Quality Public Infrastructure

The second leg of the three-legged stool of our urban society

While there are other issues pertaining to the quality of life aspects of living in an urban area, there is basically a three legged stool, the top of which holds everything together as urban society. That stool consists of: affordable housing; quality public infrastructure, which includes public schools, convenient and affordable public transportation, as well as things like trash pickup, emergency response, the general bureaucracies that cities need to survive; and crime. This blog post is about that infrastructure.

Public Schools

Historically, urban public schools were the best public schools in the country. When my father began teaching in Farmington, CT in 1949, the principal of his school used to compare the schools in Farmington, with the schools in Hartford, with those schools being the standard to which Farmington schools needed to emulate. 

The principal, Irving A. Robbins, was a tough boss for the staff, and an even tougher old school disciplinarian for the students. His use of a leather strap was well known. He had been recruited out of the Hartford, CT public school system. The town was so satisfied with his performance, they voted him a bonus every year that he was principal, in addition to his salary. In 1959, they named the new junior high school after him. Robbins felt that his school, Noah Wallace School, came as close in quality of education as the schools in Hartford, with the resources at hand. The main reason the city schools were better, was they had the funding supplied by a very large tax base. Rural and suburban schools couldn’t compete. 

The city schools also were able to secure the talents of the best teachers money could buy. Cities also had the financial wherewithal to be able to offer specialized schools. There were schools that specialized in the arts: music, dance, theater, etc.. There were technical high schools where students concentrated on the trades: plumbing, electrical work, carpentry, culinary arts, etc.. There were also academic high schools. Washington, DC had four academic high schools. One being Dunbar High School, which in segregated DC, was the Black academic high school. Until the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown vs Board Of Education, which ordered that schools could not discriminate by race, the right decision by the way, Dunbar could boast that 99% of their graduates went on to college. Many attended the Ivy Leagues. Being a Southern city, Washington, DC had segregated neighborhoods, segregated theaters, segregated churches, and rather than just integrating their academic high schools after Brown, the “work around,” was to turn all public schools into neighborhood schools. Now you had good schools in the White parts of town, and not so good schools in the Black parts of town. Thus ended the academic high schools for the foreseeable future. Today, Dunbar is just another failing ghetto school, with a graduation rate below the national average. Less than 30% read at grade level, and about 10% are grade level in mathematics. That’s a far cry from a school in which 99% were accepted into college.    

Of course, some kids are not wired for academic work. They would rather work with their hands. There is nothing wrong with that. The skilled trades offer financial compensation on par with many so-called, white collar professional careers. Many pipefitters, electricians, and plumbers make six figure incomes.  Even the suburban schools when I was growing up had classes in automotive skills and work-study programs. We couldn’t afford to offer schools that were designed to specialize in the trades. The only one I knew of, was E.C. Goodwin Technical High School. The reason I knew about Goodwin Tech, was we played them in football. We didn’t have academic high schools either. We had what were called “Honors” programs. Today, you can’t have Honors programs. That’s considered elitist. Instead, we have Advanced Placement courses, which come with college credit; same difference, except for the college credit.  Besides one of the other legs of the stool already discussed, affordable housing, restoring quality public education, that serves the needs of the students and not the unionized teachers, would start to make living in the city desirable for the middle classes again. Most middle class families can not afford to send their kids to the toney, high-dollar private schools that cater to the upper classes. 

Washington, DC does offer some specialized public schools. For technical high schools, there is McKinley Technical High School. DC has three STEM high schools: BASIS High School, Benjamin Banneker High School, and Coolidge High School.  For arts and music, there is the Duke Ellington School Of The Arts, which is open by audition only. General education high schools make up the rest, and they are not very good. The problem is a ghetto culture that looks down on education. Doing well in school, means you are acting White. If we don’t change the culture, nothing will improve. The upper-middle-class and wealthy residents of the District will continue to send their kids to the best private schools in the area, and the kids in the ghetto will continue to get a ghetto education. As a side note, it’s not just cities. If you go to Appalachia, the same anti-education mindset culture has a home with poor Whites. If you do well in school, it means that you think you are better than everyone else. Change the culture, fix the schools, and you just might see an influx of the middle-classes back into the cities. 

The biggest obstacle to a quality urban public education is the Poverty, Grievance, and Victimhood Industrial Complex. Anything that reduces the number of “clients” for the Complex, is going to be fought tooth and nail by that “Industry.” There needs to be a constant supply of cannon fodder in order to self-perpetuate. Unfortunately, that is not going to change, until the citizenry finally says, enough is enough, and starts demanding tough changes. 

We need to have academic high schools with admission only by tough, quadruple-blind entrance examinations. We need to have schools for the arts, open by audition only for music students, and portfolio review for visual arts students. There is a great need for technical schools for those students that want to have careers in the hard trades like plumbing, electrical work, steam and pipe fitting, and HVAC, as well as robotics, as well as the soft trades like network architecture, computer programming, database management, computer repair, tailoring, and the culinary arts. Offer courses in these trades in the general education high schools, so that students can explore their talents and abilities, and then decide if they have the aptitude to succeed in these specialties. 

Starting in the first grade, bring back tracking. Different children have different abilities, and you don’t do the slow kids or the fast kids any favors, by teaching to the middle. The middle is the middle. A select segment of the fast kids can go on to honors classes. Those that are successful in the honors programs, can apply to the academic schools. The really good music students in the general education schools, can apply to, and audition for the specialized music schools, etc.. We should not let talent go to waste; Black or White, rich or poor, male or female, it doesn't matter. Talent is talent, and should be developed to its best potential. As we transition from an industrial based economy, to an information based economy, quality education is more important than ever. Quality education could help lure the middle classes back into the cities. 

Convenient and affordable public transportation 

People that live in cities, tend to use public transportation. A large percentage of them take the bus. Some do it for ideological reasons, but most do it out of necessity. The poor, the urban working classes and middle classes, often can not afford the costs associated with owning a privately owned vehicle. Plus, owning a car in the city is a pain in the neck. You have all the usual car expenses: fuel, routine maintenance, unexpected major repairs, registration fees, and insurance. You also have residential parking permits, parking space rentals, condo parking space purchases, and in DC an item called a Reciprocity Sticker, required of out of state residents living in the District. All these things cost money.

The public transportation system in the DC metropolitan area needs a major overhaul, especially the bus service. There are some bus lines that run almost 24/7. All bus lines need to run 24/7. As far as Metrorail, if it can’t run trains 24/7, they should do what Berlin, Germany does. When the rail system shuts down for the night, buses take over the same routes until the rail system opens back up in the morning. If DC did this, Metro could shut down at 10:30 PM, get all the rail maintenance taken care of, and then open back up at 5 AM. You could call them the after hours shuttles. The buses would only stop at the Metro stations, just like the trains They would also have the same designation as the Metrorail lines: Red Line bus, Green Line bus, Blue Line bus, etc.. Metrorail runs shuttles, when they are closing a certain station or group of stations. Providing 24 hour public transportation, means that the majority of the residents in a city, won’t have the need for a privately owned vehicle. Taking away the cost of having to own a vehicle might encourage the working and middle classes to move back into the cities. Even if you are a shift worker who can’t work from home, you can get around the city at all hours, conveniently and cost effectively. 

For those that can work from home, why not have your home be in the city? You like the restaurants, the street fairs, the clubs, the symphony, etc. Why commute from the suburbs to your office, and then go home, pick up the family, and head back into the city for a show? If you live in the city, and your work from home space is on the 5th floor, and you take the elevator to the second floor a couple of times per day for meetings, you are already halfway there. Plus, you don’t risk a DUI by driving back to the suburbs after a night of imbibing in the clubs. 

Public works

Like the suburbs and rural areas, cities have their own infrastructures. Infrastructures need to be maintained. There are roads to pave, potholes to fill, sidewalks to fix, and a host of a lot more things that need to get done. Hello trash pickup anyone? People expect quality public services. That’s why they pay taxes. While I will discuss crime in another post, cities need  good, strong police forces that will enforce the law in a professional manner.

If you have a heart attack, you want competent EMTs showing up in a timely fashion. Most cities have EMTs and paramedics on their payrolls. That is a good thing. We need more of them. However, that costs money. If you can offer quality public services commensurate with the tax bill, most people will be satisfied. Also, when you have to deal with the municipal government agencies, like the Department Of Motor Vehicles, it shouldn’t be on par with having a root canal done without novocaine. There would be a lot less demand for facilitators and expediters too. You shouldn’t have to hire someone who knows the bureaucracy inside out and backwards, to get things like building permits. 

Societies can not function without governments. You have to have rules that people follow, that benefit all. There have to be people that make sure everyone follows those rules. The problem is, most city governments today, are bloated and incompetent. Take a look around in the poor sections of our cities. You will see the results of incompetent city government. Back in the 1950s/1960s, you had a mass exodus of the middle-classes to the suburbs. It wasn’t just White flight. It was also Black flight. Urbanists need to think of ways to bring back a good, strong urban-middle-class. You can’t just have the wealthy and the poor.