rural idiocy

Louis Proyect lnp3 at panix.com
Wed May 6 13:23:57 PDT 1998



>My guess is -- the public space that NYC offers. Most of the US cities are
>hollow like donuts, urban wasteland in the middle surrounded by suburbs
>with private malls, private spaces, and private security guards. New York
>(and perhaps even more so Boston) are different -- they offer a viable
>public space where everyone can walk, shop, hang out, hand out flyers,
>sing, perform, demonstrate and, as Doug correctly observed, encounter
>people different than oneself -- a big big scare for the Homo Americanus
>Suburbanicus.
>
>So it much more than mere location, it is public space that is at stake here.
>
>Regards,
>
>Wojtek Sokolowski

How true. In my last year in the Trotskyite movement I went out to Kansas City to get a job in industry. I was born there in 1945 and visited it once for an extended stay in the mid 50s with my mom. It was a beautiful city with a beautiful downtown. Trolly-cars took you everwhere. After the suburbanization of the city, the downtown lost its soul. This is where I worked, in an office building until I got a job as a spot welder in an industrial part of town. What was particularly depressing was to look at the vacant department stores and night clubs that used to constitute the heart of downtown. My grandparents and mother used to make a trip downtown part of their weekend leisure. The reason that shopping malls don't give you the same pleasure is that they do not evolve organically. They also tend to be dominated by franchises. In a genuine downtown like NYC has, there are home-grown businesses that give the area its particular character. Instead of a Domino's, you will see pizza parlors. Instead of a TGIF, you will see Irish bars. It is hard to value these things properly. I suspect that one of the reasons drug addiction is so high among affluent suburban youth is that they are so bored by their sterile surroundings.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)



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