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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1414055
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1414055
Great points, although no one description fits all urban areas.
Chicago is a prime example. Until COVID, a thriving downtown, loads of middle class housing with fair transportation, and a lame, but slowly growing effort to remove the concentrated, man-made ghettos caused by inappropriate, short-sighted, often racist, high rise, public housing. Remove and replace? Not so much, but getting there.
Chicago is unique, in that we had forced, unplanned urban renewal when a non-existent, over- excited bovine burned down hundreds of acres of houses. The Great Chicago Fire (1871) allowed urban planners to create better roads, sewers, water and gas supplies, and most importantly, a superb system of parks and a beautiful lakefront. (check out the Burnham plan)
But now, Chicago’s underlying infrastructure has become aged and decrepit, especially the water and sewer systems. Those are being modernized as we sit. (Or in my case, slouch) Most US cities didn’t have the chance to accidentally erase a large portion of their original designs, and still suffer from that lack of planning. For example, NYNY, Boston, LA, and so many more. Would a modern NYNY include alleys to remove garbage storage and collection off from the city streets? One can only hope.
Add to that the heavy hand of Ike’s inner city highways (never intended for transport within a city, but in retrospect, a natural occurrence) with the razing of neighborhoods, smaller retail, and loss of jobs and culture, and we have urban areas ripe for new ideas and investment. The entrenched racism in deciding where the highways went wont easily be changed. Sure, it was a great boon to urban and economic growth, but the inherent flaws are painful and obvious.
Funny how COVID changed a great deal of our understanding. Commuting to the workplace is no longer 99% of workers’ responsibility. That impact will play out over the next decade, if not longer.
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Oh shit, so you’re saying that there are economic disadvantages to structural poverty?
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Lack of money means you can’t buy stuff? Who knew?!?
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It’s worse than that. Lack of money means nobody will open stores to sell you stuff.
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And on the other hand, we have orphan mesas of insane money locked away from stores and people. So much money that its owners are fully satiated with all consumer goods; and will only spend it on financial concepts that have no value to 99% of the population. It could be worse. There are places where money has no value because there is nothing to buy.
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Chicago also has some very vibrant locally owned groceries in some of the poorer areas. I’m thinking of fruit and veg stores and supermarkets like Del Pueblo in Pilsen.
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“Okay, so we threw all sorts of money for decades this direction, now let’s throw it in the other direction because I wasn’t right the first time. My bad. But this will do the trick. I give you my Nancy Grace Guarantee™.”
I’d run for office on that, wouldn’t you?
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Easy answer…blame the academics.
Harder solution… balanced diet, no over eating and exercise.
Sheesh!
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You can’t pay me enough to be a politician. I’d do a lotta jobs but not that.
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And remember that in many cases local governments paid the big box stores (in the form of incentives, tax breaks and free infrastructure) to destroy urban-center retail.
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Yes, Walmart built outside the urban, or even suburban areas. You had to travel to get there.
Which of course made shopping local harder, and strained small businesses. Why go to a couple of places when you can get what you want under one roof?
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But also: once you had traveled to get there, why not buy all the things on your list, even if some of them were crappy and other not exactly what you wanted/needed. Because you’d already spent the time.
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“Food grows where water flows” – Westlands Water District motto.
Almonds, pistachios, persimmons, what’s a billionaire to grow? Who cares when you get your water for $16 an acre foot and your idiot water-junior neighbor has to dig a hole or pay several thousand bucks an acre foot. California’s water problems have been obvious since Mulholland, but somehow no country has done very well in dealing with the power of great extractive industries. The groundwater destruction in California looks quite similar to that of Iraq and China, even if the political systems are all quite different.
But before Americans beat themselves up about water kleptocracy, there is at least some assurance that geologists and climate scientists are explaining what’s coming down the pike. Saudi Arabia treats groundwater resources as a national secret, so one day the king will just announce some very bad news.
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And structural poverty has historic roots, which is CRT, so none of this can be studied or talked about!
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And of course Westland’s other signs blame the “water shortage” of Congress and Nancy Pelosi.
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Yes, the woke Communist conspiracy. But you didn’t mention China, which, according to the Claremont Institute (which produced both the Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley simulacra), is the real bad guy here. And please don’t pick on Putin. He’s fighting the Nazi Jews in Ukraine!
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I think the phrase “Think Tank” is vastly overrated.
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Please don’t let the Heartland Institute find out about such comments. Billionaires, even carbon billionaires, are all about branding.
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It’s the poverty, stupid.
Conclusion from the study the author cited as evidence that eliminating food deserts doesn’t work:
Our model suggests that a means-tested subsidy for healthy groceries could increase low-income households’ healthy eating to the level of high-income households at an additional cost of only about 15 percent of the current SNAP budget.
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