I was referring to what i've seen in Detroit. The new high priced residencies are all downtown and had not existed just a few years ago, while the houses* are all in the neighborhoods. There was never really any housing in downtown Detroit other than a few high rises which where pricey as hell to begin with. No one is trying to fix up the neighborhoods in the D other than a few which have always been well to do to begin with. The thing about Detroit is that the resurgence is mostly professional blacks that are moving into these properties.

I'm all for it, the one thing that city needs the most is a tax base.

* the average value of a house in Detroit is about $40,000

Wow...so you have all the answers huh?

Your opinions are correct hmmm?

Why don't you try moving out of that comfort zone of yours and see if those answers are so cut and dry as it seems somewhere else and I guarantee you they are not.

I am laughing at the fact also that you 'jailed' yourself in to keep out "Section 8ers"....I wonder if that's the only problem people you are worried about. Funnier still is that mine isn't and we have no issue with "Section 8ers" or anyone else in our neighborhood.

Get back to me in about 5 years and let me know how that's working out for you, 'smart guy'.

I don't think the problem is with subsidized housing entirely. There are places where they will have like one project and then the rest of it is a regular neighborhood. When they put them right on top of each other is when it's almost destined to become a ghetto.

Also, saying that "we should focus on ending blight altogether" or anything of the like is an utopian appeal at best. Should blight be eliminated? Yes. Should re-devolopment an re-urbanization take a back seat to that? No. Not at all, in my opinion.

This is the most redundant thread in a while.

We know both sides of the debate but, all jokes aside, such debates are so typical and common that I don't understand DaemonSeid's frustration and cyber-emotion. LOL

I heard the whistle blowing back on page 2. That was my cue to stop reading and look at the length of posts instead. When they hit novel proportions, this sucker derailed.

Yeah it's pretty much every other thread we have about anything. I tried to learn something though. I guess I did.

I don't think utopia will ever be achieved, but I think we should all want to make our cities as best as they can be. I think people today lake civic identity. Meaning, I don't think people care at all where they live, that places and neighborhoods have become interchangeable.

Do you always lose debates like this?

This is pretty pathetic.

You did...go to college right? You're not some sort of alumni initiate with a University of Phoenix degree or something..right?

But here is the question...how many times can you keep changing between living in the suburbs vs living in the city and at what cost? It's not so cut and dry as it seems. What is it that you are willing to give up and get in return? Convenience, a nice environment, crime free areas, good school systems?

People do care where they live. Think about when you chose to move wherever you are now and where you plan to move in the future. What factors do you take into account? Better yet, if you plan on becoming a homeowner, how long do you plan on staying there? I just had this conversation with someone yesterday about the fact that due to this so call 'gentrification' issue, so many people are losing on both sides. You have owners who cannot afford to sell their property because although their credit is great, the area itself is a depressed area. And then you have people who are renting at the same price they would pay to own. It's a risk and a gamble in this economy and a question that has not been answered. How does gentrification benefit everyone? The answer is, it doesn't.

When areas a reshaped and transformed you have to sacrifice something for the desired effect. And as it's already stated, it's not just "Section 8ers" or the poor.

And as some of us have been around long enough to see some of these effects, the next question is, how long will it stay this way until people start to change their minds and decide to move back out of the cities because they don't want to be confined living up under other people, the cities have been run down, the cost of living in that area is is too high or crime forced them to the suburbs.

RU, cities lost their identities because it's more about dollars now than about 'community togetherness'.

Sidebar: Don't forget desegregation is also what lead to a destruction of 'community identity'. If you wanted tax dollars (as alluded to earlier in this thread) then governments had to bar practices about where people could live. Again another win/lose situation.

Disappearing are your "Chinatowns", (DC's Chinatown is a joke BTW), Little Poland, Little Italy, etc. These were communities that thrived at the early pert of the 20th century creating an identity because naturally the US wasn't as crowded then as it is now. But now with people scrambling to make every bit of space habitable, these communities with identities will lose them because it's all about the color and depth of green.

So, I am willing to bet you, in 10 to 20 years, this trend may reverse again.



The problem now, of course...is urban sprawl so it may not be too much suburbia left to live in within that time.


Something else you may want to look at regarding back and forth living

yah. once i saw Kevin enter the thread i knew someone was gonna get pissed off.

Gentrified neighborhoods aren't necessarily free of crime, either. There's a low level of gang activity here as well as other crime-related activity which seems to be all over Chicago... muggings, beatings, etc. It's just that when it's a violent crime and it happens here (and is reported), it gets a lot more news coverage than if the same thing were to happen in other areas.

What's frustrating to me is that there seem to be cops ALL over this neighborhood, but then they're talking about bringing the national guard into the south side because "crime is out of control there." Well... maybe if you pulled back your forces and drove by my house maybe once every two hours instead of twice an hour you'd be able to have a more robust police force in those areas.

I ask myself the same question about you with some of the erroneous racial garbage I've seen you post.

Prior to the fences, there were lots of burglaries and non-violent crimes. After the fence, those things went way down. It's hard to imagine these things are not related.

But yeah, Section 8ers do tend to commit more crimes, violent and otherwise than your average suburban soccer mom. Seems pretty "cut and dry" to me.

And I don't know if you have been keeping up....it's not just Section 8 people who are a part of the criminal element nowadays.

But then you might want to go back and review this thread (another wrong end for you BTW) to understand when people are backed into a corner, some do not have the means or know how to fight their way out.

You have to take into account the area OUTSIDE of your fence. Your fence still only counts as a temporary solution to a problem that is being ignored. What do you do about what goes on inside of your fence (and BTW I actually SERVE ON my HOA board ...a bit more different that actually just going to quarterly meetings) with people who cannot keep up with assessments, security (you guys got a fence, good for you...fences can be hopped over), fielding questions about refinancing, landscaping, architectural requests, homeowners who for many many reasons decided to rent their homes out or worse yet, just simply move while the house just sits there (still being paid for yes). I'm sure that not everyone that lives inside of this magical fence is as well off as you and if this is the case, you probably couldn't tell; it's that "Keeping up with appearances" thing.

You probably have not experienced that yet but then also remember you have to eventually come outside of your fence and as I have said repeatedly, your city may have the resources to deal with the sort of change that you describe but not every area has that ability to do so whether you want to blame it on the people or the money that is being utilized.
Eventually, enough people will not want (or be able) to continually to pay for resources that kept these elements out and choose to move elsewhere and guess what, you are right back at square one.

You just can't throw money at the gentrification problem and expect for it to be permanently solved especially since most who are throwing the money aren't the ones really digging into the layers to truly examine the overall effects of trying to fix urbanization through gentrification.

The only thing you are right about is that it's a gamble but the one thing you have truly failed to answer and grasp is how this is not a win/win situation

You may want to also see this article... your city isn't mentioned by the way.

We were in this article though...

http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/0...red-recession/

And no one's hopping that fence. I believe it's 12 feet high.

Our assessments are no big deal and they're optional, so that's not really an issue. The majority of our budget comes from grants from the city. And as far as my neighbors being as well off as me, I don't really know. So long as they keep their yards up, I don't really care either.

As far as gentrification goes, even in the circumstances where it is not win/win, being poor sucks and it should suck. That you've let your neighborhood slide to a point where external forces are needed to essentially wipe the place out and start over means that you have failed. If that happens in my neighborhood someday, then I failed at being a good steward for my neighborhood and doing what I could to protect my property value.

The problem will never be solved because the problem of blight, left unchecked tends to spread. Best to nip it in the bud if possible and salvage a bad situation, or if not possible, to at least contain all the blight in one area -- in OKC, there are certain neighborhoods you just don't go to at night... or if you do go, you go armed (conceal and carry is permissible here and open carry is about to be).

The fix is cultural. I agree you can't throw money at the problem. If the police won't clean up your neighborhood, you have to take it upon yourself to do something. There may be consequences for that, it's all a cost-benefit analysis, and it may be the case that eventually you're resigned to the fact that the neighborhood will slip into blight.

UGGGGG this is the same old school choice "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" crap. If people are paying taxes, why in the fuck should they lay down and put up with not receiving services (be it police presence, updated schools etc). The "walk away if you can and just leave it for the poor slobs who can't afford to do so" is a really good way to teach your children to be irresponsible brats who care about very little but themselves and their own pleasure.