As we all know, Baltimore was different, an outlier really. Sure, our poverty rate also decreased somewhat , and construction was booming as well, albeit to a lesser extent; but population continued to decrease, trash was piling up and crime keeps going up. We tumbled from one leadership calamity to another (Mayor, police Commissioner, DOT Director, IT Director and more). As a result trust in our local government is at an all time low. To make things worse, one cannot really say that the State has our back, even though one has to give the Governor credit for his current handling of the corona crisis. Now we are caught flatfooted.
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| West Baltimore food desert |
Overall, the pandemic of unprecedented dimensions as far as anybody alive can remember hits us largely unprepared, all the way down to the level of an inexplicably absent emergency response director. An economic storm of yet unknown proportions will follow.
To recognize this particular Baltimore condition doesn't add comfort but it allows for a realistic perspective when we are trying to peer through the long tunnel ahead.
In spite of the high level of uncertainty that comes with a situation that is unique, attempts must be made to decipher what may lie ahead on the other side of the tunnel and prepare for it. In the case of Baltimore, it should be clear that the instinctive desire to return back to the status quo ante is not desirable and would be a great mistake. The crisis must be used as an opportunity for a major reset. That it coincides with elections makes a reset more possible and provides also a political dimension.
To be sure, the world is facing a global problem and Baltimore is only a tiny speck in this larger picture. What makes Baltimore's seemingly unique and exceptional status interesting is the fact that on a national scale it isn't all that exceptional upon closer inspection. Baltimore exhibits all the flaws that weaken the country as a whole, in some cases just more so. That is true for the mistrust in leadership, the general unwillingness to prepare for difficult times, the failure to use the boom to build reserves and the lack of a cohesive and commonly shared vision of where the journey should go. Even on an international scale, Baltimore is everywhere.
Applied to the corona crisis, precisely what makes our country more vulnerable than some others in this pandemic is in full display in Baltimore: namely that the country is divided, that government has been diminished for decades, that rich and poor have drifted way too far apart and that too many people have been left behind without health insurance, good care, good education, good qualification, good transportation or good access to the internet. Too many guns, too many people in prison. A volatile mix of deficiencies. In all this Baltimore is a petri dish for the country, for what may lie ahead and for what the challenges will be in the recovery . In short, Baltimore presents a great case study for where and why our society is so vulnerable to threats, whether it is an actual or a virtual virus pandemic or climate change. No longer is it enough to rest on past glory, neither in Baltimore nor in the nation. Yes, Baltimore has one of the bests hospitals in the world, yes Baltimore was a pioneer in railroads and streetcars but this is of no use when the poor don't have access to health care or when we let our transit infrastructure crumble. Yes, the US has the strongest and best equipped military and is a leader in IT, but it is of no help when modern wars are no longer fought with jets and tanks or when IT is beginning to hollow out our democracy or worse, is open to being hijacked by those who want to weaken us.
I am not trying to make this about politics or the campaign and its candidates, but I will mention Bernie Sanders, nevertheless, to make a bigger point. He has been speaking of our societal challenges and systemic shortcomings in all his speeches. Lately voters have flocked to safer shores, the disruptions that Sander's policies would bring seemed just too large. Taking on oil, pharma, hospitals, the car industry and the oligarchs of all ilks all at once in a "revolution", is seen by very many as too risky, as something that "the economy" could not survive. It is hard not to observe that the disruptions we now face in light of corona crisis are bigger than anything that Sanders has ever considered. While this crisis may not have been predictable (many did just that, though), the next big crisis, climate change is and was entirely predictable and here, too, we have to admit that the US is ill prepared.
Baltimore is so mired in basic survival questions, that climate change barely registers. Who can grouse over beef consumption when one lives in a food desert, who about recycling when trash is piling up all around, who about eroded streams and floods when some neighborhoods drown in blood, who about CO2 emissions of SUVs when the bus is routinely late?
We know that economic justice and environmental justice are not mutually exclusive but dependent on each other as Mr Sanders says or also Baltimore's local zero waste initiative. But in the daily grind of Baltimore politics, it still comes down to an either or. Unfortunately similar mechanics are now at work in the epidemic as well. Many just don't have the luxury to shelter in place. Sticking with usual patterns, it is predictable that those on the bottom rungs of the economy will fare not only worse in the epidemic but also in the recovery afterwards. A special emphasis has to be placed on not sticking with the usual patterns: Not to bail out the largest corporations first, not to give in to the best paid lobbyists and not to build future demand on hand-outs to those who already have.
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| Construction of affordable housing on Eutaw Street How much longer can they work? |
Some say that if the money to dampen the financial crisis would have gone to local businesses and local banks as well as the consumers directly damaged by these financial institutions instead of going to exactly those banks who caused the collapse in the first place, we would have a much more robust economy now. Iceland comes to mind, a tiny country for sure, but a big player in the financial melt-down of 2008, now a country much stronger and more resilient then before 2008.
When planning the medicine for this economic meltdown we witness now, the lessons from 2008 must be heeded. What is happening now is bigger than what happened then. Everything everyone in almost every country has to do now for health and life, is the opposite of what makes capitalism thrive:
Shrinkage instead of growth , restraint instead of consumption, shelter-in-place instead of hyper-mobility, local checkpoints instead of global connectivity. Factories, stores and offices are shutting down in rapid order across the world. Not for two weeks, some probably indefinitely. The nose dive of the stock market is just a a visible gauge for that.
Seen positively: This calculated shut down of the economy in favor of human life is a choice most countries have made by now. It is a unique achievement of global civilization over barbarism. Of course, there will soon come a point where the two lines of approach will intersect, i.e. when the supply chain will be so disrupted that shortages of essential goods will occur. In the area of medical supplies made in China this is already the case in some places. Baltimore's still existent manufacturing and the many new maker start-ups and edible community gardens and farms haven't reached a scale yet to offset the need for long distance travel of goods, but they point into the right direction. So does Baltimore Planning's identification of local resilience hubs in a Resilience Plan. (In a sign of lack of resilience, the website for the new Disaster Preparedness Plan of 2018 is shut down)
The shutdown of General Motors, Boeing, Volkswagen or Apple may look most impressive, but they won't be hit hardest. It will be the millions of small businesses that are threatened in their existence and with them their employees who can't recover when their workplace will never re-open. "Too big to fail" cannot be the guideline again. Instead it should be, how does a future resilient economy need to be structured? Already the government is in using federal resources to prop up the oil price in support of the more expensive domestic oil production from unsustainable shale. Instead, this should be the time to assist the many small businesses including start-ups of the future green economy and also transfer money directly to vulnerable affected populations. This is one point in the federal discussion right now that goes in the right direction. Stopping all evictions in Baltimore was a good step in the right direction.
Crisis can bring people together, if not physically, then at least mentally. But that isn't always what happens. Italians applauding their first responders and singing local songs on their balconies appears to be unattainable to us, not only for our lack of balconies. Baltimore can't even stop shooting in this emergency. This week, in the midst of our collective anxieties, a bus driver was shot by an irate rider. Yesterday someone shot with a semi automatic into a group of people in central Baltimore. We like to think of ourselves as coming together in crisis and often we do. But Baltimore is an indication that there is no guarantee for that.
A population that was sharply divided in "good" times can become even more sharply divided during an extended lock-down when real hardship will set in for many. How to support the large vulnerable populations in Baltimore's infamous "black butterfly" during this shut-down has to be carefully planned right now. Many do just that, but the lack of a basic social safety net to catch everyone makes this much more difficult here than in, say, Norway or, yes, China.
Without drastic measures, the divide will be even bigger on the other side of the epidemic when the battle will be about the economy, supplies and education. Politicians like to say that we are "all in this together." While this may be generally true for our bodies and their defenselessness against a new virus, it is certainly not true in the way the crisis affects different populations.
Where more affluent citizens will hunker down in their single family homes with yards, poorer renters often live in cramped quarters with shared stairways, hallways, elevators and some shared air conditioning vents. Where those who own a car can avoid close contact and still travel a distance to get to work, relatives, the grocery store or even medical testing, those who don't have a car need to use transit which will be increasingly sparse and even less reliable. Where better educated white collar workers may be able to work from home, others will pay the closure of workplaces with a total loss of income. Where more affluent households have broadband and plenty of computers and smart phones to stay in touch, vulnerable communities on the other side of the digital divide will remain cut off from online education and vital information. Where the insured can count on their doctors giving advice, the uninsured will continue to try to go to the always crowded emergency rooms. Where well paying jobs provide sick-leave, those in fast food or many other service professions will be tempted to go to work anyway since their employers dock their pay when they are sick. (An issue that Congress supposedly addressed, but details are still murky).
When everything that used to be true becomes unglued in a matter of days, social cohesion becomes a lifeline, a common set of values, essential. In the absence of it, even facts are in dispute, conspiracy theories thrive, and eventually even social unrest must be considered, should we get into a situation where health care will be overburdened and rationed even more than it already. Vulnerable populations then won't have access to the resources to protect themselves. The local and presidential elections could give the situation additional volatility.
Many in the always struggling vulnerable communities live day by day, "one day at a time", unable to think beyond the challenges further ahead, often in debt, mostly without savings. This understandable take on the world can't be a guide when it comes to "social distancing" over the long haul, i.e actual survival.
This seems to be the overall predicament, laden with risk but also with another chance for getting it right. This time! I will try to use this space as a place for a look ahead beyond what the daily news discuss, carried together from many sources around the world. There won't be easy answers. Yet, trying to decipher what the future will hold several months from now and what steps could be taken to make society more resilient is absolutely essential to master the many additional challenges that, no doubt, will lie ahead. The long view should also inform the elections from Mayor of Baltimore to President. We owe a better course to ourselves and even more to our children and grandchildren.
Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
Behave in such a way that a reasonable generalization of your action to a universal rule will lead to a benefit to a generic person under this universal rule. Always treat others as ends and not means. (Immanuel Kant, the Categorical Imperative)
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