Put a Made in America Sticker on our Spaces.

Put a Made in America Sticker on our Spaces.

After reading this week’s texts I began to analyze what I thought spatial justice was and in doing so I had to step back and try to figure out why it is unjust, because no one talks about injustices if there are none. 

After Tuesday’s class it seems to me that the big two injustices is with getting to the city and space within the city. 

So first why go to the city? Why do we need to go to these large metropolises that are so far from our home that it becomes an injustice if we can’t? Well as far as I can tell it’s so people can go to work to provide for their family.  

Why are all the jobs in the city and not where we the workers inhabit? Well as far as I can tell it’s because we have a globalized economy where it is cheaper to have what I am going to call “point cities” (cities that you can see as a point when looking on a map of the whole country) that can liaison for a whole region of the country such as Chicago, NY, or LA.

So if we think back to the Idea of spatial justice for a moment we can understand that from a physical point of view there is not enough acreage in these cities for everyone that these cities try to reach from surrounding areas to occupy in their boundary.

Therefor in order to get the physical acreage to have spatial justice we need to break away from “point cities” and create communities where the people are, which implies that we need to break away from so much globalization.  I personally have seen these negative impacts from globalization with the passing of the NAFTA bill where my father lost his local job when it moved to Mexico and now has to wake up at 4:00 am to get to work because it is so far away from our homestead.

If jobs do move closer to home and create smaller, close knit communities it is going to grow the middle class and decrease economical segregation, increase knowledge of the fellow community members (which I believe will solve lots of the social issues like the ones brought up by black lives matter because the governing body will be more in tune with the community and less globalized), and with the increased understanding of community needs spaces can be purchased by local government and everyone in that community can have access to it.

Andy Griffin Show (ex. of a socially knowledgeable community)

We continuously use examples of historic public markets as reasons we all need and have the right to access the city but with those historic markets come an intimate knowledge of the community and the ideas for spaces that come from the community it serves which is missing in today’s globalized society. It appears to me that globalism not capitalism is the problem that is creating so much injustice here in America.  I also feel though that some globalization in still good but it needs to be kept in check.  This allows people from around the country to choose what type of community they want to belong to creating diversity in our cities and in our types of cities. Giving people a choice in the way the seek the American dream.