SPECIAL FEATURES:
Email
How the street failed Trayvon Martin
Numerous observers have noted that Trayvon Martin was killed on the streets of a gated community for the crime of 'walking while black.' His murder was aided and abetted by a failed urban design model tragically lacking in 'eyes on the street.'
Wed, Mar 28 2012 at 9:33 AM
Related Topics:
Photo: Dean Terry/Flickr
In a recent post, I posed a question I thought was somewhat rhetorical: “Is walking a form of activism?” Might a simple stroll down the street, I mused, constitute an act of dissent in a transportation network and broader urban landscape built mainly for cars? Within hours of posting it, I started seeing news stories seemingly everywhere, revealing with mounting vividness the shocking, sickening details of Trayvon Martin’s murder while strolling the streets of the gated community in Florida where his father's fiance lived.
Once you get past the ridiculous line of reasoning, advocated most prominently by epically misguided pseudo-journalist Geraldo Rivera, that Martin’s hooded sweatshirt in and of itself constituted grounds for suspicion, the main reason Martin first drew the attention that led to his murder was the simple fact that he was a pedestrian in a neighborhood where that is a strange enough act to attract the interest of the local vigilante.
Since the full details of Martin’s murder broke, commentators in numerous venues have attached the same phrase to the boy’s transgression: “walking while black.” Here’s how Marian Wright Edelman described the phenomenon:
Every parent raising black sons knows the dilemma: deciding how soon to have the talk. Choosing the words to explain to your beautiful child that there are some people who will never like or trust him just because of who he is — including some who should be there to protect him, but will instead have the power to hurt him. Training him how to walk, what to say, and how to act so he won’t seem like a threat. Teaching him that the burden of deflating stereotypes and reassuring other people’s ignorance will always fall on him, and while that isn’t fair, in some cases it may be the only way to keep him safe and alive.
Obviously, the emphasis is (and should be) on the racial implications of the phrase, but I think it’s also worth exploring the pedestrian aspect of it. Martin appeared suspicious and threatening to George Zimmerman because he was black, but he attracted that suspicion because he was walking.
For half a century now, urban planners and critics of a certain persuasion — the Jane Jacobs school, more or less — have been arguing that America’s predominant suburban design model, where the car is king and communities are cleaved into separate pods for living, shopping, working and playing, is a drain on social capital and robs neighborhoods of the rich interplay of random, multivalent activities that breeds — and protects — healthy community. In shorthand, this is often referred to by one of Jacobs’ most famous phrases: “eyes on the street.”
Here is Jacobs explaining the phrase in "The Death and Life of American Cities," her groundbreaking urban philosophy text:
A city street equipped to handle strangers, and to make a safety asset, in itself, out of the presence of strangers, as the streets of successful city neighborhoods always do, must have three main qualities:First, there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space. Public and private spaces cannot ooze into each other as they do typically in suburban settings or in projects.
Second, there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street. The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers, must be oriented to the street. They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind.
And third, the sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously, both to add to the number of effective eyes on the street and to induce the people in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers. Nobody enjoys sitting on a stoop or looking out a window at an empty street. Almost nobody does such a thing. Large numbers of people entertain themselves, off and on, by watching street activity.
I can’t think of a case where a street has failed on all counts as fully as the streets of the Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Fla., failed Trayvon Martin.
Like any gated community, the Retreat fails to clearly demarcate public and private space by declaring the entire community to be private space. Martin believed he was walking innocently down a public street like any other; Zimmerman evidently understood him to be trespassing on private property. In the Retreat, there were no “natural proprietors” or “effective eyes on the street” at all — no shopkeepers, no old timers on the corner or mothers out on the stoop, not even much in the way of passersby.
Zimmerman had stepped into this void — or driven around in it, actually — to proclaim himself the one and only natural proprietor, the only effective set of eyes, the neighborhood cop, plus judge, jury and executioner all in one. In a landscape completely denuded of its natural social life, the pedestrian was an intruder by default and the armed, motorized vigilante was in complete control.
There are any number of sad dimensions to the tragedy of Trayvon Martin, and one of them was the way that the street failed him. Completely. Let’s hope the Retreat at Twin Lakes represents the end of the war on public spaces that belong to us all.
To discuss the value of public space 140 characters at a time, follow me on Twitter: @theturner.
The opinions expressed by MNN Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of MNN.com. While we have reviewed their content to make sure it complies with our Terms and Conditions, MNN is not responsible for the accuracy of any of their information.
You might also like:
Sign in with one of these accounts to add your comment.
EDITORS' PICKS
Advertisement
TODAY'S MOST POPULAR ON
- Student science experiment finds plants won't grow near Wi-Fi router
- 10 cats made famous by YouTube
- 15 famous people who mysteriously disappeared
- 10 of the Web's most popular cat memes
- 10 false facts most people think are true
- How to attract spiders to your garden
- How to get a second crop of tomatoes -- for free
- Frankenkitties: House cats bred with wild animals sell for $35,000
- Archaeologists unearth 5,000-year-old 'third-gender' caveman
- 8 great cat tricks caught on camera
From our sponsor
NEWSLETTER
ABOUT Chris Turner
Sustainability author covers the latest in green innovation.
Advertisement
I'd like to see you convince a 17 year old that he needs supervision to go get some skittles in a gated community. That would be a hilarious exchange to be sure.
It's pretty hilarious now isn't it?
A hoodie is not "slovenly." He was not "skulking", nor was he "casing houses." He was walking to a convenience store to get a snack. At age 17, you don't need adult supervision to do that. Did your parents never let you out of the house alone to walk to the store, or a friend's house, or the library, or any number of other places??
He should never have pulled his Skittles on Zimmerman. They should have stayed in the holster.
He was on the sidewalk. Is that tresspassing where you are from? Would a white 17-year-old girl have been shot dead while walking there? If you can't answer yes to either question you have indirectly given credit to the complaints. If you can answer yes then you are a liar. In the end logic always wins over ignorance. At least for those who can understand it.
You addressed the key point. Any girl, no matter the color, would not have drawn suspicion.
arest him
NONSENSE! His PARENTS failed him! You don't TRESPASS and I would be suspicious and go after ANYONE on my property no matter who they are!
He wasn't trespassing if his father lived there...so i guess this makes you some sort parental guardian to say he trespassing because of what? Maybe you should have caught his father first to say he couldn't stay there.
Zimmerman wasn't anywhere NEAR his own home. He was carrying a gun which he had a permit to carry BUT because he had a protective order out against him was INVALID. Neighborhood watch personnel are NOT allowed to carry guns. Zimmerman is a known hot head and troublemaker who got off because his DADDY is a powerful JUDGE.
He WASN'T trespassing. He was on a sidewalk, in a gated community WHERE HE HAD THE RIGHT TO BE. He was N.O.T. T.R.E.S.P.A.S.S.I.N.G.
Maybe, maybe not. He should have put his hands as high in the air as possible and hit the ground immediately when ordered to do so. If he had done that, this whole thing could have been avoided and folks on Sanford would be on their patios cooking burgers and drinking wine coolers right now. Instead, we got race wars going on.
If Zimmerman was a black man, Martin's parents would undoubtedly still demand explanations from the police if no one had been charged in the shooting of their unarmed teenage son.
But if Zimmerman was a black man, anti-white racist Al Sharpton would not be parading around supporting the Martins.
However, if Zimmerman was a black man, anti-black racists would not be rushing to defend him or his actions.
Neither Al Sharpton nor James297 truly care about justice.
Poor Martin family.
It might be the most good for the most people right now if a white teenager were shot dead under similar circumstances. That would send a message to all our community organizer friends that this was an equal opportunity thing to be skulking around a gated community after dark, in Florida for Christ's sake. If nothing else, the Darwin effect seems to have at least kicked in before the gene pool made it to another generation.
How do you know he was looking at houses from the rear? Is it because Zimmerman said so? If yes, does that make it the truth or what Zimmerman thought the young man was doing?
My family and I live in a suburban, non-gated neighborhood. I really enjoy being outside, but it's interesting that I rarely see residents sitting on their front porches. I have this impression that the act of enjoying your surroundings from the front porch where you can observe the passers-by is no longer seen as "normal".
It was never "normal." It was the only/best way for folks in the US to escape their hot humid houses during warm weather. Do you recall seeing any houses or hearing any stories of folks in Europe (urban or suburban) sitting on their porch with a cold one or two watching the world go by? Nor do you hear of DRIVE-BY shootings there. Best to go back inside and stay inside.
"Best to go back inside and stay inside."
WOW. Really?? So American citizens should not expect to walk outside because that's somehow asking for it?
I wonder:
When a child gets shot in his or her home by a stray bullet, do you also justify that death instead of being saddened by the loss of life? Is it a "that's what the child gets for living there" kind of thing, in your mind?
I do not believe in coincidence.
My own experience would suggest to me that if a white guy with a gun ordered me to put my hands up and get on the ground, that my own skinny black self would get that done as soon as possible. What would your experience suggest?
Would you get your skinny white self on the ground with your hands up if a black guy with a gun ordered you to do so?
If your answer is yes, then why are you bringing skinniness and skin color into it at all? It's the gun that you think he should have responded to.
If your answer is no, then why do you think one race should accept being ordered around by the other, but not vice-versa?
Actually, the folks in Europe go to the nearest square and sit out at cafes on warm evenings. Together. In public. There are no drive-by shootings there because no one has guns.
Pages