US Plans To Bulldoze 50 Shrinking Cities 806
chrb writes "Two days ago Slashdot discussed broke counties grinding their tarmac roads into gravel. Now the Telegraph reveals plans to raze huge sections of at least 50 US cities to the ground. The resulting smaller cities will be more economical to run, and the recovered land will be returned to nature."
Dayton (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems like a good idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Detroit (Score:3, Interesting)
Hearing this makes me think of Detroit. Its population is constantly shrinking and much of the city is in disrepair. I've ridden greyhound busses through it a few times and you pass mile after mile of boarded up, dilapidated buildings.
It makes one wonder what the city would be like if it ended up being completely abandoned, sort of like Rome after the fall of the empire.
Most likely there would be a half-attempted cleanup effort, but it would probably fail. Demolishing buildings isn't cheap. Returning the land to it's natural state is even more expensive, not to mention nature would probably do it herself over a slightly longer time frame.
Urban Decay? (Score:5, Interesting)
This reminds me of the "urban renewal" projects of the 50s and early 60s, when huge sections actually were razed in various major cities. Boston's West End was a victim of this.
It's widely considered to be one of the stupidest projects the government's ever done.
Here I thought we were supposed to encourage people to move back into cities so high population densities would make mass transit more viable. Silly me.
My support (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Article mentions Baltimore (Score:3, Interesting)
> The article mentions Baltimore, which makes sense. If you've ever
> visited some of the, shall we say, less popular portions of that city,
> you'll find block after block of boarded-up rowhouses.
I was just down in Richmond VA this past weekend and saw some of the same - albeit on a smaller scale. Really weird to see what should be primo storefronts boarded up. It'd be especially hard to restart those depressed areas given the current commercial real estate problems [blogspot.com].
Tent Cities (Score:3, Interesting)
The only city they actually mention in the article is Flint, Michigan; but Flint has been having problems long before this recession. The chances of it ever growing to it's former size are about the same as Bodie [bodie.com] ever being populated again: not likely, it's a ghost town.
The article tries to spin it like it's the end of some American dream of having lots of space, and we are all going to have to start living close together now, because it's cheaper for utilities, etc. Not likely.
there's opportunity in this (Score:4, Interesting)
FTFA:
"Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow," he said.
take older rust belt cities and remove the suburban sprawl surrounding them and prune them down to their urban core, and then you have a city layout from the days before the rise of the automobile
as gas prices continue to rise, urban development plans will favor this model of development: tightly clustered cities with good public transportation, surrounded by parkland. a much more humane and livable environment. places like phoenix and las vegas and houston, nothing more than giant sprawling suburbs really, will become inhospitable to affordable living while rust belt cities will develop a new cachet as nice places to live: condos and coops in refurbished historical buildings surrounded by healthy woodlands, with easy public transport or foot traffic to anywhere you want to and need to go
of course this cachet of "nice place to live" also has to imply some sort of job growth too, but as these rust belt cities shrink, they have ample opportunity to invest in emerging job sectors to bolster that sort of growth
then the choice between sitting in your car in a traffic jam on the freeway at $4/ gallon gasoline in 105 degree phoenix won't look as nice as walking the charming old refurbished downtowns of historic cities. these old cities have good bones, they just need to be pruned and invested a little in, and natural growth will take hold again
notice one city not mentioned as ripe for bulldozing: pittsburgh. yet pittsburgh is pretty much a poster child of a rust belt city. why? good planning for investing in future job sectors:
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_612352.html [pittsburghlive.com]
now compare pittsburgh's sober but cheerful outlook to the armageddeon-level job losses at work in the newer suburban sprawl cities that relied too much on overheated sectors like construction
detroit and flint and any other city heavily dependent on automobile manufacturing, alas, has a different story than pittsburgh. but this part of the larger picture at play here: the death of the automobile, the death of suburban sprawl, the return to small compact cities with a livable core surrounded by healthy woodland and with good public transportation
i for one welcome the death of the age of the automobile and the idiotic environmental damage of gas guzzling automobiles and space wasting burbs, and the inhumane anonymity of living in the isolating mcmansions and sitting in traffic jams, in areas of the country no one can survive in without artificial air conditioning
death to california
long live ohio
mark my words: the 1950s trend of everyone moving west will be replaced in 2025 by stories of everyone out west moving to the midwest belt
for the same reason: better quality of life
mark my words
We must destroy the city to save it (Score:5, Interesting)
This is understandably a touchy subject for a lot of people. It's hard to overstate the sense of loss; more than that, the sense of historical obliteration. Neighborhoods where once happy, prosperous people lived productive lives are vacant, and one cannot help but feel that those happy, prosperous people are gone, perhaps never to return, and those empty houses stand like tombstones marking the death of their dreams.
Of course, this is thankfully not really true - those happy and productive people simply moved to other places, where they continue to live out their happy, productive lives. We feel bad about razing these homes because we feel like we are razing the lives of the people that used to occupy them. But those people left those homes behind long ago. They've moved on - so should the rest of us.
We feel sick about obliterating what should be valuable assets. This is a hard problem too. laborers built these structures, many of them good strong structures, some of them the likes of which will not be seen again. With care, they should be able to last centuries. But a society too obsessed with preserving the past - particularly a past that is not valued - is a moribund society. We should not carelessly annihilate our history. But at the same time we need to remember who we, historically, are:
We are a dynamic society. We are a dynamic people. The only constant is change. These cities shrank while other cities grew. It is in many ways a reflection on the freedom of our society, that people and businesses decided to leave and go elsewhere. Other places gained while these places lost. Now it's time for the principle of creative destruction to come into play. It's time to give up on what people have freely decided they don't value. It's time to re-allocate resources from failure to profit. It's time to clear the landscape of the ruins of yesterday, to make room for the possibilities of the future.
The ideas in this article are on the right track. We can't get sentimental about a past that is gone, never to return. Raze the unowned buildings, now sheltering criminals and vagrants. Hell, de-annex the empty land and return it to the township. Sell whatever mobile capital goods are underutilized. Wipe the ordinance book clean and start over again. Put every budget item and every tax on the chopping block. Clear the path for future opportunity, or it will never arrive.
Re:there's opportunity in this (Score:3, Interesting)
death to california
Don't worry. Our state government in Sacramento is working diligently toward that goal. :-P
Government: We passed the largest state tax increase in U.S. history in the middle of a massive economic slump! Yay!
California: (falls over face first and vomits jobs and taxpayers into neighboring states. people spend even less due to 10% sales taxes. tax revenues actually go down)
Govenrment: D'oh! That haz teh FAIL! Who do we do now? I know! Let's raise taxes again! It'll be sure to work differently this time!
California: (death rattle)
Government: D'oh!
This little skit was brought to you by gerrymandering, and the letters F and U.
Re:Really a Shame (Score:3, Interesting)
In your plan for mass immigration, where are the immigrants going to get the resources to fix up the houses? There aren't enough jobs for the current residents.
Completely off topic here, but America needs to seriously reform the welfare system. There are significant portions of the population whose entire aspirations in life involve getting qualified for either General Relief or Social Security Insurance payments. They are content to take to their EBT coupons and subsist on whatever the government can tax the productive members of society for. Welfare should be a supplement. Welfare should be a government match against hours worked. The hours worked can be community service for all I care. But people need to be put to work if they want the state to tax people with jobs to support them. Maybe I'm a bit bitter from riding through the train South Central LA every day, but the system is broken.
As long as I'm ranting, they need to modify the welfare system and deny payments to felons and their children. That would go a long way to dealing with the "baby daddy" syndrome of stupid girls letting themselves get knocked up by the most alpha, ghetto hood thugs they can find. All of a sudden the baby of a gangster won't be a free ticket to hundreds of dollars a month and a free place to live. Require a paternity test and a valid identify for the father of the child. The government needs to start holding the people that they support accountable for the choices those people make about how they live their lives. I'm sick and tired of seeing my tax dollars disappearing into the bottomless pit that is the ghetto.
Re:Really a Shame (Score:2, Interesting)
There are two problems with your idea:
1. The huge manufacturing sectors that provided the kinds of low-wage, low-skill jobs that immigrant populations used to gobble up, have actually relocated to the former immigrants' home countries.
2. We would have to be willing to legally allow people to work low-wage, low-skill, dirty, dangerous jobs, and we don't really seem willing to do that.
Re:Seems like a good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a complete waste of effort. The economy grows because we produce things, not because we dig holes and fill them up.
So when your city raises taxes to fix the roads in the area no one is living in, and spend resources to fix water mains and sewers in those areas, instead of improving services in areas with people actually there, that's a good thing, right? More taxes for maintenance = good thing?
Re:Nothing good can come of this... (Score:1, Interesting)
How this isn't considered "ethnically cleansing" cities is beyond me. It seems as if the only people who would be affected negatively would be minority groups.
It is simple. I depends who is in power and who wants to do it. Do not forget the waste land of New Orleans. Democrat = Urban development. Republican = White raciest trying to take Black and Latinos homes.
Re:Article mentions Baltimore (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, yeah, Hull St. gets scary in that section. I actually had an interview just a couple blocks from there and wrote down the address wrong (missed a 0). The address I was at was just a couple blocks down the road and was a funeral home surrounded by an abandoned church and apartment building. I couldn't dial my recruiter to find out where I had gone wrong fast enough. If you continue on south to the other side of 288 it gets pretty nice again.
If you follow 95 or 301 south down to petersburg there is are a bunch more run down, nearly abandoned areas.
Re:Urban Transit (Score:5, Interesting)
"Main street" in modern suburbia is a 6-lane highway. Take a ride out to Northern Virginia if you don't believe me. Very few places today are bicycle-friendly.
Ironically, the most bike-friendly city I've ever lived in was Fairbanks, AK. They had bike paths along all major roads, and wide shoulders on all others. I took up biking while I was there as a form of both transportation and recreation. (Unfortunately, cycling in the winter isn't much of an option there. Shame too, because it's a surprisingly nice place to live when it isn't winter)
3 more uses for parts of disused cities (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be very interesting to close off part of a disused city or even a whole city and leave it as it is to see how nature would take over without human influences. Would it decay as some predict?. Would nature take over tower blocks for high rise living? ... The nearest experiment we have is Chernobyl, but thats nothing like American conditions such as weather etc.. and a 2nd city to compare how nature adapts to part or even a whole city without humans around would be fascinating.
Also part of a disused city would be a very valuable and useful proving ground for advanced research in robotics, such as cars using the road networks and urban exploring robots. Its a once in a life time chance to gain unrestricted access to a big part of a city.
Another very good use would be to leave part of a disused city as a film set of a slowly decaying abandoned city. (The WW2 Blitz in London created a lot of disused buildings that appeared in many films for decades). Part of a city would be an incredible once in a lifetime opportunity to create a huge film set that doesn't disrupting and interrupt normal working cities and its cheaper and easier for film companies to use. So its win win for these companies helping the US film industry and other businesses in cities otherwise inconvenienced by filming. The film companies must be able to see the potential. It would be such a good help to the US film industry for many years to come. They could even set up a joint company to manage the disused part of a city for the film industry and lease parts out to film companies world wide.
Re:Perhaps can start with Crawford, TX (Score:5, Interesting)
No. This is the result of deindustrialization of the West. As our economy becomes increasingly information-based and decreasingly manufacturing-based, old manufacturing centers are crumbling. But a new economy is rising, one based on information and information technology.
The RIAA/MPAA fiascos and the rise of iTunes and P2P, the failing auto industry, and the current economic disaster are all results of the growing pains associated with this transformation.
Anybody who doesn't realize it at this point should re-open Heidi and Alvin Toeffler's books, because they provided the roadmap years ago. The fact that is happening now is not a surprise to me at all.
Re:Urban Transit (Score:3, Interesting)
I live in one of these areas! (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in an area that would be directly impacted by this type of plan. I own an old home in the North Side of Pittsburgh and I am in absolute support of this. 1/2 of the houses on my street are abandoned and boarded up. If the City were to come in and demolish them (which they have slowly started to do) it would not only increase the safety of the area. It would also raise the property values which would in turn increase tax income to the City.
The problem we're faced with is no new development will happen in parts of the area until we purge the beyond repair buildings. Why would any erect a new structure next to a building that can barely stand?
I certainly think this idea is better then doing what we've been doing for 30+ years. Letting the urban core of Pittsburgh slowly rot while the young professionals continue to avoid the City for the suburbs. City living in Pittsburgh is on it's way back in areas that are in better shape, demolishing the buildings that are not salvageable will only accelerate this renewal!
Re:Urban Transit (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, It may be true statistically speaking but I don't fear driving a car as I do standing on the street minding my own business while two idiots shoot at each other while trying to run away at the same time and emptying 8 or 9 or more rounds of ammo each.
I've seen it happen live on multiple occasions, one of which I was less then 5 foot from one of the gang bangers who got shot. I'm not scared of guns, I own my own, I wouldn't have any reservations shooting someone to protect myself or someone else, but I also down stand down range at a shooting/taget range. In the one instance, It was in Venice CA (a suburb of Los Angelos and within the greater LA area) on a business meeting, I went for a walk afterward to find some lunch, and next thing I know, I hear a gunshot right beside me and a bullet whizzing by, I ducked behind a car and was joined by a woman and her toddler sized kid as I heard several more gunshots. There was about a dozen more shots when we saw someone attempting to run backwards by the car go down while shooting. He dropped the gun as he hit the ground, the action was open signaling it was empty, and blood started pooling around his upper torso. The shooting stopped and everyone waited a minute or so before standing back up. It felt like it took forever when it happened, 5 or 10 minutes when thinking back about it, but it happened in less then 1 minute.
No one who wasn't in the gunfight was injured outside of emotionally, I mean watching a stranger die in front of you isn't exactly pleasant. I don't know if I witnessed the death blow or if he was hit before we saw him go down, there was no blood spray or bodies flying through the air like in the movies. The cops said they thought it was a rival gang ordeal where someone went into another territory.
If I had a choice of putting my kids through that or a car accident, I would pick the car accident any day. I doubt too many young kids can go through that without being fucked in the head for a while. That's probably one of the reasons why people don't make it out of the inner city.
Re:Detroit (Score:4, Interesting)
Demolishing buildings isn't cheap.
Once you own the equipment, it's essentially a matter of paying for labor and fuel.
Fortunately for detroit, there are extreme levels of unemployment due to the failure of heavy industries. They already have 2/3 of the resources necessary to begin a large-scale demolition project. Seems to me like you'd be able to do it very cheaply, given the abundance of surplus heavy equipment in the city, not to mention the hordes of laborers desperate for employment.
Re:Urban Transit (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I'm sure they'll thank you for moving them downtown to get harassed by bums, shot at by gangbangers, and attend a school where the teachers wear body armor. I can see them giving you the "World's Greatest Dad" cup now.
Ah. The old "urban areas are crime infested ghettos and suburbs are all sweetness and light" fallacy.
Ever heard of a city called LA? It's a sprawl addict's dream. A 100 mile wide city that has crime in abundance. It has nice areas too though.
Ever heard of a city called San Francisco? It's a compact city enthusiast's dream. Things are so close together that you can (are you ready for this) WALK most places! Sure it has its crime-intensive areas, but they're the exception. The majority of the city is pleasant and safe enough that it attracts tourists by the million, and doesn't have the bums, gangbangers, and teachers in shining armour of which you speak. (OK, homelessness is a problem, but that's more to do with the city's temperate climate than anything else, and you'll find bums in other bay area cities including the low density ones.)
The point I'm making here is that there are good and bad high density cities, and good and bad low density cities. However, low density cities have an inherent problem that high density cities do not - namely heavy reliance on automobiles to meet daily needs, extra expense of delivering utilities and services, along with the pollution and social isolation that comes from single-use zoning. This scheme in TFA looks like a good way to bring out the best in American cities and finally walk away from this unsustainable and wasteful settlement pattern that forces people to make car trips just to buy a bottle of milk or a postage stamp. What's the point in living in a city if you can't walk anywhere? You might as well live away out in the wilds.
And FYI, high density mixed-use zoning is proving to be in high demand [wikipedia.org].
Re:Perhaps can start with Crawford, TX (Score:2, Interesting)
Exactly...because there's no profit in manufacturing anymore...because of free-trade/globalization...brought to you by??? Yep...the super-rich. Look at the cause, not the symptom (or result of the cause). If big megacorps weren't involved, everything at the store would be made locally or nearby.
+1 to the GP. +0.5 to the parent.
Re:Perhaps can start with Crawford, TX (Score:2, Interesting)
There might be a problem with that new economy: it probably won't create enough jobs/wealth for hundreds of millions of people, like the industrial economy did. In the worst case the information economies won't be able to pay enough goods from the manufacturing economies.
Incidentally, your sig points to the root of the problem.
Re:there's opportunity in this (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, by the way: Portland (and Oregon at-large) pretty much pioneered the urban planning and growth boundary system that you are cheerleading with your car-hate and enviro-spew in the 1970s.
Sigh. Typical US-centric thinking, even by supposedly enlightened west-coasters.
The idea of a green belt dates to biblical times [wikipedia.org], and the modern idea of a legislated development-free belt around a rapidly expanding city dates to 1930s London (England)
But since the London greenbelt happened after the Great Disappearance of the Rest of the World in 1776, you can be forgiven for not knowing about it.
Re:Urban Transit (Score:5, Interesting)
Children don't do that anymore.. Their parents are too terrified they will be kidnapped. Sadly, I'm not joking.. its pretty damn sad. Check out www.Freerangekids.org for one lady fighting back against the "think of the children" fear.
Re:Perhaps can start with Crawford, TX (Score:2, Interesting)
Never read the Toefflers, eh?
It's a result of technological progress, not the super-rich. As technology has improved, efficiencies have reduced the need for industrial capacity. Hence, the crumbling cities. Toyota went in this direction early on, while GM, Ford and Chrysler lagged behind.
Re:Tent Cities (Score:2, Interesting)
There's been a tent city moving around the outskirts of Seattle for 6 or 8 months, calling itself Nickelsville (in honor of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels). It just recently moved to West Seattle: http://westseattleblog.com/blog/?p=17881 [westseattleblog.com]
Re:Perhaps can start with Crawford, TX (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, it is one thing for this to be a Local/State decision, but, where does the Federal Govt. come in to play with all this at all? Talk about overstepping the bounds?!?!
On a side note...if they did want to start this somewhere, I'd recommend New Orleans East and the 9th Ward...we need to just finish off what Katrina started. That area was all swampland to begin with...let it return to nature, no one's hardly living there now to this day, just a drag on the New Orleans recovery.
Re:Perhaps can start with Crawford, TX (Score:5, Interesting)
There might be a problem with that new economy: it probably won't create enough jobs/wealth for hundreds of millions of people, like the industrial economy did. In the worst case the information economies won't be able to pay enough goods from the manufacturing economies.
Incidentally, your sig points to the root of the problem.
The problem is, the trade economy is built on the premise of a manufacturing economy. Unfortunately, our existing trade economy cannot efficiently allocate resources in an information economy.
Hunter-gatherers "worked" an average of 10-20 hours a week to maintain themselves. It was the introduction of agriculture that put us in the mode of working all the time; it also meant our population could burgeon out of control, and we could (several thousand years later) start building an industrial base. But the 40-hour-work-week is an artifact of a particular system that some societies have already outgrown. In places where health care isn't tied to "full-time" employment, there's already growing trends toward job-sharing, the four-thirds solution, and shorter work weeks.
Bottom line: we no longer need as much labor put in to meet our needs, so we need to stop withholding needed goods and services based on how much labor one puts in. There's enough for everyone. Let's be nice about it.
Re:Perhaps can start with Crawford, TX (Score:2, Interesting)
Not only that, it also means we will need to trade in some of our opinions, morals and values.
A nice example; Recently, the Dalai Lama made an unofficial visit to the Netherlands, without meeting important people like the Prime Minister and such. The reason: China would impose trade restrictions if the meeting was official or he would meet the Queen or Prime Minister. Now they only impose mild sanctions on us, such as restricting Visa for politicians.
A better example even: If you'd go to a local department store here in the Netherlands and purchase a Globe (not sure what the proper English name is; a soccerball sized globe with the world map and a lamp inside), produced in China of course (what isn't), you'll notice that some borders around China have been moved. Taiwan is no longer an independent country either, but it is part of China.
Re:Urban Transit (Score:3, Interesting)
Take your kids out of nature, grass, trees, clean air... and pack them into a filthy concrete jungle full of extreme poverty and extreme wealth.
There's six and a half square miles of nature, grasses, and trees [lacity.org] an easy walk from my house. I'm also three miles from downtown LA. (BTW, the walk includes a footbridge over a river populated by fish, ducks, geese, and coots. It's lovely.)
It's not either/or. There are urban areas people are happy to escape from when they manage it, and there's urban areas that are great places to be. It sounds like this project hopes to "prune" the really awful parts of certain cities, allowing people subsidized relocation to the vibrant areas. Sounds like a great idea.
Re:Seems like a good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
the much lauded (by your side of the argument) laffer curve disagrees with you.
they only cut spending AFTER a certain point.
according to the best analysis we could increase the tax rate on 1,000,000 to 10,000,000 a year earners to 60% before even the slightest hint of "belt tightening" would occur.
the economic science just doesn't agree with those people who, like you, confuse laissez-faire with being a form of capitalism
Re:3 more uses for parts of disused cities (Score:3, Interesting)
The Japanese place is called Hashima island, but popularly called "Gunkajima" - Battleship island, due to the high walls making it look like a huge battleship from far away.
It's normally completely closed off for visitors, but photographers and artists are occasionally allowed access. An excellent photo series here: http://www.ne.jp/asahi/saiga/yuji/gallary/menu-e.html [www.ne.jp]
Re:3 more uses for parts of disused cities (Score:1, Interesting)
This was actually happening in the 90's. Parts of New Orleans were fenced off and left to rot. You'd see apartment buildings and factorys on the outskirts of town just slowly crumbling and collapsing into themselves... Long before the recent hurricanes.
What I don't get is people are loosing their homes. Thousands are homeless... And yet the governments big plan is to bulldoze all the houses they just kicked families out of. I'm all for returning unneeded land back to nature, but how about housing the population first... I have five different friends whom with their families have lost their homes because they couldnt afford their mortgages or the value dropped and the bank foreclosed because the house wasn't worth the base of the loan anymore... So they stay homeless with all the others while we level the houses that we took away from them?!?!? There is no logic in government.
Re:Article mentions Baltimore (Score:2, Interesting)
I live in Catonsville which is very close to the city (I don't live in the city because I do have kids and can't afford private school) and I too work in Columbia. I wouldn't live in Columbia either for a bunch of reasons, but check out the housing prices in Columbia! Things have slowed down quiet a bit but it still seems that if there are a couple of square feet with nothing on them in Howard County it doesn't take long for there to be a suburban McMansion to be built there. So I think we are in the minority; clearly there are a ton of people with a bunch of cash who would rather live in Columbia. And although I wouldn't live in Columbia, if you are into the suburban hell hole thing then Columbia isn't a bad place to: hang out, to eat at a nice chain restaurant, go to a mall with all the same shops as any other mall in America. Yeah know, basic suburban hell hole stuff. I understand there was a time when you could go into a main street or mall in America and tell where you were based on the locally owned shops there. Of course now everything is owned by giant companies that are all too big to fail; I guess that is another story!
Re:Perhaps can start with Crawford, TX (Score:5, Interesting)
It was the introduction of agriculture that put us in the mode of working all the time
This is really not quite true. I'm very familiar with farm operations, and I can assure you that farmers do not work all the time. There are a couple times of year when you really need to make sure all the field operations get completed in a very short window: e.g. planting and harvesting. Some of the other things can be done in a bigger window: e.g. tilling & spraying. Prior to those times of year you spend your days servicing and rechecking your equipment 3-4 times because the cost of a downed tractor or combine can be enormous. The rest of the year, you could take a part time job or simply do nothing.
Livestock care is a different story, since they pretty much require constant care, but most farmers these days don't handle livestock the way they did 50 years ago when people ran integrated farms.
If we're to step back a few hundred years ago, it was not at all uncommon for serfs and laborers to only work 10 hours a week during offseason. There are plentiful stories of peasants sleeping all winter to conserve calories. They would basically shack up as a family in bed together to conserve heat and minimize the food they required.
The real transition to clocked in time was with the introduction of factories (capital). When a significant portion of the value of a product is derived from the value of the capital, then it makes sense to keep the capital operating as often as possible. You couldn't afford to have the line stop because a worker came in late.
Even then, the 40 hour work week is a relatively recent invention, having only come about in the 1930's through 1950's due to labor organization.
Manufacturing productivity has gone up drastically in the last century, whereas service productivity has not (as much). It still takes as many manhours to get a hair cut today as it did 100 years ago. The scissors used to cut your hair probably take 1/50th the amount of labor they did 100 years ago. It shouldn't be too much of a surprise then, that we've slowly transitioned from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, even when you take into account world trade. The USA is still the largest manufacturer in the world, in terms of value produced, so we can't say that the transition is due to "all of our manufacturing base going to China." People have simply decided to allocate their wages towards labor-intensive products (health care, financial, etc.) rather than material goods.
Re:Perhaps can start with Crawford, TX (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:3 more uses for parts of disused cities (Score:4, Interesting)
Large sections of Detroit have been like this for 10 years, so you don't have to go very far. Yes, there is some human influence in these areas (traffic, vandalism, fires, etc) but there certainly is no such thing as maintenance or improvement to these properties.
One of the saddest things I've seen was a gigantic brick-and-stone train station with beautiful architecture that looked like it hadn't been touched in 50 years, except of course to replace the wood boarding up the windows and update the graffiti. Something like this should be a museum or a landmark, but I guess no matter how beautiful a building is, if it's on the trashed side of town, then it's effectively worthless.
Re:Urban Transit (Score:3, Interesting)
San Francisco is nice, but it's not exactly someplace you live in you're straight and have a family.
Excuse me? Have you actually been to San Francisco?
Most cities are NOT like NYC, LA, SF, etc. They're usually more like Atlanta. The suburbs are fairly safe, and the downtown is a big ghetto full of crime and drugs.
You don't have a clue what you're talking about. Most cities have neighborhoods with various income levels. Some of the poorer areas may also have higher crime but even that is not always true. I feel quite comfortable walking around North Minneapolis, even though people in the suburban Twin Cities area are too afraid to ever go there. Too bad, they're missing some nice restaurants and coffee shops.
There's a reason white people (or rather, middle-class people) have been moving out of cities: they want to get away from all the crime
Wrong again. People initially left because after WWII the government subsidized new housing construction in the suburbs and penalized infill development. Segregated neighborhoods were official policy and people were led to believe their cities were crime-infested when in fact the numbers demonstrate the opposite. It was only after the whites (and the wealth and tax base) left the cities that crime began to become a real problem. And today, those impressions persist even though, for example, crime has droppepd nearly 70% in Minneapolis over the last decade or so.
U.S. residents have a distorted and paranoid view on crime. It's incredibly unlikely that you or I will be killed or harmed by some random act of violence. Almost all violent crime is targeted toward specific individuals by people they know.
People don't usually move to cities because they really want to live around so many other people; they go there because there's employment, and they're hungry. Niceties like walkability are luxuries in selecting a city to move to.
People go to the cities because of the community (yes, most people actually like being around other people) and the amenities. We're seeing a trend of people moving back into our cities. Downtowns are becoming more residential. It's certainly happening here in the Twin Cities. In fact the company I work for is about to move from the suburbs to downtown because it's already lost recruits due to its isolated location. The younger generation wants to live and work in the city.
Re:Urban Transit (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm raising my own kids in Manhattan, as I was raised here. My older son is just 3, so he's not yet old enough to cross streets by himself, but we let him run down the block when it's not too crowded, and he knows to wait for an adult at the corner. In our neighborhood, there's more of a hazard of him running into an oncoming stroller when he isn't paying attention than to falling victim to some sort of mythical pervert, especially since with the huge number of people with young kids on the sidewalks, everyone keeps an eye out for things that are truly out of place.
The best example is in the playgrounds. The kids who are old enough to cross the streets by themselves go to our local playground by themselves. (NYC recently announced a campaign to increase the number of playgrounds so that there is a playground within a 10 minute walk of every legal residence in the entire city. Estimates are that it may take fewer than a half dozen additional playgrounds to achieve that.) The youngest kids are watched by parents or caregivers. My brother described going to meet up with my kids at the playground one time, when they were with their caregiver. He described walking into the entry of the playground and standing there, looking for my kids. As he did so, he watched every single caregiver size him up, then make sure that they were between him and the kid they were taking care of. The instant he connected with my kids (and it was obvious from their caregiver's response that my brother was a welcome, familiar face), they all relaxed and went back to letting the kids be kids. In speaking to some of the caregivers, there's enough of a community in that park that an unfamiliar adult wouldn't be allowed to walk off with any kid who didn't know him/her, even if it's one of the older kids who's there alone.
One of the worst parts of the car culture in most parts of the US is that people don't interact with each other. Living in a pedestrian-centric place, there's a real sense of community. I can recognize the people who I see every single day, even if I don't actually have any interaction with them. It's how humans lived for thousands of years, and there's still something to be said for it...
-JMP
Re:Urban Transit (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a new yorker. What i know of LA is that those who can afford it, live outside the city in better areas. Those who cant, live in the less desirable places.
Well, I'm an Angeleno, and have been all my life. Is it possible I know more about what people in LA do than you?
People who value having a big house and yard over having a community live "outside the city" (which doesn't mean outside the contiguous urban area, just outside the area that's within a 20-minute commute of Downtown Los Angeles). People who can't afford to buy a house in LA live VERY far out, commute 1-2 hours each way every day, and don't get to enjoy the home they're proud to own, or spend time with the kids they wanted to give a "better place."
There are a lot of great neighborhoods within the City of Los Angeles; I live in one of them. Our local school, two blocks from our house, has a great booster club and lots of community involvement. It's a 15-minute public bus ride to my husband's work or to mine; same bus (which stops four blocks from our house) in opposite directions. We only own one car, and only NEED one car (heck, technically, we could get by without a car, but it's highly convenient to have one for shopping trips and such, and it's not hard for us to afford one).
Our yard is smaller than we could get in Chatsworth or Upland or Santa Clarita. But I get to see it in daylight on weekdays, and it's plenty big enough; we've got a monster play structure with three swings and a slide, roses, blackberries, and room for a garden on the side when I get off my a$$ and plant one. I'm home in time to cook my family dinner every night. Our seven-year-old car is just about to top 60k miles. And the interior of our house is big enough for every family member to have their own bedroom, with an office dedicated to our computers and a family room for watching TV or playing console games. We've also got a HUGE living room and good-sized dining room for entertaining.
I have trouble understanding what people think I'm "sacrificing" to live where I do; yes, we could have gotten a similar house for $200k less 40 miles away, but then I have to wonder how much money the extra two to three hours a day of commuting is worth for me and my husband. Let's see... two hours a day, 50 weeks a year, at our current hourly pay rates... $200k would pay for about 2,500 hours of commuting, so after five years we'd be in the hole. And our kids wouldn't even know us anymore.