Historical May 1993 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
My scholarly endeavors have taught me many times over that cities are not regarded fondly in our country. Thomas Jefferson called them a “pestilence” and it seems that out- state legislators have agreed with him from that day to this. City folk always were underrepresented in state legislatures and congressional delegations.
The Supreme Court’s “one person, one vote” rulings in the 1960s came to late to advantage St. Louis and other central cities. Representation by population became the law after the gigantic migrations to the suburbs began_ Now our legislative organs are filled with suburban, small town, and feral representatives who significiantly outnumber city dwellers.
The practical effect is disdain, or perhaps neglect for central city problems. That was clearly evident recently in Washington where a stimulus package that would clearly help central cities was bottled up by filibuster.
I must admit that even my cynical persona was deeply offended by certain senators who described a swimming pool to benefit poor inner city youngsters as pork barrel politics.
I don’t believe a swimming pool can hold a candle to the soybean or tobacco subsidies. But, nonetheless, there was no way that spending for that pool or other infrastructure or a summer jobs program could be made to seem a critical necessity to those who never spent a summer hanging out on the hot sidewalks with little to do. Of coune, such senators pay no heed to the chronic unemployment in central cities with the resultant poverty, crime, and growing welfare rows. So many politicians rose in the well of the Capitol to decry attempts to close a military base or to denounce a tax raise that friends or supporters might just have to pay. Let’s reduce the deficit—but not in my backyard.
The United States is undergoing a major economic structural transformation. That transformation exacerbates the effects of a preexisting spatial transformation in America’s urban areas, a transformation that has aided economic and racial segregation.
It seems that if you’re not there to see it, it just doesn’t exist or certainly is not an object of concern. It’s too bad, you know.
There are clear spillover effects to what goes on in our central cities.
There is nowhere to run. nowhere to hide–certainly not in the long range scheme of things. Maybe someday people, especially those in our Jefferson City’s and in Washington, D.C., will realize that. But, until that munificent day, private interest seems to clearly overcome public interest and community may be another word for nothing left to lose.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, May 1993.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1993_05.pdf, printed page(s) 2; PDF page(s) 2.
