Last night I went to my friends’ dorm to have a little break from my busy week. I was talking to one of them when the other mentioned how concerned she was because the raising of levels of delinquency in her hometown Texarkana, Texas. I immediately answered, without thinking much, that it means that her town was becoming a bigger city, and that is what this change brings. The topic ended there, and I went back to my room to finish my homework.
Today in my Public Finance class, in the middle of a deep lecture about the government role, my professor mentioned the topic of the Trump’s wall to stop the entrance of the ‘bad hombres.’ And I remembered my conversation last night and started thinking of why all that irrational scared of things that, good or bad, developing brings to our society. I am talking about this because I think it is a losing battle. It is not worth to be opposed to progress because early or later it is going to happen. It is in our hands to act before or immediately when these ‘side effects’ that improvement creates.
The South of the United States is not growing with the idea of global city in their minds. I have noticed something in every city I have been in the South, all of them are being built around automobiles. Everywhere you go has the most monstrous highways and automobile roads. Every small town has the road system of a the most important cities of every country, even when every edification is miles apart from the other one. To have a car is almost an obligation if you want to live in this part of the country, otherwise you cannot go anywhere.
Comparing the southern cities to other urban sectors in other countries, where everything their people need is within walking distance, the south is not preparing their citizens to grow together. One can add this to the causes of obesity, and why this country is so divided and nobody gets together anymore.
Delinquency is a side effect of the fast progress. When cities have disorganized expansion things like crime appear. When people grow, fast people get robbed more, there are more murders, there are more homeless on the street. It is easy to understand if people want to prevent these things from coming to their towns. But as one time Hector Abad Gomez, a Colombian medical doctor, university professor, and activist said: “The best way to eradicate illnesses is with to prevent them to happen.” It saves lives and reduces costs, and it works for more things than just medicine. All these problems are not new, all of them are happening in every big city around the world. Most of them have solutions too. Why don’t prepare our towns for these?
United States, and the whole world, need to start building their cities thinking about their habitants. You cannot stop progress, so why don’t we bullet proof our cities? How can we defeat crime before it is a social problem? Economist suggest that we should bring more public goods into the cities. Then, let motivate those governing to build parks, sideways, libraries, bicycle roads. Let’s create a public transportation system, and use it. Trump promised that he was going to update the infrastructure. Why don’t we instead of building a wall we build places were people have to meet with each other? Why don’t we ask for places were all the cultures in these country can be together and finally be that one country that we all want to be?
Ted Talks related to the topic:
Aziza Chouni: How I brought a river, and my city, back to life
Alison Killing: There’s a better way to die, and architecture can help
Enrique Peñalosa: Why buses represent democracy in action
