Some magazine called that the question, ‘To dig or not to dig,’” says Kenneth Rose, a professor at California State University Chico and author of the book One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture. “There’s this huge national debate of whether or not to build a shelter. I know that you will want to do no less.”Īlthough some historians say the speech was mainly meant to intimidate Khrushchev, one effect was to stoke public anxieties about nuclear war. “In the coming months, I hope to let every citizen know what steps he can take without delay to protect his family in case of attack. But the time to start is now,” Kennedy said. “In contrast to our friends in Europe, the need for this kind of protection is new to our shores. Kennedy addressed the nation, pumping up the Civil Defense budget and urging Americans to prepare. “It was just an eerie time,” says Addams.Ĭold War preparation really got hot in 1961, when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev threatened to cut off Western access to Berlin, then a divided city. As apartment dwellers, her family had to have faith in public shelters. And they had those little signs that were saying that you go here, like in the subway, or certain other areas.”Īddams says those who had the money and a little property could build their own bunkers. “People were buying and making fallout shelters, and trying to find out where we could go if there was an attack and all that kind of stuff. could lead to a 45% spike in overall homelessness within one year.“It was kind of scary,” she says. The coronavirus crisis stands to exacerbate the problem, perhaps dramatically: According to a recent study, the economic disruption, housing instability, and mass unemployment that Covid-19 has touched off in the U.S. That’s been particularly true in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City, where scenes of tent encampments and panhandlers amidst urban wealth provide a stark illustration of urban inequality. This edition of CityLab University seeks to provide a baseline level of knowledge about homelessness, a phenomenon that has long been linked to urban life in the United States. When governors and mayors delivered stay-at-home orders, many Americans-likely more than one million-had nowhere to go. Suddenly, the plight of those living on the streets became intimately linked to the well-being of everybody else as the nation sought to tamp down a contagion that targets the most vulnerable members of society. If you have constructive feedback or would like to see a similar explainer on other topics, drop us a line at it has in so many other arenas of American life, the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the depth and severity of the nation’s homelessness crisis.
It’s time again for CityLab University, a resource for understanding some of the most important concepts related to cities and urban policy.
0 kommentar(er)
