Gap Be Gone: A Locality Takes on Inequality

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



Gap Be Gone: A Locality Takes on Inequality
June 19, 2011

Amid fierce fiscal austerity, a borough in London is doing battle to level up the poor and level down the rich. Imagine if a borough in New York tried something as ambitious to tackle the rich-poor gap.

By Sam Pizzigati


In the United States and Britain, the developed world’s two most unequal major nations, you can find localities like Islington in every major metro area.

Islington, a London borough that counts about 200,000 residents, sports some of Britain’s poshest neighborhoods, cocktail bars, and boutiques. But nearly half of Islington’s children live in poverty, and locals in the borough’s poorest areas live seven fewer years, on average, than locals in the richest.

And now residents in those poorest areas have a local government, a borough council, having to make do with less. Much less. Austerity at Britain’s national level has ravaged Islington’s available budget for public services, with deep cuts looming in everything from libraries to foster care.

Thousands of localities, on both sides of the Atlantic, face this same sort of squeeze. These localities have begun slashing away. Islington is slashing, too — but at a different target. Islington has begun slashing away at inequality, the massive gap that divides the borough’s rich and poor. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/rich-poor-gap-be-gone/

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[Scuba]

2. Recommend. Nice article about a grass-roots movement using practical....

....methods to help achieve something closer to "fair".

[LiberalEsto]

3. Good article

We stayed at a small bed & breakfast in Islington when we visited London with the kids back in the late 90s. It was definitely a mixed bag economically, but not like the slums you see in many major U.S. cities. We walked about a mile to the Underground station every day and rode to various places around London. It was far less expensive than staying in a downtown hotel, which we could not afford.

Much more needs to be done on the inequality issue, but Islington is making a good start.