In an interview with CityLab Sharkey discusses “The Persistent Geography of Disadvantage” further and underscores the issues surrounding durable urban policy and urban politics.
Read the full article here: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/07/persistent-geography-disadvantage/6231/
A useful feature he points us to is the The Justice Mapping Center’s website which uses GIS technology to communicate and evaluate criminal justice and other social reform policies. Check it out!
“Durable urban policy has three basic requirements. We have plenty of examples of policies that meet the first two—disrupting multigenerational patterns of neighborhood inequality and generating real and transformative changes in the places that people live. But we have few examples of policies that have been sustained when the public’s attention shifts away from issues of urban poverty or when the political winds shift away from the challenges of cities. A quick review of urban policy over the past four decades reveals a cycle in which urban issues receive a great deal of attention and exciting new initiatives are announced, only to be diluted or abandoned and forgotten before the programs have any chance to be effective.
I am not a political scientist and I don’t study social movements, so I have no expertise in how to generate a coalition of support behind durable urban investments. But there does seem to be growing recognition throughout the policy world that the key to sustainable prosperity lies in our cities and the urban areas that surround them. A related insight, and one that rarely makes its way into discussions of metropolitan policy, is that the fortunes of entire urban areas are compromised when cities contain sections featuring areas of severe concentrated disadvantage, low-quality schools, and high levels of crime and violence.
One final point on urban politics is that a durable urban policy does not necessarily require a massive influx of new funds into poor, nonwhite communities. Instead, what is required is a shift of priorities in the way that funds are spent in such communities. If you want to see some stunning visual representations of how much our nation already spends in low-income communities, check out The Justice Mapping Center’s maps of block-by-block expenditures, in New York City and elsewhere, used to lock up residents in prisons and jails. The point of these maps is that we are spending an enormous amount of resources in disadvantaged communities, but the resources are not being used to make investments in the families, core institutions, and organizations that are essential to creating enriching, safe, and prosperous community environments.”