23-06-2003 21:37									#1
	How Do You Fix a Broken City Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

This is a problem for all North America.

Problem:

so-called 'white flight' to suburbs. The relatively wealthy cluster to distant suburbs, driving up property values and funding quality schools and other institutions. Also, they keep 'high quality' spending in this areas and tend to be culturally active and community involved.

creating a donut city with a downward spiral...neglect, closing businesses, and a run down look, crime or the appearance of crime. A vicious circle where there is less and less reason to invest and more and more risk. A rent controlled appartment building with crack smoking tenants (or appearance thereof)? No thanks says mr committed non-slimeball investor/landlord.

Attempted Solutions:

Zero Tolerance: the Giulani idea. Don't tolerate any crimes, crack down on things that degrade the cities image. Create the feel of a safe city. Police everywhere. High schools with cops and metal detectors.
Pros: kinda works given New York.
Cons: look at their budget. They have an AWFUL lot of people in jail because of various zero tolerance type measures. Those people are expensive, and they get out and continue to be even more of a problem.

Abandonment: A la Flint MI.
Pros: Cut your losses.
Cons: No one likes permablight.

New Concept Public Housing: Funky stuff with gazebos, greenspace, terraces, all that nice community stuff. Pools, parks. Infrastructure.
Cons: $$$

Gay People: Seems to have worked in most places. Gay people bring boutiques and small businesses downtown. And restaurants etc.
Pros: works
Cons: not enough gays. some people don't like to raise kids in areas with known bathhouses/bars.

So how would you fix a Broken City?

My Idea: Totally level downtown and replace it with a giant central park, just bicycles, footpaths, the Spotted Owl, all that ****. No one is allowed to live downtown.

	23-06-2003 21:51									#2
	Increase the size of your Attachments

or, turn it into a sunbelt city: kick everyone out of the city, build recklessly into the suburbs where the city has no jurisdiction, and then turn the city center into a commercial, touristy, and shopping district.

works for atlanta.

	23-06-2003 21:59									#3
	Suffering from ads?

Tax the hell out of gas and the use of roads.

	23-06-2003 22:00									#4
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

Subsidise property developers to rebuild quality yet affordable housing.

quote: The humble terraced house, immortalised in television soaps and ridiculed by planners, is about to make a comeback - as a trendy, loft-style home with an affordable pricetag. Developers last night unveiled plans for a £30m makeover of inner Salford, where Coronation Street was conceived, to rescue a community considered past the point of no return a few years ago. In a pioneering venture that could bring new hope for tens of thousands of boarded-up terraces facing demolition, 430 homes in an area plagued by crime - and, latterly, by negative equity - have been earmarked for rebuilding. They could be rebranded as "mews" and sold for around £30,000 apiece. The plan for the South Jubilee Street area, in the once-notorious Seedley-Langworthy district less than two miles from Manchester's vibrant centre, has been prepared by the company which has transformed redundant mills and warehouses into upmarket apartments throughout the north.

http://society.guardian.co.uk/regen...,974243,00.html

There are very, very few places in the developed world like inner Salford. It's good, knowing that one half of my family had lived there for many generations, that it is finally becoming an area not to speak ashamedly of.

	23-06-2003 22:04									#5
	Support Apolyton

Oops, I just quoted the Guardian...

	23-06-2003 22:07									#6
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger Tax the hell out of gas and the use of roads.

Won't that just aggravate the problem.

	23-06-2003 22:11									#7
	Suffering from ads?

I only see this as a short-term problem.

I think a bigger problem is drug use among middle-class children in the wealthy suburbs and liberal attitudes to casual sex, in addition to sex education that is still way behind the times.

Last edited by Park Avenue on 23-06-2003 at 22:18

	23-06-2003 22:13									#8
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

Permit High-rise zoning, lower land sale taxes there. Use police.

Allocate funds to restore and renovate nice old buildings, and preserve them.

	23-06-2003 22:15									#9
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

Tax breaks/Incentives for businesses to open shop in the city/ open up jobs.

Restoration of historical buildings/districts. Don't tear down but incorporate the history of a particular city - ala Pittsburgh.

Light rail/ public transit to connect the outer ring of suburbs.

Expedient removal of condemned/abandoned properties.

Some federal/state government oversight to root out waste and corruption, and instill accountability.

edit - More privatization of city services like trash removal.

	23-06-2003 22:28									#10
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Gay people are a potential solution to urban decay?



That's one I've never heard before....

	23-06-2003 22:52									#11
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

You can't find really queer statistics regarding their effects, FP...

My tutor last year once had an article in the Daily Mail saying how gay people earn more than straight people. However, they are still discriminated against. They should be earning even more.

	23-06-2003 23:03									#12
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

quote: Originally posted by DaShi Won't that just aggravate the problem.

The idea is to force people to move back into the city by making the commuting from the 'burbs to city centre expensive.

Of course, this will have to be the same way in the whole country.

	23-06-2003 23:07									#13
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Might that not make business re-locate elsewhere than the city centre?

	23-06-2003 23:27									#14
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Every city has this problem as many families want a detached home with a yard and this is just not available in the downtown.

General economic affluence seems to reduce the problem. Calgary for instance, does not have a major inner city issue and the downtown inner core remains fairly vibrant ( although the office tower part of the core is pretty empty at night)

I know that city planners are struggling with the issue and the solution always seems to be the creation of mixed use neighbourhoods in the city where businesses and residents co-exist.

A local paper did a piece on the death of the neighborhood. The premise is that people have less and less interaction with their neighbors since we live in all-residential areas and have to take a car to the nearest shopping area, sports area etc. They contrasted this with older neigborhoods more toward the core where people live and work in the same neighborhood

	23-06-2003 23:33									#15
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

it's interesting to note that in some other countries, where they still have corner shops and bakeries and what not, slums and projects as we have them in the states don't exist.

there are bad parts of town, but they're not like how bad the south side of chicago was.


so one thing i would like to see is a lot of favoring of the small mom-and-pop stores...
at least, in other countries. in the us, since most, if not all, of them have vanished, it's a moot point.

	23-06-2003 23:36									#16
	Inflate your Upload Space

quote: Originally posted by FrustratedPoet Gay people are a potential solution to urban decay? That's one I've never heard before....

Actually, it's not that far-fetched. In many cities, they're considered the anchor of what sociologists call the "creative class"- young, hip, creative urbanites, professionals with high disposable income.

There's a few cities near where I live, like Ferndale, Michigan, that have been helped enormously by an influx of gay people.

	23-06-2003 23:57									#17
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger The idea is to force people to move back into the city by making the commuting from the 'burbs to city centre expensive. Of course, this will have to be the same way in the whole country.

The problem is that the wealthiest people are moving out of the city. If you increase gas prices, then only the wealthiest people can live out of the city, which they certainly will to stay away from the common scum.

	24-06-2003 00:02									#18
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

typical leftie response

raise taxes

pulleeaase.

as the post above just said. It would men only the very rich could live in good neighborhoods. The middle class would be forced to live in crime ridden neighborhoods.

It's a microcosm of what socialism does to a society.

Lefties always want to force people to do things. They haven't heard of a little thing called liberty.

	24-06-2003 00:09									#19
	Suffering from ads?

Let me tell you a little story. I'm sure I'll be accused of being a racists. The left always likes to do that.

There is a neighborhood in North Las Vegas (yes we were segregated at one time) where there are millions of dollars poured into it. There are numerous schools and college prep schools to help people get an education and help themselves. Along Lake Mead, near Martin Luther King there are numerous nice brick buildings. Far nicer than anything in my neighborhood which is starting to get run down, and no new businesses are opening up.

Yet the problem is, things haven't improved despite all the nice improvements. Gang violence is still at an all time high, and I doubt income level has increased at all.

Please don't take that as racist. That could happen in any neighborhood. It just so happens, this one happened to be a black neighborhood.

The point of this? well sometimes people don't want to be helped I suppose. I'm not exactly sure what the problem is. All I know is even though the rest of the country saw decreases in violent crime, Las Vegas has shown substantial increases. Lots of beatings and rapes.

	24-06-2003 07:19									#20
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

First you send in the gay people to clean the place up.

Then you send in the jews to hold the place and keep it nice for the next 100 years.

The only problem is we don't have enough of either so they are spread thin.

	24-06-2003 07:32									#21
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

the dead kennedys had an interesting solution..... "kill the poor"

	24-06-2003 07:34									#22
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

San Diego totally rebuilt its downtown area and now it is once again the beating heart of the city. They did they by first spending big money cleaning up the downtown area (repairing roads, beautifying parks, painting over graffiti etc), cracked down on criminals, built city owned attractions (like a new mall, several theaters, a bigger convention center, new parks, a new museum) to bring people to downtown, then giving generous cash incentives & tax incentives to developers & business owners who set up shop downtown. Top it off by getting the city's historical society to to identify key historical buildings and then offering the owners a deal where they wouldn't have to pay any property taxes for 10 years if they restored the building & even offered then very low interest rate loans to do it with.

	24-06-2003 07:39									#23
	Inflate your Upload Space

Pretty good plan.

GAS LAMP

	24-06-2003 07:41									#24
	Increase Your PM Length

quote: Originally posted by FrustratedPoet Gay people are a potential solution to urban decay? That's one I've never heard before....

It true. Gays don't have kids so what do middle aged homosexuals spend much of their money on? Fixing up that perfect house they've always dreamed of. Also they're not worried about neighborhood schools and care more about nightlife and social clubs then do your average 30 year old parent of two (who spends most of her time taking care of the rug-rats) so they're more likely to want to live in the city then in some boring suburb.

	24-06-2003 07:48									#25
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

quote: Originally posted by Boddington's My tutor last year once had an article in the Daily Mail saying how gay people earn more than straight people. However, they are still discriminated against. They should be earning even more.

Gay people earn more because they're smarter and think outside the box.

	24-06-2003 07:59									#26
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

quote: Originally posted by Asher Gay people earn more because they're smarter and think outside the box.

Nah, its because they don't have a Mrs. always nagging them about "your never here to take care of the kids", "Why don't you spend more time at home?" so the gays can put in more OT at work.

	24-06-2003 08:00									#27
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

But where do they fit in the time for the bathouses, then?

	24-06-2003 08:06									#28
	Increase the size of your Attachments

quote: Originally posted by DaShi The problem is that the wealthiest people are moving out of the city. If you increase gas prices, then only the wealthiest people can live out of the city, which they certainly will to stay away from the common scum.

Most people can't stay away from cities - they need to go work. For the few that don't, you can't attract them back anyway.

	24-06-2003 08:16									#29
	Suffering from ads?

What you're talking about is Urban Revitalization. There are a number of ways to go with that, which include relocations, remodels, redevelopment, and establishment of locations that will give a positive change within the area's synergy and economics.
It of course has political, social, economic, and aesthetic implications, blah blah blah.

	24-06-2003 08:23									#30
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Declare a socialist state. Make everyone work and to live where they're told to live. Tolerate no slackers. They parasitize the workers. You know what we do to parasites don't you?