Poverty

            There are many factors that can cause poverty. A major factor that causes poverty as depicted in Demonizing the Inner City is unemployment in the urban core. This should come as no surprise when the concept of spatial mismatch is applied to the situation (Lecture 1/26). As land on the edges of the city became cheaper, factories in need of horizontal space moved away the urban core, which resulted in fewer jobs for those in the inner-city. Another cause of poverty comes in the form of underemployment. This reality was hinted at extensively in the videos discussing a living wage. Individuals can have full time jobs, but due to low wages still find themselves unable to make ends meet. While there are many other causes of poverty, the last one I find important to discuss is what is known as a “culture of poverty”.  Born with a Wooden Spoon shows that a lack of education and hope make it almost impossible to break this cycle.

            Based on the aforementioned causes, the videos from this week did make some suggestions about possible solutions. Demonizing the Inner City points to capitalism as the root of poverty. In a capitalist society, the fear of poverty will always force individuals into taking the unfavorable jobs in society that no one wants to do, but must be done. This video also indicated that the media’s violent portrayal of the inner city is detrimental to making progress. The living wage argument speaks to eliminating those that are considered the working poor: the members of society who are able to find and hold full-time jobs, but are still unable to provide for themselves and their families. Their argument is that an increase in wages would eliminate this particular problem. Born with a Wooden Spoon makes education the focus to eliminating poverty. The video further argues that without education the cycle of poverty will never be broken. While there are some extremely valid points presented here, I believe that all of these elements need to be combined to truly eradicate poverty.

            A major question asked in class was if efforts need to be focused on individuals or on environments (Lecture 1/19). The conclusion I draw from class, the readings, and the videos indicate that the focus needs to fall on both areas. As Born with a Wooden Spoon exemplifies, throwing money at individuals will not solve the problem of poverty. These are individuals that have never had money and it cannot be expected that they will be able to instantly prioritize how to allocate their funds.  Due to this argument, I would refute that raising the living wage alone is sufficient to eradicate poverty. As stated in Living wage debate in NY, a claim was made that there would be not many jobs lost from increasing the minimum wage because it simply will not impact that many people. While they try use this evidence as a positive claim, I see it as an absolute negative. What good is a program if it only helps very few and doesn’t work to address overall problems? With all that being said, I do still believe that there is a place for cash benefits, but environmental change through education is necessary.

            I find myself strongly agreeing with the video Born with a Wooden Spoon’s argument that education is key to the eradication of poverty. The “New Growth Theory” also finds education crucial to the success of the nation and metropolitan areas because of the direct effect from individual productivity as well as the knowledge spillover effects the more educated workers have on those around them (Urban Public Education and Metro Prosperity, p. 254,255). I also want to address another critical issue in Born with a Wooden Spoon that comes into play. As aforementioned, Born with a Wooden Spoon points out that giving an individual money will not solve the problems of poverty because they will not know how to budget it. In my mind, this points out a flaw in the education system that is even present where poverty is a non-issue. It is way past time for a class to be implemented into the high school curriculum that would focus on life skills that are too often taken for granted. At first this may sound like commonsense, but budgeting money, preparing a résumé, interview etiquette, and many other “common” skills do not come naturally. These skills are not different from others and need to be developed in order to become a functioning member in society, no matter ones social class. 

Perspective of a Childless Couple

            I wanted to write my second blog from the perspective of a childless couple due to a couple different reasons. First and foremost, I find this group to face some of the most unique challenges out of the possibilities given. Another reason is because I think this stage will most likely be a reality in my own life before some of the other ones. I want to address some of the major urban indicators on quality of life because I find them to provide good headings for areas of interest/concern (Class 1/12). With that being said, the place I would choose to live is a place like Tempe/Mesa, AZ. I know that initially sounds kind of boring, but with further explanation I hope it makes more sense.

            The first area to consider is housings and its associated costs. Since a childless couple tends to be fairly young, I will consider them to be somewhere between slightly below to slightly above middle-class. With this knowledge, it is important for their housing to be affordable yet location efficient. An area like Mesa, which is further away from the urban center of Phoenix, will, in theory, provide cheaper housing according to the Alonso Model (Class 1/12). On a slightly different level of reasoning, gentrification can lead to rising costs of living in the city center. According to Sharon Zukin, “The cultural claim to urban space poses a new standard of legitimacy against the claim to affordability put forward by a low-status population (Zukin 42).” In other words, transforming downtown areas to revive their cultural and historic roots through renovations leads to more expensive housing. This is extremely logical because the addition of amenities and added services costs money, and an investor would never put forward a business plan that loses them money. The investor wants to see a high return on their investment and this comes in the form of higher rent or purchasing price. 

            The next factor in my decision-making process involves taking a closer look at the Alonso Model. The reasoning that Alonso had behind claiming that the center of the city is the most expensive is because of transportation costs (Class 1/12). Deciding to live downtown represents a trade-off, higher housing costs in return for no transportation costs and added convenience. With no children being present, it is expected that both members of this couple will be employed full-time. It would seem most logical to live downtown to save on transportation cost, except this is not necessary due to a major technological advantage of the Phoenix Metropolitan Area: the light rail. The light rail allows individuals to live outside of the central business district, but still have a cheap and efficient means to downtown. This would, at the very minimum, allow a couple to become a one car household. There are many added expenses to a car that make this such a huge savings (E.g. gas, insurance, registration, environmental impacts, etc).

            Several areas I want to briefly discuss that also play a role are crime, environment, and employment opportunities (Class 1/12). A major bonus of Arizona is the lack of winter, and generally nice weather for about eight months out of the year. Due to size of the Phoenix Metro area, there should be more opportunity for employment versus what there would be in a smaller community. Also, targeting areas to live that are not in the city center should result in lower crime rates. The trade-off would be dealing with slightly more pollution (although the paper mills back home do plenty of that) and congestion. I find both of these areas tolerable due to the benefits of city life.

            The aforementioned paragraphs are the main forces behind an idea that is summed up quite nicely in the Smith reading. Neil Smith discusses a cultural element as to why there is an added emphasis on downtown areas. He talks about how “young, usually professional, middle-class people have changed their lifestyle.” Then he goes on to say that these individuals “are trading in the tarnished dream of their parents for a new dream defined in urban rather than suburban terms (Smith 71).” This does a good job of summing up my feelings because I want to have the experience of living in an urban area with all of the amenities it has to offer versus an average sized town in Wisconsin. I want to be able to go downtown to work and have fun, but be able to escape to a smaller, quieter community like Mesa. 

First Blog

            My name is Jacob Meshke and I am new to Arizona. I actually just moved here a week before classes started with one of my best friends from home, which is close to Green Bay, Wisconsin. I went to a smaller state school before I decided to transfer (the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh). I am a junior majoring in urban and metropolitan studies, thus the reason I am in this class. I would eventually like to further my education with a master’s degree in public administration or potentially a degree in law.

            The first area that I would like to discuss is some different categories of public policy. A substantive policy is what government is doing, such as building roads, paying welfare benefits, etc. Whereas a procedural policy simply deals with how a particular action is going to be carried out; it gives direction (Anderson 8). I thought that these were interesting distinctions because recently in Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker passed legislation that drastically cut the benefits given to public workers and eliminated their right of collective bargaining. The Anderson article mentions that sometimes a bill can be stalled due to procedural reasons and that is exactly what happened in my home state. A judge found the bill to violate a public hearings’ law and temporarily delayed the bill from going into effect.

            Another area from the readings that I found particularly interesting was the distinction made between material and symbolic policies. Material policies demonstrate “tangible resources or substantive power to their beneficiaries” (Anderson 13), whereas symbolic policies “allocate no tangible advantages or disadvantages (Anderson 14).”  The reason that I found this area to be of particular interest is because sometimes this line can become blurred. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 provides such an example. This act was initially supposed to be a symbolic act that looked good on paper without any foreseeable costs. In practice, this had some serious unintended consequences. New construction projects, such as roads or housing, which was to destroy the habitat of endangered species were shut down due to their environmental devastation (Anderson 14). I have an easy time seeing and understanding both sides of this issue. I think further development is good to keep workers employed and provide more services/conveniences to citizens. Although, I did take an environmental issues course back in Wisconsin that opened my eyes to the fact that our environment and animals are a treasure that needs protection. The generations to come have the right to enjoy the same natural beauty and animal species that we currently enjoy. It’s not our place to cause this type of destruction simply for economic purposes.

            Shifting gears, I would like to look at the differences between taking an individualistic versus communitarian outlook.  The individualistic look includes elements such as looking out for self-interest and the belief that government should be limited to maintaining basic order. Also, the individual is only asked to respect the liberty of others and perform minimal tasks, such as voting, paying taxes, etc (Euchner and McGovern 11). The flip side of this approach would be a communitarian outlook. This would involve seeing individuals as interconnected, forming a “web of life” (Euchner and McGovern 11, 12). Other elements of a communitarian approach might include higher taxation to provide national health coverage for all or free higher education. An argument can be made that while these services are available to all, they may not necessarily be of the highest quality. Overall, I think that a communitarian approach is more beneficial to all and would provide people with a better outlook on life. Thinking individualistically all of the time can lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation (Lecture 1/05). Also, a communitarian approach would provide more funds for open spaces and other recreation areas that are proven to increase morale. The downside to public spaces is the potential for a tragedy of the commons or for free ridership (Lecture 1/05). If the government chose to increase income taxes for these services, those without jobs would become the free riders. The other question is who would be responsible for clean-up and maintenance to prevent a tragedy of the commons.