Discussion on:

Is your city dying?

Getting rid of the corrupt politicians who support the politics of poverty.

And to update you on one item. Many poor cites in Massachusetts are getting younger, not older.

The problem is the youthful scales are tipped because the policies of poverty include teaching female high school juniors the ins and outs of the welfare system in the classroom.

They drop out of school at an alarming rate after their junior year, contributing greatly to the nearly 50 percent dropout rate in most poor Massachusetts cities.

During the summer months you end up seeing dozens of 22 year olds walking around with 3 kids in tow and another on the way. Every kid they have allows for an extension of benefits that are supposed to have a time limit.

To top it off, government funded programs to provide GEDs to these drop outs employ dozens of well paid union teachers.

The 12 months of training to take the GED test allows the system to extend more benefits that would have expired.

While on welfare they also get a free government funded cell phone. Gov. Patrick even setup a sweet deal they qualify for a free used car, a donated car with the first year insurance paid for by the state, if they start doing job interviews.

Note that they do not have to land a job. The company I work for gets dozens of these people coming in to interview for every posted job. All they want is a signature. Most are bold enough to say ???sign the form and I will leave without wasting your time.-

Many of the maladies that you are describing are a direct consequence of Big Government. Unfortunately, we are taught at an early age in our public schools that government is always benign and well intentioned. Therefore, if we are not careful, we miss the fact that the type of people who go into politics and who seek government positions are not altruistic individuals who want to serve their fellow citizens, but power-hungry individuals who want to control big bureaucracies with a huge staff and a staggering budget. These become their little empires, and they will want to continue to feed their empires by enacting more regulations and artificially creating more need and more "clients" as a reason for being and for demanding a larger slice of the tax revenues. No one managing these bureaucracies is motivated to cut the size of the empires they control. Instead, they will create rationales as to why the size of their empires should grow.

People need to wean themselves from their childish notions that government officials are their allies and are motivated by public service rather than by naked self-interest. Notice that government officials often react to the type of decline described in this article by demanding more money to "develop" areas of urban blight. This is like throwing money down a rat hole, because, by and large, the citizens of the city have already reacted and have "voted with their feet," moving away from the blighted area, never to return. That doesn't stop politicians and bureaucrats from demanding higher taxes from those who remain, thus ensuring that more people will move away to areas having a lower tax burden. Politicians and bureaucrats are inherently dishonest, because if they really looked these problems in the face, they would see that their own policies are responsible for making things worse, not better.

My home city has had budget problems for years. When I was young, I lived there and paid their stupid and ill-advised income tax for little or no services. Then I moved across the country. When I had a chance to return to my city a decade later, I made the wise decision to stay out of it, thus saving myself thousands of dollars. Politicians might think that the taxpayer is nothing more than a money tree, from which they can extract funds at will. But the result is that those who can afford to escape leave, and only those who do not have the means to do so (the poor and the elderly) are left behind.

You nailed the problem.

Right, so the solutions are:

1. effective and swift recall

2. initiatives to repeal and reduce taxes and fees

3. initiatives to restrict local, county/parish, state and federal spending

Look around - the cities that are "dying" are those where industry has abandoned people, instead choosing to automate, or to ship jobs past our national borders. It's not the EPA or bad government policies, but simply the lack of well paid work. But the author doesn't cite one "dead" city, and doesn't talk about how the dying cities of the East recovered (or did not recover) after the textile, shoe, steel, light manufacturing, etc. left the country more than 50 years ago.

It seems like a knee-jerk response: blame government. But government's job isn't to buy their way out of blight and decline and give us a nice city. It seems to me that when industry abandons a city because they can't maximize their bottom line, there's not much anyone can do, government or individuals, until we replace the engine of our economies. Move somewhere else, and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy; and just hope that the new place can sustain your wants, rather than rely on your participation.

- But government's job isn't to buy their way out of blight and decline and give us a nice city.- BUT, that is exactly what they promise the poor with every government welfare type program.

That is how they buy votes and stay in power.

You nailed the heart of the politics of poverty without even trying.

Look into the fall of Detroit and learn.

didn't realize that this is where the trolls lived on smartplanet. I'll try to stay in line and blame government for the problem. Would you please detail your argument about "the heart of the politics of poverty"? I'm afraid I don't understand.

"Poverty" is an industry. There is money and power to be had by sustaining it.

People who get upset by public recognition of the politics of poverty are usually the people making a profit from it.

I expect such responses from time to time. Self preservation is strong among parasites.

"old" saying: if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Getting rid of government, taxes; recalling someone you didn't vote for in the first place: those aren't solutions, they're negations. You don't propose a real way for cities to thrive.

Trillions wasted and nothing to show for it except more poor people and destroyed communities. The only people who still support it are those who are entrenched in it and rely upon it for their enrichment or livelihood. I believe that supporting the status quo is evil.

...but only in the sense that it made it possible for people to flee living in poorly managed cities.

The Progressive solution seems to be to eliminate competition so that people are forced to live in cities that are unresponsive to their needs.

You must know my town Macon, GA. The people vote for color rather than skills. Maybe that can change but only if the good people don't leave town.

In 2008 the redevelopment of old mill space was moving ahead well in spite of the down economy. The developer had solid financing and the presales of both commercial and residential space in the project was ahead of goals.

Then the race politics hit. Here was a project bringing jobs and tax paying residents to the city at the start of a global recession and the people who stood to lose funding if people in the city started getting real jobs viciously attacked the developer with outright lies.

They sent a letter to his investors informing them of his racial marketing plan to bring only white people into the city to sway future elections and other outlandish accusations. The investors pulled out leaving the project dead.

Sadly the investors never looked at the facts in the case before pulling out. Over 75 percent of the committed businesses were minority owned. A majority of them had started in the city and fled in the 1990s because of the high crime rates. With a new police chief in 2001 the crime rate has dropped since and they wanted to come back to the city where it all started for them. They wanted to pay back the city with jobs.

Over 90 percent of the residential commitments were the actual minority owners of those companies coming back into the city they had fled.

These were honest, hard working people who had their business plans trashed by the politics of poverty.

Sweet. Negative votes for calling out the parasites.

30 years ago I was guest lecturing to civil engineering and planning students at several Universities and many city council/planning meetings about this pending disaster. Urban design was doomed to failure as the planners put the industrial areas on one side of the city center and the residential on the other side which created a gridlock traffic problem. This gave those that could to move to the suburbs eliminating the need to cross the city.

This the suburb was born and a great migration occurred. This accelerated in the 70s and 80s when the EPA and regulations forced factories to close and move to Asian. So, now we have the middle class gone and the jobs gone only doom is left. One thought back then was to have two sets of cities land sites - when one becomes functionally obsolete you build an new modern functioning city of the other site so infrastructure can be utilized but the city can function as need today.

The dual site concept is much less costly than trying to keep older designs in compliance with new codes and needs for power and utilities. Old building are energy wasters and very costly to try and improve them.

I recall reading in an old encyclopedia published in the 1940s about cities in which suburbs had been exploding into existence. Of course, after WW2 they got a huge boost from young adult soldiers returning with significant savings and builders who developed cheapo ticky-tack housing... then again it was hampered by the explosion of zoning, building codes and attendant code-nazis, etc.

...but that it was the Petri dish of Progressive policies that ultimately drove business, then the middle class out after the politicians had sucked all the life out of the golden goose. The freeways just made it easier to leave.

In the urban area I live in, one can see countless square miles of abandoned commercial & industrial properties sitting idle for no other reason that few businesses wish to operate in the city jurisdiction because of the high taxes, overt corruption and racial politics that subvert nearly everything. Cities are usually considered the center of corporate power. Here, the highest concentration of corporate headquarters in the state is literally just outside the city limits.

The question is how can one tell if one's city is dying, not what is causing it. I would have to say that one of the surest signs is a desire to commit municipal suicide demonstrated by the urban leadership's pride in how many buildings they can demolish. Such folly is routinely accompanied by a failure to appreciate the value of the traditional urban form with its pedestrian, human scale as opposed to the modern suburban model and its automotive scale. In an age where the need for sustainability is becoming increasingly critical, this lack of vision portends the eventual decline of even those cities which may seem vibrant at the moment.

A city which is experiencing population decline and economic distress can be revitalized if it respects, honors, and protects its urban character. Unfortunately, since WWII the official goal of American public policy has been to transform the nation's urban spaces to conform with the modern suburban model, reaching all the way to our city centers. The only deference to being within a formerly traditional urban space is frequently that the modern automotive scaled suburban form has been scrunched more tightly into the former urban grid, but often, as in Pittsburgh, even that is eliminated to substitute serpentine streets in its place along with blocks being combined into large lots where huge automotive scaled buildings overwhelm their location with a detail that can be fully observed at 65 MPH as they replace human scaled architecture whose details intrigued those walking past from varying angles of view.

Authentic, quality urban spaces have huge, distinct advantages over the modern suburban form. But, when diluted and increasingly suburbanized, the balance reverses. A city which tries to compete with its suburbs by imitating their form, either in part or in whole, merely succeeds at becoming a third rate suburb at best -- more people and investment will leave, choosing the real thing over the cheap imitation.

Real urban space, not the faux urbanism which seems to have become all the rage of architects in the past couple decades, offers both substance and emotional charm, is socially more engaging, and provides for more efficient energy and material usage. As the costs of carbon consumption come home to roost, the population will be clamouring for more opportunities to move into quality urban communities, especially those which have retained their real traditional form and character. Those urban communities which have championed and preserved their architectural heritage will beat the suburbs hands down. They'll also have much more to offer than new Disney-esque imitations which resort to loud speakers piping in the sounds of birds singing in their attempt to seem real.

Maybe specific examples of dying cities where this is happening...? I can point to dozens of cities that have revitalized their core, where people are returning to live, where thoughtful rehabilitation has revived dead industrial spaces and transportation corridors. Even major cities that people love to hate like NYC are recovering their seedy centers, creating commerce, parks, and housing on their waterfronts and in abandoned military lands, while still creating jobs and industry in their heart. Did you take your Prozac today?

Pretty simple. No one wants to live in a city unless they have no choice. (With a few exceptions). Why would anyone want to go downtown to shop, movies, restaurants and pay to park, and risk mugging, etc.

I choose to live as far away from cities as I can, I don't feel like I'm missing anything.

Incidently, the by products of "the politics of poverty" are with us everywhere, not just in the cites.

And that's fine. They are usually younger, more socially adventurous, and less risk adverse. And for people who wish to live in that environment, I say "go for it".

My problem is with people who wish to outlaw or restrict my choice to do otherwise.

...that someone would vote "negative" on the above. Is it because I'm wrong that hip urbanism is most appealing to the young? Or is it politically incorrect to castigate those who see themselves as the arbiters of what should be the correct lifestyle for other people?

some people like to share resources, are comfortable (no, happy!) living in compact spaces, and like the density of intellect, commerce, transportation and entertainment that a city offers; and can live free of crime in attractive settings in walking distance of almost everything they need. New York or San Francisco meet the criteria, but even in a place like Minneapolis, you could live in a lovely home in view of a lake or the Mississippi, walk or take affordable transportation to get groceries, go to Target, go to a major league baseball game, basketball game, football or hockey game, see a world-class play, go to a movie, ride your bike to work downtown, or take a train to the airport to get out of town, all with less than a half hour commute. If you decided to drive away somewhere, two major US highways cross the city, as do many state roads.

At a national convention of the American Institute of Architects' Regional and Urban Design Committee in Pittsburgh during the mid-1990's, City Planning kept asking over and over at each session: "But who do we want to attract, and what do we need to do to get them to come here?" In the final plenary session where everybody came together to summarize the previous days discussion, the City representative again repeated their plea.

A visiting architect had enough and shouted back, "You've been brow beating us with that question for three days in every session. But, you're asking the WRONG question!"

"Chattanooga, Tennessee used to be called the little Pittsburgh of the South," he said, "and they were hurt worse by the collapse of the steel industry than you were here in Pittsburgh. But they didn't ask your question. Instead, they asked, 'Who do we have here and what do we need to do to take care of us?' They took that as their guiding question. When they started answering it, people elsewhere said, 'I want to be one of them," and started moving there with their investment."

He went on, "They didn't just apply it to the people, either. They also included its culture, the physical community assets, its architecture, and infrastructure. Old buildings were re-purposed instead of being torn down. When the Department of Transportation wanted to demolish a historic bridge to build a new one, the people rose up and organized, forcing them to leave the old bridge as a pedestrian bridge when the new one was built for highway traffic." Again, he concluded, "You're asking the wrong question!"

Pittsburgh's leadership resorted and continues to resort to carnival barking tactics in their effort just to get people to poke their heads into the tent. At the same time they've roundly ignored the needs of the people who live here while providing massive public subsidies for real estate speculation (it's the people who own older existing properties who must end up paying to cover them). The smoke and mirrors may have fooled some in the media who have raved about the transformation of Pittsburgh, but it hasn't worked well. Smart people elsewhere simply weren't fooled. Most needed only ask themselves, "why would I want to become one of them and be stepped on?"

Meanwhile, as Pittsburgh continued to decline, Chattanooga shed its "Little Pittsburgh of the South" moniker. Instead, it started being called the "Little Atlanta" because of its booming economy.

So if you want a good sign of a dying city, just look at its guiding question. Whether it's explicitly asked as in Chattanooga and Pittsburgh or merely implied, it is a good indication of which direction that city is headed.

a quick search will result in links to sites claiming either Chattanooga or Pittsburgh as the best city in the US. You make the false claim that a statement at a national conference paints all the leadership of Pittsburgh as incompetent. I'm not sure how many cities, and how many leaders, have "guiding questions", but it seems that both Pittsburgh and Chattanooga have recovered sufficiently to beckon others by their vitality.