Politics in the City
Written by Mark Van Steenwyk : September 22, 2004
In an earlier post, I mentioned that I am abstaining from the national election. Someone replied, telling me that it would be dumb to apply my non-involvement logic to local politics. I agree whole heartedly with that assessment. I think the more local the issue, the more one ought to be involved; while I cannot in good conscience vote in this presidential election, I feel that it is imperative for myself, and others, to be engaged in our communities. Churches shouldn’t be mere oases in culture. We are missional outposts.
Towards that end, I recommend the following two books, both by Myron Orfield. Orfield is a social demographer who is from Minneapolis. His first book looked specifically at the Twin Cities, while his second deals with the changing urban landscape nationwide.
Orfield contends that money isn’t the answer–urban areas will not improve if all we do is increase spending in urban schools and programs. Urban schools are often better funded than their suburban counterparts. The problem is the totalizing effects of poverty on a neighborhood. Orfield recommends creating affordable houseing in suburbs to hold ghetto-ization at bay.
Anyone interested in urban ministry should definitly check Orfield out. But so should those who are in the suburbs. It is often assumed that issues surrounding poverty and diversity are urban concerns that do not directly touch the suburbs. However, the Twin Cities has growing diversity in its suburbs. We need to start doing church in a different way. As Orfield’s work suggests, if one area of the city has problems, it effects the entire metropolitan area. Churches must become more like the metropolitan council in the Twin Cities–working together for systemic change.
for further reading . . .
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While Orfield’s suggestions sound good on paper, and while his demographics of the Twin Cities area are thorough, many of the points he makes are only one side of the story. For example, while it’s true that most urban schools are better funded PUBLICALLY than suburban public schools, they get almost no private donation money (unlike suburban schools) and their constant turn-over rate and other factors make it more expensive to keep shop. As for building affordable housing in the suburbs, good luck! With restrictive zoning laws and prohibitive municipal measures and restricted access within the city, affordable housing in the suburbs is a joke. It’s a good book for the info it gives, but beyond that, the solutions it proposes won’t work in my opinion.
FYI, Chris (the previous poster) is the one who recommended the books to me.
Chris: I think the book is great in the way that it challenges alot of assumptions and shows how the metro area is a system. Once I’ve finished reading it, it’d be cool to discuss the book in more detail.
Yeah, I did recommend it, but as the highlight of the book is the demographic stuff, I had forgotten how disappointing the analysis was. I would favor other works that analyze urban issues a bit better, i.e., Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities
I’ll have to check that out. I’d like to hear more about what is disappointing in the book.
Basically, it is only a demographer who would offer the solutions that Orfield does. Looking at a map of dark spots where poverty and crime appear and seeing the luminous, sunny spots in the suburbs where those problems don’t occur, it is tempting to say, “Well, let’s just mix the dark spots in with the light spots and everything will get better.”
Thats a pretty big simplicifation of his argument.