Where have you lived in your life?
I grew up in the medium-sized town Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and I went to college in Iowa City, Iowa. I lived in college towns up until Minneapolis, as college towns are more pedestrian and have the additional cultural advantages. I lived in Chicago for a couple of years, but I didn’t really grow up in a big city. The thing that got to me first as a large city was Montreal. There’s something about Montreal: the subway and the streets full of people that became my ideal of a city. Then I went to Europe, and all the possibilities of what a city can be all came back to me. Over the last 10 years, Minneapolis has faced the same problems that other cities do. Sometimes the focus is on reducing the negatives rather than emphasizing the positives, like access to local businesses.
Why do you currently live in Minneapolis?
There are a lot of advantages. It’s a very green city, and I’m a five-minute walk from a lake that you can swim in during the summer and skate on during the winter. I like skiing, skating, and winter sports. My friends and family and my history are here; it’s my psychic city. I could move to Prague or Bologna, but we have coffee shops, bike trails, they’re slowing down the traffic, plus we have parks and green space. There are economic problems here with concentrations of poverty and sprawl out of control, but on the week-to-week level, city life here has improved.
What local issues and groups are you active in?
Here in Minneapolis we’re sort of blessed with a strong tradition of populist people speaking up. So whenever there’s a road widening, it’s not always stopped, but there’s a healthy debate. Today, they want to add another interchange to the highway. They’re going to widen the streets like it was in a corn field, instead of in a city. Despite Minneapolis’ progressive reputation, they haven’t been generous to their transit system. It’s a statewide thing, a lot of rural legislators that don’t understand why they should support light rail. It will be 50 years to the month since the streetcars disappeared, and they’ll be putting in light rail.
Your talk is called, “Falling In Love With Cities All Over Again.” Do you think we’ve fallen out of love with cities? Are we in America now in love with suburbs?
I think we’re falling back in love again, but cities for many years tried to justify themselves by becoming more suburban - you know, those turn of the century neighborhoods. When I moved into the Kingsfield neighborhood, people thought that this was a great neighborhood because there were no businesses here. Their ideal for what a great neighborhood was looked a lot like the suburbs, but I didn’t want to have to get in a car to do everything. Lately the neighborhood has come alive, with coffee shops and bookshops that have recently opened up. It’s kind of a flowering, but the prices are coming up too, which is the downside.
If you talk with Mayors today, they complain about state and federal policies that are harmful to cities, such as school funding mechanisms which, like Ohio’s, are based on property taxes and have been ruled unconstitutional and illegal. What would you suggest for city Mayors, and what can citizens do?
They are in a tough position. People leave the city for the suburbs because of property taxes. But there’s not a lot of public life or public space in the suburbs - that takes more tax revenue. It’s not something Mayors can do alone, but in Copenhagen, Denmark, they have a system called tax sharing. The wealthy northern suburbs share their taxes with the organic whole of the metropolitan area. You wouldn’t say “My leg is hurting, I’m going to cut it off.” When there are concentrations of poverty and areas aren’t doing well, then the suburbs don’t have the same level of prosperity of a region that is economically sound. You can’t say, “We’re here behind our gates and safe and sound,” because everyone has a stake in the entire region. Tax-based sharing on property taxes means the wealthier communities put money into a pool and the inner ring and blue collar suburbs benefit more than the inner city. Interestingly enough, it was a bill that was pushed through by the Republicans in the 1970’s, and the region is stronger as a whole because of it. Portland has done the growth boundary limit; there isn't free or cheap land on the perimeter that people can use. Thirty years ago in Montgomery County, Maryland, when a developer built a subdivision, they had to insure there was a certain number of low income housing, so there wouldn't be a tipping point with a lot of economically challenged people concentrated in one place. Mayors can’t enact these laws themselves, it entails working on a larger canvas. Portland has elected metropolitan government. Things like counties and cities are kind of artificial; one way to define them is to generate authentic neighborhoods within the regions. But there’s no neighborhood level or metropolitan level for government to operate at.
What can you suggest for a town like Cleveland that has great authentic neighborhoods, an overabundance of arts and culture and a super-low cost of living, but doesn’t seem to appreciate it or know what to do with it?
That's where the theme of my talk goes. Cities have to be proud of cities, and not apologetic because they're not a suburb; I've seen cities build a shopping mall in the middle of the city. Cleveland will fail miserably if it tries to become a suburb, but it can be a really good city. So if you're five-four, weigh 110 pounds and you want to be a linebacker, it won't work. Maybe you should be a ballet dancer. If there's a lot of excitement, cultural activity and places where urbanites can take a walk, problems like crime will go away, and reducing crime is the single most effective way to revitalize a city.
What are your thoughts on Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland, who is running for President in the Democratic party on a platform of peace and social justice?
You know, it’s really interesting because I was able to speak with him, and my wife and I were Kucinich supporters. He doesn’t have a chance to win and hasn’t from the beginning, just like Jesse Jackson in 1988, John McCain in 2000, and Jerry Brown in 1992. For some reason the media has never taken him seriously, and I think Howard Dean stole some of his thunder. Kucinich's Department of Peace is a wonderful concept, and his involvement with the Progressive Caucus to challenge the Heritage Foundation was really great. I think he’s been able to reach people and fire them up.
What about Nader?
This is not the year for Ralph Nader to run. We’ve seen what Bush is capable of. Look at Bush’s record on tax policies that overwhelmingly favor the wealthy; that’s going to hurt the cities. And Bush has not been positive about mass transit - he’s with the Texas oilmen, for chrissake! I’ve respected Ralph Nader for years, but this is not his year, 1996 was the year he should have run, because Clinton was a shoe-in. This is the year we have to be strategic in terms of civil liberties.
Many young people aspire to be writers. How should a writer live in the world today?
I think there are many different ways. This is not a culture that’s going to regard writers, so writers need to reconcile that they’re not going to have a fancy beach house and three sports cars in the garage. Writers need to be in the world. They should stick with it and subsidize their writing, even if it means washing windows and being a waitress.
We're looking forward to your talk in Cleveland.
I'm excited about coming to Cleveland. It sounds like one of the great American cities. You've got ethnic richness, a transit system, arts and culture. I can't wait.
Interview by Thomas Mulready (:divend:)