Worst Headline Ever

If there were an annual worst headline award, The Sun would probably win pretty much every year. Today's paper screamed "'Enormous' fraud at City Hall"

It makes it sound as though the city council or mayor has been caught doing something corrupt or fraudulent. Reading the article, one finds out there were 9 civil servants (working in social services) who are accused of insurance scams with Manulife, the city's supplier of health insurance. They allegedly made fake claims. This is being investigated, has been turned over to the Toronto Police right now, and the city sent the accused employees home (with pay, which is necessary when a charge is unproven).

Rob Ford, (the only councillor interviewed in this article on the same topic, opined "I've always said corruption is rampant at City Hall," he said. "I believe this is the tip of the iceberg."

The city is scrutinized in ways the federal and provincial governments aren't. The city is more efficient than any other level of government - it has to be - and yet, it is constantly being accused of waste. Our city budget is well in line with other large North American cities, it supplies services many other cities don't have to (due to good old Mike Harris), and every penny is watched. If 9 low-level employees of a company which employed over 50,000 were to scam their health insurance, nobody would claim the company itself was corrupt.

City News coverage of the same story

NYPD Officer Assaults Cyclist during Critical Mass

This is nuts.


But wait, it gets worse. Initially the cylist was arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer. The police officer said in an affidavit that the cyclist deliberately ran into him (though you can clearly see the cyclist trying to go around him). The cyclist was held in custody for 26 hours.

At least the cop's father is proud of him: "These people are taking over the streets and impeding the flow of traffic. Then you gotta do what you gotta do," he said, not having viewed the video.

I must say: hooray for citizen journalism!

Disclaimer: it is possible the cyclist did something else really really bad earlier and the cops were specifically looking for him. Like maybe he was a terrorist with a ticking time bomb. It better have been that bad because a hit like that could have killed the guy (helmetless onto pavement!)

More at Democracy Now, Gothamist and the NY Post

How Walkable is Your Neighbourhood?

To answer that question, you could go outside and try walking around and see how well it goes, or for those who prefer the virtual to the physical, go to Walkscore.com and type in your address. Based on things like density and proximity to shops and services, the software will give a ranking. It works for the US, Canada and the UK.

Of course, the really cool thing is seeing how walkable other cities and neighbourhoods are - you know, the ones you can't access by stepping outside your door. Unsurprisingly, San Francisco and New York City and Boston are the most walkable cities in the USA.

They don't have rankings of the most walkable cities in Canada, but you can search for addresses to get a score. Toronto didn't fare too badly, but it depends on where you live, really.

What does this all mean? They explain:

Picture a walkable neighborhood. You lose weight each time you walk to the grocery store. You stumble home from last call without waiting for a cab. You spend less money on your car—or you don't own a car. When you shop, you support your local economy. You talk to your neighbors.

(Screenshot found here)

Walk Score admits there are many features currently overlooked by the software - like weather, design, safety, or topography, but it is still a pretty cool tool. Via Grist.

Zen Moments in the City

This evening, eating ice cream outside near Mel Lastman square, there was a baby falcon sitting on a telephone wire. There were a couple of people taking photos, and one guy told us that this baby had just flown for the first time yesterday. The family of three live atop a highrise at Elmwood (on the small green roof that we could see from the ground). Apparently there are only 74 of these falcons in Ontario, so these three are extremely important. There are all kinds concerned citizens watching out for their well-being. I was too awed to even think of taking a photo of the baby - who was really close - but I did snap a pic of the poppa falcon flying. Please excuse the poor quality as I took it with my cell phone cam.

I feel so lucky to have experienced this!

Safety video for cycling in traffic

I thought this was well done, demonstrating how to operate a bike as a vehicle, under all rules of the road. In particular, controlling the lane is demonstrated well here. This was a hard lesson for me to learn when I first started bike commuting as I didn't want to delay anyone or be "in the way". However, nearly getting doored when feeling pressured over to the right taught me a valuable lesson. Unfortunately I have experienced many a honk from an angry driver who thinks I should be driving in the gutter, or who nearly sideswipes me while passing too close. However, the truth is that most drivers are fine with this type of cycling, and they would rather see you clearly and not making unexpected maneuvers (even if they are delayed a few seconds!). They may not always be happy but everyone stays alive!

Carfree Times issue #50 is up

This month has some good stuff on offer. Aside from beautiful photographs of carfree places, you'll find interesting articles about carfree living like:

Expensive Gas Drives Down Suburban Housing Values
Buy a McMansion? Bad idea. But they are cheap. And probably getting cheaper. Housing prices are probably nowhere near their bottom. (There's a scary thought.) But some neighborhoods are holding value. And it's no surprise which neighborhoods. It's the ones that aren't 40 miles from work.
[...]Near the city center, people are still buying and new listings attract plenty of interest. In the city proper, prices are actually up 3.5% over the past year. Good access to public transport is especially important to buyers.

Simply put, the longer the commute, the steeper the drop in prices.

In addition to the 10 or so articles, there's an interesting interview towards the bottom - "Cars Are Driving Us Nuts: We drive ever longer distances in order to satisfy the same needs".

Check it out.

An Open Letter to People Who Smoke While Driving

Dear smoking drivers,

When you are finished smoking your cigarette, please do not throw it out of your window. There may be a cyclist right in the trajectory of its burning ember.

Sincerely,
Your friendly nonsmoking cyclist

p.s. You could also be a real pal and refrain from honking a cyclist out of her lane so that you can illegally pull over into said bike lane where you aren't supposed to be, seeing as how you are in a car and all.

Toronto: Homeless Man Frozen to Death

Shelter is not an option. It is a matter of life and death, especially on long Canadian winter nights.

OCAP:

Wednesday night an Aboriginal man who was homeless was found frozen to death in a stairwell around Yonge and Charles St. Another man was found in Chinatown with serious injury from exposure.

Just six days ago the City heard 12 deputations from agencies and community members about the current crisis. After the loss of over 300 shelter spaces and basic needs such as food, we have been left in a dangerous situation. Demands were made for only the most basic need -shelter. The City's response was to leave people in danger and to risk injury and death. The death of this man and the injury and suffering of other homeless people is on the hands of the City.

On Tuesday will be going to City Hall to face Miller and demand an immediate response to this crisis. This is aserious situation and we ask that you make all efforts to join us. For more info contact OCAP.

Meanwhile, here's a new publication on the shelter crisis in Toronto (PDF). It looks at some of the results of the cuts to the shelter system, including the 5 downtown shelters that the city recently shut down. The $4 million dollar saving comes at a cost of increasing overcrowding at other shelters. People are walking and waiting for hours, only to be turned away. The lucky ones get to sleep on chairs inside. The not so lucky... well, they might freeze to death.

Taking a look at the current shelter crisis in Toronto, this issue includes writing on the $4 million cuts to the shelter system, the new police cameras at Dundas and Sherbourne, the illusion of the City's "Streets to Homes" policy and crumbling public housing.

Read more on homelessness -especially this

City Planet - Housekeeping the Bookmarks part 1

I have a whole pile of fantastic links in my bookmarks that have been hanging out and going stale just waiting for some attention. I think it is time to share them. So, here is the first in a new series.

This 2006 article, City Planet, is about urbanization, squatting and slums.

"Pavement dwellers" living in open-air homes in Byculla, a Mumbai neighborhood
City infrastructure and housing in the developing world cannot keep up with the rapid pace of urbanization. The result: vast informal settlements and neighbourhoods. The article tells of the bad and the good, the crowded, dirty, and yet incredibly vibrant communities:

Let no one romanticize the conditions of slums. New squatter cities usually look like human cesspools and often smell like them. There is usually no infrastructure at all for sanitation, for water, for electricity, or for transportation. Everyone lives in dilapidated shacks jammed together wall to wall, with every room full of people. A typical squatter city, which may stretch for miles, has grown without a plan or government, in an area generally deemed uninhabitable: a swamp, a floodplain, a steep hillside, a municipal dump; clustered in the path of a highway project, squashed up against a railroad line.

But the squatter cities are vibrant. Each narrow street is one long bustling market of food stalls, bars, cafes, hair salons, churches, schools, health clubs, and mini-shops of tools, trinkets, clothes, electronic gadgets, and pirated videos and music. What you see up close is not a despondent populace crushed by poverty but a lot of people busy getting out of poverty as fast as they can.

What about the economic impact?

Gradually a consensus is emerging about the economic value of rural-to-urban migration. This migration, "on the whole, acts to alleviate poverty in both the urban and rural sectors," wrote geography professor Ronald Skeldon in 1997. He explained that the urban "informal sector, with its capacity to create an almost infinite variety and number of activities" and its "considerable potential for self-organization... can create a dynamic economy and society."
[...]
Cities have been the wealth engine for civilization since its beginning. Thus the bottom line in the U.N. report: "Cities are so much more successful in promoting new forms of income generation, and it is so much cheaper to provide services in urban areas, that some experts have actually suggested that the only realistic poverty reduction strategy is to get as many people as possible to move to the city."

Of course, cities, slums and informal developments aren't uniformly good.

It's easy to gloss over the enormous variety among the thousands of emerging cities with different cultures, nations, metropolitan areas, and neighborhoods. From that variety is emerging an understanding of best and worst governmental practices - best, for example, in Turkey, which offers a standard method for new squatter cities to form; worst, for example, in Kenya, which actively prevents squatters from improving their homes. Every country provides a different example.

View from a balcony in Rocinha, Brazil, a dense and relatively prosperous squatter community of 150,000 people, built on steep hills above Rio de Janeiro
These different governmental approaches are detailed for four major squatter cities in Robert Neuwirth's Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World, heavily referenced in this article. Aside from security (i.e. NOT living in fear of the government bulldozing your community), what helps these communities thrive?

Social cohesiveness is the crucial factor differentiating "slums of hope" from "slums of despair." This is where CBOs (community-based organizations) and the NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) that support local empowerment play such an important part. Typical CBOs include, according to the 2003 U.N. report, "community theater and leisure groups; sports groups; residents associations or societies; savings and credit groups; child care groups; minority support groups; clubs; advocacy groups; and more... CBOs as interest associations have filled an institutional vacuum, providing basic services such as communal kitchens, milk for children, income-earning schemes and cooperatives."

Women play a crucial role, as it is they who form and participate in many of the communal self-help organizations. Urbanization also brings decreasing birthrates and increased opportunities for women.

Already, as a result of the headlong urbanization, birthrates have plummeted in the developing world from 6 children per woman in the 1970s to 2.9 now. Twenty "less developed" countries, including China, Chile, Thailand, and Iran, have already dropped below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman.

And what about the young and fertile couples in developing countries? If current demographic trends continue, 2 billion of them will live in the cities, choosing to have fewer children. It's not because they're poor. They were poor in the countryside. In town they see opportunity to come up in the world. Having fewer children, who are better educated, is part of that equation.
[...]
"In the village, all there is for a woman is to obey her husband and family elders, pound grain, and sing. If she moves to town, she can get a job, start a business, and get education for her children." I heard this remark, made by a global community activist, in 2000 at a Fortune magazine conference in Aspen, Colo. It was enough to explode my Gandhi-esque romantic notions about the superiority of village life.

Cities are important. A dense city, like New York, is the most environmentally reponsible way to organize large numbers of people. Depending on their organization, cities have shown other benefits too. They represent our future, and our past.

Cities are remarkable organisms. They are the most long-lived of all human organizations. The oldest surviving corporations (Stora Enso in Sweden and the Sumitomo Group in Japan) are about 700 and 400 years old, respectively. The oldest universities (in Bologna and Paris) have lasted a thousand years. The oldest living religions (Hinduism and Judaism) date back about 3,500 years. But the town of Jericho has been continuously occupied for 10,500 years. Its neighbor Jerusalem has been an important city for 5,000 years, though it was conquered or destroyed 36 times and it suffered 11 conversions from one religion to another. Many cities die or decline to irrelevance, but some thrive for millennia.

If you're interested, read the full article here.

And I Thought my Bike Commute was Bad

Every time I travel on somewhere my bike I experience the heart-pounding feeling of impending death, and plenty of frustration. It seems Torontonians, especially the uptownians, have not yet realized their beloved car culture is dying. My bike commute usually consists of at least a handful of the following: people honking randomly at me as if to say "what are you doing on MY ROAD?", the delivery vehicles in the bike lanes, the cars stopped in the no-stopping-zones, the drivers too lazy to signal their lane change, the three or four cars that go through every red light, and the bike lanes with a 4 lanes of traffic and a raised streetcar right-of-way in the middle (St. Clair & Poplar Plains). Or I get caught in traffic because some impatient yahoo in a huge car wondering what's the blockage ahead (not considering that the blockage is more huge CARS) has to pull all the way over to the right to have a look, leaving not enough inches for wee little me and my wee little bike to get through.

But, I must say, my commute has NOTHING on this guy's.

The Revolution Will Not Be Motorized: Tomorrow is World Carfree Day

Plan to be in Toronto this weekend? Check out the World Carfree Day festivities on Queen Street West.

Why not have a parking meter party around 1:00 pm? Here's how:

• Scout out a parking spot where you'd like to spend the afternoon
  
• Park your non-motorized "vehicle" (bike, trike, roller-skates, dinky-car etc.) along Queen West
  
• Pay the meter: for $1.50 per hour the spot is yours! (Be sure to display your parking receipt on the "dash" of your "vehicle")

Or, go a-paradin' at 6:00. Meet at 5:00 at Trinity-Bellwoods park. One tip: I don't suggest driving down to the parade (or if you have no other method of transportation, why not consider one of these).

More festivities on Sunday. Details here and here

If you feel so inclined check out these related links:

Do Motorists in the US Pay Their Own Way? No. They are subsidized by taxpayers. Check out the UC Davis study (PDF) that proves it. Bookmark it for use the next time some taxpaying motorist complains about subsidizing public transit.

And, yes, it is within our power to create carfree cities. Don't believe me? Check out the book that proves it.

Today is also Park(ing) Day. Who knew? A whole day in which parking spaces are transformed into parks. Like this on a larger scale. Sweet.

And next time you get into a car by yourself, for goodness sakes, check the passenger seat. Darn evil dictators, always bumming a ride!

Save our TTC

Today I will narrow my usual global scope to my city of residence: Toronto. As those of you who live here know, our beloved public transportation has been dying a slow death in the past several years. Service has gotten worse, buses and subways more crowded, fares far more costly. I am a die-hard anti-car person, and yet... and yet... lately I've been getting fed up with the TTC ("The Bitter Way"), which as they say, should stand or Take The Car. And now, faced with an ever-worsening budget disaster, the city proposes insane service cuts. Yes, insane. Don't believe me, read about it here, or just look at this map of the proposed cuts.

Oh how far we've come since our naive and hopeful discussions of this

I won't go into the details of the terrible things that will befall our city if the proposed cuts happen, but consider the congestion now, and then consider it if even 25% more cars were on the road. Those who choose the TTC for their daily commute will simply go back to their cars, because what middle income earner in her right mind would sardine herself with strangers for half an hour twice a day when there's a comfortable air conditioned car ride as an alternative - especially when the sardine rides cost her 50 cents more each day. Those who have no choice but to take the TTC, predominantly school children, poor people, carless people, the elderly, and students, will be screwed. Having no alternative, they will pony up the extra money. For middle class college students, perhaps it means a little less beer or coffee, but for many of the city's poor, it means a little less food in the tummy. This is outrageous in a city with so much wealth.

Although I believe the TTC needs increased public funding, if we must pay higher fares, it is preferable to service cuts. I propose along with the higher fares, a system of subsidized passes and tokens for those of low income. At minimum, the tax credit for bus passes should be refundable, since right now many of those who need it most don't even make enough money to use the credit.

Anyways, the TTC cannot cut service without public consultation, so they have devised a meagre and pitiful survey. However, if you live in Toronto, it is important you take this survey. Fill in the comments, since that is the only real forum to express your opinion.

When you are done, check out this much improved survey at Torontoist.

Not a Big Truck; Series of Tubes

Visitors to Tate Modern will be able to try out five giant slides that have been unveiled at the London gallery.

The largest of the spiralling slides is more than 55m (182ft) long and descends from the fifth floor of the venue.

Artist Carsten Holler said his work, Test Site, was a "playground for the body and the brain". He says slides can help combat mental health problems.

The slides are the seventh exhibit in the series commissioned for the gallery's Turbine Hall. <BBC>

See more on the exhibit here including lots of photos, and one of those 360° interactive thingies.

In other transportation news, Toronto guerilla cyclists are taking bike lanes into their own hands, spray painting bike lanes - now prettier in pink. Hot.

Edmonton's Army of Homeless

The skyrocketing rents in Edmonton have increased pressures on limited social housing and shelter spaces. This has made Edmonton's homeless problem worse. A lack of a home often means a lack of safety, and so it isn't uncommon for homeless people to sleep close together. This gives rise to tent cities and squats, such as what had sprung up behind the Bissell Centre (a centre servicing low income people in the inner city).

Tue, May 22, 2007
Squatters Say They're Staying:

Officers told more than a dozen people camping in at least six tents in a field behind the Bissell Centre yesterday morning that they're going to have to move.

But most of the tent dwellers are refusing to budge, claiming they have nowhere else to go.

Sat, May 26, 2007
The poor need a tent city

Almost every night, dozens of homeless people - some of whom have day jobs - gather to sleep on the grass there in Edmonton's inner city. Some put up tents to keep the night chill at bay.

Yet, most nights, city police evict the hapless homeless, forcing them to go someplace else.

Bissell Centre spokesman Ele Gibson is ticked off. "Where are they supposed to go?" asks Gibson, who's the resource development director for the inner-city charity that provides everything from a drop-in centre to family services for the poor.
[...]
There's lots of talk from our politicians about affordable housing and homelessness. But the problem persists.

If these people can't stay on this particular patch of land, surely to God someone could find a small slab of public land somewhere where the homeless can have a simple tent over their heads. Other cities have set up safe tent cities. Is that too much to ask, given there's no affordable housing for them?

Mon, May 28, 2007
Homeless gathering an army of supporters for rally

Homeless Edmontonians are taking their plight to the steps of the legislature.

Those recently evicted from provincial land behind the Bissell Centre and others who will be evicted from winter shelters at the end of the month plan to rally on June 27.

These people were sleeping on public land, and it is immoral to force people into dangerous situations just so you don't have to see them. Not to mention: being too poor to have a home isn't illegal. So, I say good for them. We need some proper squatter's rights. The bullies in the provincial government will never do anything for the people unless they are forced.

"You let people live like abandoned animals on the street?"

Los Angeles has one of the biggest homeless populations in the US. We know this because it had the first accurate homeless census done in 2005 (82,291 homeless people in 2005)

(Photo from Wikipedia)

LA's financial district is merely a few blocks away from the urine-soaked, tent-strewn streets of Skid Row, shown in these photos.



(Photos from Down and Out in Downtown LA: The Story of a Homeless Couple)

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(Photo by Stephen Shames)

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(Film stills from TIES ON A FENCE - Women in Downtown Los Angeles Speak Out )

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(Photos by mattlogelin)

Notice any pattern to the faces seen here? African Americans make up 38.7% of LA's homeless population (they are only 9.5% of the general population of LA)

Listen to Jennifer Westaway's award-winning portrait of Skid Row (highly recommended), or check out this LA Times article

Another View of The Good Life

Following on the heels of yesterday's post, here's another way of looking at The Good Life.

Robert Neuwirth, author of Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World , who blogs at Squattercity.blogspot.com does a presentation about the amazing vibrancy of so-called slums: squatter communities. This will be of special interest for anarchists because there are real examples here of self-organizing, self-government. These are people taking their lives into their own collective hands - many because they have no choice, but others because they love these communities and the freedom they provide.

Sprawl --> Sedentary Lifestyle --> Obesity & Health Problems

When you create a mental image of the countryside, it probably features the smell of clean air, and green seas of rolling fields. Seems so healthy, doesn't it? But according to this article on SFGate.com people who live in the country are generally far less healthy than city-dwellers. That's because usually the countryside is actually a suburban environment that has little in the way of nature, and a lot in the way of big box chain stores whose names end in "-mart" that are connected by highways peopled by SUVs. This is not a recipe for health: "a sedentary lifestyle (which may or may not manifest in obesity) contributes to many American health problems -- including asthma, diabetes and high blood pressure."

Ever since two studies linked sprawl and obesity in 2003, study upon study has been published suggesting that our built environment -- marked by car-oriented, isolated, unwalkable neighborhoods -- is having a deleterious influence on our health. In other words, sprawl is making us unhealthy, unhappy and fat.

One early study of 200,00 people, led by urban planner Reid Ewing, found that residents of sprawling communities tended to weigh more, walk less and have higher blood pressure than those living in more densely populated areas. Another study, by health psychologist James Sallis of San Diego State University, concluded that people living in "high-walkability" neighborhoods walk more and were less likely to be obese than residents of low-walkability neighborhoods. A 2004 study based in Atlanta, led by Lawrence Frank, reported that the number of minutes spent in a car correlated with a risk of obesity. Among the oft-cited conclusions of the study: A typical white male living in an isolated residential-only neighborhood weighs about 10 pounds more than one living in a walkable, mixed-use community.

I never understood the suburbs. I know someone who moved out of the city when he got married because he wanted to bring up his kids in the country. Of course what this meant was getting a McMansion in a subdivision (which destroyed the very nature he said he wanted to live in). The cute little chipmunks he sees on his lawn are there because their home was bulldozed to make way for his lawn. His family has to drive any time they want to go somewhere. He doesn't like his neighbours. There's no sense of community. Culture is hours (of driving) away.

Unfortunately in places like Toronto, living in the city is increasingly expensive. Many have little choice: "30 percent of the respondents reported that they wanted to live in walkable neighborhoods but were unable to afford them."

The answer isn't necessarily to move everyone into the few walkable cities that exist in North America, but to focus all development on the principles of New Urbanism: neighbourhoods that are pedestrian-friendly, medium-density development, mixed-use zoning, and preserved green spaces outside the city. In concrete terms this means you can live, work, and shop in the same neighbourhood, without having to own a car. (Here's a virtual demo of what such a community might look like)

Via the Carfree USA Blog. Urban environments can have all kinds of benefits, health is just one.

Please Keep our Streets Clean: Over 818 People Have to Sleep on Them

Seen around Toronto:

"Please Keep our Streets Clean: Over 818 People Have to Sleep on Them"

"Homeless Sleeping, QUIET"


"Approximately 5052 Homeless Living in Toronto as of April 2006"
Turns out these signs are the work of Mark Daye, a 4th year graphic design student at OCAD, who says:

Instead of rebranding a product, or service for my 4th year thesis project I chose to represent a local population that usually gets overlooked. I re-coded official signage and affixed 30 of them to poles in the downtown core with messages pertaining to an obvious but ignored urban sub culture. The goal was not only to catch people off guard by creating signs that acknowledge the homeless population on a seemingly official level, but to get people to think about codes of behaviour, conformity, acceptance and to maybe spare some consideration for the homeless who live mostly ignored in the city, blending into the background just like the signs.

"2 Homeless People Die Every Week in Toronto"

Via 3 excellent Toronto blogs: Torontoist, BlogTO, and Spacing Wire

UPDATE (APRIL 4): Reactionary Signs

A Virtual Demo of A New Urbanist Community

Cool interactive tool from National Geographic lets you explore a community based on New Urbanist design principles. There's medium density, mixed-use zoning, light rail transport, corner stores, walkable streets, subsidized housing, public squares and lots of trees!

Related Article on Urban Sprawl

via Grist

Dense cities are environmentally friendly and they can have immense social benefits too, compared to sprawling suburbs and gated communities connected by vast highways. For example, cities help regulate fear.

This is a good opportunity to plug a great book Carfree Cities by J.H. Crawford. You don't have to buy the book, though, as most of the info is available for free on the Carfree Cities website.

How Cities Help Regulate Fear

Why do people in rural areas tend to be more Right-wing than people in urban areas?

First, Rural and Suburban areas promote fear:

In an open city...people of different colors and incomes must negotiate their mutual fate together. In some respects, they learn to value one another more highly, and social networks are expanded. In socially isolated environments [such as gated suburbs], social distance leads to stereotyping and misunderstanding, which in turn leads to fear and even greater distance. A resident in one of our [suburban] focus groups exemplified this dynamic when she told us that she never left her downtown San Francisco office building, even for lunch, for fear of people on the streets. Her building is located on a central street of department stores and offices, populated at lunch hour mainly by businesspeople and shoppers. But because it is a public space where anyone may go, it is too uncontrolled for her comfort, too unpredictable. Unlike her gated suburb, its openness increases the vulnerability she already feels to an unacceptable level.
* * * * * * * * * * *
As one citizen told Constance Perin in her study of community and place in American life: "See, you have to understand the fundamental feeling in the suburbs is fear, let's face it. The basic emotional feeling is fear. Fear of blacks, fear of physical harm, fear of their kids being subjected to drugs, which are identified as a black problem, fear of all the urban ills. They feel [that] by moving to the suburbs they've run away from it, in fact, they haven't, in reality they haven't, but in their own mind's eye they've moved away from the problem." From Blakely & Snyder's Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States via Bicycle Fixation

Not only are residents of vibrant cities usually less fearful of crime, they also tend to be less fearful of the big 'T': Terrorism, despite inhabiting much more likely targets than suburb dwellers:

We do not live behind gated communities and we do not have private security forces. We walk by alleys after dark and we dodge mentally unstable people to get to our subways and to make our bus connections. When you neglect the needy, we are the people that suffer. When the dispossessed and alienated riot, they riot in Newark, Detroit, and Watts. They do not riot in Topeka, Boise, or Crawford, Texas. From On Courage

Second, I think the simplistic cliché that the Left is all about hope, while the Right is all about fear holds a lot of truth. The Right Soothes Fear. The Right offers people the promise of security and order in what can feel like a world gone out of control. Witness McCarthy-era anti-Communist hysteria, which is very similar to the current hysteria over "Islamic terrorism". When facing something frightening, it feels good to have a strong, protective big brother.

Right-wing leaders know this, and they use fear as "a way of getting people to act against their own interests to work up hysteria and to get people to do terrible things to other people, because they’ve been made afraid." - Howard Zinn

Fear is one of our biggest challenges. Also see Can Fear be a Useful Tool for Progressives?