Spatial Equity: Keeping the poor in check

Soja’s “The City and Spatial Justice” discusses the Los Angeles MTA proposal of a multi-billion dollar rail system that would primarily serve the wealthy portion of town. The proposal neglected the “more urgent needs of the inner city working poor” by limiting their access to public transportation. The courts shot the proposal down and demanded that the MTA prioritize improving the system upon which the economically challenged so heavily rely over improving the lives of those that seem to already have more than they need.

I argue that this demonstration of ‘spatial justice’ not only maintains a broken economical system, but further promotes class division with a dependence on the wealthy within our cities. Essentially, public transportation and spatial equity limit localized communities by keeping the poor dependent on the rich.

Riding the bus from a localized community to a wealthy urban core promotes low wage jobs and keeps an entire population in poverty. By eliminating/reducing public access to these ‘rich’ areas of the city, citizens are forced to focus on their own neighborhoods, potentially seeing opportunities for business growth and job development in one’s own block (as opposed to riding the bus up to clean Mr. and Mrs. Whoever’s 12,000/ month flat and being paid $6.50 to do so). By forcibly limiting access, going against the spatial justice discussed by Soja, individuals will focus on their own immediate community needs and realize their false dependence on the rich.

As this plan begins to play out, wealthy communities will surely see an immediate collapse of the system with which they are all too comfortable. The system that allowed them to trap an entire population through their wealth will cease to exist when they are forced to find alternate labor sources or pay attention the needs of the poorer population. The wealthiest people that run our cities will soon realize that change is the only answer. Is this not a better, more effective form of protest? That last thing the rich want is to see the marginalized populations become successful.

Public transportation and spatial equity only feed into and promote a corrupt system that thrives on inequality.