In 1995, a business consultant introduced a managerial concept that took the business world and later, government decisions, by storm. He coined this idea "disruptive innovation" but over the last decade, it has become known by us plebeians as "destructive innovation."
Basically, disruptive innovation is the act of new technologies displacing established ones: the automobile displacing the horse; the PC displacing typewriters; contracted private cars displacing taxis; social media displacing the newspapers and the World Wide Web. "Innovators" study past markets to forecast which sectors of economies can be disrupted by new technologies. The idea, as the originators argued, is that the disruption can move society forward. But anyone who's been paying even the smallest amount of attention to US politics and economics in the last thirty years is able to recognize that disruption inevitably leads to destruction without innovation.
The goal has become to make as much money as possible from the disruption before someone else disrupts the disruption. Neither ethics nor sustainability* play roles in business's decision-making; the bottom line is quick profit from the technologies before the technology itself becomes outdated and obsolete. As these private-sector-decision-makers then enter politics, they bring this ethos into public institutions -- like courts, schools, and congress -- that were meant to serve those of us who have to deal with the fallout of destructive disruptions.**
While I could write a whole thesis on how disruption has become destruction, I will instead let photographs captured by Google Earth and Google Maps of city blocks in Oak Cliff (Dallas County, Dallas, Texas) and Shreveport (Caddo Parish, Louisiana) do the work for me. These photos -- above and below -- are small illustrations of how "disruptive innovations" literally destroyed the essences of the neighborhoods and the lives of people who resided there.
Interstate 20 through Shreveport
In the 1960s, Shreveport's bustling downtown was cut in two by investments in infrastructure that accommodated quicker through travel for the trucking industry. While all American cities experienced this upheavel, Shreveport's scars are still very obviously exposed.
During the first half of the 20th century, most freight was shipped via railroad. While trucking was growing, especially in rural areas, city-to-city shipping was still, largely, a railway concern. This began to change after World War I. During the war, railroads had been nationalized to mitigate strikes brought on by increased labor demands, safety issues, and stagnant pay. After the war, the railroads were quickly re-privatized and the Unions busted; but, to ensure a takeover would not re-occur, highways were constructed at a fever pitch to lessen the country's depedence on the rails.
The shift from tracks to trucks intensified after World War II with the introduction of the Interstate highway system. Trucking companies built terminals for shipping logistics, truck drivers unionized, and three corporations -- Greyhound, General Motors, and Firestone -- conspired to replace streetcar systems with bus lines. The unions, their employers, and airlines successfully lobbied to move US mail deliveries from railroads to trucks and airplanes. Practically overnight, the railroad's passenger train traffic halted. And, due to the increased automotive traffic, the Interstate Highway system built the roads parallel, and even on top, of the old tracks.
This is very obvious in downtown Shreveport, where the Union depot was razed, even though it had been renovated in teh 1940s. The Central Depot that served the Texas & Pacific Railway and then, the Union Pacific Railroad, is now shuttered. Where homes and a long line of businesses stood along Marshall Street, Interstate 20 lies on top.
"Bishop Arts" in Oak Cliff
Davis Street at Bishop Avenue in Oak Cliff, an early suburb of Dallas, was built up in the 1910s and 1920s as a street car turn-around along the Bankhead Highway. A predominantly working-class neighborhood, with small and larger homes that often served as boarding houses, developed in this area. Two-story brick buildings that ringed the street car tracks served the community with independently-owned shops, bakeries, and small businesses that employed locals.
After the interstates displaced the Bankhead Highway and the street car had stopped running, the area became less attractive to in-coming residents. Real estate was cheap. In the 1990s, young urban "pioneers" moved in to revitalize the neighborhood, and named their effort at urban renewal the "Bishop Arts district." Investors and developers decided to cash in on the trendiness and bought up properties to redevelop them into large, multi-story apartment buildings, essentially destroying much of the character that had enticed people to move here in the first place.
Chasing disruption has now become a standard practice in the business world. It ruly illustrates "late stage capitalism," as it devours every new technolgy in its need for growth. Its hunger feeds the destruction of our public spaces.
*The definition of ethics and sustainability in lay terms: "Just because it can be done, doesn't mean it should be done, because the social/environmental fallout will be too great."
**Here are two prime examples: the New Deal (1933 to 1948), which was a response to the collapse of the American economic system after de-regulation in the 1920s meant to continue the excess of the late Gilded Age. Another one is the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC (2010), which neutered campaign finance laws to allow the influx of unregulated and unaccounted-for political donations by corporations.
