Justice at Work; is a good, even ground-breaking book. At least by implication, they redefine how we think about cities. This is because of their discovery that investors, having abandoned manufacturing, now want to “capital switch” to (re)invest in cities. And Doussard and Schrock argue, with that rediscovery, that one can now see many ways cities offer profitable opportunities to sustain manufacturing and the city populations that supply all these services that corporations have been offloading.
One fall-out from that is a developing vision for the range of income groups that need to be involved in these services, both as suppliers and as consumers. Another is that alongside the expanding vision to the income range, there is also a vision to enlarge the racial one.
Another result of this is that the definition of the progressive city is forming or potentially will form around it. The emphasis on social networks ends up being spatially larger, encompassing what we used to think of as “regions” – not as an odd entity that always gets short shrift, but as now just part of a larger sense of the city. Another is some kind of labor presence – not just unions, but “labor centers,” community colleges that retrain workers — a variety of institutions that extend across income and racial lines.
What had not been done much, was to think about cities as political entities with a wide capacity to solve its own problems. But everything about Justice at Work begs for this. Oddly, Dousard and Schrock don’t much mention it. But therefore, we must.
What this implies is that I think work laying out “progressive cities” can ground itself in Justice at Work, and I propose a discussion of this in Nashville. And invite them into some kind of joint project – one or more of us joined with one or more of them.
I know a joint book will seem too much and short notice; but what I’m suggesting can be more long-term, more than a book: website, blog posts, articles, as well as books. I will be glad to suggest something and would welcome you to think the same.
Perhaps I can do something in the way of adding content re: city functions. That is, I take it as given they are right about the new coalitions of black and white progressives acting as a force in local politics. Part of that will be describing what a progressive city response would look like.
My first thought is to see what de Blasio imagined he could do in NYC at the beginning of 2014. UPK was one, and I bet it’s visible in the literature on school innovation. Another will be on affordable housing, and what’s needed is a viewpoint on what might have been – maybe not in NYC, but if there is anywhere that the Real Estate forces are less prominent. (Bob’s internet search for the drying up office market being relevant as well). And of course, Phil Thompson’s list of grassroots and grassroots-based city hall initiatives will give force to whatever can be s aid by the sources I’ve uncovered so far. (Ken is compiling several sets of notes on his talk as we read this).
But also, Simon, there will be something like this in Preston and in the “Fearless Cities” and other European cases you have reported already -1 think of the Vienna formula for actually extracting more affordable housing by changing the neoliberal formula from something like NYC (20 pet of the total to 51 percent) and a similarly more generous definition relative to median incomes.
Of course, we need better information about US cases than we will get just on NYC and Boston – which were the context for our meeting at UMass. I await your thoughts on this. I still have that possibility from Dierwechter re: Seattle, which I can write to. Doussard and Schrock could shed light on all this, along with Stiles and others you will encounter in Nashville.
All this envisages a longer time-scale than we have had in mind for now. As I have argued, we now need to think short term about blogs and articles – as well as the “book” which still awaits an effort towards McGill, but not as the only thing now: website, and articles are worth discussing with the Nashville group.