this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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it'll be fixed after decolonization
These urbanism channels just preach supply side Reaganomics, which itself only increases gentrification and displacement because housing/land is commodified in a market.
Europeans cities like Amsterdam were built through Colonialism and getting people around the world hooked on opium. The difference between the Euros and the Settler cities is that the Euros don't want to trash their own land, while the Settler states are trashing someone else's for maximum profitability. Countries like Switzerland built really nice train networks off of centuries of banking for empires. Their money comes from this so they don't need to trash the land for profit as in the US and Canada.
NJBs isn't as much of a Neoliberal dork as Oh the Urbanity or Strong Towns, but still there is zero connection with Colonialism in discussing the settler and colonizer creation of space. Relevant paper on gentrification in settler states: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/918979
Like so much of the shape of cities in "North America" is due to Colonialism in the form of land expropriation, racial segregation and casting, and making maximum money from workers in the form of rent, transportation, and food costs. Marxist Geography has pretty good theories on this stuff, the post I linked criticizes the field of study for its failure to address the specifics of Colonialism in city-building.
But yeah as long as Settlers rule over this land we'll have deadly streets, food deserts, and fossil fuel reliance.
what does this mean? like how do you propose we just "decolonize" the united states?? do you mean decolonize it of cars??
Probably something like giving back land to native Americans, paying them reparations. Paying reparations to descendants of slaves. Ending systemic racism. Paying reparations to countries the US bombed or suffered CIA intervention. Demilitarizing the US.
It's not just giving land back and reparations. It is the dissolution of the settler state. Americans will not have a state for themselves. They will become citizens of a Decolonial state.
I agree that all those things are good and should be something to work towards, but the word "decolonize" implies people leaving, perhaps by force. That's just a surface level vibe though. I also don't think those things will inherently fix the infrastructure problem in America - I think that's firmly in the capitalism circle of issues. Yes there's intersectionality, but until companies aren't allowed as strong a hold on the public transportation sector, I don't think much will change.
I thought this was an interesting video on the history of Amtrak, but I'm sure you can find the same information elsewhere. Until public transportation is really allowed to thrive nothing will change. https://youtu.be/von_IMi97-w
I think NJB's take is pessimistic, but unfortunately also on the side of realism. Just like how guns have infiltrated American culture and there's no good way to put the genie back in the bottle; we have to work with what we've got. It sucks for the people who can't afford to move, but for those who can there are places without the issues America has grown up with. I think that's all NJB is saying.
It doesn't. Colonizers have made up this rhetoric as a boogyman, because they displaced people by force to create their colonies. If you don't like the idea of indigenous populations controlling their territories again, you can leave voluntarily. Many cases of Decolonization this has happened, because they couldn't accept not owning all the property, but in partial de-colonized countries like South Africa, they mostly stayed because they got to keep their stolen property. This is why the EFF is getting popular because they want to redistribute the concentrated wealth in the hands of the mostly white settler, bourgeoisie.
Mind you, Colonization is constantly, habitually, force relocating indigenous, racialized, and poor peoples (reservations, terminations, condemnations, and gentrifications). Now we might have to relocate people into more efficient communities, for all of our sake, but there is no need to move them to another continent. They just need to accept that most land will become commons under indigenous stewardship. Most biodiversity is on indigenous territory, the colonial system has proven itself incapable of stewarding the lands.
I'm 100% down for efficient communities run like actual communities. If the land is commons and everyone can use it, instead of such a strong focus on personal property, that could become an incredible thing. Infrastructure could become much more human-forward, and homelessness would likely dissappear. Local gardens and food areas would also likely be a priority. So if that's what decolonizing means, I can appreciate it.
I'm just saying that's not what the word "decolonize" sounds like to people like me who don't know what it fully means, and perhaps a better word should be used.
To me it sounds like moving people out that shouldn't be there, or weren't there when the colonizing happened. Where I live most people don't own property anyways (I certainly don't), so that would mean displacing poor people and mostly POC with very little money. I do think there should be reparations but "decolonizing" by transferring ownership is one thing, making people leave so they have full control of the land like they used to is another. I don't have the answers but doing the same thing to innocent people that was done to innocent people in the past isn't the right one, in my opinion. It just perpetuates the cycle.
I'm super fucking down for transferring ownership from landlords to people actually living on the land. But with how America has evolved, most of those people are not indigenous people.
Even looking up what the word means, it's complicated and doesn't give straightforward answers as to what it may mean to you and the person I initially asked.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decolonization
Why do you think Liberal American Wikipedia would have a genuine, Marxist definition of Decolonization? Colonization is the reason why Liberal American definitions are the first thing you think of and seek out. America has manufactured its demographics that favor white settlers, most states were founded with equal to indigenous majority but they weren't considered citizens and the settlers violently expropriated land in self organized, private, and state ventures. America continues to make it seem like indigenous people no longer exist. It's not a coincidence that Liberal American definitions of Decolonization feed into fascist fears of "White Genocide" and "Great Replacement Theory". Did you know that the Bolshevik revolution kicking out German and Polish bourgeois colonizers of what is now Belarus and Ukraine by Slavic and Jewish Communists is what inspired fears of a "Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy to eliminate 'Aryan' dominance"? Doesn't that sound familiar.
Sovereignty over the land will be entirely in indigenous hands. Americans will have rights as citizens such as democratic control over their communities but they will no longer have political control over land in general as they do under the American state.
Indigeneity is not a racial category, nor is colonizer, it is a political category in the national form. The indigenous nations still exist and still have claim to the territories we are settled on. The Black nation has a right to self determination from American rule. This is Decolonization. We will not change the definition. We should never give way to Liberal Colonizer definitions.
This is the same cognitive dissonance surrounding ideas of Communism meaning taking all your stuff and giving everyone exactly the same amount of food. It's them applying idealism to our scientific cause because idealism is the only way they can justify keeping their "so-called primitive accumulation" which Marx sarcastically defined in mockery of Liberal apologists of private property.
Decolonization is not a metaphor.
Probably of genocidal white supremacists and their legacies.