美国城市社会冲突的结构性根源

The Structural Roots of Social Conflicts in Urban America

当前美国城市社会冲突出现阶层政治转向与身份政治、种族冲突相互叠加影响的新趋势,其背后的结构性根源不仅在于经济不平等的日渐扩大与政党政治的意识形态冲突,还在于美国民主制度长期缺乏适应性改革,特别是城市政治与政策因被长期忽视而缺乏实质性改革,难以应对城市发展转型挑战。其中,新自由主义城市政治学及其治理失败、城市空间政策失误、警察系统的种族歧视困境是美国城市社会冲突的三大根本动因。拜登政府提出了有针对性的包括短期经济刺激与社会发展项目在内的“大基建”计划,虽然其可能在一定程度上缓解美国社会内部矛盾,但在实施过程中仍面临城市政策层面的较高执行风险。

Today’s U.S.cities have seen an emerging trend of social conflicts in terms of class and identity politics overlapping with ethnic conflict.The structural roots not only lie in the widening economic inequality as well as ideological conflict of the party politics,but also the long-term lack of adaptive reform of the democratic system,especially the absence of reform of urban politics and policy which has been neglected for several decades and thus ill-equipped to meet the challenges from the fast transformation of urban development.Among them,the three direct causes of social conflicts are the failure of neoliberal urban governance,the wrong urban spatial plan and the systematic racial discrimination in the police system.The Biden administration has adopted the infrastructure plan including the short-term economic stimulus and social development projects in the long term.Although it may alleviate the internal contradictions of American society to a certain extent,it still faces high uncertainty in the implementation process from the aspect of urban policy.