speed
rail,” Lexis Nexis Academic)
US vice-president Joe Biden has proposed that the federal government provide $53 billion in dedicated
funding for high-speed rail (HSR) development over the next six years. Private developers have said that
they want to see a federal commitment to a national passenger rail system before they commit equity
to proposed rail projects such as those in California and Florida. Standing in the way of Biden's
proposal is a Republican majority in the House of Representatives. The party is vocally opposed to any
increase in federal spending, and many representatives campaigned to cut the budget during the 2010
midterm election.
Improving inner city transportation infrastructure is key – Need a federal stimulus
package with mass transit as the center
Global Outlook, 12 (4/1/12, Global Outlook, “Transport – Unclogging inner-city arteries,” LexisNexis
Academic)
Alongside the economic shift from west to east, the early 21st century may also be remembered for its
rapid urbanisation. By 2030, according to UN estimates, 60% of the world's population, or 5 billion
people, will live in cities, putting unprecedented pressure on city infrastructures. There is little surprise,
therefore, that in both developed and developing cities, transport networks - the arteries that transmit
the daily pulse of workers from home to workplace and back again - are clogging up. Most large cities
suffer daily gridlock, despite the fact that in North American urban areas, roads and car parks can
account for up to 60% of the cities' surface area. Cities in developing countries, many of which have
grown faster, have similar or worse problems. Improving inner-city transport has never been more
important and levels of investment are slowly starting to rise, particularly in Asia, but also in Latin
America where new thinking on transport has started to have a positive impact. In 2011, half a dozen
developing country cities, including Bangalore (India), Algiers (Algeria), Xi'an (China), Almaty
(Kazakhstan) and Lima (Peru), opened inner-city metro lines.] In the US, a growing lobby is calling for a
1930s-style New Deal stimulus package with public transport investment at its heart. In 2011, a
number of urban transport schemes were approved in North America, including one in the US city of
Cincinnati, Ohio, and another in the Waterloo region in Canada's province of Ontario, which both
committed to mass light-rail projects.
Educating the Youth
Youth are our future and it is our responsibility to ensure they are educated on
matters that will benefit them in today’s society. We can’t fear the younger
population we have to embrace them in order to guarantee future success.
Giroux 2003 ("Youth, Higher Education, And The Crisis Of Public Time: Educated Hope And The
Possibility Of A Democratic Future." Social Identities 9.2 (2003): 141. Academic Search Premier. Web. 21
July 2012. HENRY A. Giroux, Giroux has held positions at Boston University, Miami University, and Penn
State University. In 2005, Giroux began serving as the Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural
Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario[2][dead link][3] Giroux has published more than 50
books and over 300 academic articles, and is published widely throughout education and cultural studies
literature.[4] Since arriving at McMaster, Giroux has been a featured faculty lecturer,[5] and has
published nine books,[6] including his most recent work, The University in Chains: Confronting the
Military-Industrial-Academic Complex. JRW)
No longer ‘viewed as a privileged sign and embodiment of the future’ (p. 133), youth are now
demonized by the popular media and derided by politicians looking for quick-fix solutions to crime,
joblessness, and poverty. In a society deeply troubled by their presence, youth prompt a public
rhetoric of fear, control, and surveillance, which translates into social policies that signal the shrinking
of democratic public spheres, the high-jacking of civic culture, and the increasing militarization of
public space. Equipped with police and drug sniffing dogs, though not necessarily teachers or textbooks,
public schools increasingly resemble prisons. Students begin to look more like criminal suspects who
need to be searched, tested, and observed under the watchful eye of administrators who appear to be
less concerned with educating them than with containing their every move. Nurturance, trust, and
respect now give way to fear, disdain, and suspicion. In many suburban malls, young people, especially
urban youth of color, cannot shop or walk around without having appropriate identification cards or
being in the company of a parent. Children have fewer rights than almost any other group and fewer
institutions protecting these rights. Consequently, their voices and needs are almost completely
absent from the debates, policies, and legislative practices that are constructed in terms of their
needs. Instead of providing a decent education to poor young people, American society offers them
the growing potential of being incarcerated, buttressed by the fact that the US is one of the few
countries in the world that sentences minors to death and spends ‘three times more on each
incarcerated citizen than on each public school pupil’ (Wokusch, 2002). Instead of guaranteeing them
decent schools and a critical education, we house too many of our young people in dilapidated buildings
and serve them more standardized tests; instead of providing them with vibrant public spheres, we offer
them a commercialized culture in which consumerism is the only obligation of citizen- ship. But in the
hard currency of human suffering, children pay a heavy price in one the richest democracies in the
world: 20 per cent of children are poor during the first three years of life and more than 13.3 million live
in poverty; 9.2 million children lack health insurance; millions lack affordable child care and decent early
childhood education; in many states more money is being spent on prison construction than on
education; the infant mortality rate in the United States is the highest of any other industrialised nation.
When broken down along racial categories, the figures become even more despairing. For example,
‘In 1998, 36 per cent of black and 34 per cent of Hispanic children lived in poverty, compared with 14
per cent of white children’.2 In some cities, such as the District of Columbia, the child poverty rate is as
high as 45 per cent.3 While the United States ranks first in military technology, military exports,
defence expenditures and the number of millionaires and billionaires, it is ranked 18th among the
advanced industrial nations in the gap between rich and poor children, 12th in the percentage of
children in poverty, 17th in the efforts to lift children out of poverty, and 23rd in infant mortality.4 One
of the most shameful figures on youth as reported by Jennifer Egan, a writer for The New York Times,
indicates that 1.4 million children are homeless in America for a time in any given year ... and these
children make up 40 per cent of the nation’s homeless population. (2002, p. 35)
Every part about youth in America today is messed up and we have to fix their
problems to try to fix the broken promises of democracy.
Giroux 2003 ("Youth, Higher Education, And The Crisis Of Public Time: Educated Hope And The
Possibility Of A Democratic Future." Social Identities 9.2 (2003): 141. Academic Search Premier. Web. 21
July 2012. HENRY A. Giroux, Giroux has held positions at Boston University, Miami University, and Penn
State University. In 2005, Giroux began serving as the Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural
Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario[2][dead link][3] Giroux has published more than 50
books and over 300 academic articles, and is published widely throughout education and cultural studies
literature.[4] Since arriving at McMaster, Giroux has been a featured faculty lecturer,[5] and has
published nine books,[6] including his most recent work, The University in Chains: Confronting the
Military-Industrial-Academic Complex. JRW)
In short, economically, politically and culturally, the situation of youth in the United States is
intolerable and obscene. It is all the more unforgivable since President Bush insisted during the 2000
campaign that ‘the biggest percentage of our budget should go to children’s education’. He then passed
a 2002 budget in which 40 times more money went for tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 per cent of the
population than for education (Wokusch, 2002, p. 1). But Bush’s insensitivity to American children
represents more than a paean to the rich since he also passed a punitive welfare reform bill that
requires poor, young mothers to work a 40-hour week while at the same time cutting low-income
childcare programs. It gets worse. While the United States government aims to spend up to 400 billion
dollars on defense, not including the additional 75 billion dollars it has requested to wage a war against
Iraq, it allocates only 16 billion dollars to welfare. At the same time that it has passed tax cuts
amounting to 723 billion dollars, 50 per cent of which will go to the richest 1 per cent of the population,
it is slashing 14.6 billion dollars in benefits for veterans, 93 billion in Medicaid cuts, and promoting cuts
in student loans, education programs, school lunches, food stamps, and cash assistance for the elderly,
poor, and disabled (see Kuttner, 2003; Ivins, 2003). Youth have become the central site onto which
class and racial anxieties are projected. Their very presence in an age where there is no such thing as
society represents both the broken promises of democracy and the violation of a social contract that
traditionally at least offered young people the right to decent food, education, health, employment,
and other crucial rights fundamental to their survival, dignity, and a decent future. Corporate
deregulation and down- sizing and a collective fear of the consequences wrought by systemic class
inequalities, racism, and a culture of ‘infectious greed’ have created a generation of displaced and
unskilled youth who have been expelled from the ‘universe of moral obligations’ (Bauman, 1999a, p.
77). Youth within the economic, political, and cultural geography of neoliberal capitalism occupy a
degraded borderland in which the spectacle of commodification exists side by side with the imposing
threat of the prison-industrial complex and the elimination of basic civil liberties. As neoliberalism
disassociates economics from its social costs, ‘the political state has become the corporate state’ (Hertz,
2001, p. 11). Under such circumstances, the state does not disappear, but, as Pierre Bourdieu has
brilliantly reminded us (Bourdieu, 1998; Bourdieu, et al., 1999), is refigured as its role in providing social
provisions, intervening on behalf of public welfare, and regulating corporate plunder is weakened. The
neo-liberal state no longer invests in solving social problems, it now punishes those who are caught in
the downward spiral of its economic policies. Punishment, incarceration, and surveillance represent the
face of the new state. One consequence is that the implied contract between the state and citizens is
broken and social guarantees for youth as well as civic obligations to the future vanish from the agenda
of public concern. Similarly, as market values supplant civic values, it becomes increasingly difficult ‘to
translate private worries into public issues and, conversely, to discern public issues in private troubles’
(Bauman, 1999b, p. 2). Alcoholism, homelessness, poverty and illiteracy, among other issues, are not
seen as social but as individual problems — matters of character, individual fortitude, and personal
responsibility. In light of the increased antiterrorism campaign waged by the Bush administration, it
becomes easier to militarize domestic space, criminalize social problems, and escape from the
responsibilities of the present while destroying all possibilities of a truly democratic future. Moreover,
the social costs of the complex cultural and economic operations of this assault can no longer be
ignored by educators, parents, and other concerned citizens.
Education has long been argued as key to government and until we reach a level of
higher education and relevant education we can’t improve.
Giroux 2003 ("Youth, Higher Education, And The Crisis Of Public Time: Educated Hope And The
Possibility Of A Democratic Future." Social Identities 9.2 (2003): 141. Academic Search Premier. Web. 21
July 2012. HENRY A. Giroux, Giroux has held positions at Boston University, Miami University, and Penn
State University. In 2005, Giroux began serving as the Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural
Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario[2][dead link][3] Giroux has published more than 50
books and over 300 academic articles, and is published widely throughout education and cultural studies
literature.[4] Since arriving at McMaster, Giroux has been a featured faculty lecturer,[5] and has
published nine books,[6] including his most recent work, The University in Chains: Confronting the
Military-Industrial-Academic Complex. JRW)
There is a prominent educational tradition in the United States extending from Thomas Jefferson and
W.E.B. Dubois to John Dewey and C. Wright Mills in which the future of the university is premised on
the recognition that in order for freedom to flourish in the worldly space of the public realm, citizens
had to be educated for the task of self-government. John Dewey, for example, argued that higher
education should provide the conditions for people to involve themselves in the deepest problems of
society, to acquire the knowledge, skills, and ethical responsibility necessary for ‘reasoned participation
in democratically organized publics’. C. Wright Mills (1963) challenged schooling as a form of corporate
training and called for fashioning higher education within a public philosophy committed to a radical
conception of citizenship, civic engagement, and public wisdom. Education in this context was linked
to public life through democratic values such as equality, justice, and freedom, rather than as an
adjunct of the corporation whose knowledge and values were defined largely through the prism of
commercial interests. Education was crucial to a notion of individual agency and public citizenship,
integral to defending the relationship between an autonomous society — rooted in an ever-expanding
process of self-examination, critique, and reform — and autonomous individuals, for whom critical
inquiry is propelled by the need to engage in an ongoing pursuit of ethics and justice as a matter of
public good. In many ways, higher education has been faithful, at least in theory, to a project of modern
politics, whose purpose was to create citizens capable of defining and implementing universal goals such
as freedom, equality, and justice as part of a broader attempt to deepen the relationship between an
expanded notion of the social and the enabling ground of a vibrant democracy.
If we want democracy to continue in America we must educate the youth on
democracy and until citizens recognize what they must do democracy risks failure.
Giroux 2003 ("Youth, Higher Education, And The Crisis Of Public Time: Educated Hope And The
Possibility Of A Democratic Future." Social Identities 9.2 (2003): 141. Academic Search Premier. Web. 21
July 2012. HENRY A. Giroux, Giroux has held positions at Boston University, Miami University, and Penn
State University. In 2005, Giroux began serving as the Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural
Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario[2][dead link][3] Giroux has published more than 50
books and over 300 academic articles, and is published widely throughout education and cultural studies
literature.[4] Since arriving at McMaster, Giroux has been a featured faculty lecturer,[5] and has
published nine books,[6] including his most recent work, The University in Chains: Confronting the
Military-Industrial-Academic Complex. JRW)
A pedagogy that simply promotes a culture of questioning says nothing about what kind of future is or
should be implied by how and what educators teach; nor does it address the necessity of recognizing
the value of a future in which matters of liberty, freedom, and justice play a constitutive role. While it is
crucial for education to be attentive to those practices in which forms of social and political agency are
denied, it is also imperative to create the conditions in which forms of agency are available for students
to learn not only to think critically but to act differently. People need to be educated for democracy not
only by expanding their capacities to think critically, but also for assuming public responsibility
through active participation in the very process of governing and engaging important social problems.
This suggests connecting a pedagogy of understanding with pedagogical practices that are empowering
and oppositional, practices that offer students the knowledge and skills needed to believe that a
substantive democracy is not only possible but is worth both taking responsibility for and struggling
over. Feminist and postcolonial theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty highlights this issue by arguing that
pedagogy is not merely about matters of scholarship and what should be taught but also about issues of
strategy, transformation, and practice. In this instance, a critical pedagogy should get: students to think
critically about their place in relation to the knowledge they gain and to transform their world view
fundamentally by taking the politics of knowledge seriously. It is a pedagogy that attempts to link
knowledge, social responsibility, and collective struggle. And it does so by emphasizing risks that
education involves, the struggles for institutional change, and the strategies for challenging forms of
domination and by creating more equitable and just public spheres within and outside of educational
institutions. (1989–90, p. 192 Any viable notion of critical pedagogy has to foreground issues not only
of understanding but also social responsibility and address the implications the latter has for a
democratic society. As Vaclav Havel has noted, Democracy requires a certain type of citizen who feels
responsible for something other than his own well feathered little corner; citizens who want to
participate in society’s affairs, who insist on it; citizens with backbones; citizens who hold their ideas
about democracy at the deepest level, at the level that religion is held, where beliefs and identity are
the same. (cited in Berman, 1997, p. 36)
Infrastructure solves poverty
We must help urban residents access employment and services by improving urban
transportation infrastructure.
Dodson, Urban Research Program, 06 (2006, Jago, “Investing in the Social Dimensons of Transport
Disadvantage—I. Toward New Concepts and Methods,” Vol. 24, No. 4, 433–453, Google Books, REM)
Changing social, economic and environmental imperatives are shifting scholarly and policy attention
towards ensuring urban transport systems provide for accessibility. This marks a shift away from earlier
perceptions which actually limited mobility (Cervero, 1989; Newman & Kenworthy, 1999). Previously,
typical transport studies sought to ensure the mobility of urban populations, with a focus biased
towards private vehicles as the primary mode of travel. Models of travel behavior have been
deployed to assess which activities stimulate travel and how the transport system provides for this
mobility. By comparison, the alternative concept of accessibility denotes the ease and capacity of
urban residents to access employment and services at the local and regional scale of analysis.
Activity based models of transport behavior offer potential for analyzing the
relationship between social status and transport disadvantage.
Dodson, Urban Research Program, 06 (2006, Jago, “Investing in the Social Dimensions of Transport
Disadvantage—I. Toward New Concepts and Methods,” Vol. 24, No. 4, 433–453, Google Books, REM)
Activity-based models of transport behavior offer some potential to illuminate the relationship
between social status and transport disadvantage. Activity-based transport models seek to determine
travel demand at the individual or household level by modeling behavior based on household
characteristics and the attributes of the broader neighborhood and metropolitan environment (Wang
& Cheng, 2001). These models offer potential for development into methods for analyzing links
between transport disadvantage and household travel status. However, such models also depend on
detailed travel survey data that identifies sub-group characteristics. This data may not be available in
sufficient sample sizes to give a comprehensive assessment of socio-spatial transport disadvantage
experienced by sub-groups at a fine geographic scale, while other data-sets such as census or
transport systems data is available at very detailed spatial scales. Further methodological
development may in future assist to improve the analytical power of activity-based models for social
transport assessment.
Community mapping enables identification of disadvantages to transportation faced
by residents.
Dodson, Urban Research Program, 06 (2006, Jago, “Investing in the Social Dimensions of Transport
Disadvantage—I. Toward New Concepts and Methods,” Vol. 24, No. 4, 433–453, Google Books, REM)
A particular benefit of this community mapping approach was that it enabled clear identification of
local access barriers to transport and services faced by residents. Such barriers included the physical
layout of the transport infrastructure in the study area, which in many instances impeded access
rather than enhancing access. For example, the freeway running through the locality prevented access
to the local rail station. Such local empirical factors could only be discovered via a local level
qualitative investigation. Other methods, such as census data mapping or mathematical accessibility
modeling would be unlikely to identify physical barriers that impede or impinge upon transport access
at the community scale
GIS development offers the most fruitful avenue for engaging both the infrastructure
and social dimensions of urban planning.
Dodson, Urban Research Program, 06 (2006, Jago, “Investing in the Social Dimensions of Transport
Disadvantage—I. Toward New Concepts and Methods,” Vol. 24, No. 4, 433–453, Google Books, REM)
From the methodological approaches tested, it was identified that there were
many benefits to using socio-spatial analysis in examining the spatial and temporal
dimensions of transport disadvantage. In particular GIS methods continue to offer
substantial scope for further methodological sophistication and refinement. This is
particularly so as they are easily able to operate at the scale of an entire
metropolitan area rather than either being restricted to local scales as is the case
with qualitative methods, or being overly mathematically abstracted from the
urban empirical context, which is the risk with model- based approaches. GIS
methods also offer the opportunity to combine multiple spatial data- sets to assist
analysis, such as socio-economic and transport system data, something that has not
been substantially achieved with traffic models. For these reasons we consider that GIS
methodological development is among the most fruitful avenues of inquiry for
research that engages both the social and infrastructure/service dimensions of
transport planning.
There must be a balance of hierarchy, market, and contract in order to create
sustainable urban transportation.
Mercier, Professor at Université Laval, 09 (2009, Jean, Equity, Social Justice, and Sustainable Urban
Transportation in the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 145–163, Google Books, REM)
Of course, there are certain elements that no organization can buy or con- tract out, such as its very
basic reason for existence, or the final choice of its strategic plan. In our case, a city cannot really buy
or contract out the decision to become responsible for the choice of a sustainable urban
transportation and land use, although it can certainly get help for thinking about it. The distinction
reminds us of Karl Mannheim’s fundamental distinction between “substantial rationality,” on the one
hand, and “functional rationality,” on the other, the first addressing itself to some fundamental,
existential question, and the second addressing itself to the manner in which these fundamental
choices will be implemented. Having said that, it may very well be that in the past, even in the recent
past, cities left some substantial rationality elements to the market to the extent that it only reacted,
ex post, to private initiatives that, added together, designed the basic form of the city. In any large
concern, be it private or public, there is a mix of hierarchy, market and contract, in the sense that
there is a wide variety of circumstances where organizations will produce themselves, buy in the
market, or contract out what they need. It is no different for urban government administration. So the
question thus becomes the balance between hierarchy, market, and contract, and not the exclusive
use of one or the other. In the challenge of sustainable urban transportation, what is the proper
balance between these three modes of governance
Impact Calculus:
Everyday instances of violence should be prioritized – prevents desensitization
Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois ‘4
(Prof of Anthropology @ Cal-Berkely; Prof of Anthropology @ UPenn)
(Nancy and Philippe, Introduction: Making Sense of Violence, in Violence in War and Peace, pg. 19-22)
This large and at first sight “messy” Part VII is central to this anthology’s thesis. It encompasses everything from the routinized, bureaucratized, and utterly banal violence of children
dying of hunger and maternal despair in Northeast Brazil (Scheper-Hughes, Chapter 33) to elderly African Americans dying of heat stroke in Mayor Daly’s version of US apartheid in
Chicago’s South Side (Klinenberg, Chapter 38) to the racialized class hatred expressed by British Victorians in their olfactory disgust of the “smelly” working classes (Orwell, Chapter 36).
In these readings violence is located in the symbolic and social structures that overdetermine and allow the criminalized drug addictions, interpersonal bloodshed, and racially patterned
incarcerations that characterize the US “inner city” to be normalized (Bourgois, Chapter 37 and Wacquant, Chapter 39). Violence also takes the form of class, racial, political self-hatred
Absolutely
central to our approach is a blurring of categories and distinctions between wartime and
peacetime violence. Close attention to the “little” violences produced in the structures, habituses,
and mentalites of everyday life shifts our attention to pathologies of class, race, and gender
inequalities. More important, it interrupts the voyeuristic tendencies of “violence studies” that risk publicly humiliating the powerless who are often forced into complicity
and adolescent self-destruction (Quesada, Chapter 35), as well as of useless (i.e. preventable), rawly embodied physical suffering, and death (Farmer, Chapter 34).
with social and individual pathologies of power because suffering is often a solvent of human integrity and dignity. Thus, in this anthology we are positing a violence continuum
comprised of a multitude of “small wars and invisible genocides” (see also Scheper- Hughes 1996; 1997; 2000b) conducted in the normative social spaces of public schools, clinics,
The violence continuum
also refers to the ease with which humans are capable of reducing the socially vulnerable into
expendable nonpersons and assuming the license - even the duty - to kill, maim, or soul-murder. We
emergency rooms, hospital wards, nursing homes, courtrooms, public registry offices, prisons, detention centers, and public morgues.
realize that in referring to a violence and a genocide continuum we are flying in the face of a tradition of genocide studies that argues for the absolute uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust
and for vigilance with respect to restricted purist use of the term genocide itself (see Kuper 1985; Chaulk 1999; Fein 1990; Chorbajian 1999). But we hold an opposing and alternative
it is absolutely necessary to make just such existential leaps in purposefully linking
violent acts in normal times to those of abnormal times. Hence the title of our volume: Violence in War and in Peace. If (as we concede)
there is a moral risk in overextending the concept of “genocide” into spaces and corners of everyday life where we might not ordinarily think to find it (and there is), an
even greater risk lies in failing to sensitize ourselves, in misrecognizing protogenocidal practices
and sentiments daily enacted as normative behavior by “ordinary” good-enough citizens.
Peacetime crimes, such as prison construction sold as economic development to impoverished communities in the mountains and deserts of California, or the evolution of
the criminal industrial complex into the latest peculiar institution for managing race relations in the United States (Waquant, Chapter 39), constitute the “small
wars and invisible genocides” to which we refer. This applies to African American and Latino youth mortality statistics in Oakland, California, Baltimore,
Washington DC, and New York City. These are “invisible” genocides not because they are secreted away or hidden
from view, but quite the opposite. As Wittgenstein observed, the things that are hardest to perceive are
those which are right before our eyes and therefore taken for granted. In this regard, Bourdieu’s partial and unfinished
view that, to the contrary,
theory of violence (see Chapters 32 and 42) as well as his concept of misrecognition is crucial to our task. By including the normative everyday forms of violence hidden in the minutiae of
“normal” social practices - in the architecture of homes, in gender relations, in communal work, in the exchange of gifts, and so forth - Bourdieu forces us to reconsider the broader
meanings and status of violence, especially the links between the violence of everyday life and explicit political terror and state repression, Similarly, Basaglia’s notion of “peacetime
Peacetime crimes suggests the possibility that
war crimes are merely ordinary, everyday crimes of public consent applied systematically and
dramatically in the extreme context of war. Consider the parallel uses of rape during peacetime and wartime, or the family resemblances between
crimes” - crimini di pace - imagines a direct relationship between wartime and peacetime violence.
the legalized violence of US immigration and naturalization border raids on “illegal aliens” versus the US government- engineered genocide in 1938, known as the Cherokee “Trail of
Tears.” Peacetime crimes suggests that everyday forms of state violence make a certain kind of domestic peace possible. Internal “stability” is purchased with the currency of peacetime
crimes, many of which take the form of professionally applied “strangle-holds.” Everyday forms of state violence during peacetime make a certain kind of domestic “peace” possible. It is
an easy-to-identify peacetime crime that is usually maintained as a public secret by the government and by a scared or apathetic populace. Most subtly, but no less politically or
structurally, the phenomenal growth in the United States of a new military, postindustrial prison industrial complex has taken place in the absence of broad-based opposition, let alone
The public consensus is based primarily on a new mobilization of an old fear of
the mob, the mugger, the rapist, the Black man, the undeserving poor. How many public
executions of mentally deficient prisoners in the United States are needed to make life feel more
secure for the affluent? What can it possibly mean when incarceration becomes the “normative” socializing experience for ethnic minority youth in a society, i.e.,
over 33 percent of young African American men (Prison Watch 2002). In the end it is essential that we recognize the existence of a
genocidal capacity among otherwise good-enough humans and that we need to exercise a
defensive hypervigilance to the less dramatic, permitted, and even rewarded everyday acts of
violence that render participation in genocidal acts and policies possible (under adverse political or economic conditions),
perhaps more easily than we would like to recognize. Under the violence continuum we include, therefore, all expressions
collective acts of civil disobedience.
of radical social exclusion, dehumanization, depersonal- ization, pseudospeciation, and reification
which normalize atrocious behavior and violence toward others. A constant self-mobilization for
alarm, a state of constant hyperarousal is, perhaps, a reasonable response to Benjamin’s view of
late modern history as a chronic “state of emergency” (Taussig, Chapter 31). We are trying to recover here the classic anagogic thinking
that enabled Erving Goffman, Jules Henry, C. Wright Mills, and Franco Basaglia among other mid-twentieth-century radically critical thinkers, to perceive the symbolic and structural
Making that
decisive move to recognize the continuum of violence allows us to see the capacity and the
willingness - if not enthusiasm - of ordinary people, the practical technicians of the social
consensus, to enforce genocidal-like crimes against categories of rubbish people. There is no
primary impulse out of which mass violence and genocide are born, it is ingrained in the common
sense of everyday social life. The mad, the differently abled, the mentally vulnerable have often
fallen into this category of the unworthy living, as have the very old and infirm, the sick-poor, and,
of course, the despised racial, religious, sexual, and ethnic groups of the moment. Erik Erikson referred to
relations, i.e., between inmates and patients, between concentration camps, prisons, mental hospitals, nursing homes, and other “total institutions.”
“pseudo- speciation” as the human tendency to classify some individuals or social groups as less than fully human - a prerequisite to genocide and one that is carefully honed during the
. Collective denial and misrecognition are
prerequisites for mass violence and genocide. But so are formal bureaucratic structures and professional roles. The practical technicians of
unremark- able peacetimes that precede the sudden, “seemingly unintelligible” outbreaks of mass violence
everyday violence in the backlands of Northeast Brazil (Scheper-Hughes, Chapter 33), for example, include the clinic doctors who prescribe powerful tranquilizers to fretful and frightfully
hungry babies, the Catholic priests who celebrate the death of “angel-babies,” and the municipal bureaucrats who dispense free baby coffins but no food to hungry families.
Everyday violence encompasses the implicit, legitimate, and routinized forms of violence inherent
in particular social, economic, and political formations. It is close to what Bourdieu (1977, 1996) means by “symbolic violence,” the
violence that is often “nus-recognized” for something else, usually something good. Everyday violence is similar to what Taussig (1989) calls “terror as usual.” All these terms are meant
to reveal a public secret - the hidden links between violence in war and violence in peace, and between war crimes and “peace-time crimes.” Bourdieu (1977) finds domination and
violence in the least likely places - in courtship and marriage, in the exchange of gifts, in systems of classification, in style, art, and culinary taste- the various uses of culture. Violence,
Bourdieu insists, is everywhere in social practice. It is misrecognized because its very everydayness and its familiarity render it invisible. Lacan identifies “rneconnaissance” as the
prerequisite of the social. The exploitation of bachelor sons, robbing them of autonomy, independence, and progeny, within the structures of family farming in the European countryside
that Bourdieu escaped is a case in point (Bourdieu, Chapter 42; see also Scheper-Hughes, 2000b; Favret-Saada, 1989). Following Gramsci, Foucault, Sartre, Arendt, and other modern
theorists of power-vio- lence, Bourdieu treats direct aggression and physical violence as a crude, uneconomical mode of domination; it is less efficient and, according to Arendt (1969), it
is certainly less legitimate. While power and symbolic domination are not to be equated with violence - and Arendt argues persuasively that violence is to be understood as a failure of
power - violence, as we are presenting it here, is more than simply the expression of illegitimate physical force against a person or group of persons. Rather, we need to understand
violence as encompassing all forms of “controlling processes” (Nader 1997b) that assault basic human freedoms and individual or collective survival. Our task is to recognize these gray
zones of violence which are, by definition, not obvious. Once again, the point of bringing into the discourses on genocide everyday, normative experiences of reification,
depersonalization, institutional confinement, and acceptable death is to help answer the question: What makes mass violence and genocide possible? In this volume we are suggesting
that mass violence is part of a continuum, and that it is socially incremental and often experienced
by perpetrators, collaborators, bystanders - and even by victims themselves - as expected, routine,
even justified. The preparations for mass killing can be found in social sentiments and institutions from the family, to schools, churches, hospitals, and the military. They
harbor the early “warning signs” (Charney 1991), the “priming” (as Hinton, ed., 2002 calls it), or the “genocidal continuum” (as we call it) that
push social consensus toward devaluing certain forms of human life and lifeways from the refusal of social support and
humane care to vulnerable “social parasites” (the nursing home elderly, “welfare queens,” undocumented immigrants, drug addicts) to the militarization of everyday life (supermaximum-security prisons, capital punishment; the technologies of heightened personal security, including the house gun and gated communities; and reversed feelings of victimization).
War impact claims disguise everyday violence
Cuomo 96 (Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, 1996 Chris, Hypatia 11.4, proquest)
Ethical approaches that do not attend to the ways in which warfare and military practices are woven into
the very fabric of life in twenty-first century technological states lead to crisis-based politics and analyses. For any feminism
that aims to resist oppression and create alternative social and political options, crisis-based ethics and politics are problematic
because they distract attention from the need for sustained resistance to the enmeshed, omnipresent
systems of domination and oppression that so often function as givens in most people's lives. Neglecting
the omnipresence of militarism allows the false belief that the absence of declared armed conflicts is
peace, the polar opposite of war. It is particularly easy for those whose lives are shaped by the safety
of privilege, and who do not regularly encounter the realities of militarism, to maintain this false
belief. The belief that militarism is an ethical, political concern only regarding armed conflict, creates
forms of resistance to militarism that are merely exercises in crisis control. Antiwar resistance is then mobilized
when the "real" violence finally occurs, or when the stability of privilege is directly threatened, and at that point it is difficult not to respond in
ways that make resisters drop all other political priorities.
Crisis-driven attention to declarations of war might actually
keep resisters complacent about and complicitous in the general presence of global militarism. Seeing
war as necessarily embedded in constant military presence draws attention to the fact that horrific,
state-sponsored violence is happening nearly all over, all of the time, and that it is perpetrated by
military institutions and other militaristic agents of the state.
Performance
White Privilege
Racism is ingrained in our culture and history - the path to confronting one’s privilege
is wrought with difficulty (Performance section - White Privilege)
Lawrence, Professor of Law at Stanford University, 87 (January 1987, Charles R., 39 Stanford Law
Review 317, “The Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection: Reckoning with Unconscious Racism,” LexisNexis, JS)
Much of one's inability to know racial discrimination when one sees it results from a failure to
recognize that racism is both a crime and a disease. n15 This failure is compounded by a reluctance to
admit that the illness of racism infects almost everyone. n16 Acknowledging and understanding the
malignancy are prerequisites to the discovery of an appropriate cure. But the diagnosis is difficult,
because our own contamination with the very illness for which a cure is sought impairs our
comprehension of the disorder. Scholarly and judicial efforts to explain the constitutional significance of
disproportionate impact and governmental motive in cases alleging racial discrimination treat these two
categories as mutually exclusive. That is, while disproportionate impact may be evidence of racially
discriminatory motive, n17 whether impact or motive is the appropriate focus is normally posed in the
alternative: Should racially disproportionate impact, standing alone, trigger a heightened level of judicial
scrutiny Or, should the judiciary apply a deferential standard to legislative and administrative decisions
absent proof that the decisionmakers [*322] intended a racial consequence n18 Put another way, the
Court thinks of facially neutral actions as either intentionally and unconstitutionally or unintentionally
and constitutionally discriminatory. n19 Page 3 39 Stan. L. Rev. 317, *318 I argue that this is a false
dichotomy. Traditional notions of intent n20 do not reflect the fact that decisions about racial matters
are influenced in large part by factors that can be characterized as neither intentional -- in the sense
that certain outcomes are self-consciously sought -- nor unintentional -- in the sense that the
outcomes are random, fortuitous, and uninfluenced by the decisionmaker's beliefs, desires, and
wishes. Americans share a common historical and cultural heritage in which racism has played and
still plays a dominant role. n21 Because of this shared experience, we also inevitably share many ideas,
attitudes, and beliefs that attach significance to an individual's race and induce negative feelings and
opinions about nonwhites. To the extent that this cultural belief system has influenced all of us, we
are all racists. At the same time, most of us are unaware of our racism. We do not recognize the ways
in which our cultural experience has influenced our beliefs about race or the occasions on which those
beliefs affect our actions. In other words, a large part of the behavior that produces racial
discrimination is influenced by unconscious racial motivation. n22 There are two explanations for the
unconscious nature of our racially discriminatory beliefs and ideas. First, Freudian theory states that the
human mind defends itself against the discomfort of guilt by denying or refusing to recognize those
ideas, wishes, and beliefs that conflict with what the individual has learned is good or right. While our
historical [*323] experience has made racism an integral part of our culture, our society has more
recently embraced an ideal that rejects racism as immoral. When an individual experiences conflict
between racist ideas and the societal ethic that condemns those ideas, the mind excludes his racism
from consciousness. n23 Second, the theory of cognitive psychology states that the culture -including, for example, the media and an individual's parents, peers, and authority figures -- transmits
certain beliefs and preferences. Because these beliefs are so much a part of the culture, they are not
experienced as explicit lessons. Instead, they seem part of the individual's rational ordering of her
perceptions of the world. n24 The individual is unaware, for example, that the ubiquitous presence of
a cultural stereotype has influenced her perception that blacks are lazy or unintelligent. Because
racism is so deeply ingrained in our culture, it is likely to be transmitted by tacit understandings: Even
if a child is not told that blacks are inferior, he learns that lesson by observing the behavior of others.
These tacit understandings, because they have never been articulated, are less likely to be experienced
at a conscious level. In short, requiring proof of conscious or intentional motivation as a prerequisite to
constitutional recognition that a decision is race-dependent n25 ignores much of what we understand
about how the human mind works. It also disregards both the irrationality of racism and the profound
effect that the history of American race relations has had on the individual and collective unconscious.
n26
History and Race
Herbert Hill Labor Secretary of the NAACP warned America in 1967 that black
migration to Northern cities and mass white exodus was leaving minorities in poverty
stricken inner city dwellings - Racialized segregation is not new it has its roots in a
history of Overt racial practice
Hill, National Labor Secretary at the NAACP, 67 (1967, Herbert, “Demographic Change and Racial
Ghettoes,” 44 J. Urb. L. 231, HeinOnline, REM)
The movement of Negroes into northern cities has been accompanied by an expanding and
increasingly rigid pattern of residential segregation. Negroes migrating to northern cities are forced to
live in dilapidated dwellings with improbable extremes of population concentration. Negro ghettos in
urban centers have grown in size as white citizens have conversely emigrated to greener, and whiter,
suburbs. In New York City, for example, a half-million white persons left the city between 1960 and
1964.40 Housing facilities for Negroes in the cities are also more expensive and increasingly
substandard in comparison with housing for whites.
Civil rights struggles were rooted in growth, mobility, and urbanization, as African
Americans were pushed into racial ghettoes. In 1967, the NAACP made it clear that
direct public policy would be needed to stop the creation of a permanent black
underclass - their concerns went unheeded
Hill, National Labor Secretary at the NAACP, 67 (1967, Herbert, “Demographic Change and Racial
Ghettoes,” 44 J. Urb. L. 231, HeinOnline, REM)
CURRENT civil rights struggles are rooted in three major demographic developments of the American
Negro community: accelerated growth, increasing mobility, and rapid urbanization. Almost half of the
Negro population now lives in the North, but the response of American cities to this development has
been a vast increase and rigidity in the pattern of residential segregation. Thus the Negro finds that he
has left the segregated South for the segregated northern slum. The growth of housing segregation has
been accompanied by an extension of the ghetto pattern in major cities together with vast urban blight
and the decay of central city areas. As a result of Negro population concentration in large cities and the
movement of whites to the suburbs, the Negro is becoming strategically located to realize a growing
potential of political power. However, racial segregation, poverty and exploitation are causing the
emergence of a ghetto "underclass" profoundly alienated from the society. Federal, state and
municipal agencies have directly encouraged segregation and the extension of racial ghettoes. The
problem of urban redevelopment and the future of the cities is directly related to public policy on
racial issues. There is now an urgent need for a new order of national priorities to fundamentally
change the racial situation in the urban centers.
Transportation racism still exists in the SQ and remains a Civil RIghts issue - like Rosa
Parks and the Freedom Riders - Transportation equity movements are demanding a
redress of the discriminatory practices that perpetuate racial disparity
Bullard, Dean of the Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University and former
Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, 04( Robert D., Ph.D.
Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity) SJ
More than one hundred years ago, in the foreword to his classic book The Souls of Black Folks, W. E.
B. DuBois declared that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.'*
DuBois*s diagnosis came seven years after the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson US Supreme Court
decision codified "separate but equal" as the law of the land. Sadly, in the twenty-first century, the
problem persists. Highway Robbery weighs in a half-century after the landmark US Supreme Court
Brown v. Board of Education decision overturned Plessy and outlawed "separate but equal" in 1954.
Unfortunately, decades of court rulings and civil rights laws have not eradicated the historic
disparities between races or the discrimination that perpetuates them.1 The United States remains a
racially divided nation where extreme inequalities continue to persist in housing, schools,
employment, income, environmental protection, and transportation. The struggle against
transportation racism has always been about civil rights, social justice, equity, and fair treatment. For
more than a century, African Americans and other people of color have struggled to end
transportation racism. Harbingers of the modern civil rights movement. Rosa Parks and the
Montgomery Bus Boycott of the 1950s challenged transportation racism. Later, the Freedom Riders of
the 1960s defied "Jim Crow" on interstate transportation. Despite the heroic efforts of many and the
monumental human rights gains over the past five decades, transportation remains a civil rights and
quality of life issue. Unfortunately, it appears that transportation-civil rights issues have dropped off
the radar screens of many mainstream civil rights and social justice organizations at a time when
racist political forces disguised as "conservatives" attempt to roll back and dismantle many hard-won
civil rights gains. It is time to refocus attention on the role transportation plays in shaping human
interaction, economic mobility, and sustainability. From New York City to Los Angeles, and a host of
cities in between, people of color are banding together to challenge unfair, unjust, and illegal
transportation policies and practices that relegate them to the back of the bus. From Rosa Parks and
the brave souls who risked their lives in the Montgomery Bus Boycott to John Lewis and the Freedom
Riders, individual and organizational frontal assaults on racist transportation policies and practices
represent attempts to literally dismantle the infrastructure of oppression. Natural heirs of the civil
rights legacy, the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union in the 1990s and hundreds of grassroots groups in the
early years of the new millennium have taken to our nation's buses, trains, streets, and highways and
joined the battle against transportation racism. Transportation racism hurts people of color
communities by depriving their residents of valuable resources, investments, and mobility. This book
represents a small but significant part of the transportation equity movement—a movement that is
redefining transportation as an environmental, economic, civil, and human right.
Student Activism good
Discourse is a technology of power that can be utilized by students.
Giroux, McMaster University Global Television Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies, 86 (1986,
Henry A., “Radical Pedagogy and the Politics of Student Voice,” Vol. 17, No. 1, Google Books, REM)
If language is inseparable from lived experience and from how people create a distinctive voice, it is
also connected to an intense struggle among different groups over what will count as meaningful and
whose cultural capital will prevail in legitimating particular ways of life. Within schools, discourse
produces and legitimates configurations of time, space, and narrative, placing particular renderings of
ideology, behavior, and the representation of everyday life in a privileged perspective. As a
"technology of power," discourse is given concrete expression in the forms of knowledge that
constitute the formal curriculum as well as in the structuring of classroom social relations that
constitute the hidden curriculum of Schooling. Needless to say, these pedagogical practices and forms
are "read" in different ways by teachers and students.
Radical Discourse allows students to question how ideology is inscribed in educational
institutions.
Giroux, McMaster University Global Television Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies, 86 (1986,
Henry A., “Radical Pedagogy and the Politics of Student Voice,” Vol. 17, No. 1, Google Books, REM)
The importance of the relationship between power and discourse for a radical pedagogy is that it
provides a theoretical grounding for interrogating the issue of how ideology is inscribed in those
forms of educational discourse through which school experiences and practices are ordered and
constituted. Moreover, it points to the necessity of accounting theoretically for the ways in which
language, ideology, history, and experience come together to produce, define, and constrain
particular forms of teacher-student practice. The value of this approach is that it refuses to remain
trapped in modes of analysis that examine student voice and pedagogical experience from the
perspective of the reproductive thesis. That is, power and discourse are now investigated not merely
as the single echo of the logic of capital, but as a polyphony of voices mediated within different layers
of reality shaped through an interaction of dominant and subordinate forms of power. By recognizing
and interrogating the different layers of meaning and struggle that make up the terrain of schooling,
radical educators can fashion not only a language of critique but also a language of possibility. The
remainder of this essay will engage that task. First I will critically analyze the two major discourses of
mainstream educational theory. At the risk of undue simplification, these are characterized as
conservative and liberal pedagogical discourses. Then I will attempt to develop a discourse
appropriate for a radical pedagogy, one that draws heavily upon the works of Paulo Freire and Mikhail
Bakhtin
Traditional schooling practices prevent students from participating in political battles.
Giroux, McMaster University Global Television Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies, 86 (1986,
Henry A., “Radical Pedagogy and the Politics of Student Voice,” Vol. 17, No. 1, Google Books, REM)
This failing is evident in a number of areas. First, radical education theory has abandoned the
language of possibility for the language of critique. That is, in viewing schools as primarily
reproductive sites, it has not been able to develop a theory of schooling that offers the possibility for
counterhegemonic struggle and ideological battle. Within this discourse, schools, teachers, and
students have been written off as mere extensions of the logic of capital. Instead of viewing schools as
sites of contestation and conflict, radical educators often provide us with a simplified version of
domination that seems to suggest that the only political alternative to the current role that schools
play in the wider society is to abandon them altogether. Since they view schools as ideologically and
politically overburdened by the dominant society, they find unproblematic the moral and political
necessity of developing a programmatic discourse for working within them. Thus, the role that
teachers, students, parents, and community people might play in waging a political battle in the public
schools is rarely explored as a possibility. One consequence is that the primacy of the political in this
project turns in on itself and the defeatist logic of capitalist domination is accepted as the basis for a
"radical" theory of schooling.
Student and other forms of activism will help fight this “new racism”
Bonilla-Silva, 06- professor of sociology at Duke University (Eduardo, Racism without Racists: second
edition) SJ
If this new civil rights movement begins a concerted campaign to fight ‘‘new racism’’ practices and
color-blind idiocy, this movement has a chance. If the leaders of this movement begin to say to
America, ‘‘We will no longer accept poverty and urban decay, substandard schools and housing,
inferior jobs, old- as well as new-fashioned discrimination, and racial profiling, in short, we will no
longer accept second-class citizenship in this country,’’ then this movement has a chance. If liberal,
progressive, and radical organizations join in this new civil rights movement to eliminate racial disparity
in the United States once and for all, this movement has a chance. If progressive religious leaders of
various denominations begin to preach about the need to complete the civil rights revolution we started
years ago and derail the forces that want to turn back the racial clock, this movement has a chance. If
the millions of conscientious college students across the nation wake up and do the right thing, as they
did during the Civil Rights era, this movement has a chance. If young people and workers in the United
States realize that racial inequality ultimately helps preserve other forms of inequality,27 this
movement has a chance. Activists and researchers alike need to realize the basic truth in Frederick
Douglass’s words, ‘‘If there is no struggle, there is no progress. . . . Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will.’’ Change is made, not theorized, written about, or orchestrated
by policy makers or researchers. Only by demanding what seems impossible today (equality of results,
reparations, and the end of all forms of racial discrimination), will we be able to achieve genuine racial
equality in the future.
With years of experiencing disadvantages, minorities will not easily attain equal
status.
Bonilla-Silva, 06- professor of sociology at Duke University (Eduardo, Racism without Racists: second
edition) SJ
But what is ideological about this story Is it not true that ‘‘the past is the past’’ First, whites interpreted
the past as slavery, even when in some questions we left it open (e.g., questions regarding the ‘‘history
of oppression’’) or specified we were referring to ‘‘slavery and Jim Crow.’’ Since Jim Crow died slowly in
the country (1960s to 1970s), their constant reference to a remote past distorts the fact about how
recent overt forms of racial oppression impeded black progress. This also means that most whites are
still connected to parents and grandparents who participated in Jim Crow in some fashion. Second, the
effects of historic discrimination have limited blacks’ capacity to accumulate wealth at the same rate as
whites. According to Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, the ‘‘cumulation of disadvantages’’ has
‘‘sedimented’’ blacks economically so that, even if all forms of economic discrimination blacks face
ended today, they would not catch up with whites for several hundred years!11 Third, believing
discrimination is a thing of the past helps whites reinforce their staunch opposition to all race-based
compensatory programs. This story line, then, is used to deny the enduring effects of historic
discrimination as well as to deny the significance of contemporary discrimination. Thus, when one
considers the combined effects of historic and contemporary discrimination, the anchor holding
minorities in place weighs a ton and cannot be easily dismissed.
Solvency
Racism undergirds the policies of both the state and private institutions; the only way
to overcome racial inequality is to engage in direct action in opposition
Ginsburg 98 Dec 1 Institutional racism and local authority housing DOI: 10.1177/026101838800802401 Critical Social Policy 1988 8:
4NormanVersion of Record -
Just as the concepts and processes of class and gender oppression are hugely debated, so obviously the
concept of racism and the processes sustaining racial inequality are debated, often in much the same
forms. There is the question of whether it is the socio-economic structure which essentially produces
and sustains racism or whether it is the personnel of the state and private institutions who are the
fundamental source of racial oppression. If the social structure is seen as central to an explanation, then
the strategy demanded is a comprehensive and revolutionary political and economic challenge such as
that being mounted today in South Africa. If the personnel of the state and civil society are identified
as the essential locus of racism, then their control of agencies and institutions can be gradually
wrested by anti-racist struggle and organization. A related question concerns the intentionality of
policies or personnel in sustaining racial inequality and oppression. In sociological terms this is the
problem of consciousness or false consciousness. If policies or personnel are intentionally racist then
an anti-racist strategy will root them out and either reform their consciousness or remove their
influence. Unintentional policies or action by individuals are often harder to identify and may require
more complex and controversial policies to overcome them.
Discourse shapes reality, the only way to redefine racism is to change the rhetoric that
addresses groups of people in our society specifically people of color
Wallace 09 professor and chair of the Department of English at the University of Central Florida,
09 [“Alternative Rhetoric and Morality:Writing from the Margins:” David L. C C C 6 1 : 2.
At the level of theory, the field of rhetoric and composition has largely ac- cepted that
rhetorical theory must be redefined to account for the constructed nature of agency and the
ongoing processes of cultural reproduction—that objectivity no longer exists and that the
new game in town is accounting for our unique subjectivities. Thus, as Bakhtin has led us to
understand, all language and all rhetoric is inherently discursive, whether those using it
recognize it or not. As Jacqueline Jones Royster argues in the epigraph above, this discursive/
contingent nature of discourse must be at the center of any understanding of rhetoric and
composition that takes postmodernism seriously, and discourse must be understood as an
embodied force that has real consequences for real people. Further, if we are serious about
developing alternative rhetorics that address our field’s complicity in the discourses of
power, then those efforts must begin with an explicit recognition that the consequences of
discourse are more severe and limiting for some groups in our society than they are for
others.
As long as we sit and do nothing the white man will continue to dominate over the
people of color and the poor
Wallace 09 professor and chair of the Department of English at the University of Central Florida,
09 [“Alternative Rhetoric and Morality:Writing from the Margins:” David L. C C C 6 1 : 2.
Culture forms our beliefs. We perceive the version of reality that it communicates. Dominant
paradigms, predefined concepts that exist as unquestionable, unchal- lengeable, are transmitted to
us through culture. Culture is made by those in power—men. Males make the rules and laws;
women transmit them. (38)
History prevails; the most significant impact is to boycott the resolution in order to
gain real change
Kohl 95
the story of rosa parks and the Montgomery bus boycott revisited Montgomery bus boycot revisited by Herbert A prominent, radical
educator. Herbert Kohl is a veteran public school teacher who has worked for decades to help empower disenfranchised students. His many
influential books include 36 Children, "i Won't Learn from You". Growing Minds, The Open Classroom. and The Discipline of Hope.
Research into the history of the Montgomery bus boycott, however, reveals some distressing
characteristics of this generic story, which misrepresents an organized and carefully planned
movement for social change as a spontaneous outburst based upon frustration and anger. The
following annotations on "Rosa Was Tired" suggest that we need a new story, one more in line with the
truth and directed at showing the organizational intelligence and determination of the African
American community in Birmingham, as well as the role of the bus boycott in the larger struggle to
desegregate Birmingham and the South
Avoiding racism as if it doesn’t exist only perpetuates conflicts between people of
color and European Americans
Kohl95
by Herbert A prominent,
radical educator. Herbert Kohl is a veteran public school teacher who has worked for decades to help
empower disenfranchised students. His many influential books include 36 Children, "i Won't Learn from
You". Growing Minds, The Open Classroom. and The Discipline of Hope.
the story of rosa parks and the Montgomery bus boycott revisited Montgomery bus boycott revisited
Locating segregation in the past is a way of avoiding dealing with its current manifestations and
implying that racism is no longer a major problem in the United States. This is particularly pernicious at
a time when overt racism is once again becoming a common phenomenon and when children have to be
helped to understand and eliminate it. Yet they are absent from the narrative which doesn't talk overtly
about racism. The avoidance of direct discussion of what to do about individuals who are racist is all too
characteristic of school programs and children's literature. African American people were prevented by
law from using the same public facilities as European Americans. In addition, the African American
facilities were vastly inferior to the ones made available to European Americans The other educators
felt that, given the resurgence of overt racism in the United States these days, allowing rage and anger
tocome out was the only way African American and European American children could work from the
reality of difference and separation toward a common life. They felt that conflict was a positive thing
that could be healing when confronted directly, and that avoiding the horrors of racism was just
another way of perpetuating them.
Reject the State
American history proves - institutional action as an attempt to solve racism fails - the
state apparatus cannot be trusted
Mendenhall 2010 ("The Political Economy Of Black Housing: From The Housing Crisis Of The Great
Migrations To The Subprime Mortgage Crisis." Black Scholar 40.1 (2010): 20-37. Academic Search
Premier. Web. 20 July 2012. Ruby Mendenhall 2010. Ruby Mendenhall is an Assistant Professor in
Sociology and African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2004,
Mendenhall received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy program from Northwestern
University in Evanston, Illinois. For her dissertation, Black Women in Gautreaux’s Housing
Desegregation Program: The Role of Neighborhoods and Networks in Economic Independence, she used
administrative welfare and employment data, census information, and in-depth interviews to examine
the long-run effects of placement neighborhood conditions/resources on economic independence. JRW
)
King used as an example how one year before signing the Emancipation Proclamation, President
Lincoln signed the Homestead Act (1862) that gave each white squatter (citizens and intended citizens)
a title to 160 acres of land, which is about one quarter square mile. Reportedly, 1.6 million
homesteaders received 270,000,000 acres of land in die West and Midwest between 1862 and 1986.^^
Several years after the Homestead Act, in the fall of 1865, General Sherman's Special Field Order
#15—setting aside 40 acres of Sea Island land in South Carolina with promises of an army mule for
black ex-union soldiers was rescinded by President Andrew Johnson as part of the pardoning process
of ex-Confederates. Dr. King highlights the contradictions in helping recently arrived immigrants with
land grants but refusing to help black families who have been forced to labor on American soil for
centuries. In fact, it is estimated that there are currently 46 million descendants of homesteaders who
have benefited in terms of property ownership and wealth.^' The 46 million descendants represent
about a quarter of the adult population. Dr. King ended this portion of his speech by accusing America
of several other contradictions: passing Civil Rights bills in 1875 and 1964 but refusing to fully enforce
them, passing a poverty bill that did not touch the lives of poor Americans, and the audacity of
suburban politicians speaking out against open housing but claiming that they were not racist. By the
time that Martin Luther King proclaimed his "dream," the material and social contradictions of the
America Dream had assumed their modern form. Although Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech
contained some materialist aspects associated with the American Dream, his primary focus was on racial
justice and citizenship rights.
The state no longer functions as a protectorate because it doesn’t follow the rules of
democracy; this only excludes people of color and the poor.
Center for Social Inclusion 2012 [National public policy intermediary, serving as a bridge between
policy research and grassroots activism to create more effective strategies for equity and opportunity by
dismantling structural racism. Access date: July 19, 2012;
http://www.centerforsocialinclusion.org/about-us/our-work/]
In all of the public spheres listed in Article 1, U.S. policies create conditions that disproportionately
exclude marginalized communities and groups from enjoying fundamental freedoms and
opportunities, such as good jobs and good schools. Some policies may be facially race-neutral but
perpetuate the historic racial exclusion that is embedded in our institutions. Present-day federal
transportation, housing, education and fiscal policies perpetuate the racial exclusion that was built
into federal policies from the 1930s through 50s – policies that created middle-class White suburbs
and poor, non-White inner-city neighborhoods. While the incomes and racial identities of cities
and suburbs have been changing, people of color continue to be deeply isolated from
opportunities.
Social welfare provides minimal assistance to residents of the ghettoes. This practice
is simply a form of “custodial operations,” preventing the enactment of real change.
Instead, a true “war against poverty” must be initiated to overcome this seemingly
endless cycle of poverty. Piecemeal government policies fail
Hill, National Labor Secretary at the NAACP, 67 (1967, Herbert, “Demographic Change and Racial
Ghettoes,” 44 J. Urb. L. 231, HeinOnline, REM)
It has become evident that the political leadership of many municipalities prefer social welfare to
social change thus helping to maintain and expand the Negro ghettos. Major cities, such as New York,
Chicago, and others have increased the amount of money allocated for welfare programs, thereby
merely providing a minimal subsistence life for the ,residents of the ghetto. All too frequently the
projects of the so-called "war against poverty" are simply an extension of these welfare programs.
Instead of making it possible-as would a real "war against poverty"-for the poor to exit out of their
condition of permanent poverty, antipoverty programs are in most instances merely custodial
operations by which public officials believe that they are purchasing racial peace. This approach,
however, only serves to increase the sense of hopelessness of those who live in the ghetto. The
growing disturbances in ghetto areas must be understood as the revolt of the powerless against the
hopelessness and despair of their lives. Ghetto life has led not only to growing alienation and
withdrawal from society, but also to an increase in social pathology. Dr. Kenneth B. Clark has written
that "The dark ghetto is institutionalized pathology; it is chronic, selfperpetuating pathology; and it is
the futile attempt by those with power to confine that pathology so as to prevent the spread of its
contagion to the 'larger community.' "36 There is a most unfortunate tendency in American society to
prefer the welfare approach as a substitute for economic innovation and social change. This is
dramatically demonstrated in the tragic plight of the people of Appalachia who for more than a
generation have lived in a permanent condition of welfare poverty and have been reduced to a state of
welfare passivity.