Blighted Cities Prefer Razing to Rebuilding

[theHandpuppet]

I do understand some of the reasoning behind the push for demolition but damn, seeing pics of so many cities with neighborhoods reduced to what looks like nuclear test sites, I keep thinking there must be another way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/us/blighted-cities-prefer-razing-to-rebuilding.html?hp

Blighted Cities Prefer Razing to Rebuilding

BALTIMORE — Shivihah Smith’s East Baltimore neighborhood, where he lives with his mother and grandmother, is disappearing. The block one over is gone. A dozen rowhouses on an adjacent block were removed one afternoon last year. And on the corner a few weeks ago, a pair of houses that were damaged by fire collapsed. The city bulldozed those and two others, leaving scavengers to pick through the debris for bits of metal and copper wire.

“The city doesn’t want these old houses,” lamented Mr. Smith, 36.

For the Smiths, the bulldozing of city blocks is a source of anguish. But for Baltimore, as for a number of American cities in the Northeast and Midwest that have lost big chunks of their population, it is increasingly regarded as a path to salvation. Because despite the well-publicized embrace by young professionals of once-struggling city centers in New York, Seattle and Los Angeles, for many cities urban planning has often become a form of creative destruction.

“It is not the house itself that has value, it is the land the house stands on,” said Sandra Pianalto, the president and chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. “This led us to the counterintuitive concept that the best policy to stabilize neighborhoods may not always be rehabilitation. It may be demolition.”

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[LisaLynne]

1. This is happening where I live.

I think it's just easier to knock the houses over. They started around here because of a few fires, but I think that it was mainly because people were squatting in the houses. Then, yes, in the one area, they started building these really huge houses that people who traditionally lived in those areas can not afford, so ...

I hate to see the loss of older homes and buildings, just because I like the way they look, but I also worry about gentrification. I don't like where it's going. However, I also see the problem with having a bunch of empty, decaying structures sitting around. Sigh.

Thanks for posting the article.

[theHandpuppet]

2. I agree with you about the gentrification

It would seem to me that once all the blighted dwellings are torn down, why couldn't some decent, low-cost housing take its place? Where are the poor supposed to live?

[LisaLynne]

3. Exactly!

They want the particular area I'm thinking of to look nice (to create a better impression of the city to visitors, etc), but why can't it be nice-looking housing that's affordable to the majority of the people in the area?

[theHandpuppet]

4. Because the poor are supposed to be invisible

Once the poor are shoved farther and farther out of urban areas, the more difficult it becomes for them to access services or even seek jobs, much less be able to afford a place to live. The poor are also dependent on public transportation systems and when they get shoved out into the back of beyond you basically isolate them until they get the hell out of Dodge or die. To me, it seems like a slow, torturous, genocidal war against the urban poor.

Edited to add: And I'll bet most of this is going on in neighborhoods that are predominately black, so the issue of race cannot be ignored.

[MineralMan]

5. I have no problem with that strategy, if

those same cities build affordable housing to replace what is demolished. That should be the goal. Rehabilitating aging residential housing is not the answer in many cases. Starting fresh can be.

[theHandpuppet]

6. From what I've seen, that isn't what's happening.

I watched the gentrification of inner city Cincinnati over a number of years. The poor were shoved out in favor of urban yuppies and upscale eateries. I would like to think dilapidated homes in urban areas were being replaced by decent housing for low income families but I haven't seen any evidence that's the result of this strategy.

[MineralMan]

7. I know, but that doesn't have to be the case.

In some cases, it's unlikely that low-cost housing will be built in neighborhoods near city centers. However, there's no reason that it won't happen in neighborhoods a little farther away from downtown districts. Our major cities are strange, really. The older neighborhoods evolved into low-cost housing as people left the cities for the suburbs. The trend is for people to move back today, but the existing residential housing near the city centers is not attractive to affluent residents. So, it's a cinch that close-in neighborhoods will revert to housing that will attract more affluent people who work in the city center. That's the trend here in Minneapolis and St. Paul, where high-end city-center condo living is thriving.

However, once you get just a short distance from the city center, additional neighborhoods are perfect for building affordable housing. The real issue is that most of the buildings around city centers are old, sometimes over 100 years old. Even neighborhoods many blocks away from downtown are old and in disrepair, inefficient for energy consumption, and unattractive.

City planning is about to have to face a changing urban focus. How each city does that will determine its future. There's an opportunity here to plan well, and a danger of planning poorly.

[gopiscrap]

8. that sucks, it makes cities lose their cultural character.

[bhikkhu]

9. The old strategy - get rid of poverty by getting rid of the places they can afford

and, on the commercial side, get rid of small businesses, family operations and start-up businesses by getting rid of the old buildings they can afford to operate in.

Here's a counter-example http://uptownmessenger.com/2012/05/new-ideas-need-old-buildings-residents-discuss-legacy-of-jane-jacobs-on-freret-renaissance/

In my town there have been some old buildings demolished by the city for the sake of beautification, raising commercial property values and standards, and adding parking. The ground-floor business space is one issue, but the other side is that the same buildings had cheap upper floor apartments.