Reply #133: There should not BE a "bad side of town". The reason there is [View All]

[Leopolds Ghost]

Is because of redlining on the basis of income and subdivision age, but mainly, these days, subdivision age. If a subdivision is NOT an auto-oriented bedroom community, it is illegal. You heard me, illegal. You could choose to invest there, but the slumlords have let the buildings run down because they plan to clear EVERYTHING out to make way for "new urbanist" pod-complexes of garage townhomes, garage town center shopping centers with Bed Bath and Beyond as far as the eye can see. You have no choice because the selection is so limited -- the few "urban neighborhoods" that are protected from auto-mization (usually by historic ordinance) are so few and far between that they are tremendously expensive. Even in the most desirbale, dense urban neighborhoods, the childless rich refuse to improve the schools and refuse to allow sky-rises to be built without at least 1.5-to-1 parking and low FARs (meaning state-mandated "open space" used for unsightly median strips and auto access.) genuine livable cities like you see in Europe or even Canada or Mexico! are illegal in the USA. Like any highly regulated commoditry, they are tremendously expensive.

Few people understand that the plight of the "ghetto poor" in America has nothing to do with the "welfare state" and everything to do with the "corporate welfare state". They use poor people to "blockbust" neighborhoods they are intent on redeveloping.

Invariably these neighborhoods are "obsolete" (read: too urban). Invariably when what little housing for the poor or homeless shelters are provided, it is in flex space in the very areas the developer intends to tear down in 20 years time -- these things are planned far in advance. One of the things I heard in a recent lecture on Real Estate development is that 80% new housing and development is for the rich and NONE of it for the genuinely poor and develpers expect that trend to continue. The poor belong in whatever neighborhood, whatever buildings are "obsolete" and "fully depreciated". As for public schoos in cities, they might as well not exist, because the "DLC power structure" that is based in urban areas has essentially said the city is only for the childless rich and the very poor, whose kids they no longer want to educate.