Comments on: Urban Shrinkage

By: La Ciudad Viva»Archivo del blog » Crisis y ciudades fantasma. ¿Demoler o reutilizar?

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:19:25 +0000

[...] su parte, Richard Florida también ha escrito sobre el tema contextualizando históricamente este tipo de planes y [...]

By: Buzzcut

Buzzcut — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:44:35 +0000

Hayden, my point is that everything that you have written in that post, while conventional wisdom, is total BS. That is NOT what has happened (well, the projects have been systematically torn down in Chicago, but pretty much nowhere else. NYC projects are still going strong).

Chicago is an excellent example. It is has always been a segregated city. At the point right before gentrification started (say, 1985 or so), working class whites held the north side for the most part, AA’s the south.

Over time, the north side has gentrified strongly. The south side, with arguably the better architecture and neighborhoods, has not gentrified, despite most of the high rise housing units going under the wrecking ball.

There is a lot of gentirfication opportunity on Chicago’s South Side. It’s not happening, and it’s because the SWPLs won’t come in to a neighborhood that is supermajority African American.

By: hayden fisher

hayden fisher — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:53:44 +0000

On the African-American issue, the bulldozing of concentration-style housing projects designed to house lower-echelon African-Americans –many of them single mothers– that had been left to be open drug markets and crime clusters has had more to do with the re-development of urban centers than the population of white people living there. The response to Brown v Board of Education was to build-out suburbia with covenants that did not allow African-Americans to live there; create another separate but unequal public education system revolving around the urban vs. suburban geographic county school systems paradigm; and refuse to police the housing projects. These projects have been largely bulldozed over the last 10 years and their inhabitants matriculated back into society and out of these de facto prisons. So diversity is king. Mixing persons of different races, creeds, ages, socioeconomic backgrounds and the like in high-density mixed-use neighborhoods and communities has led to an explosion of tolerance and appreciate therefore. Portland’s success has nothing to do with racial composition, New York, DC, Atlanta, Chicago and other creative class cities with high African-American populations have faired just fine as well. But the elimination of these concentration camps has been key in each case.

By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:39:44 +0000

Perhaps you need a certain personality to be an urban homesteader no matter what your race. Perhaps middle class or college educated African Americans are not moving back to to cities because they want good public schools, green space, and relative quiet.

By: KIRSTI

KIRSTI — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:48:34 +0000

Depopulation sounds scary as does planned shrinkage…. I wonder more about the connection between people and places = as some posters point out, there are just some places which are designed and built for and by particular people which exclude others. I am blogging from one right now…. are spaces, like our technologies are cultural artifacts = and they have politics….as the posters here discuss….it would be interesting to watch a community over time and its changes as well as corresponding changes in ideology, people in charge and of course, demographics…. then we might see some revealing facts about cultural dimensions of people and places and the relationship between them….

By: david j

david j — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 17:27:19 +0000

You might find the work being done in Northeast Ohio by the Kent State University Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC) interesting. Their Shrinking Cities Institute explores alternative approaches for dealing with depopulation: http://www.cudc.kent.edu/shrink

Some of the strategies initiated by the CUDC include the Re-Imagining a More Sustainable Cleveland reports: http://www.cudc.kent.edu/shrink/landlab.html and the Pop Up City initiative: http://www.myspace.com/popupcleveland

By: Buzzcut

Buzzcut — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:01:36 +0000

you’re right that for various reasons African Americans are underrepresented in the Creative Class occupations, while Whites and Asians are overrepresented. Richard addresses this in Rise, and it is a cause for concern. As more middle class Black people graduate from college I expect it will change as the economy changes and diversifies.

Right. That’s a fact, African Americans are not well represented in the creative class. They’ve got lower levels of education, are more represented in the welfare class, etc.

Those are facts, Michael. And it shouldn’t be racist to say so.

Now, I happen to agree with you that, over time, African Americans as a group will get more education and come more in line with the rest of America. But what’s the timeline for that to happen? Decades? Buffalo is already in its sixtieth year of decline! How long do people need to wait?!?

Are you saying that Portland wouldn’t have attracted high tech industry, built streetcars, developed a DIY music scene, and the other “Creative Class” attributes if we had a higher percentage of Black people?

That’s exactly what I’m saying. Things like public transportation and suburban development limits are accepted when the SWPLs don’t have to live next to African Americans. I think Portland and San Fran are the best examples of that, but even Boston and New York only really took off gentrification wise when crime was brought under control and a certian level of white population (re-population?) was achieved.

Look, you can write this off as racist, but as Eric Holder would say, that would be cowardly. The challenge stands: how do you redevelop an area like the east side of Buffalo with the population that you already have?

Thanks for the reply, by the way. I appreciate what you’ve said, especially your tales of ’70s New York. Too bad you didn’t buy in then and stay, huh? You’d be filthy rich!

By: Michael Wells

Michael Wells — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:57:33 +0000

Buzzcut,

I’m not sure that I follow your logic, but it borders on being racist and offensive. Are you saying that Portland wouldn’t have attracted high tech industry, built streetcars, developed a DIY music scene, and the other “Creative Class” attributes if we had a higher percentage of Black people? If that’s not what you’re saying, then what is the significance of your comments on whites and African Americans? Charlotte which you mention is about 1/3 African American, and Boston and NYC are both about 25%. Austin is about 10% Black but also about 33% Latino.

However, you’re right that for various reasons African Americans are underrepresented in the Creative Class occupations, while Whites and Asians are overrepresented. Richard addresses this in Rise, and it is a cause for concern. As more middle class Black people graduate from college I expect it will change as the economy changes and diversifies.

By: Michael Wells

Michael Wells — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:33:06 +0000

Here’s a story about shrinking cities in East Germany.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/world/europe/19germany.html?_r=1&ref=world

By: Buzzcut

Buzzcut — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:06:37 +0000

Michael, my consistant point when I call Richard’s ideas “SWPL-fication” is that his ideas rely on a certain type of person being present. Generally white, open minded, educated, etc. That is a very small minority of people in this country.

Could Manhattan have improved had the population living there not turned white? Can the East Side of Buffalo change for the better without SWPLs, and with the population that currently lives there?

For all Richard’s assertions that diversity is a strength, the fact is that his examples of cities that are improving themselves are ones with lower than average African American populations (i.e. San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Pittsburg, etc.).

Even in Buffalo, there are neighborhoods that have improved themselves, following Richard’s ideas. And they have been SWPL-fied.

How do you achieve economic growth with the people you have already? That’s something that Richard can’t answer.

And speaking for myself, I’m not a SWPL and I don’t particularly like SWPLs, so SWPL-fying a place is not very attractive to me.