Page 14 gave me pause by introducing a question I think is a

little controversial, but salvaged by the fact that it probably

won’t have influence on how we decide to deal with poverty.

“The opposition between civilization and barbarism was practically as old as [London] itself. But Engels and Dickens suggested a new: that the advance of civilization produced barbarity as an unavoidable waste product, as essential to its metabolism as the gleaming spires and cultivated thought of polite society (pg 14).

The question is whether poverty adds something vital to a city,

besides in the exploitative areas of low paid labor and tough living conditions that benefited upper classes in various ways. Not whether or not we would provide the best health care to the poor if we could, but if doing so would have societal consequences.

On page 18 there is a passage that illustrates what I’m considering:

” But despite — or perhaps because of — unsanitary conditions , the neighborhood was a hotbed of creativity.”

and

“New ideas need old buildings,” Jane Jacobs once wrote, and the maxim applies perfectly to Soho around the dawn of the Industrial Age: a class of visionaries and eccentrics and radicals living  in  the disintegrating shells that had been abandoned ac century ago by the well to do.”

Is there a chance that the kind of legendary link between the harsh conditions of poverty and intrepid and inspiring creativity could be weakened with a better public health ? The question might seem absurd because it goes without saying that people will choose the immediate benefits of more sanitary conditions and better health care in spite of the potential and unforeseen social ramifications.

I guess the question is does anyone believe that poverty

sustains unique and socially beneficially ways of life ? And that if

it were taken out the equation entirely our societal

infrastructure could be turned on its head?

-Rachel Kisty