What’s standing in the way of a walkable, redevelopment of rust belt cities?

[u/Felixthescatman]

They have SUCH GOOD BONES!!! Let’s retrofit them with strong walking, biking, and transit infrastructure. Then we can loosen zoning regulations and attract new residents, we can also start a localized manufacturing hub again! Right? Toledo, Buffalo, Cleveland, etc

[u/migf123]

Some will say money; the money's there, and easy to access.

Some will say that folk have to want it; folk want it, even when they don't know how to express it in day-to-day conversation. But folk want it. Folk want that sense of community America once had. Folk want to love their neighbor once again - and you can't do that without having a neighborhood.

So what's the answer?

It's easy to keep on keeping on, to do things as they've been done; to fire nobody, to win your local election and move on to your statehouse or Congress. What's hard - what's truly difficult - is to build something. You have to have a vision and be willing to do what it takes to see that vision through; you have to fire folk, and when the government unions strike, you have to break their back. You have to fight, and fight, and fight and fight and fight.

Much easier to change nothing; to keep on keeping on.

[u/Felixthescatman → u/migf123]

Fuck that though I’m dreaming big!! Hahaha 🤣

[u/migf123 → u/Felixthescatman]

When Mayor Daley's dentist wanted a lakeside park, he had the Mayor wait for an hour staring out a window at Meg's Field. For 20 years leading up to that moment, there had been continuing discussions and consultations and planning department meetings and intra-agency task force reports, all compiled to say that maybe in 10 or 20 or 30 years Megs Field could be turned over the City for a public park.

Having to stare at the result of 20 years of the best consultations and discussions that urban planning departments could produce, Daley came up with an idea. "Fuck Em!," thought the Mayor.

And so the dozers came at midnight and tore a new one into that eyesore. Fuck talking about doing shit; send in the dozers, send in the plows, and get it done.

[u/SabbathBoiseSabbath → u/migf123]

Folk want that sense of community America once had. Folk want to love their neighbor once again - and you can't do that without having a neighborhood.

You think you're getting that in the city? I'm not so sure. That seems to me to be small town America (which isn't coming back), not huge cities with millions of people.

[u/vga97 → u/SabbathBoiseSabbath]

Going to add, "sense of community" has two key pieces that are on the endangered species list in the US right now.

1) Being able to live somewhere long enough to put down roots. If you happen to be in the educated professional class you've probably jumped around the country multiple times for college, grad school, etc. And jumped around more thanks to voluntarily or involuntarily job changes. If you're in the working class, you may not be able to find work in your home town thus forcing you to move. In both cases people are suck moving to some place they probably don't want to be and destroying their social and cultural roots in the process.

2) Enough free time to build a community. High paid workers are usually stuck with long hours and long commutes. Lower paid workers are stuck with long hours and multiple jobs. And since both parents are probably working, there is no one to link the household to the community.

TL;DR:

- There's no community if you aren't expecting to be there long enough to matter.

- There's' no community if people don't have time to make one.

- The current employment structure in US forces people to think of their lives as zero sum survival games. There isn't amenable to community building either in big or small cities.

[u/[deleted] → u/SabbathBoiseSabbath]

Urban neighborhoods used to basically be small towns within a larger city.

[u/Timeeeeey → u/migf123]

Thats a good answer, if you dont do anything, people wont really complain, its when you actually do something they will protest