BOOKS/REVIEW: Lost in the Suburbs

By Paul Weinberg Reprint | | Print |

Paul Weinberg

TORONTO, Oct 26 1999 (IPS) - What economists call the “dominant ideology of the free market” – privatization, tax cuts and a diminished role for government – had its origins in the North America suburban lifestyle, according to a new book published here..

Canadian journalist and author Stephen Dale, in his “Lost in the Suburbs: A Political Travelogue”, opines that the isolation of Canadians and Americans in their cars and homes in low density suburbs “has degraded the bonds of social solidarity – which existed previously among people of all backgrounds…”

“The attitude that citizens should have to pay taxes only to support services they directly use is also encouraged by the comparmentalized nature of suburban life,” says Dale.

“It’s difficult to see any greater social good arising from government spending when you pass most of your day in the workplace, at home and in your car – spending little time in public places and having few opportunities to glimpse into the lives of people who are less well-off and more likely to be in need of some kind of government assistance.”

Canada, with its stronger tradition of social democracy enjoyed governments – particularly at the provinicial level – in the early 1990s that introduced social legislation focused on redressing income disparities within the population.

Such policy effectively had been abandoned by neo-conservative administrations both in the United States and in Britain in the 1980s. But the pull of a politics more focused on personal initiative and a sterner approach to dependants on government assistance has been hard to resist – even in Canada.

But when the Liberals routed Conservatives in ther federal elections of 1993, they undertook major cuts in transfer payments for welfare, housing, health care and post-secondary school education to the provinces. The government also toughened entry provisions for the national unemployment insurance plan.

In the meantime,conservative movements, such as the western Canada based Reform party on the national level and ideologically similar Conservative led provincial governments advocated more right-wing policies.

These included tax cuts, privatization, a less open immigration policy, heavier legal penalties for young criminals and a sharp resistance to fulfilling centuries’ old treaties with aboriginal nations regarding land and resources.

Dale says he detected in recent Ontario provincial elections, a greater reliance by the winning provincial Conservatives on US- style political attack-advertising.

Here, certain groups, such as welfare recipients, street youths and teachers (disliked by portions of the population), were specifically targeted to gain votes.

“Where is the line that separates a legitimate recognition of voters’ grievances from a demagogic exercise that will inflame irrational and destructive hostilities?” Dale asks.

California’s suburban sprawl, particularly in greater Los Angeles, was the birthplace of this type of politics, he continues.

He points to the rise of US actor-turned politician Ronald Reagan who, in the mid-1960s in California “jump-started the nascent Republican crusade against socially interventionist government.”

In earshot of the television/film industry in Hollywood, important U.S. military bases, the consumer advertising industry and major American universities, Reagan relied on specialists in mass media appeal, demographics and behavourial science to appeal directly to restive suburban voters in California, says Dale.

Reagan later transferred this model of politics to the national level and in 1981 was elected for the first of two terms as president of the United States.

Much of what transpires for right-wing politics in places like Canada, observes Dale, had their origins in California, including tax revolts, election campaign consultants and an opposition to so- called job quotas for disadvantaged groups such as women and the disabled.

A new development in the bellwether state, where Dale personally spent several months, is that the Republicans have lost the governor’s chair and both houses of the state government to the Democrats in California.

Also, in Orange County, home to Disney, the heartland of American conservatism and once the stomping ground for tough guy actor and staunch Republican John Wayne, an independent environmentalist has been elected mayor in the city of Irvine.

Dale believes strongly that the suburban lifestyle with its fixation on the greenhouse gas belching automobile and the gobbling up of valuable farmland for more subdivisions is “ecologically unsustainable” over the long term.

With Republicans devoid of any new ideas, he sees a possible comeback for liberals and progressives in California, if they appreciate that the environment can be their “wedge issue” in future elections.

Also, Canadian suburbs have not adopted holus bolus all the worst aspects of their U.S. counterparts, concludes Dale.

“Few security company logos are sprouting on lawns. No homeowner associations are taking over the functions of municipal government,” he says. “The schools you pass are likely to be public, not private, institutions. How long things stay this way is anybody’s guess.”