I

f you’ve been away over 
the summer, you may have 
missed some exciting new 
developments here on campus!
Did you hear about the new 
protected bicycle lanes on campus? 
Oh, sorry, I got mixed up. That’s 
Michigan State. Here in Ann Arbor, 
the world-class separated bike lane 
on William Street mysteriously 
dead-ends at campus. 
What about the exciting new 
solarization initiative to add solar 
panels to 90 locations around 
campus? 
Wrong 
again, 
that’s 
Arizona State University. With the 
exception of a few arrays built by 
DTE over a decade ago on North 
Campus, not a solar panel or wind 
turbine can be seen. Maybe we 
should ask ASU how they did it?
Have you looked into renting an 
apartment at the new 15-acre project 
on North Campus containing 2,500 
student beds located over 104,000 
square feet of shops, restaurants 
and services? Sorry, that’s the 
University of Southern California 
Village project; our North Campus 
features open fields and strip malls 
despite years of calls for a denser, 
more vibrant campus. 
Although some new dorms 
are helping, a concerted effort to 
produce even more housing near 
campus is needed to stem the ever-
increasing number of students, 
faculty and staff forced to commute 
into Ann Arbor by car due to a lack 
of regional transit. According to the 
U.S. Census Bureau’s Longitudinal 
Employment 
and 
Household 
Dynamics dataset, the number of 
people employed in Ann Arbor who 
commute into the city has increased 
from 72,972 in 2002 to 90,651 in 
2019, a 24% jump.
Finally, did you hear about the 
new rapid transit system running 
through campus? Oh, sorry, that’s 
the University of Maryland at 
College Park, which is preparing 
for construction of the Purple 
Line light rail line, which will tie 
their campus even more closely to 
regional buses and trains. At the 
University of Michigan, giant diesel 
buses lurch around spewing fumes, 
and there is minimal coordination 
with the city bus system. The 
concept of a “connector” to serve 

the city and campus was abandoned 
years ago.
What’s my point? The University 
of Michigan’s physical campus in 
Ann Arbor is outdated, and does not 
exemplify the sustainability goals 
we claim to have. Dropped into 
campus, an alum from the 1980s 
would feel right at home, except for 
a few shiny new buildings here and 
there, and the eye-popping rents 
advertised for off-campus housing. 
Of course, some things have 
changed, but our campus is far from 
boldly illustrating our sustainability 
ideals and spirit of innovation.
Given 
recent 
leadership 
changes at both the University 
and the city, Ann Arbor faces a 
unique opportunity to rethink 
the U-M campus and broader city 
through coordinated planning and 
implementation. With the selection 
of Santa Ono as the new University 
president, he and his team have 
an unprecedented opportunity to 
make some big changes to catapult 
our physical campus into the 21st 
century. The election of a slate 
of progressive, pro-development 
City Council candidates during 
the August primary means he’ll 
find ready collaborators in city 
government. 
On campus, the President’s 
Commission on Carbon Neutrality 
(PCCN) was a model for cross-
campus 
collaboration 
and 
generated a report containing lists 
of many good ideas. At the city 
level, A2Zero demonstrates robust 
support for carbon neutrality, but 
also leaves many unanswered 
questions about how and where 
the ideas will be implemented. 
What we need now is planning 
and implementation that bakes 
these principles into key plans and 
bolsters our capacity to act.
Both the University and city 
need new Master Plans, and they 
should be ideally prepared through 
a joint project, to serve as a concrete 
vision for implementation. The 
University Master Plan has not seen 
a major update since 1998, over 20 
years ago. The PCCN described 
good ideas, like a campus connector 
and electric car charging, but not 
specifics about where and when 
they should be implemented that a 
plan could address. 
On 
the 
city 
side, 
the 
“Comprehensive Plan” is simply a 
giant stack of often contradictory 

plans and studies. There’s no single 
map showing priority areas for new 
growth. Recently, City Council 
became interested in upzoning 
transit corridors, but nobody has 
done a study about where and how 
density can be best added. Luckily, 
the planning commission started 
work this week to hire a consultant 
for a new comprehensive plan. It’s 
not rocket science — the urban 
planning methods to create growth 
scenarios are widely used by cities 
as diverse as Madison, Cleveland 
and Salt Lake City.
Why a single plan? University-
owned land is spread throughout 
the city, and our transportation, 
housing, 
electricity 
and 
other 
infrastructure 
are 
tightly 
integrated. Key University-owned 
parcels, such as along Plymouth 
Road, 
are 
opportunities 
for 
innovative mixed-use development 
that would serve both University 
and City goals. A unified plan 
would also allow both communities 
to consider their histories of racial 
and economic exclusion, from 
admissions to racial covenants and 
single-family zoning, and consider 
how future planning decisions 
could address injustice and foster 
greater inclusion.Good planning 
works at the scope of problems, 
not merely political boundaries. 
Writing plans collaboratively can 
help get all the key stakeholders on 
the same page and build consensus.
But a good plan is not enough. 
Although collaborative planning 
can 
lay 
the 
groundwork 
for 
implementation, 
it 
requires 
capacity for follow-through. Here 
the University can learn from the 
city, where staff leadership from a 
dynamic Office of Sustainability 
& Innovations and the Planning 
Services 
Department 
are 
a 
big reason so many exciting 
sustainability proposals have been 
approved recently, like work on 
electrification and solar power, 
parking reforms, changes to rules 
for accessory dwelling units and 
the transit-oriented development 
zoning district. The University’s 
planning function, operating with 
a small staff deeply embedded in 
Facilities & Operations, lacks the 
capacity and institutional mandate 
to lead.

L

ast semester, I was able to 
study abroad in Barcelona, 
Spain. 
While 
most 
of 
my classmates and roommates 
were American, I did get the 
chance to learn about foreign 
perspectives on the U.S. from 
my Spanish professors and other 
international 
students 
(from 
countries 
including 
Lebanon, 
Ireland and Egypt) living in my 
dorm. One of the most prevalent 
opinions of the U.S. was that 
Americans love to work. This 
became more apparent to me as 
my classmates and I experienced 
the summer internship recruiting 
process and are now considering 
our post-graduation options.
One of my professors shared 
that while people in Barcelona 
“work to live,” Americans “live to 
work.” He continued to explain 
that with the value Americans 
put on work come stereotypes 
and social-influence levels tied 
to career paths. Instead of feeling 
valued for being a good person 
or spending more time with 

family and friends, Americans 
value working as hard as possible 
and making as much money as 
possible. Workism, the belief 
that work is not just a means to 
economic production but is also 
the center of one’s identity and 
purpose, is the cultural norm in 
the U.S., increasing overall stress 
and decreasing overall happiness.
One of the best examples of this 
is the way American employers 
treat new parents. The United 
States is the only industrialized 
country in the world that doesn’t 
require employers to offer paid 
parental 
leave. 
The 
average 
paid parental leave is 12 weeks 
globally and 20 weeks in Europe. 
While most wealthy countries’ 
governments guarantee health 
care, the majority of insured 
Americans are insured through 
their 
employer. 
The 
1996 
Personal Responsibility and Work 
Opportunity Reconciliation Act 
pushed Americans even more 
towards workism by replacing 
most of the welfare system with 
programs that made benefits 
contingent on employment.
These gaps in the U.S. system 
have 
resulted 
in 
Americans 

working 184 more hours annually 
than Japanese workers, 294 more 
hours annually than U.K. workers 
and 301 more hours annually 
than French workers. Eighty-five 
percent of male employees and 
66% of female employees in the 
U.S. work over 40 hours per week. 
However, working more hours 
does not increase productivity. 
Some research estimates that 
out of an eight-hour work day, 
workers are only productive for 
three of those hours. 
Further, the pressure that 
American workers face to put 
all time and energy into their 
careers leads to higher rates of 
burnout, 
disappointment 
and 
stress. According to research 
by the American Psychological 
Association, burnout in the U.S. 
is increasing every year, with 79% 
of employees experiencing work-
related stress in the month before 
the survey. Symptoms of work-
related stress reported included 
lack of interest, lack of energy, 
cognitive weariness, emotional 
exhaustion and physical fatigue.

Opinion

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The toxicity of American work culture

Wednesday, September 7, 2022 — 5
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Collaboration on planning, innovation 
the key to a more sustainable Ann Arbor

ELIZABETH PEPPERCORN
Opinion Columnist

U

nder the direction of Russian 
President Vladimir Putin, 
Russia invaded Ukraine in 
February 2022 creating a chain of 
events that destabilized the region 
and threatened global democracy. In 
the intervening months, questions 
surrounding Putin’s precise motives 
for attacking Ukraine, his potential 
next maneuvers and his treatment of 
Ukrainian civilians have plagued the 
global community.
Putin’s strategy in conducting 
his full-scale invasion of Ukraine 
seems to follow a distinct pattern. 
The Russian president will launch 
a planned attack with quantifiable 
outcomes followed by a subtler, more 
insidious goal. A prime example of 
this phenomenon is Putin’s intention 
to first capture the Ukrainian capital, 
Kyiv, as the planned attack and later 
ensure Ukraine’s “neutral status” as 
the insidious goal.
The first element of Putin’s 
aforementioned plan is fairly simple 
to model and predict. Putin clearly 
seeks to depose Ukrainian President 
Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Analysts have 

estimated that the war has destroyed 
approximately 
$10 
billion 
in Ukrainian business assets and 
damaged 14,788 miles of road. Putin’s 
war-path to capturing Kyiv (and 
his pivot to Donbas) is littered with 
discernible, calculable destruction.
The ability to assess the damage 
Putin’s 
invasion 
causes 
helps 
galvanize the public against these 
aggressive attacks. President Joe 
Biden has even gone so far as 
to publicly release intelligence 
reports regarding Russian military 
strategy in an effort to increase 
transparency.
However, the second element 
to 
Putin’s 
original 
plan, 
to 
demilitarize 
and 
neutralize 
Ukraine, cannot be described by 
specific metrics. Beyond toppling 
Ukrainian democracy (which has 
a quantifiable impact, such as 
deposing Zelenskyy, adding to the 
mounting $600 billion in overall 
economic losses and increasing 
the already high rate of civilian 
casualties), Putin proposes a vague 
ideological takeover whose impacts 
remain unknown. 
“Neutralizing” 
Ukraine 
and 
absorbing it into the monolithic 
Russian territory would require Putin 

restructuring the socioeconomic and 
cultural fabric of the country. It is 
extremely difficult to quantify the 
widespread impact of a weapon that 
dismantles Ukraine’s core identity as 
separate from Russia.
Infiltrating 
long 
standing 
institutions like Ukrainian schools, 
currency and agriculture does not 
have an estimated impact like that 
of a ballistic missile or an artillery 
rocket. However, it can be just as 
devastating, and regarding the food 
supply, more catastrophic than any 
other Russian offensive.
In 2018, the U.N. Security Council 
passed a resolution preventing the 
use of starvation as a weapon of war. 
Despite this action signaling a global 
condemnation of wartime hunger, 
Putin continues to leverage the 
food supply against Ukrainians by 
closing ports, blocking trade routes 
and decreasing the wheat harvest 
by an estimated 40%. Not only does 
disrupting 
agriculture 
catalyze 
widespread famine in Ukraine, it 
deepens global food insecurity and 
plunges the country into biological 
and economic collapse that could last 
far beyond the end of the invasion.

Hunger is Putin’s most devastating weapon of war

AVERY CRYSTAL
Opinion Columnist

Moving Blues

 Read more at MichiganDaily.com

 Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Read more at MichiganDaily.com
ROBERT GOODSPEED
Opinion Contributor

VANESSA KIEFER 
AND KATE WEILAND 
Managing Editors

AMBIKA TRIPATHI | OPINION CARTOONIST

