The United States of Slum Cities
An alaysis of the history that created the “American urban form” — a perpetuator of inequality that leaves substandard housing community residents and services even more vulnerable in the face of climatae change.
In the last installment of this blog I expressed the incredible importance of substandard housing residents and the services they provide, yet how sight, situation, neglect, and climate change threaten the sustainability of these enclaves. Implementation of a new systematic design approach that uses nature as a model and combines local and expert opinions while developing changes for an urban area will work to breakdown anthropocentrism and retain maximum community authenticity and value in substandard housing areas. The positive benefits generated by substandard housing community residents are so heavily relied — such as trash and recyclable collection — that the population that carries such processes out becomes invisible and those services become systematized expectations. In truth, these service and human capital providing areas are the most vulnerable to being completely subverted by climate change induced environmental effects due to financial, educational, political, and geographical conditions that limit the site’s adaptive capacity.
Although most common in developing countries, substandard or “slum” housing can also have a presence in developed countries. Substandard housing even presents itself in the urban fabric of the hegemonic superpower: the USA. In the United States, the same “slum” beast rears its head, but under a different name — ghettos. Although similar by means of impoverish congregation, the ghettos observed in America have an additional layer beyond living conditions of structural dilapidation and low socioeconomic immobility. This additional layer is singular race or ethnic domination. How did these particular excluded enclaves develop? Ghetto and substandard housing origins can be tied to two historic events in America: fortified urban forms and the start of industrialization.
Technological advancements of weaponry throughout Europe, for example, the cannon ball, made mote and small barrier protection of the fifteenth century ineffective. The urban form that replaced these methods of defense, according to author Matthew Desmond in his urban ethnographic novel Evicted, was a built city focused on vertical growth behind high fortifications. This result drove agrarian families from their rural homes to the increasingly congested city. When this model was transplanted by colonial powers to the USA slum housing no longer reserved primarily for outcasts, beggars, and thieves, but mostly for a large segment of the population. In the 19th century, Jacob Riis showed how slums, in the form of New York City tenements, were often cut off from municipal services, leaving inhabitants in the deplorable conditions observable in his photo collection “How the other half lives.” During slavery, black slave substandard housing settlements represent the consummate example of a population in deplorable, highly vulnerable to even minimal climatic change conditions regardless of the individuals’ immense value and contribution to society and societal functions. Even now, about 150 years after the abolishment of slavery, the same “American urban form” that houses oppression and under appreciation persists with few strides towards improvement or aid. This is an example, of how land-use history can effect modern urban organizations.
The second major period that heavily contributes to substandard housing ghettos in the United States can be traced back to industrialization. Industrialization changed the scale of development in a way that provoked anxieties and the abrupt appearance of unsanitary, dilapidated living conditions often accompanied by residential segregation among urban communities. Aforementioned author and McArthur “Genius” fellow, Matthew Desmond elaborates on slum areas in his novel Evicted: “It was never a by-product of the modern city, a sad accident of industrialization and urbanization, something no one benefited from nor intended. The ghetto had always been a main feature of landed capital, a prime moneymaker for those who saw ripe opportunity in land scarcity, housing dilapidation, and racial segregation.” Desmond introduces this idea that sites of structural deterioration are today increasingly tied to race. He suggests that the system of “slums” in America are not only intentional, but a means for a portion of the population to capitalize on poverty. The “American urban form” of a ghetto shows that maximum profits and cheap services come not from providing first-class accommodations to those who can afford it, but rather crowded, substandard accommodations to the poorest of poor at a crippling price.
How do we deal with the flaws of the “American urban form” is a question marginalized by the inquiry — How do we deal with the flaws of the “American urban form” that promotes ghettos as enclaves of exacerbated inequality in the face of climate change induced changes that will further burden these disenfranchised, but highly important populations that carryout necessary city services in both the formal and informal economy sectors? This is the question this blog strives to uncover answers to now by analyzing the effect of the natural disaster, Hurricane Katrina, on the low- income, substandard community of the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana.
