Can Streets Discriminate?

Josh Landy
Why is there so much terrible urban design out there?

Ray Briggs
How can we make our streets more welcoming to everyone?

Josh Landy
is the perfect city just a mirage?

Ray Briggs
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
…except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy.

Ray Briggs
And I’m Ray Briggs. We’re coming to you from our respective shelters in place via the studios of KALW San Francisco.

Josh Landy
Continuing conversations that began at Philosophers Corner on the Stanford campus, where Ray teaches philosophy, and I direct the Philosophy and Literature Initiative.

Ray Briggs
Today we’re asking: can streets discriminate?

Josh Landy
Streets can definitely discriminate. I mean, look around you, Ray—it’s toxic power plants in poor neighborhoods, public transit that only serves some areas, buildings that no one in a wheelchair can access.

Ray Briggs
Oh yeah, that’s just bad design. Doesn’t discrimination have to be on purpose?

Josh Landy
Okay, so what about park benches designed so homeless people can’t sleep on them, or freeways deliberately plan to separate the black part of town from the white part of town?

Ray Briggs
Yeah, those are better examples. But what are we going to do about it?

Josh Landy
Oh, that’s simple. Just hire some architects to design the ideal city, then build it.

Ray Briggs
Easier said than done. What if the ideal city is good for the people, but it’s bad for business? Or what if homeowners think that oh yeah, the changes are great in principle, but then they don’t want any of it in their backyards. Focusing on a distant ideal just isn’t practical. We need justice here and now.

Josh Landy
Look, I love pragmatism as much as the next person. But we need a clearer idea of what we’re working towards.

Ray Briggs
Oh, please. How is an elite group of architects even supposed to know what an ideal city looks like? Maybe they’ll design an efficient highway system, clean suburbs with plenty of houses, a fancy shopping district…

Josh Landy
That doesn’t sound so bad.

Ray Briggs
Yeah. and then they’ll just ignore all the poor people who live in apartments and rely on public transportation and just want affordable groceries.

Josh Landy
Well, I mean, of course, they shouldn’t design a city without gathering information first, right? I mean, they should find representatives from every group that’s gonna be affected by the decisions and canvass them about their consents.

Ray Briggs
Okay, so suppose your architects go and they interview a bunch of people, and they make a list of all the things the city needs, like affordable housing, public transit, parks, racial integration, environmentally friendly design. How are they ever gonna know what to prioritize?

Josh Landy
Oh, they can have a rational discussion and come to some sort of agreement, like the philosophy department meeting.

Ray Briggs
Okay, even granting that optimistic view of political debate, and that optimistic view of philosophy departments, there are other reasons why building the ideal city just isn’t practical.

Josh Landy
Well, look, maybe isn’t easy, but it’s the right thing to do.

Ray Briggs
Well, that’s not always so clear. Like, suppose you want to tear down those highways that run through poor neighborhoods. Well, that’s going to create a lot of waste and pollution.

Josh Landy
I mean, I accept that there are going to be costs and benefits. But you know, you look at the costs. You look at the benefits, you weigh them up, and you make the best choice.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, but it’s it’s not always easy to know what the best choice is. Like maybe you think, oh the best choice is going to be preserved historic architecture and every one of its details. And then you just end up preserving historic injustice too. And you’re stuck with those buildings that no one no wheelchair can access.

Josh Landy
So how do we sort out all the competing demands when it comes to public spaces? We sent our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Holly J. McDede, to find out. She files this report.

Holly McDede
When it comes to the pandemic, we’re still sorting out competing visions for public space. Take Lake Merritt in Oakland, California, for example. Lake Merritt is this magical tidal lagoon, the first wildlife sanctuary in North America. I haven’t been lately, but I have wandered through the virtual neighborhood of nextdoor.com. And nextdoor is abuzz with people worried about the crowds and gatherings at Lake Merritt.

Carl Johnson
I’ve seen lots of people out picnicking, kids, families, not wearing them.

Leslie Rose
I feel like I’m getting a lot more extra slides because I’m constantly jumping out of the way of people.

Christina Beach
It’s annoying to have somebody huffing and puffing from running and their foot away from me. And they told me, this is the last time I’m coming here.

Holly McDede
Health officials around the country have been sounding the alarm about crowded parks and sheltering in place began. But during my travels on next door, I also meet Christina Beach, who speaks of her endless love for Lake Merritt, especially now

Christina Beach
I’ve got construction going on on Every single block, I work from home so I basically have to go escape too late just to have refuge from the noise.

Holly McDede
And she worries that new rules and citizen policing could make people feel unwelcome at the lake. weeks ago, she overheard a woman at the coffee shop pleading with a police officer to deal with the crowds.

Christina Beach
I’m just frustrating that people aren’t thinking of positive solutions that preserve what the lake is, instead of thinking about ways to make it, a private front yard.

Holly McDede
Lake Merritt has long been a flashpoint for debates about who gets to access public space. In 2018 a white woman called the police to report to black men grilling at the lake.

Unknown Speaker
…illegally using a Capital Grille in a non-designated area in Lake Merritt park.

Holly McDede
And issues around policing of public space haven’t gone away. Jason Corburn directs the Center for Global healthy cities at UC Berkeley. He says the pandemic has only added new concerns around equity,

Jason Corburn
Low-income residents are often living in smaller living quarters, with no backyard, no front yard, no balcony, no way to get outside. They may be in an unhealthy hole that may have toxic mold or lead or other things that we’re not addressing.

Holly McDede
Corburn says Not everybody lives near a well maintained Park. And that’s partly because of the history of how and where parks were created.

Jason Corburn
Parks emerged largely as a result of elite visions of contemplation spaces for the wealthy, as if they people in urban areas would get to the great wilderness of the West with a little microcosm in their urban area.

Holly McDede
Activists, mostly women thought to make parks enjoyable for more people. Instead of strict quiet spaces that cater to wealthy adults, Parks became places for children to play. But there are still people who aren’t well served by the parks near them.

Jason Corburn
When you got a park that’s built by expert planner designers, but very rarely relates to the local culture or practices that people may want. And they often put restrictions on that park like okay, no vending, or no barbecues.

Holly McDede
And that’s a problem because part of what people want our parks is a social space.

Jason Corburn
They’re places where we interact with people that’s healthy.

Holly McDede
Still, during the pandemic, officials worry about the crowds. Boston, Minneapolis and Oakland have closed off certain streets to cars to get people more space. But Curburn says that’s not enough.

Jason Corburn
To say okay, now just go out and play in the street, I think really ignores the role public spaces play you know, to create health but also, you know, to give people a sense of place and a sense of home and ownership.

Holly McDede
In the meantime, like married regulars, like Christina Beach, say there are ways to go outside and stay safe. A couple of times a day beach puts on a mask and braids a walk out of her apartment to the lake. Sometimes joggers get too close. So she freezes ducks and then get out of the way. And often she plopped down on a park bench and watches the community in motion… from a distance.

Christina Beach
I feel very grateful that I live next to a beautiful lake. The range of activities are amazing. You can see drummers you can see little rap groups, no bubble machines, jugglers of the birdwatchers, it just represents the best of open.

Holly McDede
For Christina and others. outdoor spaces can be both soothing and mellow and kind of a minefield, but it’s one that she and so many others will navigate for the sake of getting outside. For Philosophy Talk, I’m Holly J. McDede.

Josh Landy
Thanks so much, Holly. And thanks to Julia Linus Goodman for help with that report. I’m Josh Landy. Qith me is my Stanford colleague Ray Briggs and today we’re asking can streets discriminate?

Ray Briggs
We’re joined now by Shane Epting, who is a professor of philosophy at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, and co-director of the Philosophy and the City Research Group. Shane, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Shane Epting
Hi, Ray. Thanks for having me.

Josh Landy
So Shane, what first got you interested in questions of urban design? Did you maybe grew up in an ideal city or was it more like San Francisco?

Shane Epting
No, I’m actually I grew up in an exurb inTexas and I started thinking about transportation in cities initially when my truck broke down when I was in graduate school. And to get to my university, I had to walk a mile take two buses around a train. And next thing you know, I’m constantly thinking about transportation, and looking at different ways it can impact people’s lives.

Ray Briggs
So most people are familiar with the concept of an unjust law, or unjust behavior by a public official. But Shane, you think that cities themselves can be unjust so what is that mean?

Shane Epting
Well, basically what it comes down to is how the different parts of the city are arranged and the outcomes that they produce. And so basically, if you’re having some people spending four hours a day in public transit getting from from home to work, you have to look at the situation and saying, how did this come about? And when you look at other people that have a really nice, easy commute something, something along those lines, you look at those things, and you wonder, Hmm, what’s going on here? And from my perspective, it all comes down to like notion of desperate impacts. It’s not so much that you can find, like the smoking gun of discrimination, but what are the outcomes and how they affect people differently, like basic notions of environmental justice, in terms of the distribution, harms and benefits?

Ray Briggs
So what would you say to somebody who says, Well, look, nobody wanted people to have different different sort of levels of ability to get to where they’re going? So it’s not really discrimination? So it sounds like that’s not an argument that you think is very good, why not?

Shane Epting
Because it is really hard to pin down. intentionality. Right. So if you look at the case of the infamous case of Robert Moses bridges in New York, right, this is kind of one of the textbook examples that they show. And as the the buses were, or the overpasses were built at a height to where the city buses couldn’t get underneath them. And so it kept minority residents from accessing the beaches that that whites went to. And a lot of people claim, Hey, Robert Moses was was a racist. And that’s why he built the bridges or the built the overpasses at this at this height. And then some people have defended him saying, well, actually, that was the building codes, right at the time, or the cost of concrete? Or how about the fact that buses weren’t even allowed to be on the highway, so it’s not an issue to begin with? And so at the point of Moses being a racist or not, which I’m not defending the guy by any means, but the main thing is that the Buses couldn’t reach the beaches. And that’s the main problem. So how do we work to remedy that situation?

Josh Landy
Yeah. What about I mean, I like your point that there doesn’t have to be a deliberate intention to discriminate, right? That’s maybe irrelevant. But are there one or two cases like the practice of redlining where, where banks refuse to give loans to African American applicants, or if they give a loan, it’s at a much higher rate of interest me other cases like that, where it does seem as though there’s, there’s a deliberateness involved in the in the policies.

Shane Epting
Yeah, I mean, just recently, I had a friend approached me with a map that he showed me of his of his city he lived in, and it was for the school districts. And essentially, they had drawn the school districts to where the map excluded, like apartment complexes, like where it didn’t make any sense to why that power complex wasn’t included in the school district, if you actually draw the district around that complex, and you look at that, and you’re like, come on, how was this? Like, how do you account for this? Right? And so, yeah, you can’t always find the smoking gun, but the results, you know, speak for themselves in a way.

Josh Landy
Yeah, I’m someone who works in French, the history of French culture, and I think back to the 19th century, with Baron Haussmann changing Paris, changing the layout of Paris, making those beautiful broad boulevards, partly so that when they needed to, they could march the army down, right to, to quash rebellion. So they’re like, there are some cases where city design does have certain kinds of intent.

Ray Briggs
I mean, also, that’s what if I can jump in here, even if you can’t prove it, you might think it’s there’s a problem if the intention is there, and then there’s a separate question of like, how easy is it to tell that it’s there?

Shane Epting
Yeah. I mean, well, you know, well intended people make mistakes, right? It’s not that there’s somebody sitting behind a desk wearing a, you know, a top hat and a cape stroking a black cat, you know, with a monocle.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re thinking about justice and urban design with Shane Epting. For the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

Ray Briggs
What does the ideal city look like? Can we get everyone to agree on a shared vision? If we dream about self driving cars and futuristic suburbs? How can we keep our feet on the ground?

Josh Landy
Bike lanes, trains and automobiles when Philosophy Talk continues.

U2
And when I go there / I go there with you / It’s all I can do.

Josh Landy
In an ideal city, would the streets have no name? Or better names. I’m Josh Landy, this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ray Briggs
…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs and we’re asking can streets discriminate with Shane Epting from the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

Josh Landy
In these days of COVID, were pre recording this episode from the safety of our respective homes. So unfortunately, we can’t take your phone calls. But you can always email us at comment@sphilosophytalk.org, or become a subscriber by visiting our website, philosophytalk.org.

Ray Briggs
So Shane, we’ve seen that our cities right now are far from ideal. What would an ideal city look like?

Shane Epting
I’m gonna say El Paso. No, I’m just kidding. I’m one of my favorite cities. You know, when it comes to the question about the, you know, what is the just city or something along those lines? To me, it seems like almost an impossible question. I mean, philosophers can’t even agree on the conditions for justice. And they can’t even agree on what a city is. So taking those two questions and combining them expecting to get an answer seems very unlikely, you know, so there’s, there’s one view that cities are objects are the like technologies. And then, Achille Varzi, has a paper that I’m absolutely in love with right now, where he says that cities are like processes, right? He I think he uses the phrase there like a rock concert. And we’re all participating in these cities. And so as a city is more like an event. And so if you think about the nature of a city, how they’re always in flux, and so you could have a city though, somehow, just how is that Justice going to remain part of the city as it changes over time?

Ray Briggs
Alright, so if I can’t picture the ideal city, it seems like I can still identify some ways that actual cities aren’t ideal. So So you pointed out this thing about public transportation being really bad getting from your home to university when you’re a student? So how do I know that’s not ideal if I don’t have an ideal to compare it to?

Shane Epting
Yeah, that’s a that’s one of the interesting dimensions of these kinds of issues is that they’re no two cities are identical. And so how do you compare the conditions that surround them? And it seems like it’s really impossible to do so. I mean, when you look at like, the city of Bogota, when they were trying to solve their issue with urban mobility, and they hired some French engineers to come in. And at first they said, well, obviously, you need a subway system, right. And then they took their advice, and they discard it, because they realized that that was not economically feasible. And I think I’m not remembering this incorrectly, the ground was really dense, and it would take a astronomical amount of money to actually build a subway. And so they came up with the bus rapid transit. And that was a much more feasible solution that worked for that city. So I mean, cities all have these kind of family resemblances, if you will, but they’re so different that you really solution a will work for, for city B or something like that.

Josh Landy
That makes sense. But I wonder if there aren’t some commonalities. For example, I often think about the housing first program in Utah, where, you know, amazingly left, the left wing and the right wing, were able to come together on program of providing housing for homeless people. Partly, you know, it convinced some people because it was more cost effective, right, that they found that actually providing housing to people cost less than keeping them in, in medical care and everything else that they needed. So is that something we could generalize? I mean, couldn’t we have a program like that in every city? Or is that something that would vary?

Shane Epting
I’d like I, one thing that constantly eats at me is that I want to strive towards universals, right. That’s just how we most of us are trained. But at the same time, that’s not always going to work. So when you find something that does work, it’s worth studying and see how it how it’s gonna pan out. Like, for instance, the participatory budgeting project in New York City, has had fantastic success at restoring local democracy and putting power in the people in the hands. And so we look at that and look at this can serve as a blueprint for how we can actually make democracy more inclusive in cities. And so how can we replicate that maybe have like, participatory engineering?

Ray Briggs
So how do I figure out like, what needs success? Like? How do I make a list of priorities? Like what is the most important problem to solve in San Francisco? And how do I know that it’s the most important problem to solve?

Shane Epting
Well, one thing that I can’t give you all the answers to that question, but one thing I would say that is absolutely, extremely important is to talk to the people on the ground and talk to as many people as you can, and just allow them the possibility to weigh in on those decisions. Right. So in one sense, it’s kind of an epistemological problem, in terms of how do you get the necessary knowledge to fix the problem if you don’t have access to that knowledge? And one of the best ways to do that is to find the people who have have intimate knowledge of how infrastructure and things like that affect them?

Josh Landy
I mean, I’m totally in favor. But can I ask you a devil’s advocate question about that? I think about the what happened this year in Lansing, Michigan, where a bunch of right wing protesters armed with these rifles, you know, occupied the capitol to protest the stay at home order it, you know, during the COVID pandemic. And that kind of thing makes me worry a little bit that, you know, if you allow your policy to be set by, you know, whichever citizen or group of citizens chooses to come to a meeting, are you definitely going to get the best data? Or is it going to depend to some extent on who shows up?

Shane Epting
Well, I think it’s one thing that you really have to work on is how do you obtain the data? How do you obtain the data, right? So you just have it have all meetings in say, one language? Or do you have at a certain time, they got to really be inclusive to get to get everybody there. I remember living in the suburb, and we had a built a dog park, and they wanted to get community feedback. And so they put signs up at the dog park, they started online groups, they did all this campaigning. And before you know it, everyone showed up at six or seven o’clock, and we’re able to provide lots of perspectives on the dog park itself. But you touch on an issue that I wrestle with a lot. And it’s that, so you have these these issues in urban design, that people go to school for years, and they spend their whole life thinking about them. And they keep people from dying, right? You don’t want accidents happening. And so if people just show up, I think we should have X, Y and Z. It’s like, well, you know, that might sound great to you. But here’s the reality of the situation. Case in point, I was doing a stint at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and I had a chance to talk with Raila throb, the regional manager for the local transit authority there. And I was like, Hey, how about some sort of like Sky gondola system where you could, you know, ride in cables above the city. And to me, this is a really, you know, brilliant idea. And she looks at me with this look, and just said everything, and she’s like, it gets really windy here and people die. And I’m like, oh, yeah, that’s why I’m not an engineer. I’ll just stick to the playdough. Right. Yeah, as the thing is, how do you find a balance? Or how do you incorporate people’s voices in a way that allows them to be heard? And at the same time, kind of chips away at the paternalism.

Ray Briggs
I have another question sort of on the same thing, which I also don’t think is like an objection to what you said, but I just want to hear how to deal with it. So sometimes people seem well informed, but kind of malicious about their neighbors. So you know, they don’t want sort of the wrong kind of loud people in their public park, because they think those people are unsightly. And that doesn’t seem like the kind of preference that I really want taken into account at all. Like, is there a way of sort of figuring out the right questions to ask people?

Shane Epting
Yeah, that’s, that’s always one of the one of the dangers, you know, when I think about inclusive design, I think about people saying, Hey, if you were to, you know, increase service on this bus line, or something like that. So how do you how do you establish some sort of principles to where inclusive design only allows for, you know, inherently good outcomes, and things like that. And I think that’s one of the issues with local control in general, is that local control isn’t always it can’t always be a good thing should be a very bad thing. If people are using it to to oppress others.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re thinking about cities, streets and justice with Shane Epting, from the Missouri University of Science and Technology. And we received an email from Rabbit in San Francisco who asks, Can we reduce the impact of cities on the health of the ecosystem? For example, using Karlis cities? is concentrated human activity in cities good for the planet? How do we weigh the costs against whether it’s good for people? So what do you think about that chain like this kind of a trade off between what’s good for humans? And what’s good for the, for the planet?

Shane Epting
Yeah, I mean, the way that I’ve been thinking about this, this issue is what I call moral ordering. And that is that we have to make these decisions and give prioritization in a certain manner. And in order to do that, we have to put I mean, cities are inherently environments for humans, right. But at the same time, we don’t want to destroy the nonhuman world in the process. And so that’s why I love looking at smart city technologies that can actually give us measurable outcomes in order to reduce our carbon footprint and things along those lines. So going back to Ray’s point earlier, if we can figure out ways, you know, to reduce our water footprint to reduce those sort of things are emitted so that we could say, hey, look, this actually works. Let’s do that.

Josh Landy
And what about me? I mean, right rabbit seems to be proposing a fairly radical solution, which is get rid of cities, right? have smaller communities, do you? What do you think about that?

Shane Epting
I don’t know that. I mean, you know, on one hand, I look at places like eco villages, and I’m like, wow, that would be really cool. Or cohousing initiatives, where you actually restore community, and at the same time, decrease your your, your footprint on the planet. And that’s great. But then you also look at the literature, where it shows that you know, dense urban living is actually going to create more sustainable outcomes in the long run. And so it’s hard, it’s hard to look at these sorts of things. But how could you make a sustainable city? Like, what was it Masdar City, they tried to do that, and that didn’t work out too well. So I guess he, at this point, kind of venturing out of the realm of philosophy and more into industrial ecology, which is way above my paygrade.

Ray Briggs
So one thing I do know about sort of cities is that, so you mentioned transportation at the beginning of this show. And it seems like concentrating the population sort of, in the city close to where they work and shop is better for the environment and one key respect, which is that they’re in their cars less, and it’s also sort of better for them, and sort of better for their their safety and health and happiness. Um, do you have sort of specific insights on on car culture?

Shane Epting
Yeah, it’s some respects. I mean, we look at the personal vehicles as this symbol of freedom, right? We’re free to go wherever we want when we want, anytime we want. And at one point car seemed like, you know, they were fantastic. But now we use words like, oh, I have to go in and fight that traffic, right. And so it’s like cars have gotten to the point where they’re not that enjoyable in some places, right? They’re just like, people always talk about Los Angeles having basically the highways being a parking lot. And so it seems like, that’s a real issue that people don’t want to actually drive anymore. But a lot of people don’t have any choice. So a lot of places, there’s no option.

Ray Briggs
Right, so yeah this, this brings up another theme that’s kind of in running through our discussion, which is about sort of freedom versus good outcome. So I think you’re totally right as the carbon about the car being sold as the symbol of freedom. But then, if you just give people freedom to pick whatever they want, they won’t necessarily pick something that’s good for themselves. And they definitely won’t necessarily pick anything that’s good for their neighbors. But it also it seems wrong to just engineer people’s lives without giving them any say, like, can you engineer cities in a way that both gives people people freedom, and also gives them sort of encouragement to use it responsibly?

Shane Epting
Yeah, like one of the issues with automated vehicles. When you look at what happened in Tempe, there were some headlines coming out, where they were saying that the people were throwing rocks at the vehicles, and all that. And first, of course, the first impression was, Oh, they’re just anti technology. But what it turns out was they were upset that they weren’t consulted, and being, you know, part of the laboratory experiment, right. And so that, oh, wow, that makes that makes sense. Yeah, it really comes into come into focus, there are those kind of issues?

Josh Landy
Let me ask you another question. It’s correlated. Maybe it’s a little bit fanciful, though. I, I when I think about notions of an ideal city, I think back to people like Le Corbusier, a and Fourier, these, you know, utopian ideal as visionaries. Some of whom had had the idea that you basically build vertically, right? You build these huge skyscrapers that people live in. And then, I mean, it’s anachronistic to say no cars, but in our current context, that means basically no cars, you don’t need cars, or you need fewer cars, because that means you can have a smaller space around those skyscrapers. Beautiful green space, right? Lots of parks, the shops that you need him walking distance. What about that? Is that a crazy idea? Build, you know, have everyone live in skyscrapers and then just walk about and, you know, less pollution, less driving? What do you think?

Shane Epting
Oh, well, I mean, it seems like the the one thing I try to avoid is one size fits all solutions, right? So what are you going to what are you going to do an area that has a really bad earthquakes, really bad tornadoes, things like that? It might not be so vital, she can vote the building codes that are going on that are going to work. But vertical cities, I mean, the places that they are going to work, it seems like you’re gonna increase density. And if you can increase density, then you can decrease footprints, so that might be a good outcome.

Ray Briggs
I have a kind of question that goes in a different direction, which is that a lot of sort of depression problems that we’ve been describing have to do with failures of imagination. So, so like designing the cable car and not thinking about the wind seems like a failure of imagination, like designing a building and not no events. But designing a building and like not thinking to like make sure it has elevators so that people can’t walk up the stairs can’t go up also is a failure of imagination, maybe less forgivable now that we’ve had the Americans with Disabilities Act for 30 years. How do you guard against that? Like is, are there things that everybody should be doing to expand their imaginations?

Shane Epting
Yeah, that’s one of my big things about I think one of the benefits for philosophy is to be able to look at your your city philosophically, right, and to be able to use your moral imagination to see how people can be affected by different arrangements of the structures of a city. That’s why I think that urban urban planners to me, they’re my heroes, right? Like, I follow a guy, Jarrett Walker, on Twitter, and I look at some of the things he proposes. I’m like, wow, this is a really good idea. And so when you look at these people that have these bold ideas, they’re pushing against the status quo, of course, and that’s going to provide a window into another possible world. And so when I look at, you know, new urbanism and things like that, I get pretty excited because it’s like, oh, wow, we can figure out a way to arrange parts of the city to produce better public health and things like that. One of the issues that has really got my attention lately, is social isolationism. Right. So you have a seniors who moved into the suburban cul de sacs, when they were in their 30s, and their kids grew up, they went away, and now they’re just in their houses, dying alone, and they can’t get to the second floor of their house. And sometimes one person, they see the person that brings their meals on wheels, meal every day. And to me like this is horrible. We got to fix this, you know, and so how can we arrange the parts in order to produce better outcomes for these people?

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re asking whether streets can discriminate with Shane Epting, co-director of the Philosophy and the City Research Group.

Ray Briggs
What does urban justice look like at a practical level? Whose needs matter most? Is there a set of principles to guide us?

Josh Landy
Following where our streets are taking us—when Philosophy Talk continues.

The Kinks
Dead ends streets, yeah, dead end streets.

Josh Landy
How do we avoid turning our city into a tangle of dead end streets? I’m Josh Landy, and this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ray Briggs
…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs, our guest is Shane Epting from the Missouri University of Science and Technology, and we’re asking, can streets discriminate?

Josh Landy
So Shane, with the power of vested in us by Public Radio, we’re going to make us czar of urban planning for the next 15 minutes or so. So other than bringing more voices into the conversation, what’s the first thing you change?

Shane Epting
Well, one of the first lessons that we learned in philosophy is Socrates famous line, the unexamined life is not worth living. But in philosophy of the city, the unexamined city is not worth living in. This idea, it’s not meant to suggest that your city isn’t great. But it does suggest thinking about your city philosophically can understand, appreciate and improve it. So engaging in deep and critical thinking about your city can help you know what’s beyond the surface, to know the power structures that control it, to think about its aesthetics, and how it shapes the quality of people’s lives. So while a philosopher king or queen would be super, a philosopher, urban planner could help us these kinds of endeavors. And that’s basically my message is to think about your city philosophically.

Ray Briggs
I have a question about, like, where I would go to learn more about my city? Also, historically, so a lot of a lot of the constraints on my city, like I don’t know exactly where they come from, like, I know, it’s pretty hard to get cohousing in the Bay Area. And I don’t know exactly like, how did it get that hard? Who’s responsible for the zoning laws? And how did they come into place? Um, is there something that regular citizens can and should be doing to understand their cities better? And it kind of historical context?

Shane Epting
Yeah, I mean, that’s one thing is talk to people that, that lived there their whole entire lives and you know, get a sense of how things have changed. That’s one thing I love doing is asking people what was a city like 30 years ago, and usually people respond to us, he asked me and say, Well, you know, it’s not the same city it used to be and they start telling you a story, and you start to see the history of the city take shape. I mean, there’s a great movie. I can read the name of the guy that made it but it’s called a Los Angeles plays itself. And it’s a, it’s a movie about Los Angeles as it appears in movies. It’s absolutely brilliant. And so I think that every city in a way, is kind of like that. I mean, there are these fantastic inventions, Hans Jonas called cities, our greatest inventions. And just that notion itself to think that is something we had to invent as if it were like another device, by something to help us accomplish a goal. And to me, of course, the purpose of a city is for his human flourishing. And so how do we secure the conditions for that?

Ray Briggs
It also occurs to me that some of the people with a lot of the most valuable and under heard information about cities are kind of the same people who are hard to get involved in a political process because they have like less leisure or less ability to leave their house or in some cases, they don’t even have a place to live. Is there a way to sort of uplift those voices and make them more heard?

Shane Epting
Yeah, that’s one thing that I think really needs we need to dedicate more attention to. And that’s why earlier I mentioned the participatory budgeting project. Why I’m so fascinated by that is because the structure of it itself, it’s shown to bring those kinds of voices to the table. And if we can study the process behind it, maybe we can extrapolate some ideas or principles of how to actually work towards more inclusive democracy and get people to participate in their cities.

Josh Landy
That sounds like a great I mean, so having more inclusion in the planning process, thinking maybe about micro loans, redirecting subsidies, I like all these ideas. But part of what I’m wondering is whether we also need like, you know, people like you, right, like a professional philosopher, or the someone trained in critical thinking, to go to these meetings and think through some of the very difficult decisions to have to make, for example, the, you know, the whole notion of unintended consequence. I mean, the one example that you’ve talked about in your writing is that is what they did in Portland, right, where they removed some of the highways in the lower income areas and put in light rail. And I believe is that I think you’ve talked about this, how that had this unintended consequence of making house prices rise in the area and pricing out the original inhabitants. So I guess my question is, you know, should we also staff these planning committees with phosphors?

Shane Epting
I think that’s a brilliant idea. You know, I mean, you’re looking at the situation in Portland. Last time I checked in on it, they tried to bring residents back to the area, right. And some of them they brought back, they looked around and said, basically, this isn’t the same place that used to be here, you know, and, yeah, last time I was in Portland. I want to think it’s the Alberta neighborhood. And I remember seeing this, you know, artisan lightbulb store. And I remember thinking, like, I didn’t know these even existed, all my light bulbs are mainstream, if people don’t come into my house and judging me this whole time. You know, people, once the process is has been completed, if you can’t, you know, meet their needs, well, then we’re in trouble. And so how do you it’s, it’s such a mess of a problem. It reminds me of a former student of mine told me the story about how, when the old wooden ships first arrived in Hawaii, they, they brought rats, and so they had a rat, the rat problem. And so someone thought, haha, we’ll bring the Mongoose and turns out one’s a urinal, and one’s not turtle. So that didn’t work. And we’ve all learned from Tom and Jerry that cats can catch, you know, mice. And so they try that, but it turns out that cats preferred bird eggs. And so, you know, whatever problems where you can’t predict things, and because of that, you can’t anticipate the consequences or the outcomes or the variables, just, you know, the normal sort of issues you run into with consequentialism in general. And so, but do we give up or do we keep pushing the, the Urban Planning social justice boulder up the hill?

Ray Briggs
So I have a question about a particular kind of unforeseen, but probably foreseeable event that we’re experiencing right now. So right now, like, none of us should be going to public places indoors because there’s a pandemic on, and we’re going to sort of infect each other if we’re not careful. So how do you see the city changing in response to that, like, what are good ways and what are likely way is

Shane Epting
no idea. To be honest. I mean, I’m watching people who are making predictions about it, and they’re saying that the city is going to be reshaped by the pandemic and we’re gonna Have a social distancing built into the new structures. And it’s got to be more than just, you know, dining outside and those sorts of things. But that might happen. It might not. I mean, if we get a vaccine in time things go back to normal, then all this talk, well, what’s it worth? Right? So?

Josh Landy
Yeah, I guess we’ll see on that if I could shift gears I, you know, I’m someone who works a lot on literature and film and the aesthetic and so I can’t help us. Are there situations where there’s a trade off between, you know, kind of aesthetic considerations and other kinds of considerations, I think about, you know, set place like chichi pizza, like, that’s not very accessible, but putting an elevator and she needs I would, you know, it doesn’t seem like it’s appropriate. And I also think about this lovely line from ISIS, Ferguson, he works at the place lab at the University of Chicago, where they’re thinking about Race and Justice in relation to urban design. She says, universally designing for everyone can create homogenized, soulless places that have all people in mind, but meaning for no one. So are there going to be points at which, you know, our desire to, to kind of level the playing field and make things accessible to everyone and completely fair bump up against aesthetic considerations where those aesthetic considerations may be sometimes actually have a say?

Shane Epting
Oh, yeah, that’s, that’s a? That’s a great question. I mean, I liked the idea of universal design. But when you’re dealing with cities, it seems like at some point, you’re going to have to inflicting interest. And what do you do then? Right. And so that’s a tough one to crack. And then in terms of aesthetics? Well, it depends on how you’re looking at it. So if you look at the city of Brasilia from above, it’s absolutely beautiful. But if you look at it on the ground, you see, people have to go miles and miles just to get from point A to point B, which is unnecessary. And so for them, it’s like, aesthetics, who cares?

Ray Briggs
Yeah, yeah, I remember taking Greyhound buses through upstate New York, just on the topic of aesthetics, and feeling in the bus stations there. Like somebody who designed them really did not like or value any of us in the bus station there. And so I sort of sometimes think that like aesthetics has a communicative function, like it, it can tell you that you are valuable enough to have like pretty trees and natural light, or that you are not valuable enough to have those things. I hope that wasn’t—

Josh Landy
Right, there’s a place where aesthetics meets justice, right, where justice requires aesthetic equality. Yeah. Do you have any last thoughts for us about how to make cities better places to live in?

Shane Epting
And want to stick with think about them philosophically? Right, try to get as many different views as you can, and experience your city. I mean, you we hear people say that they love their cities, but the question needs to be asked to cities love them back? And if so what does that mean?

Josh Landy
That’s a beautiful place to stop. Thank you so much for joining us today, Shane.

Shane Epting
Thanks for having me.

Josh Landy
Our guest is being Shane Epting, professor of philosophy at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, and co-director of the Philosophy and the City research group. So Ray, what are you thinking now?

Ray Briggs
Oh, I feel like I’ve still got a lot more questions than answers. Like I don’t have a plan for fixing any of the cities I have known and loved. But I at least have like some ideas of where to start. What about you?

Josh Landy
Yeah, pretty much the same. I mean, I’m increasingly aware of all these very complicated trade offs between justice and not just the aesthetic, but also different, different forms of justice, right where the environment bumps up against, you know, income inequality. Boy, I’m glad I don’t have to decide those questions. This continued conversation continues at philosophers corner. And our online community of thinkers were a masa with apologies to Descartes is called Guiteau Ergo Blago, I think, therefore, I blog. And you can become a partner in the community by visiting our website, philosophytalk.org.

Ray Briggs
And if you have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d love to hear from you. Send it to us at comments@philosophytalk.org and we may feature it on the blog. Now, a guy who indiscriminately breaks all the speed limits—it’s Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Iah Shoals… Our cities hold secrets. Cities have rich inner lives, just like bitter housewives, and divorced bankers. And cities have skid rows, tenements, museums, skyscrapers, department stores teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and through it all, some day, the broken promise of self driving cars, that will take you from your blighted home in the suburbs to your crappy job in town with only a 37 percent chance of a fatal accident. Despite all this, or maybe because of it, many of our cities have songs written about them. New York New York. Chicago Chicago. Gary Indiana Gary Indiana Gary Indiana. I left My heart in San Francisco. I love LA. Et Cetera. Missing are Duluth, Des Moines, Bismarck, but you know, our troubled nation is still young. And so is the profession of city planner. A city planner used to be, to be put it bluntly, Robert Moses back in 20th Century New York, who removed any obstacle, such as poor black people, between him and his idea of a perfect city, which included freeways, bridges, Long Island, and a couple World’s Fairs. I myself attended, with my parents and sister, the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Though it wasn’t even IN New York, it was in Queens, I thought it was fabulous. I learned later it was actually a disaster. The high handed and powerful Moses had refused to conform to regulations from the Bureau of International Expositions, which in turn instructed its worldwide members not to participate. Canada, Austria, and the Soviet Union, among many others, did not attend. Moses projected attendance would be 70 million. Turned out to be 50. On the other hand, I was there, so it was therefore important. Also half the exhibits I saw tended up at Disneyland, where I saw them again a few years later. Disneyland, I was surprised to learn, was not in LA but Anaheim. Second string cities, you might say, can make room for epic suburban dreams. Where the question of these times began to grow: is it worth leaving the house? More than the world, corporations were represented at the Fair, and with them, America. Illinois and Walt Disney provided Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln, the first audioanimatronic figure, which migrated to Disneyland, and then joined the whole flock of robot presidents at Disney World. Disney and General Electric gave the Fair the Carousel of Progress, which eventually migrated to Tomorrowland at Disneyland, and then on to Disney World, where it attracts to this day The Carousel showed an American family in their home, in a series of scenes from the 19th to 21st Century, with all the marvels made possible by electricity and its magical guardian, General Electric. This epic attraction consisted of animated dummies singing about radios and home computers, the big hook being the scenery didn’t move, the audience did, the auditorium swiveling to reveal each tableaux, like a carousel faced inward. It seemed to me, even as I watched it as part of the Big City World’s Fair experience, that I was seeing propaganda for a suburban future. Stay home. Everything you need is right there, or will be. As if to prove that point, in 1974 a Disneyland hostess was crushed to death at the Carousel of Progress when she got caught between the walls. But then Disney was always about city planning, by not having cities, or ignoring them for a while in a magic kingdom, the happiest place on earth, in a WORLD. Disney World itself, a four part resort empire – the Magic Kingdom -Disneyland’s clone – Epcot -whatever the hell that is- Disney’s Hollywood Studio, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom. See Disney’s branding is like an addiction. Even inside a thing called Disney, you have to have things called Disney, lest we forget where we are, and why. The Disney folks created actual towns to accommodate Disney World, with their own zoning laws and sewer systems, Lake Buena Vista, which is named for a street in Anaheim, population 10, and Bay Lake, a trailer park really, population 47. Both of these communities are home to Disney employees. Perhaps inspired by its own futurism, Disney eventually created its own model city, Celebration, near Disney World, a city with one of everything, each world class architect-designed- a bank, a movie theater, a hotel, a post office. Population around 8000. So far, no riots, no drive bys, no gang violence. Knock on wood. Technically, however, all three of these curated cities, Celebration, Lake Buena Vista, and Bay Lake are part of what is called Orlando-Kisimmee-Sanford, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. That’s a city. Somewhere in it, Wikipedia says, are 19 skyscrapers. How many billboards and posters for Disney World it does not say. Besides Disney World it is most famous for the mass murder at the gay dance club back in 2016. Orlando Kisimmee Sanford Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area, over 2 million and growing. Come on America. Put that in a song and sing it. I gotta go.

Josh Landy
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KALW local public radio San Francisco and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2020.

Ray Briggs
Our executive producer is Tina Pamintuan.

Josh Landy
The Senior Producer is Devon Strolovitch. Laura Maguire is our Director of Research. Cindy Prince Baum is our Director of Marketing.

Ray Briggs
Thanks also to Merle Kessler, Angela Johnston and Lauren Schecter.

Josh Landy
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from various groups at Stanford University. And from the Partners at our online Community of Thinkers.

Ray Briggs
The views expressed (or mis-expressed) on this program did not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

Josh Landy
Not even when they’re true and reasonable. The conversation continues on our website philosophytalk.org, where you too, can become a partner in our community of thinkers. I’m Josh Landy.

Ray Briggs
And I’m Ray Briggs. Thank you for listening.

Josh Landy
And thank you for thinking.