[Plantagenet]

I just posted in the "Death of Suburbia Thread" that the premise of that thread has turned out to be totally wrong.

What we actually see in the US today isn't the death of Suburbia but the death of cities.

In city after city, the downtown areas are being abandoned to the homeless, drug addicts and drug dealers, and criminals and thieves.

In city after city the downtown hotels and businesses are closing, and corporations are moving their staff out of the huge office buildings because it just too dangerous for their employees to get to work.


Downtown San Francisco is overrun by the homeless, drug addicts and drug dealers, and criminals and thieves. The economy and culture of SF is dying

Since what we area actually seeing in the US today is the death of cities, I've decided to start a new thread on "THE DEATH OF CITIES"

And this isn't exclusively an American problem.....last time I was in Paris I was astonished to see homeless camps in many parts of the city, and drug use and other criminal activity going on in public.

France has always been a well managed and safe country for travelers (with occasional pick pocket infestations near train stations and tourist hot spots) but more and more its looking like a typical US city, with some areas becoming essentially "no-go" zones for the police. And the same thing is going in London, Amsterdam, Rome, etc.

They aren't as far down the road to the death of Cities as we are in the USA, but Europe is on the same track.

Cheers!

[AgentR11]

I always see these pictures of some cities, but when I go into Houston, I don't see anything like that. I'm sure there are areas like that, but there are also areas with lots of brand new development and re-development going on.

Cities will change of course, but I think they'll hang on, messy or not.

[theluckycountry]

Good thread topic plant.
As a point of reference, the CBD and inner city area is by design the commercial/financial center of a nation or a state or region, a place to do business and a often place for those to live who worked there. This necessitated many services there as well, to provide for those engaged in business. And because a lot of wealthy people worked there we saw the high-end shops and expensive entertainments, opera, restaurants there.

But business and finance has changed hasn't it, has consolidated, has gone online. A lot of those hi-end shops have moved out to big shopping centers in the suburbs, and the cities, down here at least, have been morphing into residential centers with endless apartment towers. Who lives in these inner city towers? Some business people, a lot of retired middle class couples, but also a lot of flakey people, a lot of prostitutes and drug dealers. Certainly not Jack and Jill with their two children.

A fascinating topic to explore as even small cities are following this pattern of rapid decline. Thanks Plant.

[Newfie]

We voted with our feet.

Working in transit I look at cities and suburbs as a singular paradigm. What works better are smaller groupings, connected hubs. Maybe 5 to 50 thousand. That meeps you within reasonable distance to food but also within a network of specialists. You may commute to work in an adjacent town, via efficient mass transit. But you walk or bike to the local market, clothing store, hardware, etc.

[theluckycountry]

Exactly! My town is only 3000 but it has all the modern services, even a hospital. Traffic is light and it was the the big city traffic that was one of the main reasons I left to move out here. It's friendly in a rural town, you can stop and chat with nearly anyone, there is an inherent sense of trust in these small communities.

I have never even heard of a homeless person let alone seen one, but go to the minor city an hours drive away and they are living in the parks, in the CBD around the churches, it's really quite amazing that in a rich nation like this so many have slipped through the cracks. Drug and alcohol abuse are the main suspects but also mental illness.

A couple of decades ago the government closed down all the metal health homes and now people with mental issues are shunted into cheap residential units in and around the cities. Trouble is they skip their meds, go off the rails, fail to pay the nominal rent and services and end up on the street. There is no solution to this sort of thing. For millennia cities have had these unfortunate people, beggars, lunatics, alcohol abusers, it's only in the cheap oil age that we were able to care for them and keep them off the streets.

Half Of All Americans View San Francisco As Unsafe New Poll Finds

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')an Francisco Mayor blames ‘right-wing attacks on the city, including in the media’
According to a new Gallup poll released this week, only 52% of Americans rate San Francisco as safe anymore, freefalling from a previous poll only 15 years ago when the city scored one of the highest ratings and was viewed as one of the safest cities in the entire country.

[Newfie]

Lucky,

There are ways to deal with this situation but they will never happen. You have to start with the kids, improve their environment, improve their health, improve their education. Then in 3 to 5 generations things will be better.

Simple eh?

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', '
')There are ways to deal with this situation but they will never happen. You have to start with the kids, improve their environment, improve their health, improve their education. Then in 3 to 5 generations things will be better.

Simple eh?

[mousepad]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '
')The public school system is a disaster in city after city across the USA. There are many schools in large cities in the USA where not a single child reads or can do math at grade level, or at best there are a handful in the entire school.

[Plantagenet]

The URBAN DOOM LOOP is coming to a city near you

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/urban-doom-loop-could-pose-105045782.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kcnVkZ2VyZXBvcnQuY29tLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMeeB7FNRr6ClqksXwkI8JvhJD9ekG9kzDKCT5Nr5w5mnPr7Vcjsziy5iqGkdMy9gNrSsc_x1CvbfivLHh7r75khhaD8LftI4I9fQzJJX4byhWkf20tcKMrfHHYUr6Bzz_y0axzUHCmLuuBa9kkx5Ic2mAEqT2ILfrP54x1Al7RY

Increasing crime rates in urban areas is driving out stores and hotels and corporations and business which in turn destroys property values which undercuts the tax base and reduces tax revenue to cities which then cut services and police which leads to increasing crime rates which drives out......


Things tend to go bad slowly until suddenly everything goes bad all at once....

Cheers!

[Tanada]

I have a thought, give it a solid review and let me know how you feel about it.

Until the 1750's at the earliest there were no cities run under a Democratic model of governance. Most were either appointed autocracies from higher authority or they were placed in charge through inheritance in the feudal sense. This means the people in charge were beholden not to the general masses but to the people who had significant financial or personal stake in the cities being well run. Cities were generally friendly for business because that was their entire reason for existence.

In our modern system where the people holding office keep that office by appealing to the lowest common denominator and also feed into the small minority of activist voices because they are seeking mass appeal by doing so. As a result you get NYC and Detroit raising taxes so high they chase many businesses away from the city core, which then leaves an unemployed population who demand further tax supports to keep them voting for the people in charge. It becomes a viscous cycle where uninformed or misled voters feed into supporting the very people who are destroying the tax base and chasing away the jobs, which also feeds in with automation reducing the need for labor reinforcing the employment crisis in the big cities.

[noobtube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '
')The public school system is a disaster in city after city across the USA. There are many schools in large cities in the USA where not a single child reads or can do math at grade level, or at best there are a handful in the entire school.

[theluckycountry]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'L')ucky,

There are ways to deal with this situation but they will never happen. You have to start with the kids, improve their environment, improve their health, improve their education. Then in 3 to 5 generations things will be better.

Simple eh?

[theluckycountry]

NYC's Crumbling Infrastructure On Full Display As Century-Old Water Line Floods Times Square

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ew York City Mayor Eric Adams is dealing with yet another problem: A century-old water pipe broke early Tuesday, flooding midtown streets and the city's busiest subway station.

[noobtube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', '[')b]NYC's Crumbling Infrastructure On Full Display As Century-Old Water Line Floods Times Square

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ew York City Mayor Eric Adams is dealing with yet another problem: A century-old water pipe broke early Tuesday, flooding midtown streets and the city's busiest subway station.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('noobtube', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', '[')b]NYC's Crumbling Infrastructure On Full Display As Century-Old Water Line Floods Times Square

[theluckycountry]

Youth brawls draw hundreds to 2 California malls
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... e-response

Chicago TV news crew robbed at gunpoint while reporting on a string of robberies
https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wi ... -102652494

Just business as usual in American cities? Perhaps, but perhaps things are progressively getting worse over time. That is certainly the case in Australian cities, which are in no way as crime ridden as our US counterparts, 'yet'. It's doubtful we will ever catch up, we will probably always lag, but at what point do you say enough is enough and move away?

The crime reported was over the top in the Trump era but as soon as biden was in office it was like a media blackout was in place. The riots continue though, but now there is a twist.

Union Square Melee Proves Riots Have Little to Do with Real Political Grievances

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')ugust 07, 2023

The most revealing thing about Friday’s Union Square pop-up riot is that as police dispersed the mob, members started chanting, “Black Lives Matter.”

Make no mistake: This was not a protest on the part of teenagers drawn to 14th Street by Kai Cenat, an online “influencer” with millions of followers, including thousands eager for free PlayStations he used to lure them to demonstrate his importance. But as dozens in the crowd were being arrested for vandalism, they realized they had a useful line of defense: invoking the movement predicated on police mistreatment of minority youth.

The NYPD was not intimidated into turning a blind eye toward the destruction of food carts and cars — not this time around. But the chant pulled up the curtain on what has long been the dirty secret of mass protests, from the Watts riots to the rampages accompanying the “protests” of the police homicides of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

There’s always been a significant part of the crowd that is, in Harvard social scientist Edward Banfield’s legendary phrase, “rioting for fun and profit.”

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'I') just posted in the "Death of Suburbia Thread" that the premise of that thread has turned out to be totally wrong.

What we actually see in the US today isn't the death of Suburbia but the death of cities.

In city after city, the downtown areas are being abandoned to the homeless, drug addicts and drug dealers, and criminals and thieves.

[theluckycountry]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '
')
Now you have Energy Unlimited's conjecture:

[noobtube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'I')n New York City Mayor Adams recently estimated the cost of housing all the illegal immigrants at 12 BILLION DOLLARS!!!!! It doesn't help that NYC is putting them up in luxury hotels and paying top dollars for them to stay there.

When Joe Biden opened up the southern border and allowed the massive influx of illegal immigration to occur, I'm not sure he thought through how badly this might impact places like New York City and other cities where many penniless illegal immigrants wind up living on the streets.

Welcome to New York City where only the homeless can afford to stay in the best hotels....

Cheers!

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('noobtube', '
')Crime has always been "bad" in American cities because that's where the wealth is.