inkbluesky

light morning fog 

Urban puzzle and gentrification

Taken together, the work of Wilson, Freeman, and Pattillo offers a more nuanced picture of gentrification. Given the state of disrepair of US inner cities in the 1990s, it is not entirely shocking to find local voices supporting economic development and hoping to protect their investments. Not many general truths can be gleaned, except perhaps that the impact of gentrification depends largely on a constellation of local factors — some concrete, like the existing makeup of minority political power, and some more abstract, like patterns of metropolitan residential segregation.

We are left with a sobering look at the modern American metropolis, one still mired in the social obstacles and challenges that afflicted earlier generations. And we find compelling evidence that race still matters in American society, although after reading these books, it is not always easy to predict exactly how.

For some reason I think my interests in cities and how neighborhoods have a tendency especially in older eastern cities to have good eras followed by declining socio-economic conditions and then re-birthed by gentrification. It does seem that property taxes play a role. If a few people or a developer starts buying up properties and renovating them then local property taxes go up, which in turn hurts the working class people that are already there. On the other hand gentrification brings in retail stores and the jobs that go with them, tends to reduce crime and can in some cases improve local public education. Since we now live in the “you’re with us or against” culture which doesn’t do subtlety so any progress that we might be making in the debate in how to best save our cities proceeds at a snail’s pace. Just my observation and one not addressed in the article in the influence of real estate developers and mortgage bankers on what constitutes the best path to take. They are not universally evil, but almost inevitably favor plans that put the most amount of money in their pocket in the shortest time. A better route might be to rely more on sociologists with city planning backgrounds and for more working class residents to run for local office.

I don’t find NBC News chief White House correspondent David Gregory to be one of the worse broadcast medias talking heads. He’s pleasant enough and if he has a political bias one way or the other it isn’t as evident as say Chris Wallace at Fox, but still Mr. Gregory owes his listeners the coutesy of keeping important facts straight,  Despite polling to the contrary, NBC’s Gregory asserted that “Bush’s strength” on foreign policy, terrorism helps GOP candidates

For instance, a March 28-29 Newsweek poll found 45 percent of respondents approved of “the way Bush is handling terrorism and homeland security,” while 49 percent disapproved. In the same poll, 28 percent approved of “the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq,” while 65 percent disapproved.

Maybe he knows some political formula that I’m not in tune with. Most people have caught up with the old propaganda master in chief. The guy that said he would be the best answer to another 9-11 and then we had hurricane Katrina - the management of which gave incompetence a whole new meaning.