Month: March 2018

Lorenzo Dajlani

Walkability Essay

Prof. Singleton.

3/18/2018

Walkability Essay

Walking down the street, a pulse of red and blue light blasts blindingly from behind, then the sirens come, and out of nowhere, you’re under arrest! So sudden, so violent, unexpected; this is the reality that minorities, mainly African Americans, have faced, and continue to face today. Police officers are meant to protect citizens from danger, and subdue criminals, “So why are they arresting innocent people?” one might ask, and it is plain to see that police officers, back then, and even today, tend to profile people based on their appearance. This is a real issue in the United States; this overbearing fear of being “booked” and beaten by those meant to protect individuals is arguably one of the most severe threats to walkability in our civilization. Although this issue is one of a very large scale, being continent-wide, there are many ways to fix the way police handle their jobs against those on public streets, therefore helping improve walkability in neighborhoods. Some methods of making such improvements are having officers go through rigorous training to suppress discrimination, and having more police departments around the less-patrolled areas.

In order to explain how anti-discrimination training and increasing the police force would improve walkability, we first need to obtain a firm understanding of what walkability is. Walkability is the amount of freedom an individual is allowed when, and the ease of, walking through a town, city, neighborhood, or any other type of populated area. Examples of things that would reduce the walkability of a place are events such as gang fights, terrorist threats, unlit, dangerous streets, and unfriendly neighbors; overall a place where going out would endanger the walker. On the other hand, an area with good walkability has adequate safety measures; maybe police patrolling, welcoming neighbors, many shops and places where people can interact and different cultures diffuse, and overall clean, community-driven environments. In the case of  this paper, walkability is reduced by violent, discriminatory officers that make the streets dangerous and put people’s minds at unrest, while officers that are kind to civilians, and handle crimes in civilized ways with no more than necessary force, leads to walkability becoming stronger.

Unfortunate for many areas of America, there are not enough “cops” that take consideration when performing their duties, and often go overboard with their authority, instead using their position with malice in order to abuse their power over others due to personal beliefs. One such case is the one of Mike Brown, a teenager who was shot by Darren Wilson. George Lipsitz, a professor of black studies and sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, states in his article, From Plessy to Ferguson, that police officers in the U.S. can get away with murder as long as they can make up a story of how they were defending themselves, and that racism and prejudice allow more leniency toward killing a person of color than anyone else (Lipsitz Para 1&2). I agree with Professor Lipsitz in that police officers often feel like they can, and actually do use over-the-top means to subdue criminals, and too often it is African Americans who suffer this activity. This unforgivable way of thought can be fixed very easily; a good way to get police officers to see everyone as equals is to have them work with officers of different races, creeds, religions and so on, in order to expose them to different perspectives in life and  broaden their views to see everyone as on even ground in the eyes of the law. Similar to choosing a jury in court, police officers should be thoroughly tested before being hired to make sure they hold no prejudices and no group-targeted ill wills before they are placed in a position of power over them.

On the topic of hiring officers, another good way to raise walkability is to place more officers in places where they lack numbers, for instance, my neighborhood has two police departments within ten blocks of it, and while it is not the main reason for it, my neighborhood also happens to be very walkable; people wave to officers, police cars do not slow to leer at pedestrians, and overall they seem to be just like other people, only in suits and with a badge. One of the main issues with officers, beside prejudices, is how they are perceived. Officers are usually rarely seen in the more remote areas of a population. Suburbs are a good example of this phenomena; often there will be only a sheriff to handle the troubles of a suburban complex, and while this is seen as a substantial amount of law enforcement for such a low-population area, it causes people to form opinions of law enforcement based on that one individual, in addition to that one person not being able to interact with the entire community as they have other duties to attend to. Meanwhile, in cities, law enforcement is spread throughout widely, and because of this people have more interaction with officers and begins to see them not as monsters, but as what they are; people just like them assigned to keep the peace. A lack of officers leads to rumors and speculation, while daily friendly interaction with them puts those rumors to rest and encourages people to challenge what media conveys as the norm for a person of the law. As a last example to cement this argument of hiring more officers, Brent Staples, an author with a Ph.D from the University of Chicago, wrote in his article Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space the following; “-in Chester, Pennsylvania, the small, angry industrial town here I came of age in the 1960s-”, this quote being a part of his explanation of how he remembers reaching maturity, he inadvertently opens a portal to his past and shows the reader a small town full of gang fights, knife fights, shootings and murders; happenings which all severely destroy walkability, and ruin any sense of community (Staples 1). It is in places like these where law enforcement is most needed, and would benefit a great number of people by limiting the amount of violent outbursts that occur, whether it is through arrests or through patrols deterring offensive acts.

There are, of course, those who disagree with embolstering law enforcement in the ways described above. One might argue that we need less police officers because they are inherently abusive, and cause unease and panic within communities, having people second-guess every action to attempt to avoid an unjustified arrest. As well, others may also argue that filtering out officers more harshly based on prejudices will lead to law enforcement being virtually non-existent as many officers hold beliefs against one group of people that they do not hold against others. The problem with these refusals of the stated points is that one would fix the other; if police officers grow sparse due to how few people are truly unbiased against races, more police stations may be opened to increase the number of good-natured police. Conversely, if people are worried about the new police officers only adding to the chaos and nervousness of everyday pedestrians, this issue could be easily remedied by having police, as stated at the beginning, go through training on how to be more friendly, approachable, and fair to everyday citizens, which would cement a positive relationship with law enforcement and make them one step closer to being a perfect piece of the puzzle that is having a walkable area. As a personal anecdote, one of my walks consisted of a short trip around my neighborhood, followed by a short trip through Manhattan, in this “weekly walk”, I had noticed that my neighborhood, with its two police stations, seemed rather peaceful and timid in comparison to some other ones I’ve been to, while Manhattan was absolutely gorgeous; there were many more police units than where I live but the streets were ordered, people walked in multitudes of single file lines, and there were seldom any conflicts, meanwhile at home there are still muggings every once in a while (Dajlani 2-6-18).

In conclusion, in order to increase walkability there are countless things we need to fix and reform. A good place to start would be law enforcement, because they are the backbone of peace and security around any area with any amounts of people. Though police officers are often prejudiced and act different based on the race of the person they are interacting with, they are necessary to maintaining order, and as a community we need to push to make sure these people in charge of our well being are selected from the fairest, most reasonable groups of individuals in order to secure a walkable, interactive community. But in addition to stricter selection of those who protect us, we need more facilities to aid these people in aiding us, to train them to be the best they can be, and to encourage harmony between authority and citizens, not chaos and mistrust; this is what will give us walkability in areas deemed dangerous or unsafe.

 

Works Cited

Lipsitz, G. “From Plessy to Ferguson.” Cultural Critique, vol. 90 no.1, 2015, pp. 119-139. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article586903.

Staples, B. “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space” Harper’s 1987. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u8A0M14PjG8ddx8wqbMgX0MqlaRi_EdJ/view

Dajlani, L. “Hoodology 2-6-18 Weekly Walk” [email protected]. Feb 6, 2018.

https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/englishspring2018blog222135/?p=6

Brent Staples’ Just Walk On By: Black Men and Public Space

The second paragraph of this essay on how African Americans are affected by and viewed because of prejudices struck a chord within me. Staples writes of how he felt dismayed and changed by his experience many years ago. The last few sentences, in particular, seemed to convey a deep message about the experiences of minorities in large cities. During the end of the paragraph, Staples speaks to the reader of his realization that he had ‘inherited’ the ability to affect the streets in an “ugly way”. What he means by this is that his mere appearance would put off white people, that upon sighting a black man at night, they would assume he was just another mugger from nearby ghettos, that they would react violently and had to be avoided of all costs. Because of this understanding Staples derived from the encounter, he then states “I soon gathered that being perceived as dangerous is a hazard in itself. I only needed to turn a corner into a dicey situation, or crowd some frightened, armed person in a foyer somewhere, or make an errant move after being pulled over by a policeman.” (Staples, P.1). In this quote he explains that he is aware of himself being perceived as a dangerous individual, and he knows the reason is his skin color, so because of this he has to watch out for his own safety to avoid cornering someone, making them feel uncomfortable, or giving cops a reason to use violence. The summary of this paragraph is of his unfair treatment and how he has to metaphorically dance around people in order to preserve his health, because any bad encounter could be his last.

Jane Jacobs conveys to us a very interesting story on how city streets seem to be healthier in general for the public than projects or suburbs. In her story she conveys ideas of how city streets have people loitering on steps, shopkeepers glancing about streets, and multitudes of other people generally being active among the roads. However, Jacobs indirectly lampoons the projects, making statements on their anti-social habit forming nature. In her arguments in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs, to paraphrase, says “Open, grassy parks and physically small, private complexes encourage bullying” (Jacobs P.78). This argument correlates with Lauren Elkin’s tale of life between the city and suburbia, connecting with Jacobs on the idea that suburbs offer too much space between people; a far-too-great disconnection from each other in comparison to the ‘togetherness’ and tight-knit community feeling that city life provides. Elkin mentions a brief word of how street performers dressing at Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are leagues scarier than the older days when religious lunatics would scream of eternal damnation. This small anecdote could be interpreted as safety being easier to achieve with the known dangers, which would be a religious fanatic, than it would be with the unpredictable people who stand on streets in character costumes, their intentions and identities unclear. Overall, both speak of how suburbia and projects isolate people from each other, while cities encourage a diffusion of interaction and diversity to expose people to one another, dispelling rumors and stereotypes as people could see for themselves the behavior or those they might have once been prejudiced again.

Boy am I happy I got up very early today! I fell asleep on the train and rocketed past 23rd street while riding the R train! Imagine my shock when I ended up on 14th street, an alien station to me. For the life of me, I could not figure out where the other platform entrance was to catch a train back, so I opened up Google Maps and saw that Baruch College Vertical Campus was only a couple of blocks off. “Whatever, I could use the wake-up walk”, I thought to myself, starting off toward the school. On the way I saw some stores I had never seen before, granted, I was too tired to remember any of them, but there were plenty of shops wedged tightly in between bigger businesses. There was a pretty interesting triangular plaza about halfway through the walk, I thought it was neat how the city constructors thought to add a small, open space to provide some relief from the crowding of the city. Once I recognized the familiar fast-food chains such as McDonalds, among other stores, I quickly found the Vertical Campus entrance and made my way up, chatting about miscellaneous stuff with Michael as we waited for class to start.

I had a pretty rough start on this week. After some digging I realized I had started falling behind on classes and studying. It felt like a fog was circling around me, not exactly choking, though it did stress me out. I decided to go for a walk down a familiar road to clear my head, down 67th Avenue to relax a bit and lose myself in the neighborhood. I was stricken by the amount of time that had passed since I last walked down this way, I saw changes that must have taken place over the past eight months, but seemed like just days to me. The sidewalk was no longer split on the side by a patch of grass, rather it was filled in with cement. My middle school seemed different somehow; I couldn’t put my finger on it but there seemed to be new life breathed into it. On the way across the boulevard, I was reminded of the Barnes and Nobles store, and how it was replaced with the mega-mart that is Target. It saddened me a little to have seen the small store be run out and instead replaced with a Target, but I guess that’s how business works, out with the old and in with the new. I went home after a while of being burdened by boredom, deciding I had had a nice trip and was ready to start catching up.