The much needed shift you are longing for is only going to come about when we get to know each other as people and not as members of some party or race or whatever.
A good start to that is to encourage open discussion and dialogue, not just about and with positions you agree with, but with everyone.
The much needed shift you are longing for is only going to come about when we get to know each other as people and not as members of some party or race or whatever.
A good start to that is to encourage open discussion and dialogue, not just about and with positions you agree with, but with everyone.
So that’s a hard NO to censorship of things and opinions you don’t fancy, and a strong “yes” to getting out of your comfort zone and interacting with people you normally wouldn’t cross paths with.
One Small Step is an actual program that puts together people with allegedly incompatible views and steps back to see what happens.Great idea though I don’t think we need the choreography.
Myself and the regulars down at the pub go through that sort of exercise organically every night . Over a pint, especially one I just bought ya, we don’t seem like such bad people to each other.
From a long life of traveling and talking with people from all walks of life, I can honestly say that most people in the world, absent prodding from so-called experts in the elite who wants to cause trouble, want the same things: enough food and shelter to get by, a better life for their children, and some sort of break from the work cycle. Those things shouldn’t be hard to achieve if we find common cause and stop spending so much money and effort on fending off and protecting ourselves from the “other”.
"The much needed shift you are longing for is only going to come about when we get to know each other as people and not as members of some party or race or whatever."
Part of the shift I'm talking about is the extreme, borderline-psychotic discomfort with differing opinions. Discomfort with differing opinions isn't new, of course, but it feels so much more universal than it did. I'm constantly amazed at how often people will completely ignore or simply get mad at irrefutable evidence that they're wrong. The bubbles people live in are so impregnable in 2024. And it makes conversation impossible.
Agreed….which strengthens my belief that my roughly-speaking “libertarian” values might be useful here. For decades, I have loudly and publicly proclaimed that I don’t care if Charles Manson is my next door neighbor……or anyone else….consenting behavior between and among adults should be off limits to any government bureaucrat….you do you and let me do me. Just leave the children and animals and defenseless alone. Most problems can be solved at the hyper local level. I am in the extreme minority where I live (Detroit) with something like 90% Democratic Party registration and zero percent libertarian, but I get along just fine with every single one of my neighbors…..zero problems. It isn’t, at all, complicated. You just have to talk to each other, respect differences, help where needed, and stay out of other people’s business.
"I have loudly and publicly proclaimed that I don’t care if Charles Manson is my next door neighbor……or anyone else….consenting behavior between and among adults should be off limits to any government bureaucrat"
But you don't actually believe this hough, right? You do, in fact, want the government to keep you safe from criminals and you see the danger of cults. You understand, as in the case of Manson and...certain other people, that human beings can and do fall victim to cults of personality and behave in ways that are corrosive to society and dangerous to themselves and others.
"Loudly and publicly" proclaiming values that you know you'll never actually have to suffer the consequences of is exactly the same game the Abolish the Police lunatics played, for example. But they would absolutely care if suddenly there were no police around. Just as you would absolutely care if Charles Manson were your neighbour. It's okay to admit that it's not possible to solve every problem yourself.
No, I actually mean it. What I should have included it was that I don’t care what Munson and Company does as long as they stay on their side of the fence and let me do my thing on my. I thought that that was fairly obvious from the general thrust of my common, but, there it is.
I would vastly prefer being legally able to be responsible for my own protection and well-being. A second choice would be being able to rely on police protection.
Here in Detroit, I am legally forbidden to protect property and can’t shoot someone in the back, even if they’ve just raped my wife. so I’m neither allowed to defend myself or my property, and we have no police protection whatsoever unless you have connections in the administration.
I have an opinion about the Munson Carlton and the other cults, but I simply preferred to work on taking the plank out of my own eye before inspecting the spec in someone else’s. In any event, I have never, and would never advocate for government intervention in any situation where consenting adults are doing their thing as long as it’s on their property and there is “consent” and “adults” present.
I think that there is a place for the police, but the courts have declared that the police have no obligation to protect you. That is your job and when seconds count, the police are only minutes away. Your police department might even be like the Uvalde police department.
There are several organizations that sell insurance for gun owners who use a firearm in self-defense because the courts "seem" more inclined to prosecute you for shooting the guy raping your 10-year-old daughter than him. Where the line between protect/prevent (OK) and revenge (Not OK) is placed varies by state.
Fifty years ago, a friend's wife took a defense class offered by the Sheriff's department in Macon Georgia. He told her, "If someone is breaking in, gather your children and lock yourselves in your bedroom (retreat) and call the police (pre-cellphones when people had landlines in their bedroom). Let him steal your TV, that's why you have insurance. If he breaks into the room with you, shoot him until he goes down and is no longer moving. There is not a court in Georgia that will press charges on a woman alone in that scenario."
Solid advice, but that may not still be true in some jurisdictions (shooting him until he is dead). And the victim's family can sue you for shooting their choir boy.
I honestly don't care if my next-door neighbor has an AR-15 or even an M-16. No victim, no crime. But I do care if they are a threat to society. Owning a firearm is not a threat to society and it is often difficult to determine a threat where no previous crimes have been committed.
I think that there is a place for the police too….in a best case scenario they would be well trained and respond appropriately to whatever the situation required without the perhaps excessive response from someone who is too close to the situation, whether victim, witness or whatever. The problem I have is that, at least here in Detroit, you are neither allowed to defend yourself nor can you rely on police protection. That is just fucked up, and a result of 50 years of one party rule here, and a clear, motivating factor for the exodus from the City. This isn’t, at all, racial, as more black people are fleeing than white people, and, to some degree black flight is partially compensated by white hipsters and artists and techies snatching up the generational wealth of the descendants of the great migration that is being practically abandoned by the grandchildren.
What is the generational wealth that artists and techies are snatching up, in concrete terms? Are you talking about buying and remodeling deteriorating buildings with low market value, or jazz clubs, or what?
Economically, generational wealth isn't wealth if its value has dropped too far. (There are other non-tangible forms of metaphoric wealth passed on from parent to child, but that is portable geographically).
Passion, gentrification is conducted by the government, not individuals.
When local governments engage in DIS-investment, the public sphere in neighborhoods declines. During the DIS-investement process, tax dollars are transferred out of some neighborhoods and into other neighborhoods.
In neighborhhoods hit by dis-investment, the public sphere enters severe decline, and drags property values down. In turn, homeowners turn homes into rentals, or sell them at a loss, and move out of the neighborhood. Once homes are no longer maintained, plumbing, electical, and roofing problems turn into structural damage. In turn, homes are abandoned, boarded up and owners join the long wait for a change in the market. Its a downward spiral for years.
Gentrification begins when local goverment begins investing in neighborhoods they drove into poverty. In urban planning we call this part of the process displacement - poor people, renters, etc. must be moved to another part of the city, to make room for people with money to move in and bring the housing stock back up to market value.
Obviously, we are talking about old homes in good city locations. In the suburbs and exurbs, homes are built so cheaply and shoddily, local governments usually bulldoze homes to make way for new developments.
Some local governments, especially those in rural areas, do not engage in dis-investment and the housing stock in these communities remains in good repair, and maintains its value.
I went through all that by way of saying, that dis-investment is one of many systemic tactics, designed to transfer generational wealth from the hands of 'some' Americans, into the hand of 'other' Americans.
Deteriorating homes and buildings are merely the symptom of neighborhoods targeted for dis-investment, and dis-placement, not the cause.
Are you an experience urban planner? Where have you worked? I'd like to learn some of your perspective.
So how do you and your planning colleagues choose which currently healthy neighborhoods to dis-invest in, so as to cause deterioration and decay, so that you can later displace the current inhabitants, re-invest in the neighborhood, and attract a different group of people? How long in advance do you need to plan this, like how generally how many years do you need to take their tax money and not invest in the neighborhood, in order to make it ready for eventual gentrification? Is it like 10 years or 35 years from the start of systemic disinvestment until gentrification? How do you sustain a policy focus across turnover in the planning department and political administrations?
Could you describe the disinvestment specifics that city planners accomplish? I mean from the beginning, whether there is a healthy neighborhood paying good taxes sufficient to pay for city services, but which the city wants to transfer away taxes and disinvest from. Like do you intentionally let streets fall into disrepair, streetlights to go out, sidewalks to crumble, storm sewers to become blocked to cause flooding, or what? Revoke the business licenses of otherwise healthy retail stores and restaurants so as to decrease the quality of life in the neighborhood? Reduce police presence to increase street crime, and refuse to answer police or fire calls? Reroute public transit to avoid the neighborhood? Allow/encourage water and electric utilities to fail? End garbage collection?
I'm trying to understand the specific tools you believe cities use in their strategy of disinvesting in a neighborhood in order to cause decay and deterioration. I look around my own city neighborhood, and I'm wondering what my city would do if they (presumably involving the city planning department) decided to dis-invest her to lead to eventual reinvestment and gentrification with different people. What would the signs be?
I'm not an urban planner, but to the untrained, this doesn't sound like a highly feasible strategy, and it's hard to see the payoff for the city (given the timescale between disinvestment and gentrification, and the burden on the city during the deterioration phase). Like "we want to degrade your generational wealth for a few decades, then help transfer what's left to people we haven't yet met some time in the future". So I'm happy to hear from a professional.
Your questions suggest you need a better idea of how city planning works and I will try to do that.
First, don’t conflate two different professions. Simply put, city planners are not urban designers. Next, assigning human motivations and intentions to a system is a mistake. We are talking about city planning and that is a system.
Urban designers create city plans, decide what kind of activity will go where, street layouts, infrastructure etc. These ‘visionary’ documents, known as General Plans, guide growth and new development. Since no one can foresee the future, General Plans can only detail what is known and provide a best guess “sketch’ for what might be in the future.
General Plans are cities and counties founding documents, and just like the U.S. Constitution, General Plans are amended, added to, interpreted, expanded, etc. in what is known, as The Planning Process. As elected officials come and go, the General Plan maintains the stability necessary to encourage long-term investments in the city or county. Fighting a General Plan in court is so time consuming, and expensive, it discourages efforts to force change that can negatively impact an entire city.
City planners are responsible for maintaining and implementing the General Plan and overseeing the planning process. Again, city planners oversee a system, they are not urban designers
As cities grow, city planners identify one of the ‘sketchy’ areas for development, then hire urban designers to ‘design or create’ Specific Plans for that area, then oversee the process, including the public-input and advisory phase, followed by adoption into the General Plan by elected officials and finally, they assume responsibility for implementing the Specific Plan.
The once, teeny, tiny, little CHINK in the urban planning system grew by leaps and bounds.
It started in the early 1900s, when factory pollution was so severe, everything around them was covered in black soot, including the air, clothes neatly tucked in drawers and closets, dishes in cupboards, and people’s hair. City residents were literally choking to death on factory pollution. It was so bad, day looked like dusk all day long. To solve this very visible pollution problem, politicians created zoning, which gave city officials the legal power necessary to keep polluting factories segregated from housing, offices and other clean urban activities.
In turn, urban designers replaced best-guess ‘sketches’ with best-guess zones – this zone for one kind of development, another zone for that purpose, etc. Like ‘sketches’, zones were advisory only, and cities were supposed to develop “Specific Plans” for whatever type of development made financial and social sense for the city as a whole.
Soon, corporations saw an opportunity and began using the courts to force cities to adhere to zoning, rather than urban planning. The financial incentive is obvious. Long before they planned to build, corporations identified an area zoned for housing and began buying land that would secure them a controlling interest in the area. Since these areas were sparsely populated, and far away from jobs, land was cheap. In 10, 20, or 30 years, when city development reached these areas, the land would be much, much more valuable. In the meantime, corporate real estate ‘holdings’ served as collateral for capital loans.
Unfortunately, people die and corporations live forever and the corporate lifespan is an advantage that people can never compete with – or overcome. As a result of this gigantic inequity, corporate behaviour became the driving force behind urban dis-investment and dis-placement.
When its time to build, bulldozing and leveling the land is the cheapest way to begin. Corporations planned to bulldoze trees and everything else on the land, then subdivide the land, and build as many housing units as possible, on that land. Every extra home or apartment they could squeeze in increased their profits – hugely.
For example, in 2010 one development corporation was raking in $97,000. in pure profit on every home that it built in our area. For three long years, that corporation lobbied our county supervisors for smaller lot permits and succeeded in gaining an additional 1,000 lots on the same acreage. You do the math, Mr. Passion, then calculate the increased profit on waiting to build until home values start increasing, and you will understand why that corporation did not reach build out until 2023.
These targeted areas on the outskirts of cities were usually occupied by three groups of people. One: Farmers, farmworkers, artisans and craftsmen. Two: the wealthy who owned large homes, on large lots, even acres of land – many of which had been passed down through generations. Three: black people. Since the red-lined areas of cities were located and enforced near city cores, black people were forced to live on the outskirts, and that is where they built, or bought their homes. While the homes and lots of black people were smaller than the country mansions of the wealthy, the design and craftsmanship was excellent – and passed down through generations.
Pouring public tax dollars into an area that will be bulldozed is prudent and sensible. Naturally, when city officials became aware of an area targeted by a development corporation, they began diverting money out of that area, and into areas that would not be bulldozed. Once the dis-investment process started, it was hard to stop. Deferring maintenance on infrastructure increases the costs of repair well beyond the means of local government. And so, while large swaths of cities were visibly in decline, other parts of cities were well-maintained, upgraded and beautified.
More often than not, local officials respond to corporations, rather than constituents. City planners and city economic development departments are so intertwined, they too respond to corporations rather than constituents. To help you understand local government funding would take me twice as much space as I’ve already consumed. Suffice to say, gentrification is just one of many development strategies embedded in dis-investment and dis-placement practices.
I really appreciate your patient and careful response. It is kind of you to take the time.
I will endeavor to avoid conflating urban designers and city planners.
From your response, it sounds like gentrification is facilitated by city planners, not by urban designers? Is that correct?
I know many lay folk who label any case where people with relatively more money move into a neighborhood, buying housing which is cheaper even if needing repair or renovation. As more move in, the neighborhood begins to look better, and the new population may inspire new businesses to move in, like shops and restaurants, possibly some offices. However, housing prices may rise, and some of the earlier inhabitants may move to a cheaper area. The city may change its behavior to some degree in reaction to the new better heeled population and their needs and influence. This informal process does not appear to correspond to your more formal description of "gentrification", which seems to be a deliberate policy architected by city planners. Is that just a lay misunderstanding of the correct usage of the term?
(Aside: is there a missing "not" in the first sentence of your penultimate paragraph, re pouring public tax dollars? It didn't make sense to me otherwise)
It sounds like the key factor with developers are looking for is cheap land which is currently on the outskirts of a growing city, to maximize their eventual profit after creating and selling more upscale dwellings at market rates. Is that correct?
I am still asking for some more concrete examples of the most relevant city infrastructure which would be dis-invested in, whereupon the deferred maintenance makes it infeasible for the city to change course even if they wanted to. Sewers? Water pipes if the city provides water? Electric distribution lines in cases of city owned utilities? Sidewalks? Pavement? I'm looking at my own city; what would I look for to see such a process in action?
Ooops. You’re right, there is a missing NOT is that sentence.
Correct, urban designers create the plan and city planners implement it. However, the real responsibility rests with elected officials who allocate or withhold the tax dollars and city resources necessary to implement the plan as designed.
To understand gentrification, we need a little urban history. Up until the mid-1950s, cities grew from the ground up. Back then people bought a piece of land, and built their own homes and shops, or hired someone to do it for them. Each home was custom designed and built. Since people were skilled, the craftsmanship was excellent. But the building materials were different. Since wood flooring, cabinetry, mouldings, etc. came from old growth forests, the wood was denser, harder, and more durable. Cement was a much poorer grade back then, so it was less durable. Since people used lathe and plaster, instead of drywall, the walls were much more durable. Insulation was often newspaper or old clothes, so homes were drafty. Wiring was expensive and used sparingly. Heating was iffy. Tiles were used instead of laminate, again a more durable material. Plumping used lead pipes (bad stuff).
Today, the high-quality features in old homes are so rare, they are highly desirable and very, very expensive. Conversely, electric, plumbing and cement foundation up-grades on old homes, can be very expensive.
My daughter and I are currently building our own homes. Like my grandparents, we have no labour costs, and we are skilled craftsmen, so we can afford to put our money into high quality materials, and lots of land and still have custom cabinetry, millwork, details etc.
Back in the old days, people liked to live near their jobs, or their companies. For that reason, neighborhoods were filled with huge mansions on huge lots, big and small homes on good sized lots, townhomes with shared walls, small apartments in back yards and over garages (aka granny flats), apartment buildings with landscaped courtyards, plus shops, restaurants, bakeries, banks, etc. Lots of shops had rental offices or apartments on the second and third story or owners lived above their shops. Doctors, lawyers, florists, etc. built homes with home offices in them and a small rental unit in their backyards (to generate additional income).
As a result of city’s tight Job-Housing relationships, people really cared about the public realm that they shared with their neighbors, who might be their boss, their employees, their customers, their co-workers, city councilman, bankers, attorneys accountants, dry cleaner, grocers or bakers. Today, we call this urban-arrangement Mixed-Use development.
Take note. America’s city tax revenue structure was built around these traditional urban environments. Thanks to the mix of businesses, and rich, poor and middle-class residents in the same neighborhoods, these “collective tax bases” could support urban amenities like neighborhood schools, tree-lined sidewalks, parks, community centers, etc. Today, these neighborhood amenities are very rare and highly desirable.
By the mid-1950s, state and federal governments were offering cheap loans for housing construction and corporations jumped in with their big predatory feet. Typical corporate thinking led to “development corporations” where profit came first - at the expense of high-quality housing.
Custom homes were replaced by cookie-cutter designs – four configurations of the same plan for each development. Bulk buying reduced material costs of everything from cement. to pipes, and wiring, to moulding, doors, cabinetry, roofing, flooring, etc.. Instead of craftsmen, labor costs were reduced by unskilled labour - one group of workers would pour cement for 100 homes, another group would frame, another work group would plumb, another would wire etc. and so on. If one group messed up, the next group would work around it, and flaws and defects got covered up. New homes got larger and larger, while the quality of materials and construction quality went down, down, down. Built in obsolescence took over the housing industry. Instead of homes built to last a hundred or more years, new homes were built to last the length of the mortgage (30 years).
Worse yet, the city tax revenue structure never changed. Bottom line, property taxes on housing cannot pay for anything more than a road and police and fire services – period. Commercial property taxes, resale taxes, income taxes, and various fees assessed businesses, pay for almost all city amenities.
Once housing and commercial property was segregated, old residential neighborhoods entered decline. Cities moved tax dollars out of maintenance in old neighborhoods to build streets, and sidewalks in new neighborhoods.
The mass dis-investment in old residential neighborhoods left sidewalks, streets, landscaping, etc. to decay. Trees died and were removed. Streets were left with potholes. Bus service was eliminated. Police services were reduced. Community centers were boarded up. Since old residential neighborhoods had the most amenities, they were hit the hardest. Surrounded by visible decay, home and property owners had a hard time selling, and subdivided their old homes into multiple rental units. From big old mansions, to tiny granny flats, poverty moved in. Businesses were gone, policing was gone and drugs and crime moved in.
As new housing quality declined, everywhere, the quality of old homes and apartments in old city neighborhoods with huge trees and large lots grew in value. At some point, it’s cheaper to refurbish an old home, than it is to build a new one of similar quality. When realtors see that tipping point, they start marketing old homes and neighborhoods and lobbying city hall to re-invest in an old neighborhood. Gentrification begins when cities start re-investing in an old, run down neighborhood – for the sole purpose of increasing property taxes from that neighborhood.
Take a block with 20 homes for example. Refurbish just 2-4 homes and the property values of the whole effing neighborhood goes up and so does all 20 property owner’s tax bills – go up. One block can raise property values and taxes for several blocks in all directions. And so, more than anything else, it’s property taxes that drive poor people out of homes they’ve owned for generations, maybe even built with their own two hands. These poor homeowners stuck it out and paid taxes for decades, but will never see a dime of their home’s increased value, because they can’t afford to pay more taxes.
To answer your last question, you got it. If you want to identify the beginning stage of gentrification look for a newly restored building or two, and improvements in the public sphere – new sidewalks with handicap corners, tree plantings, landscaping, road repair or widening, striping (cross walks, bike lanes, etc), the greening of public spaces like medians and parks, and new street furniture (benches, trash cans, planters, etc.). Look also for minor zoning changes, from residential only, to residential/light commercial for example.
That said, the best way to identify an area ripe for gentrification is to find out where artists, designers, architects, musicians, artisans, techies, and other creatives have set up shop. Our businesses are super-interconnected, so we like to work in the same area. Thanks to our taste, skills and social activities, we turn old neighborhoods into vibrant hot spots. Gentrification priced my company out four different times.
If I understand you, anything which raises the market value of a home (like improvements in nearby homes, or desirable businesses, or a revitalized city park) will raise the assessments on that home, and thus proportionately the taxes. All fine reasoning. But then you say:
> These poor homeowners stuck it out and paid taxes for decades, but will never see a dime of their home’s increased value, because they can’t afford to pay more taxes.
I don't follow your reasoning. If your home is now worth three times was it was a while back because of nearby improvements, such that you cannot afford three times the taxes and need to sell, why wouldn't you receive three times a much when selling it?
Not only that, the described increase in home value in this scenario comes from the investments of other people, rather than being earned by something the homeowner did. I had a friend years ago with a rotting old farmhouse near the freeway in a semi rural area; when an interchange was put in nearby by taxpayers, their property suddenly increased in value 15 fold (as a potential location for a business - basically just a bonanza which fell out of the sky for them. Of course their property tax would have gone way up, but they sold the property for a couple million and moved to a cheaper location. As best I understand you, this would be considered a bad thing for the owner, because their taxes would have gone up without their seeing a dime - but that was far from the case. What am I missing?
I also hear that older houses may have some positives but also some serious negatives which many people may not be be able to afford to fix. The praise for their generational wealth aspect seems a little shakey, if that "wealth" has deteriorating concrete, bad insulation, bad plumbing, bad electrical. That sounds as if the actual loss of generational wealth has already occurred long before gentrification or city disinvestment could be blamed. There might be some good elements, but if the bad elements are too prevalent, it's not really wealth - any more than a rusted out old Porche with a blown engine but some good parts would be highly valuable to later generations.
To have value would require major investment from somebody who can not only afford to buy it, but also to fix it up, and to pay the yet further increased taxes.
The much needed shift you are longing for is only going to come about when we get to know each other as people and not as members of some party or race or whatever.
A good start to that is to encourage open discussion and dialogue, not just about and with positions you agree with, but with everyone.
So that’s a hard NO to censorship of things and opinions you don’t fancy, and a strong “yes” to getting out of your comfort zone and interacting with people you normally wouldn’t cross paths with.
One Small Step is an actual program that puts together people with allegedly incompatible views and steps back to see what happens.Great idea though I don’t think we need the choreography.
Myself and the regulars down at the pub go through that sort of exercise organically every night . Over a pint, especially one I just bought ya, we don’t seem like such bad people to each other.
From a long life of traveling and talking with people from all walks of life, I can honestly say that most people in the world, absent prodding from so-called experts in the elite who wants to cause trouble, want the same things: enough food and shelter to get by, a better life for their children, and some sort of break from the work cycle. Those things shouldn’t be hard to achieve if we find common cause and stop spending so much money and effort on fending off and protecting ourselves from the “other”.
"The much needed shift you are longing for is only going to come about when we get to know each other as people and not as members of some party or race or whatever."
100% agreed. This is essentially the first thing I wrote after Biden's election - https://medium.com/illumination-curated/joe-bidens-most-important-job-is-to-de-simplify-america-f89c7467b2c7
Part of the shift I'm talking about is the extreme, borderline-psychotic discomfort with differing opinions. Discomfort with differing opinions isn't new, of course, but it feels so much more universal than it did. I'm constantly amazed at how often people will completely ignore or simply get mad at irrefutable evidence that they're wrong. The bubbles people live in are so impregnable in 2024. And it makes conversation impossible.
Agreed….which strengthens my belief that my roughly-speaking “libertarian” values might be useful here. For decades, I have loudly and publicly proclaimed that I don’t care if Charles Manson is my next door neighbor……or anyone else….consenting behavior between and among adults should be off limits to any government bureaucrat….you do you and let me do me. Just leave the children and animals and defenseless alone. Most problems can be solved at the hyper local level. I am in the extreme minority where I live (Detroit) with something like 90% Democratic Party registration and zero percent libertarian, but I get along just fine with every single one of my neighbors…..zero problems. It isn’t, at all, complicated. You just have to talk to each other, respect differences, help where needed, and stay out of other people’s business.
"I have loudly and publicly proclaimed that I don’t care if Charles Manson is my next door neighbor……or anyone else….consenting behavior between and among adults should be off limits to any government bureaucrat"
But you don't actually believe this hough, right? You do, in fact, want the government to keep you safe from criminals and you see the danger of cults. You understand, as in the case of Manson and...certain other people, that human beings can and do fall victim to cults of personality and behave in ways that are corrosive to society and dangerous to themselves and others.
"Loudly and publicly" proclaiming values that you know you'll never actually have to suffer the consequences of is exactly the same game the Abolish the Police lunatics played, for example. But they would absolutely care if suddenly there were no police around. Just as you would absolutely care if Charles Manson were your neighbour. It's okay to admit that it's not possible to solve every problem yourself.
No, I actually mean it. What I should have included it was that I don’t care what Munson and Company does as long as they stay on their side of the fence and let me do my thing on my. I thought that that was fairly obvious from the general thrust of my common, but, there it is.
I would vastly prefer being legally able to be responsible for my own protection and well-being. A second choice would be being able to rely on police protection.
Here in Detroit, I am legally forbidden to protect property and can’t shoot someone in the back, even if they’ve just raped my wife. so I’m neither allowed to defend myself or my property, and we have no police protection whatsoever unless you have connections in the administration.
I have an opinion about the Munson Carlton and the other cults, but I simply preferred to work on taking the plank out of my own eye before inspecting the spec in someone else’s. In any event, I have never, and would never advocate for government intervention in any situation where consenting adults are doing their thing as long as it’s on their property and there is “consent” and “adults” present.
I think that there is a place for the police, but the courts have declared that the police have no obligation to protect you. That is your job and when seconds count, the police are only minutes away. Your police department might even be like the Uvalde police department.
There are several organizations that sell insurance for gun owners who use a firearm in self-defense because the courts "seem" more inclined to prosecute you for shooting the guy raping your 10-year-old daughter than him. Where the line between protect/prevent (OK) and revenge (Not OK) is placed varies by state.
https://www.concealedcarry.com/self-defense-gun-owner-insurance-programs-compared/
Fifty years ago, a friend's wife took a defense class offered by the Sheriff's department in Macon Georgia. He told her, "If someone is breaking in, gather your children and lock yourselves in your bedroom (retreat) and call the police (pre-cellphones when people had landlines in their bedroom). Let him steal your TV, that's why you have insurance. If he breaks into the room with you, shoot him until he goes down and is no longer moving. There is not a court in Georgia that will press charges on a woman alone in that scenario."
Solid advice, but that may not still be true in some jurisdictions (shooting him until he is dead). And the victim's family can sue you for shooting their choir boy.
I honestly don't care if my next-door neighbor has an AR-15 or even an M-16. No victim, no crime. But I do care if they are a threat to society. Owning a firearm is not a threat to society and it is often difficult to determine a threat where no previous crimes have been committed.
I think that there is a place for the police too….in a best case scenario they would be well trained and respond appropriately to whatever the situation required without the perhaps excessive response from someone who is too close to the situation, whether victim, witness or whatever. The problem I have is that, at least here in Detroit, you are neither allowed to defend yourself nor can you rely on police protection. That is just fucked up, and a result of 50 years of one party rule here, and a clear, motivating factor for the exodus from the City. This isn’t, at all, racial, as more black people are fleeing than white people, and, to some degree black flight is partially compensated by white hipsters and artists and techies snatching up the generational wealth of the descendants of the great migration that is being practically abandoned by the grandchildren.
What is the generational wealth that artists and techies are snatching up, in concrete terms? Are you talking about buying and remodeling deteriorating buildings with low market value, or jazz clubs, or what?
Economically, generational wealth isn't wealth if its value has dropped too far. (There are other non-tangible forms of metaphoric wealth passed on from parent to child, but that is portable geographically).
Passion, gentrification is conducted by the government, not individuals.
When local governments engage in DIS-investment, the public sphere in neighborhoods declines. During the DIS-investement process, tax dollars are transferred out of some neighborhoods and into other neighborhoods.
In neighborhhoods hit by dis-investment, the public sphere enters severe decline, and drags property values down. In turn, homeowners turn homes into rentals, or sell them at a loss, and move out of the neighborhood. Once homes are no longer maintained, plumbing, electical, and roofing problems turn into structural damage. In turn, homes are abandoned, boarded up and owners join the long wait for a change in the market. Its a downward spiral for years.
Gentrification begins when local goverment begins investing in neighborhoods they drove into poverty. In urban planning we call this part of the process displacement - poor people, renters, etc. must be moved to another part of the city, to make room for people with money to move in and bring the housing stock back up to market value.
Obviously, we are talking about old homes in good city locations. In the suburbs and exurbs, homes are built so cheaply and shoddily, local governments usually bulldoze homes to make way for new developments.
Some local governments, especially those in rural areas, do not engage in dis-investment and the housing stock in these communities remains in good repair, and maintains its value.
I went through all that by way of saying, that dis-investment is one of many systemic tactics, designed to transfer generational wealth from the hands of 'some' Americans, into the hand of 'other' Americans.
Deteriorating homes and buildings are merely the symptom of neighborhoods targeted for dis-investment, and dis-placement, not the cause.
> In urban planning we call this
Are you an experience urban planner? Where have you worked? I'd like to learn some of your perspective.
So how do you and your planning colleagues choose which currently healthy neighborhoods to dis-invest in, so as to cause deterioration and decay, so that you can later displace the current inhabitants, re-invest in the neighborhood, and attract a different group of people? How long in advance do you need to plan this, like how generally how many years do you need to take their tax money and not invest in the neighborhood, in order to make it ready for eventual gentrification? Is it like 10 years or 35 years from the start of systemic disinvestment until gentrification? How do you sustain a policy focus across turnover in the planning department and political administrations?
Could you describe the disinvestment specifics that city planners accomplish? I mean from the beginning, whether there is a healthy neighborhood paying good taxes sufficient to pay for city services, but which the city wants to transfer away taxes and disinvest from. Like do you intentionally let streets fall into disrepair, streetlights to go out, sidewalks to crumble, storm sewers to become blocked to cause flooding, or what? Revoke the business licenses of otherwise healthy retail stores and restaurants so as to decrease the quality of life in the neighborhood? Reduce police presence to increase street crime, and refuse to answer police or fire calls? Reroute public transit to avoid the neighborhood? Allow/encourage water and electric utilities to fail? End garbage collection?
I'm trying to understand the specific tools you believe cities use in their strategy of disinvesting in a neighborhood in order to cause decay and deterioration. I look around my own city neighborhood, and I'm wondering what my city would do if they (presumably involving the city planning department) decided to dis-invest her to lead to eventual reinvestment and gentrification with different people. What would the signs be?
I'm not an urban planner, but to the untrained, this doesn't sound like a highly feasible strategy, and it's hard to see the payoff for the city (given the timescale between disinvestment and gentrification, and the burden on the city during the deterioration phase). Like "we want to degrade your generational wealth for a few decades, then help transfer what's left to people we haven't yet met some time in the future". So I'm happy to hear from a professional.
Your questions suggest you need a better idea of how city planning works and I will try to do that.
First, don’t conflate two different professions. Simply put, city planners are not urban designers. Next, assigning human motivations and intentions to a system is a mistake. We are talking about city planning and that is a system.
Urban designers create city plans, decide what kind of activity will go where, street layouts, infrastructure etc. These ‘visionary’ documents, known as General Plans, guide growth and new development. Since no one can foresee the future, General Plans can only detail what is known and provide a best guess “sketch’ for what might be in the future.
General Plans are cities and counties founding documents, and just like the U.S. Constitution, General Plans are amended, added to, interpreted, expanded, etc. in what is known, as The Planning Process. As elected officials come and go, the General Plan maintains the stability necessary to encourage long-term investments in the city or county. Fighting a General Plan in court is so time consuming, and expensive, it discourages efforts to force change that can negatively impact an entire city.
City planners are responsible for maintaining and implementing the General Plan and overseeing the planning process. Again, city planners oversee a system, they are not urban designers
As cities grow, city planners identify one of the ‘sketchy’ areas for development, then hire urban designers to ‘design or create’ Specific Plans for that area, then oversee the process, including the public-input and advisory phase, followed by adoption into the General Plan by elected officials and finally, they assume responsibility for implementing the Specific Plan.
The once, teeny, tiny, little CHINK in the urban planning system grew by leaps and bounds.
It started in the early 1900s, when factory pollution was so severe, everything around them was covered in black soot, including the air, clothes neatly tucked in drawers and closets, dishes in cupboards, and people’s hair. City residents were literally choking to death on factory pollution. It was so bad, day looked like dusk all day long. To solve this very visible pollution problem, politicians created zoning, which gave city officials the legal power necessary to keep polluting factories segregated from housing, offices and other clean urban activities.
In turn, urban designers replaced best-guess ‘sketches’ with best-guess zones – this zone for one kind of development, another zone for that purpose, etc. Like ‘sketches’, zones were advisory only, and cities were supposed to develop “Specific Plans” for whatever type of development made financial and social sense for the city as a whole.
Soon, corporations saw an opportunity and began using the courts to force cities to adhere to zoning, rather than urban planning. The financial incentive is obvious. Long before they planned to build, corporations identified an area zoned for housing and began buying land that would secure them a controlling interest in the area. Since these areas were sparsely populated, and far away from jobs, land was cheap. In 10, 20, or 30 years, when city development reached these areas, the land would be much, much more valuable. In the meantime, corporate real estate ‘holdings’ served as collateral for capital loans.
Unfortunately, people die and corporations live forever and the corporate lifespan is an advantage that people can never compete with – or overcome. As a result of this gigantic inequity, corporate behaviour became the driving force behind urban dis-investment and dis-placement.
When its time to build, bulldozing and leveling the land is the cheapest way to begin. Corporations planned to bulldoze trees and everything else on the land, then subdivide the land, and build as many housing units as possible, on that land. Every extra home or apartment they could squeeze in increased their profits – hugely.
For example, in 2010 one development corporation was raking in $97,000. in pure profit on every home that it built in our area. For three long years, that corporation lobbied our county supervisors for smaller lot permits and succeeded in gaining an additional 1,000 lots on the same acreage. You do the math, Mr. Passion, then calculate the increased profit on waiting to build until home values start increasing, and you will understand why that corporation did not reach build out until 2023.
These targeted areas on the outskirts of cities were usually occupied by three groups of people. One: Farmers, farmworkers, artisans and craftsmen. Two: the wealthy who owned large homes, on large lots, even acres of land – many of which had been passed down through generations. Three: black people. Since the red-lined areas of cities were located and enforced near city cores, black people were forced to live on the outskirts, and that is where they built, or bought their homes. While the homes and lots of black people were smaller than the country mansions of the wealthy, the design and craftsmanship was excellent – and passed down through generations.
Pouring public tax dollars into an area that will be bulldozed is prudent and sensible. Naturally, when city officials became aware of an area targeted by a development corporation, they began diverting money out of that area, and into areas that would not be bulldozed. Once the dis-investment process started, it was hard to stop. Deferring maintenance on infrastructure increases the costs of repair well beyond the means of local government. And so, while large swaths of cities were visibly in decline, other parts of cities were well-maintained, upgraded and beautified.
More often than not, local officials respond to corporations, rather than constituents. City planners and city economic development departments are so intertwined, they too respond to corporations rather than constituents. To help you understand local government funding would take me twice as much space as I’ve already consumed. Suffice to say, gentrification is just one of many development strategies embedded in dis-investment and dis-placement practices.
I really appreciate your patient and careful response. It is kind of you to take the time.
I will endeavor to avoid conflating urban designers and city planners.
From your response, it sounds like gentrification is facilitated by city planners, not by urban designers? Is that correct?
I know many lay folk who label any case where people with relatively more money move into a neighborhood, buying housing which is cheaper even if needing repair or renovation. As more move in, the neighborhood begins to look better, and the new population may inspire new businesses to move in, like shops and restaurants, possibly some offices. However, housing prices may rise, and some of the earlier inhabitants may move to a cheaper area. The city may change its behavior to some degree in reaction to the new better heeled population and their needs and influence. This informal process does not appear to correspond to your more formal description of "gentrification", which seems to be a deliberate policy architected by city planners. Is that just a lay misunderstanding of the correct usage of the term?
(Aside: is there a missing "not" in the first sentence of your penultimate paragraph, re pouring public tax dollars? It didn't make sense to me otherwise)
It sounds like the key factor with developers are looking for is cheap land which is currently on the outskirts of a growing city, to maximize their eventual profit after creating and selling more upscale dwellings at market rates. Is that correct?
I am still asking for some more concrete examples of the most relevant city infrastructure which would be dis-invested in, whereupon the deferred maintenance makes it infeasible for the city to change course even if they wanted to. Sewers? Water pipes if the city provides water? Electric distribution lines in cases of city owned utilities? Sidewalks? Pavement? I'm looking at my own city; what would I look for to see such a process in action?
Ooops. You’re right, there is a missing NOT is that sentence.
Correct, urban designers create the plan and city planners implement it. However, the real responsibility rests with elected officials who allocate or withhold the tax dollars and city resources necessary to implement the plan as designed.
To understand gentrification, we need a little urban history. Up until the mid-1950s, cities grew from the ground up. Back then people bought a piece of land, and built their own homes and shops, or hired someone to do it for them. Each home was custom designed and built. Since people were skilled, the craftsmanship was excellent. But the building materials were different. Since wood flooring, cabinetry, mouldings, etc. came from old growth forests, the wood was denser, harder, and more durable. Cement was a much poorer grade back then, so it was less durable. Since people used lathe and plaster, instead of drywall, the walls were much more durable. Insulation was often newspaper or old clothes, so homes were drafty. Wiring was expensive and used sparingly. Heating was iffy. Tiles were used instead of laminate, again a more durable material. Plumping used lead pipes (bad stuff).
Today, the high-quality features in old homes are so rare, they are highly desirable and very, very expensive. Conversely, electric, plumbing and cement foundation up-grades on old homes, can be very expensive.
My daughter and I are currently building our own homes. Like my grandparents, we have no labour costs, and we are skilled craftsmen, so we can afford to put our money into high quality materials, and lots of land and still have custom cabinetry, millwork, details etc.
Back in the old days, people liked to live near their jobs, or their companies. For that reason, neighborhoods were filled with huge mansions on huge lots, big and small homes on good sized lots, townhomes with shared walls, small apartments in back yards and over garages (aka granny flats), apartment buildings with landscaped courtyards, plus shops, restaurants, bakeries, banks, etc. Lots of shops had rental offices or apartments on the second and third story or owners lived above their shops. Doctors, lawyers, florists, etc. built homes with home offices in them and a small rental unit in their backyards (to generate additional income).
As a result of city’s tight Job-Housing relationships, people really cared about the public realm that they shared with their neighbors, who might be their boss, their employees, their customers, their co-workers, city councilman, bankers, attorneys accountants, dry cleaner, grocers or bakers. Today, we call this urban-arrangement Mixed-Use development.
Take note. America’s city tax revenue structure was built around these traditional urban environments. Thanks to the mix of businesses, and rich, poor and middle-class residents in the same neighborhoods, these “collective tax bases” could support urban amenities like neighborhood schools, tree-lined sidewalks, parks, community centers, etc. Today, these neighborhood amenities are very rare and highly desirable.
By the mid-1950s, state and federal governments were offering cheap loans for housing construction and corporations jumped in with their big predatory feet. Typical corporate thinking led to “development corporations” where profit came first - at the expense of high-quality housing.
Custom homes were replaced by cookie-cutter designs – four configurations of the same plan for each development. Bulk buying reduced material costs of everything from cement. to pipes, and wiring, to moulding, doors, cabinetry, roofing, flooring, etc.. Instead of craftsmen, labor costs were reduced by unskilled labour - one group of workers would pour cement for 100 homes, another group would frame, another work group would plumb, another would wire etc. and so on. If one group messed up, the next group would work around it, and flaws and defects got covered up. New homes got larger and larger, while the quality of materials and construction quality went down, down, down. Built in obsolescence took over the housing industry. Instead of homes built to last a hundred or more years, new homes were built to last the length of the mortgage (30 years).
Worse yet, the city tax revenue structure never changed. Bottom line, property taxes on housing cannot pay for anything more than a road and police and fire services – period. Commercial property taxes, resale taxes, income taxes, and various fees assessed businesses, pay for almost all city amenities.
Once housing and commercial property was segregated, old residential neighborhoods entered decline. Cities moved tax dollars out of maintenance in old neighborhoods to build streets, and sidewalks in new neighborhoods.
The mass dis-investment in old residential neighborhoods left sidewalks, streets, landscaping, etc. to decay. Trees died and were removed. Streets were left with potholes. Bus service was eliminated. Police services were reduced. Community centers were boarded up. Since old residential neighborhoods had the most amenities, they were hit the hardest. Surrounded by visible decay, home and property owners had a hard time selling, and subdivided their old homes into multiple rental units. From big old mansions, to tiny granny flats, poverty moved in. Businesses were gone, policing was gone and drugs and crime moved in.
As new housing quality declined, everywhere, the quality of old homes and apartments in old city neighborhoods with huge trees and large lots grew in value. At some point, it’s cheaper to refurbish an old home, than it is to build a new one of similar quality. When realtors see that tipping point, they start marketing old homes and neighborhoods and lobbying city hall to re-invest in an old neighborhood. Gentrification begins when cities start re-investing in an old, run down neighborhood – for the sole purpose of increasing property taxes from that neighborhood.
Take a block with 20 homes for example. Refurbish just 2-4 homes and the property values of the whole effing neighborhood goes up and so does all 20 property owner’s tax bills – go up. One block can raise property values and taxes for several blocks in all directions. And so, more than anything else, it’s property taxes that drive poor people out of homes they’ve owned for generations, maybe even built with their own two hands. These poor homeowners stuck it out and paid taxes for decades, but will never see a dime of their home’s increased value, because they can’t afford to pay more taxes.
To answer your last question, you got it. If you want to identify the beginning stage of gentrification look for a newly restored building or two, and improvements in the public sphere – new sidewalks with handicap corners, tree plantings, landscaping, road repair or widening, striping (cross walks, bike lanes, etc), the greening of public spaces like medians and parks, and new street furniture (benches, trash cans, planters, etc.). Look also for minor zoning changes, from residential only, to residential/light commercial for example.
That said, the best way to identify an area ripe for gentrification is to find out where artists, designers, architects, musicians, artisans, techies, and other creatives have set up shop. Our businesses are super-interconnected, so we like to work in the same area. Thanks to our taste, skills and social activities, we turn old neighborhoods into vibrant hot spots. Gentrification priced my company out four different times.
If I understand you, anything which raises the market value of a home (like improvements in nearby homes, or desirable businesses, or a revitalized city park) will raise the assessments on that home, and thus proportionately the taxes. All fine reasoning. But then you say:
> These poor homeowners stuck it out and paid taxes for decades, but will never see a dime of their home’s increased value, because they can’t afford to pay more taxes.
I don't follow your reasoning. If your home is now worth three times was it was a while back because of nearby improvements, such that you cannot afford three times the taxes and need to sell, why wouldn't you receive three times a much when selling it?
Not only that, the described increase in home value in this scenario comes from the investments of other people, rather than being earned by something the homeowner did. I had a friend years ago with a rotting old farmhouse near the freeway in a semi rural area; when an interchange was put in nearby by taxpayers, their property suddenly increased in value 15 fold (as a potential location for a business - basically just a bonanza which fell out of the sky for them. Of course their property tax would have gone way up, but they sold the property for a couple million and moved to a cheaper location. As best I understand you, this would be considered a bad thing for the owner, because their taxes would have gone up without their seeing a dime - but that was far from the case. What am I missing?
I also hear that older houses may have some positives but also some serious negatives which many people may not be be able to afford to fix. The praise for their generational wealth aspect seems a little shakey, if that "wealth" has deteriorating concrete, bad insulation, bad plumbing, bad electrical. That sounds as if the actual loss of generational wealth has already occurred long before gentrification or city disinvestment could be blamed. There might be some good elements, but if the bad elements are too prevalent, it's not really wealth - any more than a rusted out old Porche with a blown engine but some good parts would be highly valuable to later generations.
To have value would require major investment from somebody who can not only afford to buy it, but also to fix it up, and to pay the yet further increased taxes.
Housing, for the most part, that was acquired through lots of pain and suffering and sweat.