Quote:
Originally posted by jitterbug13
Reading that story reminded me of what Charleston went through after Hugo and now. Before Hugo came, the tourist area of Downtown was looking rough, especially the Battery. After $$$ came in from the damage, Downtown started to look a whole lot better and more rich *cough y--t* people started to come in.
Downtown has always had a big African-American population but it may be shrinking very soon. Some people can't afford to live downtown anymore and investors are buying up their houses. Also, a person would buy a house for about $100,000, fix it up and sell it for $300,000. Not many African Americans in Charleston can afford that.
After the dust has settled, NO is going to be the same way because they have displaced the people who have made NO what it is today.
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They did this in Charlotte w/o a natural disaster. Downtown Charlotte used to look verrrry different than it does today. It started years ago with plans of building a new Coliseum. First, they started to semi clean up the Biddleville area (near JCSU), then they built a new transportation center so that there would be one main place dwntwn to catch & xfer buses (stopping a certain "element" from being strewn all over the city), then they systematically started closing some of the surrounding projects and forced them to move elsewhere. Then up came a new parking deck, condominiums, a Johnson & Wales University, a YMCA, a Harris Teeter, etc. Instead of the "element" you see a different element jogging, walking dogs, walking to restaurants... Now I cannot lie and say that it definately doesn't look better downtown and there used to be alot of crime there, but at what cost? The poor was forced out of their homes, they certainly couldn't afford the condos, and those committing crimes were just forced into different areas - like East Charlotte, which was actually nice when I first moved here, but is now crime infested.
ET correct: there to their