{"id":62889,"date":"2014-06-11T09:00:36","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T14:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=62889"},"modified":"2017-09-17T16:51:03","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T21:51:03","slug":"291978-spent-in-philadelphia-to-make-poverty-pretty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/06\/11\/291978-spent-in-philadelphia-to-make-poverty-pretty\/","title":{"rendered":"$291,978 Spent in Philadelphia to Make Poverty Pretty"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have the money and the know how to tackle most of our social problems.\u00a0 Certainly unemployment, houselessness, and poverty.\u00a0 So, why don\u2019t we?<\/p>\n

In large part it is because our socially created wealth remains outside social control. \u00a0Critical economic decisions are driven by private interests not the public good. \u00a0One result is hipster economics.<\/p>\n

If you are not familiar with\u00a0the concept, I recommend Sarah Kendzior\u2019s\u00a0The Perils of Hipster Economics<\/a>. Here is the first part:<\/p>\n

On May 16, an artist, a railway service and a government agency spent $291,978 to block poverty from the public eye.<\/p>\n

Called\u00a0psychylustro<\/a>, German artist Katharina Grosse\u2019s project is a large-scale work designed to distract Amtrak train riders from the dilapidated buildings and fallen factories of north Philadelphia. The city has a 28 percent poverty rate \u2013 the\u00a0highest<\/a>\u00a0of any major U.S. city \u2013 with much of it concentrated in the north. In some north Philadelphia elementary schools,\u00a0nearly every child<\/a>\u00a0is living below the poverty line.<\/p>\n

Grosse partnered with the National Endowment of the Arts and Amtrak to mask North Philadelphia\u2019s hardship with a delightful view.\u00a0The Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0calls<\/a>\u00a0this \u201cFighting Urban Blight With Art.\u201d Liz Thomas, the curator of the project,\u00a0calls<\/a>\u00a0it \u201can experience that asks people to think about this space that they hurtle through every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The project is not actually fighting blight, of course \u2013 only the ability of Amtrak customers to see it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"1\"<\/a>
Flickr creative commons, Knight Foundation<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI need the brilliance of colour to get close to people, to stir up a sense of life experience and heighten their sense of presence,\u201d Grosse\u00a0proclaims<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople,\u201d in Grosse and Thomas\u2019s formulation, are not those who actually live in north Philadelphia and bear the brunt of its burdens. \u201cPeople\u201d are those who can afford to view poverty through the lens of aesthetics as they pass it by.<\/p>\n

Urban decay becomes a set piece to be remodeled or romanticised.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The rest of the article is\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\nMartin Hart-Landsberg is a professor of economics at Lewis and Clark College<\/a>. You can follow him at Reports from the Economic Front<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have the money and the know how to tackle most of our social problems.\u00a0 Certainly unemployment, houselessness, and poverty.\u00a0 So, why don\u2019t we? In large part it is because our socially created wealth remains outside social control. \u00a0Critical economic decisions are driven by private interests not the public good. \u00a0One result is hipster economics. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1853,"featured_media":62902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,36,85,304],"class_list":["post-62889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-economics","tag-politics","tag-the-state"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/06\/1b3.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1853"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62889"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71666,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62889\/revisions\/71666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}