America's Problem: Suburbia

With ever-rising gas prices and my long search for the best place for me to live, the discussion of suburbs, inner-city neighborhoods, gentrification, and public transit is never far from my mind. Today I looked up some info about Montclair, NJ, because a friend recommended it as a solid middle class town with a substantial young population (at Montclair State University) and proximity to New York City.

In the Wikipedia article I found this interesting tidbit:

After a referendum held on February 21, 1894, Montclair was reincorporated as a Town, effective February 24, 1894.[6] In the late 1970s, after protesting for years at the inequities built into the formulas, Montclair joined several other communities to qualify for a pool of federal aid allocated only to Townships, that allowed townships to receive as much as double the revenue-sharing aid per capita received by the four other types of New Jersey municipalities — Borough, City, Town or Village.[7][8]

Citation #7 points to a New York Times article from 1977, a year when big cities were on the verge of bankruptcy as its most affluent, and generally white, population left to the suburbs. This coincided with, and surely had some influence on, a surge in crime and a reduction in city services. A popular theory among the group we in 2008 may call "Obama supporters" (students, yuppies, people under 30, city-dwellers) states that the federal government in fact promoted "white flight" and the deterioration of big cities through policies that favored the suburbs over the urban areas and made it easy for wealthier folks to move out of the city.

Favoring townships over the other kinds of municipalities is one example of such a policy. Although I don't have access to the full New York Times article, I can venture a guess that townships are more rural and suburban than boroughs, cities, towns, and villages. They tend to have more commuting professionals or, in very rural settings, large farming enterprises- in other words, people favored by Republicans over both poor minorities and wealthy urbanites. This is the kind of policy that promotes suburban sprawl, increases dependence on the automobile, and generally "Wal-Martizes" America.

When I ran a search for "revenue-sharing aid" I stumbled upon the book Inside Game/Outside Game: Winning Strategies for Saving Urban America. One of its main themes is that elastic cities- those that expand geographically by annexing empty land or adjacent towns- do better economically than inelastic cities. Inelastic cities don't expand, so when people move out of them into the suburbs, the cities lose their taxes. Elastic cities collect taxes from both the rich and the poor by including them in one municipality; inelastic cities get stuck with the poor, while the rich live in their own little worlds.

New York City is a prime example of an inelastic city. Its long-established rich suburbs to the east and north will never give up their independent and parasitic status. New Jersey, across the river, has the largest number of municipalities per square mile in America, because everyone wants to be exclusive. Town mergers would be an obvious and very cost-effective way of reducing the state's financial woes, but who would want the rich and the poor to mix in one town, much less on one street? It's as un-American as it gets.

Paintball

I had a very full day yesterday. My first main activity of the day was a game of paintball organized by some coworkers, and in the spirit of seriously discussing what at first seems like a frivolous pursuit, I would like to share what I learned from the experience.

Out of the 22 people who ultimately showed up, only about a quarter were actually the employees of my company. A black dude, the organizer, brought some of his black friends; an Indian guy brought Indian friends; I brought five friends and friends of friends of various backgrounds (if you have to know, two Albanians, a true-blue American, a Russian, and a Pakistani). Needless to say, women were in the minority. We got along well, partly due to a carryover of office formalities and partly due to the anonymity of war. (More on this later). As a team-building exercise (as office-organized activities are invariably called), the game was a success.

At first we went through a setting-up process not unlike that of renting skis on a ski mountain- you get a bunch of gear to put on, and you have a choice of doing a full day or a half day of the activity. Then we got a brief safety orientation and split up into teams. Two high school kids, our referees, led us into the tent near the roped-off areas which were the playing fields. The number one rule was that if you get shot, you are "dead" and out for the round. Games were up to 15 minutes long (ending before the time was up if the goal of the round was reached). We did a total of 7 rounds on 3 different fields, with one round not counting because the refs gave different instructions to the different teams.

In the previous days, I wondered if I would feel guilty about hitting people because I know them, or because they are strangers, or because they are managers, or because they are women, etc. This didn't actually happen on the battlefield, because almost everyone was dressed into identical rented camouflage jumpsuits. The only differentiator was a pair of orange bands on the arms of my team members. (The other team had no bands). In war, anonymity is everything. I just felt animosity towards my enemies, indifference towards members of my team I didn't know, and an urge to help my teammates I did know, although that was canceled out by a certain helplessness overall. Teamwork takes time to develop.

Paintball shows how far modern man is divorced from nature. Crawling on the forest floor feels unnatural; clear, straight lines of sight are expected but usually prove dangerous because your enemy knows about them, too. The forest has to be treated as a three-dimensional space, which even experienced hikers don't always know how to do. Paintball lets you reconnect with this forgotten animal past.

Another thing paintball brings out is the famous "war is hell." Here I am, by choice, in protective gear, shooting what are, by and large, harmless candy shells filled with paint. I paid for it and signed a waiver. The worst feeling I deal with is losing a round, although there is that small chance of twisting an ankle or getting hit up close, which hurts. Now just imagine that you have to do it. You are stuck in a war, and every shot is lethal. Do you want to continue?

When people complain about our overprotective society, in which kids can no longer play unsupervised and trivial deviances are illegal, paintball is a useful outlet. I saw kids as young as 12 sign up to play. Few things can compare with paintball for increasing self-esteem, simply because you realize that you just practiced kicking someone's ass. I recommend paintball to all the nice guys, all the geeks, all those who want to feel cooler just by paying a little cash and shooting some people from a toy gun.