Paul Cantrell
I don’t love having a choice between (1) very gradual attempts to lessen the harm of policing versus (2) aggressive attempts to let police brutality run utterly rampant — but that’s where we are in this US national election (re this post from @Nonilex).
Two thoughts on that, neither of which is about the candidates.
Paul Cantrell
First: This sad choice isn’t a function of the candidates, the parties, or even the two-party system. It’s an honest reflection of where people are at in this country — unfortunately.
No candidate moving to replace policing with something radically different (as I would wish) could win a national democratic election in the US.
For candidates to change, we have to change how people see things. Change minds and the candidates will change with them.
2/
Paul Cantrell
Second: Those of us in left-leaning cities often have better choices on the table. Our center of gravity is different from the national one. We can & should try to replace policing with better approaches that actually provide public safety.
Let the national fight and the local fight each take the shape they need. They won’t be the same shape.
IOW: I’ll support in a national election positions I’d oppose in a local one. Politicians are tools, and we always use tools in a context.
/end
Paul Cantrell
@donaldball
On 2 and 3, I do think cities have some levers to pull:
2 is all about housing supply. Cities can build more housing. That’s long and slow, but ultimately it’s zoning and city planning and development that make the difference — and those are all in cities’ court.
More proactive measures like a housing-first response to homelessness are probably hard for even mid-sized cities to undertake, maybe a state thing? But I’ll bet larger cities could pull it off.
Donald Ball
@inthehands So I fear we're doomed to swing back and forth between tepid progress and reactionary backlash in most cities. Maybe I'm just in a pessimistic mode when it comes to how to ensure public safety — are you aware of any countervailing trends from which I could take inspiration?
Donald Ball
@inthehands Here in Durham, NC, we apparently hit a home run with our HEART program https://heartforthis.org/about/ for non-violent crisis intervention. Loving it.
And yet, there's a reactionary undercurrent in favor of more policing based, as I see it, on three ongoing problems:
1. gun violence
2. unhoused folk
3. traffic safety
I'm not aware of any *effective* measures the city can bring to bear on these, given state hostility to city governments and, of course, the corrupt Supreme Court.
Paul Cantrell
@donaldball
On traffic safety: it’s unglamorous, but urban design (traffic calming measures etc) has a huge impact — and cities have lots of latitude to make good choices there. And cities can choose to use camera enforcement instead of traffic stops by armed officers, if state law allows it.
In many cases, I expect the fight to be stopping states from stopping cities from doing good things.
Paul Cantrell
@donaldball
The thing about that is that increasing housing units at any price level helps all housing. Who moves into those luxury condos? They relieve pressure on whatever housing they were looking at before. I don’t love the “trickle down” feel of that, but in this rare case it does seem to work. Building luxury condos for 1000 people counterintuitively helps the unhoused more than building designated affordable housing for 100.
It’s the sprawl that’s the problem.
Donald Ball
@inthehands I guess I'm a little skeptical on how much cities, or at least my city can change housing supply in a way that positively affects the crisis. All developers seem to want to offer are a. luxury condos downtown (but generally no more than 5 stories) or b. suburban sprawl, all but requiring folk to own cars (and I'm convinced by the strong towns analyses that these are a net negative in terms of support costs over 20+ years for infrastructure and utilities).
Paul Cantrell
@donaldball
Right, and it’s that sprawl-tilted local governance where I think we have real leverage. Minneapolis is currently in a years-long fight over this plan, which essentially eliminated single-family zoning in the city: https://minneapolis2040.com And yes, the fight is ongoing, but…activists got people on board, got it passed, have the city council in their corner, etc etc. Leverage.
In your community, there’s probably a similar tipping point. (Duplexes, maybe?)
Donald Ball
@inthehands That definitely is the case here. Significant stroads are controlled by the state department of transportation, which exhibits at best contempt and at worst hostility towards the city or any attempt to serve anyone but car operators.
We could do far better within the city though, but our governance is tilted towards cookie-cutter sprawl developments.
Paul Cantrell
@jumbanho @donaldball
Statewide single-family is going to be a hell of an uphill battle, but the fact that it’s even on the horizon is a testament to the effectiveness of working from the local level up.
James Umbanhowar
@inthehands @donaldball I think even more important for sprawl is that the state (MN) is getting a lot closer to removing single family only zoning from the whole state. After moving here (from Durham coincidentally), I was so excited about the city's move to enable denser development, but was subsequently saddened when I bike through second and third tier suburbs to see the awful sprawl.
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