Thoughts on Reforming Our Streets - and Other Things
Generally speaking, our cities have not been designed for the convenience of the people who live there. They have been designed to make rich people richer.
This presents some challenges for people, like me, who are trying to make our streets safe, useful, and pleasant for everybody, not just rich people.
In the middle are the politicians, whose main job is to mediate between the rich and the hoi poloi. They used to have a side job of leading, and there have been some refreshing signs of actual leadership lately, but overall survival by triangulation still seems to be the basic approach.
If you are a policy person in this political schema, the simplest way to get things done is to become a servant of the rich. This will, of course, affect your work product in a variety of ways, but historically it was the only way, and if you admire the work of people like Michelangelo, you are a beneficiary of this system.
Rittenhouse Square was also a product of this system, as duly modernized to fit a more democratic society where money was not so tightly concentrated at the top as it was in the time of Pope Julius II.
Still, there is the lingering thought that policy, in a democratic society, should be able to speak for itself. That is simply not the way it works. In today's world, if you build a better mousetrap, you don't wait for the world to beat a path to your door. You have to go out and sell it.
You might think that the policy entrepreneur could go and knock on the doors of politicians and sell them a policy or two. Again, that's not the way it works. Here, and now, all politics are interest-group politics, and every idea is a commodity looking for an interest group to peddle it to the politicians.
We're a long way from the Romantic ideal, expressed by John Keats, that a thing of beauty is a joy forever:
And now, at once adventuresome, I send / My herald thought into a wilderness: / There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress / My uncertain path with green, that I may speed / Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.
If you have ideas about how to improve things, do not try to do it on your own. Find some like-minded people, work with them, build a constituency, find politicians open to your ideas, try to find a few rich people who may be willing to support you if it's convenient - and then expect a long, hard struggle, prepare to watch your best ideas deformed almost beyond recognition, and recognize that you will lose more often than you win. The important thing - the prize - is to win in the end.
I was fortunate to find, in the endeavors that I remember fondly, a few colleagues, often very different people from me, where the group dynamic proceeded to a deeper, more complex, and astonishingly strong bond that held us together in difficult times, and in less difficult times allowed us to flourish in startling and often new ways.
What Victory Feels Like for Me
I'm sitting in my armchair at the end of the day. The yellow and pink and sometimes red of the sunset sky is slowly fading, and the living room is quietly filling with blue light. Inside my body there is a warm glow. As I unwind from the challenges of the day, I look back and feel that I have probably accomplished something. Will anything come of all this work? I hope so.
I've found that actual victory - passage of legislation, winning an election - can be somewhat anticlimactic. I do know the victories are important, and I enjoy sharing them with friends. But what gets me up in the morning are those quiet moments of satisfaction.
See also Sandy's Book, For Athena, Ron DeSantis Comes to Philly, Rebecca Rhynhart for Mayor, Hector at Troy, Some Things Actually Get Better.
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