Urbanism, Too, Has a White Dude Problem
I’ve been a follower of a podcast called The War on Cars (henceforth TWOC) since early 2019. Of course it resonated with me, as I’ve advocated all my life to have less space for cars and less sprawl. I was even a monthly donor to their Patreon until earlier this year! I could link to them, but I don’t want to. Sorry, not sorry. This podcast is easy enough to find on Spotify and Apple Podcasts though. You can listen to this podcast yourself and follow the social media of any or all of the three hosts and judge for yourself how much I got right or wrong.
Over time as I listened, I got the impression that they wholeheartedly bought into the notion that both Republicans and Democrats were the same when it comes to not caring about reducing VMT, not caring about increasing the use of buses and trains, etc., and that Democrats will only ever elevate electric cars and never anything else. The latter is true to an extent, but TWOC vastly overestimates that extent. The most productive conversations I’ve ever had on these issues have been with “normie” Democrats. But I understand, I don’t have receipts to show for that assertion. So let’s pivot to the Virginia State Senate, where Democrats held their ground and did NOT suspend the gas tax because they understood that doing so would harm bus riders. Was there backlash? Probably, but I’m not hearing any suburbanites complaining about it at the kitchen table.
All sorts of small steps forward are happening throughout the USA when it comes to transit oriented development/moving away from car culture. We have a Train Guy as President. He picked a Bus Girl as his VP, and it’s no secret that I stan her. And he picked a Train Guy as his Transportation Secretary, one whose signature accomplishment as the Mayor of South Bend was to make over the downtown so it would be designed for people over cars. Were the TWOC people aware of ANY of this in early 2021 when they were discussing Mayor Pete’s appointment to Secretary Pete? Nope. All they knew was that he was gay and that he worked in the military and the private sector and those were both Bad Things. (I’m not linking to the episode, but you should be able to find it easily enough if you go on Spotify or Apple podcasts.) This was the discourse about Secretary Pete on most of Kamala Harris’ internet, actually. There was a whole cadre of very online urbanists (I am qwhite ready to make a guess what their demographics were) convinced that Secretary Buttigieg intended to promote the Hyperloop at the expense of public transit, because something something capitalism. Why let actual records get in the way of vibes?
TWOC has, rightly, heaped praise on Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris on its show. Its hosts have also (rightly) praised Mayor Valérie Plante of Montreal. Their silence on the good things said and done by Mayor London Breed of San Francisco, Mayor LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans, Mayor Ken Welch of St. Petersburg, Florida, and others, however, is deafening. Guess what these mayors have in common.
That brings me to the Twitter interaction I had yesterday with one of the hosts of The War on Cars. One of the hosts made a tweet along the lines of, “Look at the awesome work Mayors Hidalgo, Plante, Colau, and Wu are doing! I wonder what they have in common…” (they’re women, and I suppose I should be grateful that he mentioned one East Asian lady among all the white women he focuses on) I suppose he was expecting feminist cookies. I saw one commenter in that thread say, “I wish SF would have this same energy” which was a not-so-subtle and entirely uncalled for swipe at Mayor Breed, so I chose violence. By that, I mean, I replied to that account by pointing out that Mayor Breed has been thoroughly endorsed by YIMBY Action SF, Matt Haney, and Scott Wiener. I dropped receipt after receipt on Mayor Breed’s credentials, and brought up the other Black mayors I mentioned previously. I QT’ed TWOC’s host and said something along the lines of, “Mayors Breed, Cantrell, and Welch are pretty dang awesome too, but their good work never gets mentioned. I can’t qwhite put my finger on why.” I was met with derision from other Twitter users, and TWOC’s host up and blocked me rather than respond to the points I raised.
Outside this interaction, you’ll notice that Urbanist Twitter LOVES Scott Wiener and Matt Haney, but loathes London Breed, even though both men that they swoon over very regularly uplift Mayor Breed’s credentials. If that’s not naked misogynoir, I don’t know what is.
I suppose the host from TWOC wanted feminist cookies for his original tweet, and he was mad as hell that I didn’t respond with that, but instead with pushback. No doubt he got feminist cookies from other people. I’ve had interactions like this with any number of men who consider themselves progressive. They expect feminist cookies for what they think is their uplifting of women, and get angry and defensive or they shut down at any pushback.
Is it the end of the world that one of the hosts of TWOC blocked me on Twitter? No, I suppose not. In the most recent episode of TWOC I listened to, the hosts were lamenting that Republicans had turned cars into a culture war issue and…in what world is this not a welcome development???? This is the perfect opportunity to turn the Democratic Party into the pro-TOD party, the same way reproductive rights advocates managed to turn the Democratic Party into the party of abortion rights! And I really don’t need to listen to the umpteenth mediocre white urbanist dude rant about another mediocre white cager dude. I can summarize everything wrong with Elon Musk’s Hyperloop too, and I bet dollars to donuts I can do so a lot more eloquently.
What’s the TLDR of this stream of consciousness? I suppose it’s that the urbanist movement, like ALL other movements, needs to do a much better job listening to feedback from marginalized groups, and not pat its own back because it elevates a few exceptional women. Perhaps it’s that it needs to do a better job looking at what people actually say and do instead of the vibes they give off, whose perception is very much a product of unconscious bias.
What’s happening to London Breed is extremely similar to what went down with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, on a side note. So maybe we’ll be looking at Senator Breed sooner rather than later!