Mumbai Metro to the Fore

Mumbai's urban railway network is notoriously clogged with bodies. While around 13 people die every day from accidents, the city strives less-than-wholeheartedly to construct a thorough metro system. I wish India's largest urban agglomeration the best of luck in this enterprise, but I am fairly certain that the metro will not be completed for many years. I'll be supremely gladdened when the system finally does take off the ground. For the 6+ million people who grace the rails each waking day, any and every improvement is overdue.


Here are some links that deal with the Mumbai train system and the construction progress. This process surely takes some time!


Death Trains

mumbaimetro1

Mumbai Matters


Two conferences that I attended in Bombay, Urban Age Mumbai and the 5th International Conference of Critical Geography, presented very different approaches to urban development, but both undoubtedly would laud the speedy completion of the planned Mumbai metro. While neoliberal development advocates might be more at peace with the rapid influx of motor vehicles, the automobile's pathways cannot keep pace with the increase in car ownership. The public infrastructure of Mumbai just cannot meet the demands of the demographic increases that will not cease at any point in the near future.

There is no practical way of capping the density of Mumbai, but this should not discourage critical investments in infrastructure. It's just that the burden on any new infrastructure quickly wears away at the newness. There's no end in sight to the population explosion in 3rd World cities such as Mumbai. We can merely hope and beg for more expedient development of public transport so that the morass of motoring metal, bodies, and fumes does not spontaneously combust...

Fantasy Realms Bequeathed

As I write these bloglines from my Bombay abode, I relate to thee as a neo-Mumbaikar. I have only recently arrived in this urban agglomeration of around 18 million people. As such, I fit right into the landscape of the city, for I am a migrant in a city of migrants. One might call me a nomad, as I've lived in a significant variety of cities over the last few years. Nomads in fact generally fall under the Nomadic Tribes category here in India, but I most likely would not be characterized by the same (please note my liberal use of non-American anglicisms that are newly acquired from Indian-English). Anyway, one might properly label me an expatriate, as I belong to the spectacularly virtual online consortium otherwise known as BombayExpats. Furthermore, my demographic affiliation in this town would readily be identifiable as expat.

Santa's Ghetto
I-Look Israeli Street Fashion
the street's walker

All of the above being said, I pasted the above links and pics (both courtesy of Jah's army) in order to transport thee to a prior station in my life, that of the Semitic variety. As we reach the last days of the Gregorian year 2007, I ponder the events of the first six months of this wild year. I was living in a cosmopolitan bubble at the heart of a conflict zone. Tel Aviv was my city of residence for a meaningful chunk of my life, albeit a short period of time. My experiences at the core of Semitic civilization (P.B.U.H., H=Shem) englightened me in countless ways about the workings of this troubled universe that we inhabit.

Despite the violent character that pervades much of Semitic civilization today, why not hark back to the times I spent in an edgy place with all sorts of avant-garde problems, idiosyncrasies, and fashions. My longing for just a night in Florentine getting busy to B-More club spun by Botanika is indescribable. It is imperative that I can experience this sphere at least vicariously, lest I lose touch with where I laid down roots, albeit temporarily and/or hastily. I love Kna'an in all its manifestations. The land of milk and honey comes in many flavors, and I have savored many of these tastes.

Kna'an is a land of rebellion. Stubborn invaders meet tribal partisans who are hellbent on the hegemony of their deities and culture. The dialectic continues, as peoples always try to claim that they were the original inhabitants (known as adivasis on the sub-continent). However, the truth is that most of today's supposedly native peoples, first nations, and aboriginals were not the original inhabitants of the lands over which they seek further dominion. The map-crafting game is all about convincing a critical mass of laypeople, bureaucrats, academics that your group has legitimate historical control over a significant enough swath of territory. This in turn credits your people with some form of ideological land deed, which itself transforms into a birthright that can be inherited by future generations.

In the case of the warring parties in Kna'an, it is my belief that neither side had arrived in the Holy Land much prior to the 14th Century BC. It is clear that both sides have ancestors who hailed from somewhere very close to the Holy Land, but at some point, through a melange of benevolent migration and brutal invasion, the various peoples made their way into the Promised Land.




Therefore, since one people "originally" came from the seas to the west and the other people "originally" came from the deserts to the northeast and southwest, neither can claim exclusive privileges over the land, water, or airspace. There is one remaining year of Mr. Bush's reign, and Jah willing there will be some earth-shattering deals struck at the eastern shores of the potentially pacifying Mediterranean Sea.


^^^^(Shout-out to my home-dog Ditto!!!)^^^^



The maps below from Strange Maps deserve some blogspace due to their geographical splendor. The first one is infinitely scintillating for anyone who is fascinated by maps of metros, undergrounds, trams, monorails, or other public transit. The concept of symbolically linking together all of the disparate international metro systems (built, under construction, and/or planned) is a radical step. Check out the creators at Metro Maps of the World.

Next, the blondes of Europe map (courtesy of the le mec and originally from EUpedia) will stimulate anyone who is turned on by cartography, blondes, and/or genetics.

I hope these diversions are enjoyed as situationist spectacle. Jai Jai Jai!

Multihued Multitudes of Mumbaikars

My experience thus far in Mumbai has encouraged me to ponder and act in ways that I have not previously been compelled to comport myself. The brazen attitude that one must adopt in order to board a second-class coach during rush hour is something that you cannot develop prior to actually being here. The adjustment to sheer volume of human beings takes some time. In fact, perhaps living in such a congested, clogged, and crowded metropolis might not be at all desirable in the long term. However, the human truths that can be accumulated by living the metropolitan grind are so far worth the struggle.

Density...is the first reality with which one must become accustomed in this town. With a metro population of around 18 million bodies, that's something like 36 million each of ears, eyes, and kidneys. 180 million toes and fingers. 18 million souls. The average density in Greater Mumbai, which is the name given to the city itself and which does not include the population of the whole urban agglomeration, is something like 40,000 inhabitants per square kilometer. This absolutely staggering density of human habitation, while not close to the 170,000 inhabitants per square kilometer in the Lower East Side of NY in 1905, is considerably higher than 50,000 people per sqkm in many parts of the city. While sheer volume of people is no way to judge quality of life or ease of transport throughout a city, the congestion that plagues Mumbai is a function of a vast inability to cope with staggering population growth.

Map of Population Density by Country
Selected Urban Population Densities

Of three other world cities whose population densities in certain incredibly packed areas rival Mumbai's (Hong Kong, Cairo, and Shanghai), perhaps only Cairo would strike the average visitor as more overwhelming, due to a number of factors, including poverty stats, crime, and general overcrowding. Yet, Mumbai does not have a crime problem. Crime is a subject that will be dealt with in later entries, but for all intents and purposes, crime is not on the short list of perennial urban difficulties in India. Poverty and general overcrowding top the list of most daunting urban challenges in this Island City. Mumbai is strikingly civil, despite its chaotic traffic interchanges, overflowing trains, and reckless rickshaws. The humans who inhabit this dazzling metropolis do not carry on with the sort of anger and embitterment that would characterize a city inhabited by New Yorker-Americans in a town almost 1/4 the size of New York, at the gateway to a country with well over 3X the population of the United States, with an area less than 1/3 the size of the continental US. Americans would kill each other if they were confined to conditions that Indians tolerate. Period. A tiny fraction of the space. A tiny fraction of the wealth. Yet, Indians get by, eking out lives with their big hearts and impossibly charming demeanors.

Divisions...by caste and religion, age and gender, language and education are astounding. Indians, contrary to what foreigners usually expect when coming to India, are of a range of divergent types. The demographic divisions that separate Indians from each other are on a level that Westerners often cannot appreciate. The endless list of tribes (7% of the overall population), formerly untouchable "Dalit" castes (16%) are positively endless. The manner with which a woman folds her saree and how a man conducts his head wiggle and where one goes to acknowledge humility before a higher power are things that vary with inconceivable range.

Diversity...is a gift and a curse. While Indians have experienced a horrific calamity several times - first and most notably during the Partition with Pakistan in 1947, the dream of a unified cultural whole lives on. Whether unified behind the notion of Hindutva or behind the national cricketeer squad, somehow the nation clunks along as a mostly coherent amalgamation of socio-linguistic communities. The several thousands of caste groups (jatis) retain the sense of tribal distinctiveness that was more or less always a part of life on the subcontinent, yet this ancestral heritage is in certain key ways losing its grip on the modernizing, globalizing, and Indianizing system. India works. India works hard. She works hard to make progress as a cohesive expression of national will. I have no concept of how this is possible. What sort of cultural constitution makes this possible at such a grand scale? Although China has several hundred million more people, I dare say India's task of keeping its far more variegated communities unified is a far more improbable task.


Disparity...is a concept that Thomas Friedman recently attempted to address in a recent column on the release of a cheap new Tata motor vehicle that will aim to inundate first-time car purchasers with an unbeatable bargain. At a mere 1 lakh (100,000 Rupees = $2,500), this vehicle will permit masses of middle-class Indians to drive to work, drive to class, drive to the collective neoliberal paradise, which in other words, is a congested ecological catastrophe. While I have not always agreed with Friedman's often neocon and/or neoliberal tendencies, I found that his green streaks shone through on this piece. No, No, Tata

His fundamental point was that clean mass mobility must trump over the near-term rush to develop, market, and compete. Without more concern for the long-term consequences of increasingly clogged roadways, railways, and sidewalks, Mumbai will begin to burst. Cheaper cars will mean more demand for petroleum, more pollution, and more traffic. Although the egalitarian impulse embedded in all of us would have us believe that all Indians have the right to drive their own cars 25 miles a day wherever they please in the same careless way that Americans parade their motor vehicles around asphalt mazes. But, the plain truth is that if all Indians were granted this so-called right to own a car, India would cease to be. I agree with Friedman's assertion that Indians must somehow jump over the car step in the evolution of transport. Build more rail lines, enact legislation to decrease the number of vehicles permitted into the city, and reverse densification-redevelopment policies that threaten to destroy any remaining semblance of urban sanity.

Dolor, depravity, destruction, delapidation...find their way into Dharavi's complex existence because this heart-shaped area of the city is Asia's biggest slum, by most estimates. Slum life is a mode of survival, reproduction, and employment unto itself - entirely the topic of another entry. But, the dreadful extremes that exist in Mumbai are embodied by the continued prosperity of its notoriously gargantuan slum. After two visits to this vibrant disaster, I have simply become more confused about human suffering and about man's capacity to cope with the most disgusting and degraded circumstances. Dharavi is Mumbai at its best and its worst. Mumbai gone horribly wrong yet Mumbai that tries, triumphs, and turns over. Another day, another dollar and a dream.

City of Peoples

In anticipation of a fabulous contest of the imagination that challenges people to elucidate their vision for the future of Jerusalem, I joined up with an Ir Amim tour of the separation barrier in East Jerusalem a few days ago. For four hours, our tour leader informed us about the causes and effects of the wall that runs through the eastern parts of Jerusalem. This organization takes a decidedly humanitarian stance, taking into account the civilian needs of people on both sides of the civilizational divide.

I should commence by stating my general point of view on the current state of the wall, as it pertains to the political entity of Jerusalem, Yerushalyim, Al-Quds. The wall seeks to cut off most of the Arab population of north, east, and south Jerusalem from the future state of Palestine. (It is a important to note that public discourse refers to all of pre-1967 Arab Jerusalem as “East”). The wall, as it currently exists in East Jerusalem, is a grave mistake that pre-empts any Palestinian attempts to create a contiguous state with a thriving Al-Quds metropolis at its center. The so-called Jerusalem envelope plan is an ill-advised way to thwart what ought to be the nucleus of Palestine.

While the idea of the wall in and of itself poses innumerble difficulties in terms of the free movement of people and goods, the wall as it stands now is more of a catastrophe than it ought to be. It largely separates Jerusalem Arabs from West Bank Arabs, while also segregating a huge number of West Bank Arabs from Israel proper. If the wall is truly to be built in such a way that respected the Palestian right to territorial justice, there are at least ten Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem that ought to be on the Palestinian side of the fence. If reconstructed in said manner, the wall would render most Arab residents of Jerusalem residents of Arab Al-Quds, which is where the vast majority want to be. It is indeed the case that these folks vote in Palestinian elections and are not Israeli citizens. Some of the neighborhoods that need to be switched over to the Palestinian side (i.e. the wall needs to be rerouted in a very complex and intricate process of territorial segregation) include Shuafat, Beit Hanina, the Arab quarter of the Old City, Abu Dis, and Beit Safafa.

Much of Arab East Jerusalem is made up of urbanized villages that barely connect the various nodes of economic life in the region. The predominant urban core of East Jerusalem is just north of Old City around the Damascus Gate. This needs to become the focal point of Al-Quds. The wall can indeed be rerouted in such a way that would shift approximately 200k Arab Jerusalemites into the sovereign Arab districts of the capital. This must occur, as most of these folks have no desire to be ruled over by the Israeli government. This process is very tricky because of the Israeli inclination to include a maximum amount of Jews and land but a minimum number of Arab inhabitatnts on its side of the separation barrier.

Jerusalem was traditionally the economic, medical, educational, and religious focal point of Palestinian national life. By solidifying its strangehold on the Jerusaelm envelope, Israel is crushing viability of what was once the Palestinian metropolitan core, resulting in the emergence of several other de facto hubs of Palestinian urban life, namely Ramallah and Abu Dis.

The wall seeks to make permanent Israeli control over all of Jersusalem, for a number of political and military reasons. There is a burning desire to make this ancient city, which has changed hands countless times throughout history, the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel. Israeli seeks to fortify Jewish control so that the city is never again threatened by invaders. The myth of containment has convinced too many people that such a future is possible. This fallacy can only last so long. The vast majority of Arab neighborhoods need to be under Arab sovereignty, and the Old City needs to be monitored by a battalion of thousands of international observers under the auspices of the EU, UN, and Arab League.

Recent events in the Holy City have been rather bizarre, since the Judaization of Jerusalem and the simultaneous Al-Qudsization (Arabization) have resulted in a dramatic building race to place irreversible facts on the ground. At the same time as approximately 1% of "illegal" homes are demolished by the Israeli authorities and as the government makes it difficult for Jerusalem residents to maintain their legal residency, wealthy Arab Gulf states continue to promote a very generous subsidy program for Arab construction in East Jerusalem.

Some failures of the Israeli policy in Jerusalem include one fact mentioned above: the wall largely divides Palestinians from Palestinians, making it incredibly difficult to conduct day-to-day business amidst a mind-numbing checkpoint and permitting system. However, many people believe that the Arab popuation is ballooning, due to an influx of workers and of people who merely do not want the wall to cut them off from their jobs and schools in Jerusalem. Some Arabs, God forbid, have been forced to attend Jewish hospitals or move into Jewish neighborshood because they have been cut off from West Bank and need expansion room in East Jerusalem.

New construction of Jewish neighborhoods has been furthered by the "collaboration" of certain Arabs who sell land to Jews (an offense punishable by death in areas under PA jurisdiction). Indeed, some two-thirds of West Bank settlements are apparently built on land that was purchased legally from Palestinians. Regardless, those who sell to Jews (in order to reap a greater profit than they otherwise would in the Palestinian housing market) make sure to book a one-way plane ticket to the West before they ink the contract. Meanwhile, Jewish neighborhoods constructed on the "east" side of the Green Line are no longer considered settlements these days. They are regarded as true neighborhoods that are not going to disappear. Palestinians have apparently even conceded that Israel can hold onto Ma'ale Adumim in a peace deal. The many Jewish East Jerusalem neighborhoods such as French Hill, Pisgat Ze'ev, Har Homa, and Gilo will not be evacuated like the Gaza settlements. Israel has produced facts on the ground that cannot be retracted.

Yet, the demographic paradox remains: Arabs are nonetheless flocking to Jerusalem so that they don’t get cut off from families, schools and jobs within Israel. Moreover, the Arab growth rate is staggering.

One must always consider the sometimes ineffable reality of coexistence in the street, places of employment, and elsewhere. Though minimal, it still lives on in Jerusalem, a city that is 1/3 Arab. The existence of two viable and secure states side-by-side could be enriched by the construction of new shared public spaces on the future "no man's land" that will straddle the wall. The wall, if and when it is rerouted to encompass the vast majority of Arab neighborhoods, will still be a horribly ugly method of to cloistering an unfortunate population. However, this is the reality that has come to pass.

Do security considerations trump political ones? The irrefutable reality is that Jerusalem suffered the brunt of the 2nd Intifada - 30% of suicide bomb attacks carried out in Israel. The Israeli state entertains the right and responsibility of molding a security apparatus that keeps its citizens safe. The wall has indeed been successful on this front. It is arguable whether the following factors have had more or less impact than the wall in the reduction of attacks on Israel: the death of Arafat, Hamas' hudna, intelligence successes, and the economic attrition of the Palestinians. Additionally, the wall has also dramatically reduced car thefts.

Nonetheless, the construction of the wall in East Jerusalem is one of a series of destructive, unilateral steps that have led to the de facto annexation and consolidation of Israeli control over Jerusalem. Despite the clear need to negotiate the implementation of official policies, Israel has not been able to engage successfully with an Arab peace partner.

Israel has done somewhat of an opposite move around Pisgat Ze’ev to the north. It has unilaterally cut off poor, unwanted Palestinians in the Shuafat refugee camp (who possess Jerusalem ID cards and live within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem) from the rest of the city by building the wall around the north, west, and south of this slum. In 1967, Israel thought it wanted to include this area within Israel by annexing it, along with the rest of the other Arab neighborhoods of the Jerusalem municipality. Alas, now Israel has unilaterally place this hood on the Palestinian side of the wall.

The facts on the ground demonstrate that the Jerusalem municipal boundaries are a function of military planners who have always sought control of topographically commanding areas. The south Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo is one example, which ensured that Jewish neighborhoods such as Catamon (vulnerable to shelling in the pre-1967 years) could no longer be menaced from the south. Har Homa is also an example of a neighborhood that makes little to no economic sense (and is also outside the "real" city) but was created due to territorial needs. The added security benefits ostensibly outweighed the costs of linking this area up to water, gas, and electric lines.

In most of the Jewish Jerusalem areas that have been created since 1967, a suburban quality of life pervades. Industrially prefabricated and quickly constructed houses betray an utter lack of aesthetic grace but nevertheless result in efficient and functional bedroom communities.

The Ir Amim tour mentioned that the fence is okay in certain places. When the wall has a minimal effect on the physical integrity of a given Palestinian village, then it is much more palatable. Where the wall allows for relatively hassle-free checkpoint passage through no longer crude, makeshift structures but through permanent international border crossings, one is reminded of how Israel is mapping out the future of the East Jerusalem, and of how the Palestinians have not successfully mounted a campaign to capitalize on their assets.

One pervasive problem has been the tacit approval given by the Israeli government private citizens to develop previously virgin lands, further rendering any sort of wall re-routing impossible. The apartment complex of Nof Tsion in Jabal Mukaba is one example of this, which would complicate my proposed re-routing by placing a new Jewish housing development on what ought to be the Arab side of the fence. In addition, developments on the west side of the fence near Abu Dis pose the same problem. The Israeli government must force politically influential developers to halt such construction, as it will complicate future efforts enormously.

To summarize the current dilemma, it is important to evince a few points. The Arabs of East Jerusalem vote in Palestinian elections and refuse to become Israeli citizens. They do not vote in Jerusalem municipal elections, and thus there are no Arabs in the city’s government. While some do not pay taxes, most do because the repeipt of tax payment is proof of Jerusalem residency and therefore means that the government cannot banish you from Jerusalem. However, there is a clear disparity in government services provided to Arab neighborhoods. This development issue may not just result from disrimination, yet it is important to address this dichotomy. One striking example of the disparity is the dilapidated North/South road in East Jerusalem, which is a pock-marked road to nowhere compared with the Israeli counterpart in the western part of the city. Therefore, Jerusalem is truly two cities. And, I propose that if the wall is to exist, the wall should do a better job of running between the two Jerusalems. The wall should allow for a united Arab Al-Quds, separate and distinct from Jewish Jerusalem.

Though these solutions are odd and perhaps also impractical, it is clear that sovereign states need not be territorially contiguous. Some parts of East Jerusalem might become either Jewish enclaves on the Palestinian side of the wall or Arab enclaves on the Israeli side of the wall. Though complex to solve, citizenship and jurisdiction issues can be sorted out. As for territorial contiguity, such difficulties aren't insurmountable. Hebrew University was an Israeli enclave in Jordanian East Jerusalem until 1967. Next, Gaza and the West Bank will inevitably be part of one Palestinian country connected by a sunken highway. Though they will not be physically adjacent, these entities will still be united under the Palestinian red, black, and green. Armenia and Alaska are two other examples where states do not enjoy territorial continuity but where workable solutions have provided for stability and predictability in quotidian life.

On the ground, tunnels and bridges that bypass the "other" in the West Bank and Jerusalem will allow for two states to exist simultaneously in three dimensions, which is of course not possible to express easily on a two dimensional map. There is an ongoing reality that necessitates compromise on issues such as roads, airspace, land use and development.

On the one hand, while crowding leads some Arabs to leave East Jerusalem, many just build illegally and risk demolition. There is continuous fear of house razing by the Israeli authorities. (ICAHD is an organization that works to combat blatant housing discrimination in Jerusalem). East Jerusalem Arab artisans, farmers, and traders have limited access to West Bank markets. Econonomic suffocation has been acute, but it remains a notable fact that Arab East Jerusalemites have a vested interest in not terrorizing. Thusly, evidently no bombers have come from Arab East Jerusalem.

Next, the Ma'ale Adumim problem east of Jerusalem is very difficult to resolve but is workable under my plan. At 53 sq. km., it is bigger than Tel Aviv. While incendiary and unnecessary, the E-1 plan to build industry, housing, parks, and a university is doable as long as there is a Palestinian highway that links Ramallah and Bethlehem and overpasses the Israeli extension into the east. It is necessary to draw a map of this to show what it would actually look like.

Through it all, it is crucial to recognize the impermanence of the wall. It might last 20 years, or perhaps even 50 years. But, it is just like its predecessor in Berlin that divided the poorer, ideologically-distinct, and subaltern east from the more prosperous West. It will come down eventually, once there is a general consensus about the inanity of arbitrary dividing lines and once World War IV has come to a decisive end. The wall will be finished one day. However, in the meantime, the wall is a necessary evil to keep suicide bombers out of Israel, to keep Jews from settling in the rest of Palestine, and to maintain healthy distance between the two peoples. It is a truly lamentable state of affairs, in which a small minority ruins the potentially hatrmonious relations that began to ferment from 1994 to 2000 and that were completely shattered by the 2nd Intifada.

The wall seeks to minimize the demographic threat posed by robust Arab population growth. As an economically prosperous metropolitan region, the Jerusalem municipality naturally needs to absorb cheap labor from the surrounding areas. Workers flock to the city to fill the void left by Hasidic people who don’t work, and paradoxically, to build many of the rapidly growing Jewish neighborhoods. Indeed Arab construction crews have built much of Israel, the separation barrier, and the Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

In sum, the conflict lives on. The City of Peoples exists, self-divides, and expands. Jerusalem is a beautiful balagan.

Katrina's Supremely Eminent Domain

There seem to be a few irrefutable truths that emerge from the Gulf Coast's experiences with the cataclysmic 2005 hurricane season. The most drastic shift in the societal balance of the New Orleans metropolitan region derives from the impossibility of resuming the erstwhile pattern of residential settlement. Given the utter destruction of areas such as the Lower Ninth Ward and the Route 23 corridor down south into the deepest reaches of the boggish Cajun-flavored bayou, it's become clearer that governmental authorities need to step in to prevent building in areas where further human habitation would be too costly. Such a prohibitive cost precludes the cultural or social contribution that continued community presence would offer to the region. At some point, the economic and practical pricetag of shoring up marshlands that have been degraded reaches the point of no return. The levee system has always been minimally comprehensive. It's just that a fully responsible government would insall a levee network that is far more foolproof and impregnable. The flood protection that existed pre-Katrina was no match for a beastly storm, and there's no reason to believe that local, state, or federal government will ever cough up enough funds to construct a system that would protect neighborhoods - whether wealthy or poor, black or white.

Controversies over land use reflect general patterns of sociological conflict between classes who have divergent ideas about how best to organize communities productively. In contemporary American society, there seem to be two opposite phenoms that characterize neighborhood change: gentrification and ghettoization. The first connotes increase in property value, decreasing crime rates, and domestication of chaotic neighborhood elements. The second suggests a decrease in property values, increasing crime rates, and the decline in neighborhood orderliness, generally associated in American cities with the influx of minority or immigrant groups. These contrasting movements are occurring simultaneously in America in different parts of every single city. While some neighborhoods are "going downhill" and "turning bad," yet others are "getting fixed up" or "developed." It seems like people sometimes perceive that cities are either proceeding in one way or the other. This is not the case. There is simultaneous movement in both directions. Certain neighborhoods are being vacated at alarming rates and are doomed to years of dilapidation and not-so-benign-neglect, leading to a state of under-development or regression. At the same time, many other neighborhoods in the same city may face rapid evolution.
These assumptions about "getting better" or "getting worse" exist aside a league of other variables that measure the health of cities, including educational opportunities, job availability, green space, and transportation efficiency. There are thus multiple ways of measuring the constantly evolving truths of urban life. No subjective evaluation is possible for urban fabrics in which competing classes and institutions vie for resources, and each demographic segment is not even wholly classifiable as benefitting from certain patterns of development.

New Orleans and Baltimore are the two primary cases that I'm envisioning as I explore the ramifications of urban geographic shifts. New Orleans, for one, was characterized by the severe indigence and urban blight of many predominantly African-American communities. While it is indeed presumptuous of me, as an outsider, to apply my scholarly understanding of urban change to concrete realities of habitation and development, I nonetheless am in a position to evaluate incipient changes in standard of living and quality of community interaction. The problem, which I do not pretend to be able to solve, hinges upon what most people would consider the worst neighborhoods of these two urban polities. The two examples are the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans and the MidEast section of Baltimore. While the conditions of renewal, population transfer, and so-called progress are different in both cases, there are similar fears and aspirations emerging from the clashing camps. The pro-renewal folks cite the ameliorated land use, public good, and progress. Those opposing the gentrification talk about the government-sanctioned destruction of a robust community, inadequate compensation for property owners, and the lamentable transfer of land to more powerfual socioeconomic agents.

While the New Orleans example does not involve the explicit use of eminent domain, the same justifications and methods are employed as in the legally sanctioned imposition of land use statutes. In the MidEast section of Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Hospital has convinced Baltimore City's quasi-governmental economic arm (the Baltimore Development Corporation) to incur the powers of eminent domain in commandeering 10 square blocks of raw ghetto and mostly abandoned blocks of rowhouses for use by nascent biotech research interests. Following the logic of the Supreme Court's ruling about the use of eminent domain in New London, CT, a host of American cities instantly applied this principle to their crusade to seize blocs of subaltern communtities for use by more powerful interests. Again, these processes occur simultaneously to stable, middle-class neighborhood "seizure" by lower class groups. Perhaps there is some metric that demonstrates the overall rate of progress in a city and suggests which way a city is moving in an ostensibly zero-sum development game. Is it ultimately productive, whatever that adjective entails, to destroy the most depressed neighborhoods in order to fulfill broader social goals? Some might argue that sense of community is the only thing that these neighborhoods still possess and that therefore it is not advisable to strip folks of their pride and communal sensibilities. On the other hand, why preserve ghettos that are some of the most perilous and scarred zones in America, for residents and passers-by alike?

Is there an objective arrow of development that captures the transformation of urban space? I don't believe that there is a generalized, simplistic, and objective evaluation of progress, when such an equation would aim to grasp an array of postmodern factors that involve multiple subjectivites and divergent intrepretations of value and public good. Yet, a few eternal political truths remain, as far as I'm concerend. The "less desirable" groups who are displaced by EmDo and gentrification deserve decent housing conditions. This can be achieved by illiberal policies that transcend the market's ability to optimize neighborhood arrangements. The free market usually does not provide profitable opportunities for betterment of heavily minority districts within racially and socioeconomically stratified cities.

Lastly, there are normative questions that attempt to address who exactly ought to live in certain places. Should decisions about residential location and community displacement be made by means of the general will, by nominally democratically-elected councils, or by capitalist elites? Who bears the right to occupy land, either in America or beyond. Psychological attachment to land is indeed a complex phenomenon that involves psychogeographic considerations that delve deep into history and multifaceted community relations. Consideration of public good as it relates to eminent domain must include concurrent articulation of the opposite and simultaneous social processes. This means that we all must realize that "there goes the neighborhood" is a reality for folks at both ends of the spectrum. It is not merely the downtrodden or merely the wealthy who triumph in the perennial exchange of land and population across the urban landscape.

Wire on Tap

Drugs get transacted. Buyers and sellers develop an extensive system of exchanging product for capital. The industry thrives, while the city ails. Addicts, runners, snitches, and bystanders get stomped by industry head honchos, who patrol the streets of the ghetto with full impunity. Their eyes are lit up with the knowledge that their code of behavior is more robust than the official rule of law. Cops attempt to rollback the prevailing urban pharmaceutical system of distrubution with the courts, zero tolerance, aggressive enforcement tactics. But to no avail. This is the world inhabited by the Wire, HBO's stellar program that just concluded its fourth season.

Authenticity is the province of this show, as its writer and director were born and bred on Baltimore's police, journalism, and urban mayhem. There is substantial reason to believe that the show expertly captures the gritty reality of a vast segment of Baltimorean cultural and economic life. The dealers are case studies in diehard entrepreneurialism, their egos stroked by a city whose fiends soak up a constant supply of chemical sustenance. The drug kingpins in the Wire are depicted as masters of their domain who generally are inclined to knock off relatively undeserving interlopers. Stringer, the Barksdales, and Omar consist of the business elite in the show's capitalizing upper echelons. Their drive to accumulate wealth is egged on by the mouths of the hungry and hopeless habitual drug users, who number around 50,000 in today's Baltimore.

That's in a city of about 640,000 folks. A city on the population rebound from it's lowpoint in 2000. An urban unit that suffers from the highest per capita murder rate of any American city with a population over 250,000. Averaging between 250 and 300 murders yearly, Baltimore's murder rate remains stagnant at about 6 times New York's. Believe it or not, Baltimore was the largest American city after NYC until 1870.

In this context, the Wire portrays B-more as a city on the edge. Though so far I've not watched past the first season, the show depicts my hometown as a battlefield. The cops try desperately to pursue justice the best ways they know how, without trampling on too many civil liberties but also without full respect for the rights of the criminals. Clearly, in the Machiavellian world of the drug trade, the cops can't be too bothered by the letter of the law. Clearly, the dealers aren't bound by anything more than a primitive Stop Snitching ethic that supposedly governs their actions - until they too face the Prisoner's Dilemma head on and must rat to save their own skin.

Is the show excessively negative in its depiction of a criminal culture that seems to overshadow the more promising aspects of city life? What does the show owe the city in terms of positive reinforcement of viable role models or upright citizens? The show does not delude viewers into thinking that the drug trade is all gravy. And neither does it suggest that police work is sacred. To the contrary, no one truly ends up on top in the Sisyphean challenge of preserving a semblance of urban order. Cops need to cooperate with the dealers to whom they have access. The way they pit certain players against others that get played reiterates the idea that anyone is liable to "get got" at almost any time. The brutish tendencies of both sides in the drug war belie the best intentions of certain cops to earn an honest living and of the few dealers that seek to minimize the collateral damage of their daily peddling and gun-toting.

The Wire treats enterntainment as a profane pursuit. Whereas some cop shows profess to contain sacrosanct messages about public policy or social redemption, this particular one steers clear of moralizing. The nightly reality of Baltimore's thug culture is straight fucked up. There's no denying the deadly characteristics of a street game that, while increasing the inner city GDP by a significant multiple, renders decrepit vast expanses of the city and creates an entrenched cycle of violent engagement between urban security forces, opposing drug gangs, and the dreaded snitches that bridge the gap in this civil war of sorts. Government soldiers cannot be entrusted with the authority to enforce laws on an equal basis. Gangsters produce an endearing culture of criminal glorification with regards to the urban other. Historically accurate fiction gives us the impression that we are privy to these social universes that are far removed from our own. The Wire has got me on tap.