Lead, not secede, as key player in U.S.
I teach a class at UC Berkeley’s planning school about politics and geography. I like to get the students talking on the first day of class, so this year I had them debate the question: Should California secede?
It was a lot of fun to see what they did with it. The policy students went straight to the legal questions of separation of powers and federal preemption. The business school students tried to work out the math. And the planning students got this gleam in their eyes, picturing the Ecotopia they could build.
I find myself thinking about that debate as I reflect on the good and bad of 2017. It’s been a weird year.
In the category of good things, I’m feeling really proud of the state of California. On immigration, on climate change, on a whole bunch of issues, this state has been going in a different direction from the federal government. We’re building high-speed rail. We raised the gas tax to pay for better transportation. We actually made some progress on housing reform. We’ve been showing off a little.
On the other hand, the federal tax reform bill appears to be designed to extract wealth out of California and a few other states to ship to more conservative parts of the country. It’s a huge threat to California, because it goes right to the heart of our ability to take care of ourselves. If the federal government is not going to be helpful on the big issues we care about, then we have to step up to tax ourselves so that we can invest in our own future.
The same goes for federal policies that have the effect of closing us off from the rest of world. The Bay Area is proudly cosmopolitan. We’re a place for ambitious people from all over the world to come work hard and make their mark however they can. If the federal government shuts off the flow of global talent, then that’s not just a social justice catastrophe for us, it’s also an economic one.
Many parts of this country are living through a time of economic trauma, which can be hard to remember when the Bay Area is experiencing perhaps the biggest economic boom in a century. I think there’s an optimistic story and a pessimistic story we can tell about what’s happening to the places that are struggling.
The optimistic story is that this is a moment of economic transition, and it’s temporary. Inventions and cultural changes are sweeping through society. New industries are being created, and old ones are going away. Many kinds of jobs will disappear, but in the long run new jobs will be created. This has happened over and over again in the history of capitalism.
The pessimistic story? When people are scared, they don’t act rationally. During a previous moment of economic transition and disruption, our country turned to the New Deal — but some countries turned to fascism. Where will we turn?
We don’t know how it’s going to turn out. But what I’m starting to understand is that the Bay Area has become a more central player in the story of our country. We are what it looks like to embrace immigration, put in place a European-style, high-tax/highservice social compact, and take climate change seriously.
We are the symbol of progressive urbanism in this country.
Given that, what are we called on to do in this moment?
We start with making this place work better.
Thousands of homeless people living in tents is not acceptable.
Having the highest housing costs in the country is not acceptable.
Forcing people to sit in traffic for hours to get to work is not acceptable.
We are not as far away from figuring these problems out as it might feel. Let me describe the model I think we’re moving toward.
First: It’s a region linked by highspeed transit, where it’s easy to get anywhere within the inner Bay Area. The backbone of public transit gets us most of the way, and from there we finish the trip on foot or bike or some form of ride sharing, which may be driverless. Second: It’s a region that’s affordable. And that’s because we have embraced a radical increase in the housing supply, recognizing that adding more jobs requires adding more homes. Truly, this is how we flip our story from one where we are victims of economic forces to one where we shape our own fate. Third: it’s a region that’s inclusive. It welcomes people from all over and provides opportunity for everyone who is willing to work. And finally: We have a chance to create the first carbon-free metropolis. The necessary pieces of the puzzle are being invented here, from electric cars and batteries to renewable energy — we just need to put the right technology together with the right city planning.
I don’t know how it’s going to turn out at the federal level; none of us does.
But I think we should be optimistic because we know what we’re working toward. We know what success looks like. We have here in the Bay Area everything we need to solve our problems.
We don’t want to secede from the United States. We want to lead the United States.
We are what it looks like to embrace immigration, put in place a European-style, high-tax/high-service social compact, and take climate change seriously.