February 18, 2012

Thoughts on “elitism”

Some one is wrong on the internet

About a week ago, I was involved in a tense comment thread on the Northfield News website on Northfield’s new land development code (LDC), particularly as it applies to 3-car garages. (Under the new rules, attached garages are capped at 24 feet, and they must be at least six feet behind the main façade of the house.) Many citizen voices, who have apparently ignored the multi-year LDC process are now coming forward demanding their right to a 3-car garage, and quickly dismiss any safety or community effects of those garages.

This became particularly interesting when, Dundas city councilor Nathan Ryan, joined the thread to disagree with the LDC and note that Dundas permits three-car garages. I wrote cattily about Dundas’s current development situation (two nearly dead developments, one that is so disconnected from the City of Dundas that it is not possible to get to City Hall on any street without leaving the City). I said (and still believe) that many of the problems in Dundas come from giving developers and property owners too much leeway, and allowing the “market” to determine how a town should be built. Some excerpts from Ryan’s response:

You sound like someone who is an elitist

Again you sound like an elitist.

Nice Sean. Emotional Intelligence is more important and [sic] IQ, I would suggest reading up on it, it’s obvious they are not teaching it in college.

In my ever-humble opinion, the tone is inappropriate for an elected official in a public forum. But the more substantively interesting matter is his use of the term elitist. I often face accusations of being elitist. This is unsurprising, since I’ve long understood elitism basically associated with anyone who has a progressive viewpoint. But I think it’s actually different than that: what I’ve consistently found is that being “elitist” seems to have very little to do with what one believes,  but rather with how snidely (or eloquently) one expresses those beliefs.

Let’s look more at Dundas. I was elitist, in Cm. Ryan’s viewpoint, because I criticized the scars of failed development (unfinished roads, sewer pipes sitting out, etc) and the fact that the entire development was poorly conceived in relation to the town.

Finding this objectionable, as a permanent state of affairs, is elitist.

But what about the development itself? Like many suburban developments, Dundas’s Bridgewater Heights is set up in the “pod” format, meaning that the different product offerings are wholly separate. Put a bit less delicately, this mandates that all the too-poor, too-young, or too-old are placed in a single ghetto, with literally one way in or out. The single-family homes (read: middle class or above) are safely outside this area, and need not be directly exposed to the squalor of townhomes. This is unambiguous economic discrimination, waged by private developers to create what they believe to be a higher-value product.

Actual view of the completed portion of Bridgewater Heights. The single-family homes are safely to the right, with a 80’-wide street safely separating them from the multi-family pod.

There are rigid standards to ensure that the too-poor, too-young, or too-old don’t muck up the single-family home area. These are called covenants, which is a contract tied to the lot, and is essentially land development standards set by a private industry rather than an open, public process. Bridgewater Heights’ covenants for single-family homes regulate, among other things:

I might come off as elitist, and at times I might be elitist. But wanting communities to have a physically pleasurable, sustainable environment is not elitist. Writing into a contract that a home cannot be too small or accomodate too few cars (read: that the owner is not too poor)… well, I’ll avoid the “e”-word, that seems like a more troubling form of exclusion and judgment.