Slashdot Mirror
US Plans To Bulldoze 50 Shrinking Cities
chrb writes "Two days ago Slashdot discussed broke counties grinding their tarmac roads into gravel. Now the Telegraph reveals plans to raze huge sections of at least 50 US cities to the ground. The resulting smaller cities will be more economical to run, and the recovered land will be returned to nature."
Can DC be first?
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
The article mentions Baltimore, which makes sense. If you've ever visited some of the, shall we say, less popular portions of that city, you'll find block after block of boarded-up rowhouses. It's actually kind of eerie. Hell, even if you take Amtrak and go past Charm City, you'll see lots of houses that are in dismal shape (but nevertheless, sadly, are still occupied).
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
We wall these areas off and turn them into Escape from New York style maximum security prisons. As long as we don't fly Air Force One over that airspace we should be OK. Kurt Russell is getting a bit too old to keep helping us out with that sort of thing.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
White flight into the suburbs has brought us nothing but Wal-Mart and SUV's. I grew up in a suburb, and I hated how I was not able to go anywhere without a ride from my parents because everything was so far apart. Should I have children, I will not put them through that sort of social isolation.
Unfortunately Dayton, OH should be on that list. Just lost NCR.. you know it's bad when a company that was founded in your city over 100 years ago packs up shop without even giving the host city/state a chance to appease them.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
This seems like a win-win scenario. Construction companies get hired to demolish the old buildings, which stimulates the economy and if the right buildings get the axe, old run down buildings full of lead paint and asbestos insulation go away and are replaced with meadows, forests or new greener buildings. The catch would be all the geezers coming out of the wood-work to save all the "historical sites"
Hearing this makes me think of Detroit. Its population is constantly shrinking and much of the city is in disrepair. I've ridden greyhound busses through it a few times and you pass mile after mile of boarded up, dilapidated buildings.
It makes one wonder what the city would be like if it ended up being completely abandoned, sort of like Rome after the fall of the empire.
Most likely there would be a half-attempted cleanup effort, but it would probably fail. Demolishing buildings isn't cheap. Returning the land to it's natural state is even more expensive, not to mention nature would probably do it herself over a slightly longer time frame.
This reminds me of the "urban renewal" projects of the 50s and early 60s, when huge sections actually were razed in various major cities. Boston's West End was a victim of this.
It's widely considered to be one of the stupidest projects the government's ever done.
Here I thought we were supposed to encourage people to move back into cities so high population densities would make mass transit more viable. Silly me.
If this plan includes Detroit, I fully support it. Otherwise, I think it's sad and wrong and I oppose it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The great depression brought us some awesome things in parks.
Maybe this one can lead to some awesome parks.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Not per hundred, per hundred thousand.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Detroit seems to be the wisest place to begin with. High crime, lost Stanley cup, agony of the car companies. Let Sillicon Valley become the new city for car makers. Li-Ion rules!
I think someone seriously underestimated the hazardous nature of building materials. R
azing a building containing asbestos or Ammonium bromide which a lot of older buildings contain (fireproofing) and just leaving it there is quite stupid!
Laugh, while they slowly kill you, America.
This is no joke. You are living in some post-apocalypse vision from J.G. Ballard, and yet you use this as an opportunity to jest. This is not the result of some lack or inability on the part of one community or another.
Rather it is the gradual outcome of steady, oligarchal corporate piracy and class war. Here's the kicker: That's the super-rich class, versus all others. You middle-class allies are no longer needed, now the looting is complete. You are now in the avenue of destruction - but they'll have you at each other's throats over false ideological dichotomies instead of turning on the real villains of history.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
A modest home in a lot of 7 abandoned (or un-sellable) homes is worth very little. But, if the home owners are willing to relocate, they could potentially own a similar home, closer to a "living" civilization, and bordering the nice new woods that has now been created out of all the empty districts. That home is worth a lot more.
It's obvious that the kind of home growth that we saw over the last ten years is not sustainable for any substantial amount of time. And it's a little ironic that many of the same construction companies that were thrown together to build the homes might transition into companies that are hired to tear down the very same homes... but, having said that, nothing makes me happier to think that we might rollback at least some of the ugly brown areas and return them to Nature.
Rent them out to Israeli army for training purposes.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
"But some Flint dustcarts are collecting just one rubbish bag a week, roads are decaying, police are very understaffed and there were simply too few people to pay for services, he said."
Ya know they's in barney when the dustcarts dont' e'en have any rubbish to pick up!
"Schooled" is a strong word in this context. :)
Detroit (Homicide rate of 47.5%
Wow! With that homicide rate, we don't even have to worry about razing the city, there'll be practically no one left in a few years anyway.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
You needn't worry, citizen. OCP has assured the public that a relocation plan is already in place for all residents displaced by Delta City.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This reminds me of the tent houses that were supposedly popping up all over the place a few months back, full of homeless victims of the recession. Turns out the only one (that I could find any real reference to) was in Sacramento, CA, and it was mainly because that city has such a good homeless program. The people living in the tent city weren't homeless because of the recession, they were normal homeless people, incapable or unwilling to find a job.
The only city they actually mention in the article is Flint, Michigan; but Flint has been having problems long before this recession. The chances of it ever growing to it's former size are about the same as Bodie ever being populated again: not likely, it's a ghost town.
The article tries to spin it like it's the end of some American dream of having lots of space, and we are all going to have to start living close together now, because it's cheaper for utilities, etc. Not likely.
Qxe4
Both of which also have large ghetto type areas which house hundreds of people who I'm sure that most of us here wouldn't want living in our backyards.
Truth be told, I really don't want *anyone* living in my backyard.
FTFA:
"Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow," he said.
take older rust belt cities and remove the suburban sprawl surrounding them and prune them down to their urban core, and then you have a city layout from the days before the rise of the automobile
as gas prices continue to rise, urban development plans will favor this model of development: tightly clustered cities with good public transportation, surrounded by parkland. a much more humane and livable environment. places like phoenix and las vegas and houston, nothing more than giant sprawling suburbs really, will become inhospitable to affordable living while rust belt cities will develop a new cachet as nice places to live: condos and coops in refurbished historical buildings surrounded by healthy woodlands, with easy public transport or foot traffic to anywhere you want to and need to go
of course this cachet of "nice place to live" also has to imply some sort of job growth too, but as these rust belt cities shrink, they have ample opportunity to invest in emerging job sectors to bolster that sort of growth
then the choice between sitting in your car in a traffic jam on the freeway at $4/ gallon gasoline in 105 degree phoenix won't look as nice as walking the charming old refurbished downtowns of historic cities. these old cities have good bones, they just need to be pruned and invested a little in, and natural growth will take hold again
notice one city not mentioned as ripe for bulldozing: pittsburgh. yet pittsburgh is pretty much a poster child of a rust belt city. why? good planning for investing in future job sectors:
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_612352.html
now compare pittsburgh's sober but cheerful outlook to the armageddeon-level job losses at work in the newer suburban sprawl cities that relied too much on overheated sectors like construction
detroit and flint and any other city heavily dependent on automobile manufacturing, alas, has a different story than pittsburgh. but this part of the larger picture at play here: the death of the automobile, the death of suburban sprawl, the return to small compact cities with a livable core surrounded by healthy woodland and with good public transportation
i for one welcome the death of the age of the automobile and the idiotic environmental damage of gas guzzling automobiles and space wasting burbs, and the inhumane anonymity of living in the isolating mcmansions and sitting in traffic jams, in areas of the country no one can survive in without artificial air conditioning
death to california
long live ohio
mark my words: the 1950s trend of everyone moving west will be replaced in 2025 by stories of everyone out west moving to the midwest belt
for the same reason: better quality of life
mark my words
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Feral crackheads will swing from tree to tree like Tarzan, battling beast and man alike for dominion over the urban green spaces.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
Huh? Relocate what people? The article mentions that much of this property is already empty/abandoned. Maintaining infrastructure to support large swaths of city that are relatively empty doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
One would think that people would not be fleeing "desirable" parts of town so I don't see any issue with the city "decommissioning" underutilized parcels of land and reallocating resources to areas where people actually want to live.
Surely, the squeaky clean politicians in that area don't have any plans to clue in their cronies to areas about to be decommissioned so that those folks can snap them up on the cheap and then sell them to the gummint at a profit? Nah...
Best,
You mean the ranch Bush bought a few years before he was elected to make him look like an authentic Texan even though he was mostly raised and schooled in Maine and Connecticut?
I think it was the whole Governor of Texas title that made him look like a real Texan. Before that, it was the 20 years he lived in Midland TX where he met his wife and raised his kids.
But, hey! Don't let that stop you from hating him. You seem to have such a good grasp of the facts.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The issue to me is that hyperinflation that occurred during the early and mid 200's, and the hyperdeflation we are now living with. During the inflatory period, everyone was taking fictional money out of their fictional property values to buy real goods. Banks made money, people got stuff, everyone was happy. The problem now is that, like it was with credit cards, people owe more than they possible can pay, and so the best thing to do is to walk away from the house. All this is covered by taxpayers. We can complain, but nothing can be done.
I think we just need to admit we have lived through 8 years of insanity, a national coke addiction, get over it, and move on. We don't need to pass blame, or punish people, just solve problems. If population is declining, and there are no jobs, and no people to live in the homes, then let's raze the land and return it to natural habitat. Hell, I say with a significant portion of a development is empty, pay the people to move, and raze the whole thing.
But we do have families without homes. Families who were priced out of home given the greed of the home investors at the expense of the home owners. It seems that since we have already bailed out the banks and the taxpayers have already in effect covered those mortgages, it seems that the FHA could help families move into the foreclosed homes. Right now the FHA does not want to deal with the average foreclosed home. Right now the FHA thinks that homeless is better than a imperfect home. That a leaky roof is worse than no roof at all. So it seems to me that there is a lot of housing available, and a lot of demand for cheap housing. When I say this the first time, and I saw the brookings institute, I saw it as a plot to maintain unsustainable property values rather than an way to help the country move forward.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Californian here! Can Sacramento go third?
Californian here! Can California go third?
There, fixed that for ya.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
This is understandably a touchy subject for a lot of people. It's hard to overstate the sense of loss; more than that, the sense of historical obliteration. Neighborhoods where once happy, prosperous people lived productive lives are vacant, and one cannot help but feel that those happy, prosperous people are gone, perhaps never to return, and those empty houses stand like tombstones marking the death of their dreams.
Of course, this is thankfully not really true - those happy and productive people simply moved to other places, where they continue to live out their happy, productive lives. We feel bad about razing these homes because we feel like we are razing the lives of the people that used to occupy them. But those people left those homes behind long ago. They've moved on - so should the rest of us.
We feel sick about obliterating what should be valuable assets. This is a hard problem too. laborers built these structures, many of them good strong structures, some of them the likes of which will not be seen again. With care, they should be able to last centuries. But a society too obsessed with preserving the past - particularly a past that is not valued - is a moribund society. We should not carelessly annihilate our history. But at the same time we need to remember who we, historically, are:
We are a dynamic society. We are a dynamic people. The only constant is change. These cities shrank while other cities grew. It is in many ways a reflection on the freedom of our society, that people and businesses decided to leave and go elsewhere. Other places gained while these places lost. Now it's time for the principle of creative destruction to come into play. It's time to give up on what people have freely decided they don't value. It's time to re-allocate resources from failure to profit. It's time to clear the landscape of the ruins of yesterday, to make room for the possibilities of the future.
The ideas in this article are on the right track. We can't get sentimental about a past that is gone, never to return. Raze the unowned buildings, now sheltering criminals and vagrants. Hell, de-annex the empty land and return it to the township. Sell whatever mobile capital goods are underutilized. Wipe the ordinance book clean and start over again. Put every budget item and every tax on the chopping block. Clear the path for future opportunity, or it will never arrive.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Not Sacramento! I dated a hot Chinese chick there.. I don't want her incinerated.
Oh snap, facts!
My sig can beat up your sig.
From the article. They're buying up abandoned property. Because we're smart kids we know 'abandoned' means that no one lives there. Therefor no one will be relocated.
Also they're bulldozing the land and offering to sell it to neighbors for cheap on the outskirts of town, and restoring the properties near downtown, in an effort to get people to willingly move closer together.
In most cases that means that they're bulldozing the suburbs (property on the outskirts) and restoring the ghettos (inner city housing).
They are talking about razing EMPTY buildings. They aren't talking about moving people anywhere. Both of the cities you mentioned (and I believe all of the others on the list) once had much larger populations. Philadelphia had a population of over 2 million. It now has a population of 1.4 million and shrinking. Detroit once had a population of 1.8 million. It now has a population of 900,000 and shrinking.
Eliminating much of the excess housing stock in these cities (as well as the abandoned factories/warehouses) should also help to reduce the crime rates.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
In your plan for mass immigration, where are the immigrants going to get the resources to fix up the houses? There aren't enough jobs for the current residents.
Completely off topic here, but America needs to seriously reform the welfare system. There are significant portions of the population whose entire aspirations in life involve getting qualified for either General Relief or Social Security Insurance payments. They are content to take to their EBT coupons and subsist on whatever the government can tax the productive members of society for. Welfare should be a supplement. Welfare should be a government match against hours worked. The hours worked can be community service for all I care. But people need to be put to work if they want the state to tax people with jobs to support them. Maybe I'm a bit bitter from riding through the train South Central LA every day, but the system is broken.
As long as I'm ranting, they need to modify the welfare system and deny payments to felons and their children. That would go a long way to dealing with the "baby daddy" syndrome of stupid girls letting themselves get knocked up by the most alpha, ghetto hood thugs they can find. All of a sudden the baby of a gangster won't be a free ticket to hundreds of dollars a month and a free place to live. Require a paternity test and a valid identify for the father of the child. The government needs to start holding the people that they support accountable for the choices those people make about how they live their lives. I'm sick and tired of seeing my tax dollars disappearing into the bottomless pit that is the ghetto.
You just said only minority groups live in poor neighborhoods. That's racism if I've ever heard it.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
There are two problems with your idea:
1. The huge manufacturing sectors that provided the kinds of low-wage, low-skill jobs that immigrant populations used to gobble up, have actually relocated to the former immigrants' home countries.
2. We would have to be willing to legally allow people to work low-wage, low-skill, dirty, dangerous jobs, and we don't really seem willing to do that.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Take a look at http://www.worldwithoutus.com/index2.html. Houses decay if they are not maintained. They decay rather rapidly. Unless ownership can be conveyed in some fashion to attentive stewards, a house will come down one way or another. Far better to plan the inevitable downsizing than to pretend it isn't going to happen.
All engineering should consider the full lifecycle. These houses were built in more optimistic times, but was it thought they would stand forever? The only real difference between sustainable technologies and cancerous growth is that the plan for obsolescence includes the needs of the many, not just the wants of the few.
"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
What profit has a man from all his labor
In which he toils under the sun?
while i read your post and the one you are responding to
zzz
maybe he is modded off topic because he is more concerned with grudges and overarching indictments and acid-laced blame than anything useful
people who are consumed by pointing fingers and little more are yet a further symptom of any societal blight you or the post you are responding to describes
the way out of any problem in this world is positive, optimistic ideas and attitudes, regardless of what got you there
not useless, pointless doom and gloom
and so he is off-topic, and correctly modded as such: his post has more to do with acting out his psychological damage than anything anyone else wants to read or might find useful
maybe he has good reason to be bitter. maybe his indictments are valid. but he needs to reach a point where the words that come out of his mouth are constructive, before anything he says is of any value to anyone else
until then: -1, off-topic. the correct mod
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
While I can see the merit of this from the perspective of the city having to deal with the upkeep of such lands, my mind keeps coming back to the idea that this is more a move to increase, or bolster, declining property values by simply adjusting supply in regards to demand.
Is this a move on the part of the "haves" trying to maintain the value of property that they will be selling/renting to the "have-nots"?
Despite the common-sense this proposal appears to be based on, I cannot seem to shake the feeling that this may not be in the best interests of those most hurt by the current recession. Sure, maybe this will free up tax dollars for more important programs, but will it drive up rent prices and nullify any savings for the low-income familys? Will those freed-up tax dollars simply be spent on rent subsidies?
The one good thing in all this, something I have no doubt about, is the return to nature. Now, THAT is something I have a hard time finding fault with.
All in all, maybe we should give it a little more time to examine the long-term results of this plan before throwing the rest of the country into 'dozer mode.
My hometown in Minnesota shrinks all the time.
It's probably the cold that does that. Try giving it a vigorous rub and maybe blowing on it.
And don't forget the main benefit of this, the small chance that Snake Pliskin might turn out to be real.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
When did Carter live in Texas?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
It would be very interesting to close off part of a disused city or even a whole city and leave it as it is to see how nature would take over without human influences. Would it decay as some predict?. Would nature take over tower blocks for high rise living? ... The nearest experiment we have is Chernobyl, but thats nothing like American conditions such as weather etc.. and a 2nd city to compare how nature adapts to part or even a whole city without humans around would be fascinating.
Also part of a disused city would be a very valuable and useful proving ground for advanced research in robotics, such as cars using the road networks and urban exploring robots. Its a once in a life time chance to gain unrestricted access to a big part of a city.
Another very good use would be to leave part of a disused city as a film set of a slowly decaying abandoned city. (The WW2 Blitz in London created a lot of disused buildings that appeared in many films for decades). Part of a city would be an incredible once in a lifetime opportunity to create a huge film set that doesn't disrupting and interrupt normal working cities and its cheaper and easier for film companies to use. So its win win for these companies helping the US film industry and other businesses in cities otherwise inconvenienced by filming. The film companies must be able to see the potential. It would be such a good help to the US film industry for many years to come. They could even set up a joint company to manage the disused part of a city for the film industry and lease parts out to film companies world wide.
You act as though any self respecting person needs any additional reasons to hate the worst president to ever be inflicted upon the country.
Even though Obama is taking the country downhill faster than Carter, that's no reason to hate him - instead just gently remind him and the Democrats the reason people voted for them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No. This is the result of deindustrialization of the West. As our economy becomes increasingly information-based and decreasingly manufacturing-based, old manufacturing centers are crumbling. But a new economy is rising, one based on information and information technology.
The RIAA/MPAA fiascos and the rise of iTunes and P2P, the failing auto industry, and the current economic disaster are all results of the growing pains associated with this transformation.
Anybody who doesn't realize it at this point should re-open Heidi and Alvin Toeffler's books, because they provided the roadmap years ago. The fact that is happening now is not a surprise to me at all.
My blog
How this isn't considered "ethnically cleansing" cities is beyond me. It seems as if the only people who would be affected negatively would be minority groups.
This is a good point and a valid concern, but it depends a bit on the areas they're getting rid of. There may be large areas that are essentially empty anyway, and maybe lots of those buildings are in bad shape (and maybe should even be condemned). I'm not too familiar with the cities in question, but the scenario doesn't seem completely impossible.
Also, for anyone who is displaced, they could choose to offer some other kinds of options for relocation, which wouldn't necessarily drive people out of the city. Maybe they could offer some alternative low-incoming housing for people who can't afford to simply move?
Anyway, it generally sounds like a good idea to me. For economic, environmental, and even social/cultural/health reasons, I think that our country would be well served by aiming to increase population density in specific areas (i.e. move people in cities into more compact cities, move people in suburbs into cities, even moving farming closer to cities, and leave more of the country open to nature).
In larger population densities, you can more easily (economically) provide better services to more people. Assuming things are done right, Infrastructure becomes cheaper to build and maintain. Having people live in cities is generally much more energy efficient per-person. Ignoring air pollution issues, people who live in cities are often thinner and healthier.
There are trade-offs, yes, but I think the suburbs sort of need to die. People don't realize that they're a relatively recent invention (suburbs arguably didn't exist until about half a century ago), and I think it's a social experiment which has failed.
I live in an area that would be directly impacted by this type of plan. I own an old home in the North Side of Pittsburgh and I am in absolute support of this. 1/2 of the houses on my street are abandoned and boarded up. If the City were to come in and demolish them (which they have slowly started to do) it would not only increase the safety of the area. It would also raise the property values which would in turn increase tax income to the City.
The problem we're faced with is no new development will happen in parts of the area until we purge the beyond repair buildings. Why would any erect a new structure next to a building that can barely stand?
I certainly think this idea is better then doing what we've been doing for 30+ years. Letting the urban core of Pittsburgh slowly rot while the young professionals continue to avoid the City for the suburbs. City living in Pittsburgh is on it's way back in areas that are in better shape, demolishing the buildings that are not salvageable will only accelerate this renewal!
Yeah, it's 45.7 per 100,000 people (i.e. 0.0457%).
It depends where you are. In places like SE MI you're bulldozing one type of ghetto and restoring another. Most of this housing is cheep single family homes that were built between 1940 and 1960 within the city limits, and close to a factory. Because of white flight and factory closings there are a lot of those areas that are almost completely empty.
You know that Lowes commercial about the house the GI bought after WWII? Those are the properties they're looking to raze.
Huh? Relocate what people? The article mentions that much of this property is already empty/abandoned.
Won't somebody think of the squatters?!
The enemies of Democracy are
M'Lord, I believe the common folk refer to that as "statistics".
Racism is ignoring such glaringly obvious disparities so you don't have to do anything about them or investigate what caused them.
http://blog.mlive.com/flint-city-beat/2009/06/flint_takes_international_spot.html
Which is direct contradiction of TFA:
A Human Right
Yeah, but what happens if instead, everything east of the San Andreas fault sinks into the Atlantic ocean?
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
There might be a problem with that new economy: it probably won't create enough jobs/wealth for hundreds of millions of people, like the industrial economy did. In the worst case the information economies won't be able to pay enough goods from the manufacturing economies.
Incidentally, your sig points to the root of the problem.
Except he didn't. They were both mediocre, and they went to different schools. Gore had clearly better SATs, but neither of them had clearly better grades in college. Source: http://www.insidepolitics.org/heard/heard32300.html
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Your responses to the OP are truly bizarre and, frankly, creepy. How do you put a happy face on his analysis which, in my opinion, is largely correct? *Why* would you want to put a happy face on it?
In the corporate context, a "positive mental attitude" is a convenient tool of denial that keeps you engaged toward a goal regardless of your circumstances. This seems to be your mindset.
In the real world, sometimes you're better off recognizing an unpleasant reality for what it is. Tarting it up with feel-good slogans and rank falseness may make it more palatable to genteel sensibilities, but it's counterproductive and does nothing to prevent the same mistakes in the future.
free software, open standards, open file formats, no software patents.
He used the word "only." That's not just racism to minorities, it further marginalizes poor whites.
Growing up a poor white kid in Appalachia is worse than a poor black kid in the city. Not only do you have all the disadvantages of being poor, but also: nobody gives a shit about you.
I'm sick of you racists thinking you can get away with it because its PC to be a racist toward certain groups.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
What?
he just said no onw will move to the mid-west, and the Oregon Pioneered what you are tlaking about.
Both correct.
Oregon is ALMOST as bad as Michigabn BECAUSE of the influx. Michigan is loosing people AND unemployment is rising.
Two different things.
"has the worst economic recovery prospects of any state in the union,"
False. In fact we have began some recovery and expect improvments. In fact, if people weren't coming here we would be recovering.
Oregon has industry, MI does not.
But hey, you hang out with the hicks in Flint and Flat Rock and STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM OREGON.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Speaking of Talking Heads..
Here we stand
Like an Adam and an Eve
Waterfalls
The Garden of Eden
Two fools in love
So beautiful and strong
The birds in the trees
Are smiling upon them
From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline
Where, where have they gone?
Now, it's nothing but flowers
There was a factory
Now there are mountains and rivers
you got it, you got it
We caught a rattlesnake
Now we got something for dinner
we got it, we got it
There was a shopping mall
Now it's all covered with flowers
you've got it, you've got it
If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower
you've got it, you've got it
Years ago
I was an angry young man
I'd pretend
That I was a billboard
Standing tall
By the side of the road
I fell in love
With a beautiful highway
This used to be real estate
Now it's only fields and trees
Where, where is the town
Now, it's nothing but flowers
The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we'd start over
But I guess I was wrong
Once there were parking lots
Now it's a peaceful oasis
you got it, you got it
This was a Pizza Hut
Now it's all covered with daisies
you got it, you got it
I miss the honky tonks,
Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens
you got it, you got it
And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
you got it, you got it
I dream of cherry pies,
Candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies
you got it, you got it
We used to microwave
Now we just eat nuts and berries
you got it, you got it
This was a discount store,
Now it's turned into a cornfield
you got it, you got it
Don't leave me stranded here
I can't get used to this lifestyle
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Never read the Toefflers, eh?
It's a result of technological progress, not the super-rich. As technology has improved, efficiencies have reduced the need for industrial capacity. Hence, the crumbling cities. Toyota went in this direction early on, while GM, Ford and Chrysler lagged behind.
My blog
The cars that the corner shop down my street makes are awful.
Yes there are parts of any sprawling American city which would be better off if torn down and rebuilt. This sounds too much like yet another bailout (as if $13.9 trillion tax dollars thrown into banks ^H^H^H^ black holes wasn't enough.) This is simply a plan to reduce property supply, prop up property prices and therefore bail out banks and property developers (generally wealthier with more $olitical influen$e than tenants and mortgage holders.) It is exactly like the government destruction of fruit during the Great Depression in order to prop up cannerys and megafarms:
"...And the failure hands over the State like a great sorrow. The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit--and kerosene spayed over the golden mountains." - From "The Grapes of Wrath", John Steinbeck 1939
Although, I'll bet its on a number of people's to-do lists.
I mean, it is one thing for this to be a Local/State decision, but, where does the Federal Govt. come in to play with all this at all? Talk about overstepping the bounds?!?!
On a side note...if they did want to start this somewhere, I'd recommend New Orleans East and the 9th Ward...we need to just finish off what Katrina started. That area was all swampland to begin with...let it return to nature, no one's hardly living there now to this day, just a drag on the New Orleans recovery.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
There might be a problem with that new economy: it probably won't create enough jobs/wealth for hundreds of millions of people, like the industrial economy did. In the worst case the information economies won't be able to pay enough goods from the manufacturing economies.
Incidentally, your sig points to the root of the problem.
The problem is, the trade economy is built on the premise of a manufacturing economy. Unfortunately, our existing trade economy cannot efficiently allocate resources in an information economy.
Hunter-gatherers "worked" an average of 10-20 hours a week to maintain themselves. It was the introduction of agriculture that put us in the mode of working all the time; it also meant our population could burgeon out of control, and we could (several thousand years later) start building an industrial base. But the 40-hour-work-week is an artifact of a particular system that some societies have already outgrown. In places where health care isn't tied to "full-time" employment, there's already growing trends toward job-sharing, the four-thirds solution, and shorter work weeks.
Bottom line: we no longer need as much labor put in to meet our needs, so we need to stop withholding needed goods and services based on how much labor one puts in. There's enough for everyone. Let's be nice about it.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
I normally wouldn't speak up in such conversations, but From personal experience I have some advice to offer. Do not try to argue who is a Texan with a Texan. I do not mean to bash an entire state, but when it comes to the issue of statehood there is no logic. They can be very rational on any other topic, but there is something about Texan-ness that is a giant blind spot.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Not only that, it also means we will need to trade in some of our opinions, morals and values.
A nice example; Recently, the Dalai Lama made an unofficial visit to the Netherlands, without meeting important people like the Prime Minister and such. The reason: China would impose trade restrictions if the meeting was official or he would meet the Queen or Prime Minister. Now they only impose mild sanctions on us, such as restricting Visa for politicians.
A better example even: If you'd go to a local department store here in the Netherlands and purchase a Globe (not sure what the proper English name is; a soccerball sized globe with the world map and a lamp inside), produced in China of course (what isn't), you'll notice that some borders around China have been moved. Taiwan is no longer an independent country either, but it is part of China.
It only takes one man to change the Wisdom of the Crowd to Tyranny of the Masses.
The other downside is that the US Trade Deficit will get a whole lot bigger, since California's trade is at a huge surplus, and the rest of the country drags us down into the negative.
Me, I just want California to declare independence. If Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii want to come with us, ok by me, but it's not necessary.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Being a frequent listener to Democracy Now, I've actually heard Cindy Sheehan speak at length on different topics, and disagree with her if you like, but she doesn't deserve to be smeared as a "crazy woman": Should impeachment be off the table
I was particularly impressed with this response:
I see no problem with eliminating parts of cities that house people I don't like. Granted, this would depopulate most cities entirely, but nonetheless.
It's an incredibly racist proposal, whether you realized it or not.
It's not simply picking places full of residents you don't like and/or are scared of.
Oh for fuck's sake. I only know the part I drive through. It's a lot of abandoned factories on/near the lake. It reminds me of the abandoned industrial area they shot the last part of Robocop in. It's an abandoned graffiti magnet. I wasn't suggesting leveling the suburbs. The east side of Cleveland proper though - nobody would miss it. It would make a lovely park.
And BTW, there is nothing more annoying than being accused of racism when it's not warranted. Not everyone evaluates every single fucking thing they say for their impact on whatever ethnic group anyone might personally have a bug up their ass about. Part of the trouble in this country is that people feel they have a right to never be offended, so they're constantly on the lookout for things that do. Strangely enough, these people perpetuate the racism they loudly claim to despise by constantly making it an issue. Let me tell you something about racism. It's boring. And the people who keep bringing it up are crashing bores as well.
You're one of these people.
So if I've offended you, please let me state this in the strongest possible way: Get bent.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Relocating population from sparsely populated area into that of a smaller area does allow the government to more easily monitor and control the said population as there are now substantially smaller area to cover.
You're absolutely right about that; it's a lot cheaper to provide effective law enforcement to a denser population. Same goes for fire stations, schools, sewer maintenance, water and power...
It doesn't have to be evil just because the government is doing it.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
I lived through the ineffectiveness of Carter and the criminal actions of Reagan and Nixon so I know they are out of the running. As for the others, the damage they caused was nothing compared to the damage this country has suffered and is suffering due to Bush.
"In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside."
Sounds like New Detroit and RoboCop!
Snake Pliskin? I heard he was dead.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
It was the introduction of agriculture that put us in the mode of working all the time
This is really not quite true. I'm very familiar with farm operations, and I can assure you that farmers do not work all the time. There are a couple times of year when you really need to make sure all the field operations get completed in a very short window: e.g. planting and harvesting. Some of the other things can be done in a bigger window: e.g. tilling & spraying. Prior to those times of year you spend your days servicing and rechecking your equipment 3-4 times because the cost of a downed tractor or combine can be enormous. The rest of the year, you could take a part time job or simply do nothing.
Livestock care is a different story, since they pretty much require constant care, but most farmers these days don't handle livestock the way they did 50 years ago when people ran integrated farms.
If we're to step back a few hundred years ago, it was not at all uncommon for serfs and laborers to only work 10 hours a week during offseason. There are plentiful stories of peasants sleeping all winter to conserve calories. They would basically shack up as a family in bed together to conserve heat and minimize the food they required.
The real transition to clocked in time was with the introduction of factories (capital). When a significant portion of the value of a product is derived from the value of the capital, then it makes sense to keep the capital operating as often as possible. You couldn't afford to have the line stop because a worker came in late.
Even then, the 40 hour work week is a relatively recent invention, having only come about in the 1930's through 1950's due to labor organization.
Manufacturing productivity has gone up drastically in the last century, whereas service productivity has not (as much). It still takes as many manhours to get a hair cut today as it did 100 years ago. The scissors used to cut your hair probably take 1/50th the amount of labor they did 100 years ago. It shouldn't be too much of a surprise then, that we've slowly transitioned from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, even when you take into account world trade. The USA is still the largest manufacturer in the world, in terms of value produced, so we can't say that the transition is due to "all of our manufacturing base going to China." People have simply decided to allocate their wages towards labor-intensive products (health care, financial, etc.) rather than material goods.
Right before he added trillions to the national debt, sank the country into an extended and unpopular war in the middle east, ignored intelligence that warned of an attack of the World Trade Center via airplanes, wiretapped Americans illegally, and complacently watched the destruction of a major American city, apparently.
Long? What do you mean the signature at the bottom of every comment I post on Slashdot is too lo
Much to economists chagrin, economies don't run on information or money, they run on manpower and energy, the cheaper the better. Economies with a surplus of either will do well, and those with neither like the United States will do poorly in the coming decades. How anyone can imagine that the U.S. can reinvent itself into an "information based" economy is beyond me - information technology is a consequence of industrialized society, not a foundation of one. What makes us believe that our ideas are so fantastic that we should be paid GDP-sized sums of money for them? The recent economic decline is not a growing pain, it's another death throe of the decline of the current way of living, a decline that essentially started when U.S. oil production peaked and offshoring of industry began in earnest in the 1970s.