Dominion Road is a long road in Auckland, New Zealand that stretches through several suburbs, at the moment (from 2010) there is a project to widen Dominion Road called the "Auckland Transport Dominion Road Upgrade", and of course "Upgrades" are always a progression of an inferior state to a superior state. Such is the language used.
The issue with widening Dominion Road in Auckland, as described to me, is that this would remove parking spaces, cycle lanes and footpaths for the sake of increasing traffic flow from the suburbs to the city center and back. This would negatively effect local businesses and disrupt the community that exists on Dominion Road. There is an argument that Dominion Road has historically been culturally significant and is associated with a middle class community of storeowners and people living in the area. On the top of my head, evidence in support of this would include that it was the subject of a Mutton Birds Song "Dominion Road", but of course proving its cultural significance and the existence of community is complex and political, see figure 1.
Figure 1: A flyer put in local letter boxes to raise local awareness
My exposure to the arguments against the widening of Dominion Road have been interesting discursively, although this is possibly due to the individuals involved, which have featured the argument that many of the new shop owners, who are immigrants, don't have a sense of its history and don't have a sense of community and thus will not adequately oppose this idea. This of course has racial dimensions, New Zealanders are relatively quite sophisticated in their approach to non western cultures but the new form of racism tends to be supported with "common sense" propositions of reality that have value statements that are embedded within a wider set of moral values (Augoustinos et al 1999 : 90). In this case "community" is arguably being used as part of a set of moral values that the "immigrant" shop owners do not have. Associated with this is the argument that the immigrant run businesses are only being run for the purposes of obtaining New Zealand citizenship. Apparently one of the current Immigration/ Permanent Residence pathways is the Long Term Business Visa (LTBV)/ Entrepreneur visa pathway which requires the business to be run for two years minimum, so the argument is the shop owners are holding out for two years before folding and doing something else for the immigration purposes and thus are not really interested in the community and/ or what is to the benefit of business on Dominion Road.
When I first heard this argument, I found it compelling and asked questions such as how do you know? Part of the answer was, "They have poor English, they are isolated". My next question should have been "Is it possible that there exists an equally valid community of people who don't speak English as their first language", but the reality is, in the situation one has the motivation of just getting along and not causing unnecessary fallout.
When reading about the LTBV/ Entrepreneur visa to Permanent Residence pathway it has the criterion that the business has to be "successfully established" and provide benefit to New Zealand, creating employment, increasing foreign exchange earnings or exports, revitalizing existing businesses or introducing new products, services or technology. Not to immediately discount the two year minimum argument on the basis that this criterion was not mentioned, because the gap between a reasonable sounding goverment statement and the reality can be significant but even if they are only trying to meet the two year minimum business period for Permanent Residence purposes, wouldn't some kind of positive involvement in the wider community, in which they could provide some kind of documentation and personal narrative be useful for that Permanent Residence. Could this not be a basis for an interest in this issue if they are presented with the facts?
The community argument is also being used against the Project Director, who is of Dutch origin, thus it is argued that this person does not have a sense of community on the basis of being foreign and thus does not know what he is destroying. This is a logical fallacy in the sense that it is an "Ad hominem argument" and thus not evaluating the effects of the road widening approach on the community or what the road widening will do to the cultural value of Dominion Road. But these types of arguments are part of the general "common sense" discussion over the issue and possibly are part of a tradition of resistance that exists in the wider New Zealand culture, the kind of language used in Union and Dock worker strikes.. The community argument is embedded in a wider set of moral values and the concept of community is vague enough to be used in problematic ways. I like the concept of community and it is something I value but I have problems in the way the concept is being used discursively but perhaps the ways it is being used is more in line with the political realities.
Bibliography
Augoustinos, Martha: Keith, Tuffin & Sale, Lucinda. (1999). Race Talk. In the Australian Journal of Psychology. Volume 51. No 2. Pages 90 -97.
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