The Cost of Entry and Diversity of Experience

I recently took a family trip to St. Louis.  While in St. Louis, we went to the zoo.  Aside from the ethical questions that all zoos raise, the St. Louis zoo was impressive in design, appearance, and scope.  Most noteworthy, though, was the fact that the zoo charges no entry fee.  As such, the patrons seemed considerably more diverse than what I experience when I attend the Milwaukee County zoo.  I cannot say for certain whether cost is the sole factor (and am not assuming that diversity is coterminous with poverty), but the city's promotion of the zoo and other cultural experiences as benefits of residency seems to make the experiences more communal.

In many ways, the St. Louis zoo reminded me of the Milwaukee lakefront during summer.  It is at the lakefront that the barriers of segregation are at their weakest because the public resource is limited in size, open to all, highly desirable, and accessible in cost.  I should add that there is no equivalent alternative available that could lead to populations self-sorting.  The St. Louis zoo or the Milwaukee lakefront are unique public resources and so have a truly public character.  The experience suggests to me that if we value diversity and prefer integrated social experiences to segregation or self-sorting, then we must place unique and desirable spaces and institutions wholly in the public domain.  By this I mean that the cost of entry and maintenance of the spaces and institutions must be spread progressively and fairly across the public through taxation rather than through usage fees, which are by nature regressive, even when partially subsidized.

Even small entry fees will have, like all regressive taxes, a discriminatory effect, favoring both those best placed economically and those whose sociocultural experience values the space or cultural institution.  In short, if institutions like zoos and museums charge entry fees, they largely become the domain of the middle and upper middle classes (and especially what might be called the traditional or 'white' middle and upper middle classes) because these groups, through received experience, place a sufficiently high value on cultural institutions like zoos and museums so that they will not only be able to pay entry fees but are also willing to do so.  There is nothing wrong with being middle or upper middle class; however, our communities are richer when valuable institutions that help us create shared histories and experiences are actually shared with all people. Progressively spreading the costs of cultural institutions is a sensible way to do this.