Opportunities Lost
Why Not?
Next time you’re plowing through your email and reading those lame self congratulatory “victory!” press releases by so called bicycle advocates praising the Christie DoT for a bike lane press release, stop and think for a moment:
Think about all the Post Sandy multi-billion dollar reconstruction ongoing and think of the huge opportunities to rebuild a better community – stuff like this vision:
I was recently invited into a conversation that is taking place behind the scenes here among some San Franciscan progressives towards establishing a Municipal Bank. My first reaction is predictably skeptical but I decided to give it a bit of thought. I’ll never be a true believer in this kind of reform agenda, but I have to admit, holding out for a total transformation is pretty religious and I’m a very anti-religious guy.
So what could a Municipal Bank do? That’s the question I was asked in the context of what should it invest in—what kinds of economic activities could be engines of local development, in particular, should urban agriculture be part of that program? I had to say no to that, farming is never going to be on a scale in San Francisco that it could justify a big investment that needs to be returned with a profit. But given the horrible housing crisis and the tidal wave of evictions going on just now, I do think a Municipal Bank could finance tenants in existing rent-controlled buildings to convert themselves into permanent land trusts and owner-occupied co-ops, thereby taking properties off the open market forever and preserving affordable housing in perpetuity too.
Going a bit further, the terms of financing such land trust/coops could include rules about retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency (replacing windows, adding solar and insulation, improving heating and cooling), adding gray water plumbing systems, establishing rain catchment systems, putting fiber optic wiring into every block and every building to provide a free municipally-owned internet system, and so on. It could even include requirements to plant fruit-bearing trees, opening yards to urban farming, establishing roof gardens where sensible, and more. So the goal of all this would be to lower the cost of living here, to make it possible for people who live here now to stay, and to create social cohesion among neighbors in buildings, between buildings on a block-to-block basis, and slowly but surely make it possible to live more of one’s life outside the pecuniary and punishing logic of wage-labor and endless work.
When we add to the mix the larger scale issues of climate change, the obsolescence of automobiles, oil, and coal as technologies at the heart of our “economic lives,” and the reconfiguration of daily life we’re going to experience as we adapt and adjust to these realities, we really should be getting on with this now, while we still have resources to start the process with. Why not?
Yeah, why not.
Ask Gov. Christie.