
How to Decimate a City - sergeant3
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/syracuse-slums/416892/?single_page=true
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godzillabrennus
The problem isn't a highway it's that we have more labor than we need for
society to exist while we simultaneously offer nearly no social safety net for
those out of work. This country needs to offer a minimal viable income to all
citizens. I'm sure nearly everyone will blast me for how bad this will be and
for the inflation that'll surely happen but every study I've seen shows that
giving people relatively small amounts of money improves every aspect of their
lives. Society pays to incarcerate people, to police people, to heal people,
and to try and educate people. I say we take it one step further and just pay
our citizens for simply existing.

~~~
omnomrent
UBI will just be a yet another huge transfer of wealth to rentiers.

Rents will eat up every last dollar of UBI, and we'll be back where we
started.

Capital controls, rent controls, and punitive vacancy taxes are needed well in
advance of establishing UBI. The chances of this happening on a broad scale in
the US are, unfortunately, zero.

Too bad.

~~~
pstuart
Renting should be replaced with some sort of fractional ownership.

~~~
FussyZeus
Or you could just buy the property and be done with it. Take a little
responsibility for own existence.

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maxsilver
I really wish urbanists would stop blaming transportation infrastructure for
poverty and racism.

The article itself mentions that this poverty is systemic to dozens of issues
in the area (zoning rules, poor public transit, suburbs not having section 8
housing, loosing 10,000 jobs in three years, and many more).

Eliminating a freeway does nothing to address any of those issues.

\---

And everyone knows this. What "ReThink81" _really_ wants is to take that
public infrastructure land, sell it to developers for cheap so they can make a
lot of profit off building luxury condos and luxury retail/commercial spaces.

It will be a happy accident when the rise in property values "just so happens"
to displace a number of the existing poor residents.

See : [http://rethink81.org/vision/vision-
images](http://rethink81.org/vision/vision-images)

~~~
akgerber
Tearing down a freeway doesn't necessarily lead to 'luxury condos and luxury
retail/commercial spaces' when there's no demand for such property in the
neighborhood. There's vacant land at the edge of downtown Milwaukee from the
teardown of a freeway spur almost 15 years ago.

That said, in a rust belt city like Milwaukee or Syracuse, the real risk is
full-scale abandonment of the city in the style of Detroit or Flint— which is
best prevented by having a diverse array of people invested in, and fighting
for the city. If that doesn't happen, it'll decay into a zone of concentrated
poverty that major employers flee for the suburbs, trapping people in a
worsening cycle of poverty because they can't get a job without a car and
can't get a car without a job. And a car often costs the better part of $5,000
a year to maintain, and potentially much more if you can't scrape together
that $5,000 upfront for something decent used and have to deal with scammy
low-end car dealers.

And, of course, some rich people and expensive property are a necessary part
of a city's tax base if it's to pay for decent schools and transit and social
services and libraries and all the services that enable social mobility.

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tptacek
This story mirrors and extends another story from the Atlantic, by Ta-Nehisi
Coates[1], about racist housing policy in Chicago. Here, evidence that
Chicago's redlining policy was the norm throughout much of the US, and
further, consideration of how --- in some places --- it contaminated urban
planning. Syracuse, then, is a city that was (choosing words carefully)
destroyed by racism.

[1]: [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-
case...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-
reparations/361631/)

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cassieramen
This reminds me of another Atlantic article, In Defense of Gentrification.
Essentially, Syracuse has segregated itself by income level. Areas with a high
density of poverty continue to suffer. The gentrification of neighborhoods
generally elevates the quality of life of for its lower income residents.
Those that are displaced are more likely to move to a neighborhood with a
higher median income than their own.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/in-
defen...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/in-defense-of-
gentrification/413425/)

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xyzzy4
Well the main problem with Syracuse is it's not in commuting distance to a
"global city".

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city)

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tommoor
It's frustrating to see cities making the same mistakes over and over and over
again, where is the shared knowledge in the public planning system?

