Third Session Notes
We had a lot to work with, given the reading and the questions posed by Cameron and Eugenio (thanks!), but the topic that I found most interesting was a result of the contention by Hayward and Swanstrom that acting to address inequality will require new institutions. In essence, old institutions grow up favoring certain outcomes, and those outcomes often privilege one group over another irrespective of the actual needs and capacities of those groups. If, as they suggest, our goal is to ensure that any inequality benefits the least advantaged, it will take more than just a change in policy to proceed.
Another way of looking at this is that it will take more than a plan to address inequality in Portland. In fact, lodging the equity objective for the city in a plan may, in fact, be the wrong place to put it. Perhaps the fact that the Portland Plan is called a “plan” is a distraction. Maybe we need to view it in different terms. In any event, lodged within the Portland Plan is an interesting element that might be the avenue to the required Hayward/Swanstrom institutional evolution: the Partnership supposedly underlying the creation and adoption of the Portland Plan itself. The exact vitality and nature of the partnership is a little foggy. What commitments have been made? What new lines of accountability have been established? In short, what will make the emergence of the partnership as a real “institution” both likely and compelling? Logos on a page are a good start, but not nearly sufficient.
Consequently, as the closest thing to a new institution or a new institutional alignment emerging from the Portland Plan, the partnership needs some work. And of course, there are a number of critical questions that go along with that:
How will the partnership become both real and accountable?
How will civil rights laws be monitored and enforced?
Will adequate public services and facilities be provided through real and progressive tax reform?
Who are the leaders responsible for ensuring that goals aren’t displaced over time, and, in fact, what do we expect and need from leadership wherever it comes from?
How does scale matter here? Do the Hayward/Swanstrom or Fainstein formulations apply regardless of scale? Is Portland equivalent to NYC equivalent to SF when it comes to acting to achieve equity, or do the scale and nature of places matter?
How does this all play out over time? Is history an adequate proxy for time? Institutions change slowly. What if we succeed and reallocations to favor the least favored are put in place. What happens when a new group becomes least favored?
In short, we’ve launched the word “equity” out there, but haven’t, perhaps, put it into a useful, operational context. As the discussion and the reading pointed out, this matters. There are glimmers of what could be, but innovation and thoughtful challenges to assumptions about relationships await.
eugenio526 and 
Sy are discussing. 
Portland Plan Equity Blog 
Sy 10:20 pm on November 7, 2012 Permalink |
Building on a few of Ethan’s points: the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability is, indeed, leaning very heavily on a partnership approach to implement effectively the equity oriented strategies set out in The Portland Plan. The approach seems to necessitate highly energetic monitoring and advocating roles for BPS in relation to government agencies inside and outside the city, and in relation to for-profit and not-for-profit private organizations. What are the possibilities and limits of BPS energetically playing these roles? In addition, the recently created City Equity Office will have to energetically play similar roles. What are likely to be its possibilities and limits? An historical note: the Albina Community Plan, produced and adopted during the early-mid 1990s, also incorporated a multi-agency partnership approach; it would be interesting and relevant to know more about the experience of implementing that plan. Regarding the NYC/SF comparison and the issues of scale/nature: San Francisco was one of a handful of cities that was able to implement equity-oriented linkage policies a few decades ago. San Francisco, as well as Boston, Santa Monica, Seattle, were able to insist on contributions for affordable housing, transit service expansion, day care services, etc. – what the English call Planning Gain – as a condition of development approval because their competitive positions as locations for office/commercial investments were so strong they were able to extract concessions. Is Portland now in a position to do something similar?
eugenio526 8:44 pm on November 8, 2012 Permalink |
According to Erik Wright problems in rich countries are not caused by the society not being rich enough but by the scale of material differences between people being too big: “what matters is where we stand in relation to others in our own society” (p. 25). As we have seen large inequalities of wealth and income mean some people have much greater positive freedom –capacity and choices to make things- than others (p. 50). It seems that inequality follows a natural path: as economic inequality increases, inequalities across the neighborhood also increase. Among the negative effects inequality grows at schools, which incentivizes middle class groups to move to more expensive neighborhoods to gain access to better schools for their children (p.119), and so on.
How could the government reduce inequality? I believe that local governments through the provision of quality public goods (redistribution) may contribute to decrease inequality, as it happened in Scandinavian countries where the high quality provision of health and education services kept the middle classes using governmental social services –which I assume increased social cohesion in those countries. On the contrary, the erosion of the quality of public goods (such as public schools) makes private substitutes (private schools) more attractive. This is why among the most negative effects of inequality are the abandon of public goods by the affluent, a trend that should be avoided.
In addition to distributive policies at the local government an interesting strategy to reduce inequality could be the extension of social rights to make access to social services universal. Among its benefits this could help erase the current stigma associated with welfare programs that divide society among those who receive them and those who do not.
Lastly, perhaps if the discussion around inequality issues were framed from the perspective of its inefficiency, policies to reduce it could gain more support. Wright explains how the benefits of equality spread right across society improving living conditions, such as health, for everyone not just those at the bottom: he found in his research among developed countries that at almost any level of income it is better to live in a more equal place (p. 84).
References
Wright, Erik O., and Rogers, Joel. 2011. American Society: How it Really Works.
W.W. Norton & Company: New York.