NW mega quake, leveled cities!!

[tech12]

Originally Posted by ChargerCarl

The reason people wanted to leave the city is driven in large part by out of control crime.

It was driven by multiple things. The suburban american dream where you have a big house with a yard, and a car, away from the hectic/crowded/dirty city, was one reason that a lot of people left. Deindustrialization was another reason. Jobs left, so people did too. Plain old racism was another reason, as a lot of people were uncomfortable with their cities' growing minority populations. And of course as people emptied out, cities lost money, and neighborhoods became poorer and even semi-abandoned (and in many cases much less white), and they became neglected by the authorities.....so yeah, crime rates started to skyrocket. Especially when a bunch of drugs are thrown in. And as crime gets worse, you'd have more and more people leaving and citing crime as the primary motivation. Can't forget the fact that racist housing policies throughout the country also forced poor minorities into these areas, which concentrated poverty even more and made things worse. Crime didn't rise for no reason, it was in large part a symptom of so many people and working class jobs leaving the city in the first place, combined with constant neglect of the poorer residents that remained/took their place.

[ChargerCarl]

Sorry but I don't buy that. I don't believe poverty causes crime, they're both endogenous to other factors.

[tech12]

Originally Posted by ChargerCarl

Sorry but I don't buy that. I don't believe poverty causes crime, they're both endogenous to other factors.

I'm sorry that you choose not to believe the history of this country. So to be clear, you refuse to believe that crime can rise due to poverty combined with a poor social safety net, combined with institutional racism/systemic neglect and oppression that has lasted for centuries (slavery, genocide of native americans, the KKK, lynchings and whites ethnically cleansing blacks from various cities, jim crow laws, redlining, sundown towns, racial profiling/the war on drugs/prison industrial complex, or how about he fact that there's a fucking white supremacist as advisor to our new president right now?), combined with increasingly poor employment options due to deindustrialization, plus a lot of drugs and guns, not to mention all the broken families and poorly educated people because of all of that shit. What's your theory on why crime skyrocketed? A bunch of people just decided that they would be big ol meanies?

[mhays]

You win tech12.

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by tech12

I'm sorry that you choose not to believe the history of this country. So to be clear, you refuse to believe that crime can rise due to poverty combined with a poor social safety net, combined with institutional racism/systemic neglect and oppression that has lasted for centuries (slavery, genocide of native americans, the KKK, lynchings and whites ethnically cleansing blacks from various cities, jim crow laws, redlining, sundown towns, racial profiling/the war on drugs/prison industrial complex, or how about he fact that there's a fucking white supremacist as advisor to our new president right now?), combined with increasingly poor employment options due to deindustrialization, plus a lot of drugs and guns, not to mention all the broken families and poorly educated people because of all of that shit. What's your theory on why crime skyrocketed? A bunch of people just decided that they would be big ol meanies?

That's a nice story, but it just isn't true. Poverty doesn't seem to be a large causal factor for crime:

http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/early....bp.113.136200

The literature points to a third factor that causes both poverty and bad behavior. My guess is it's a low g factor that explains persistent gaps in crime rates between groups, and I think the crime wave was largely caused by lead poisoning from leaded gasoline and other sources that poisoned a generation.

http://www.motherjones.com/environme...hildren-health

[niwell]

Staggering inequity with high levels of poverty is much different than isolated poverty. Generally the combination leads to high crime - something you see more in large cities than rural areas.

[ue]

Originally Posted by ChargerCarl

Surburbanization is a symptom, not a cause. The reason people wanted to leave the city is driven in large part by out of control crime.

Except that I just proved that wasn't the case. Wtf. These issues are not one-dimensional and much has been written on the subject, including on how suburbanization still happened at the expense of cities outside the US, which means that the decline of cities is not due solely to racism, in fact it really isn't even a factor outside the US, and yet sprawl happened outside of it. Enough with your American exceptionalism.

[mhays]

The idea that there's a simple answer is just bizarre. Cities grow, shrink, and adapt based on a million variables. Actually many millions...the actions of every individual play a role, and every individual affects every other individual.

You could consider it similar to weather in complexity terms....if weather wasn't a response to physics only, and involved 7.3 billion minds doing their own thing.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by mhays

The idea that there's a simple answer is just bizarre.

AMEN.



also, to those who say very silly things like "europe and canada and australia have suburbanized too, so there's nothing unique about what happened in US cities", i triple dog dare you to find the equivalents of northside st. louis, or southside chicago, or anyside detroit in any of those other first world developed nations.

you can't find them because they don't exist.

SOME of the forces that ripped apart US cities are unique to the US (at least in terms of their magnitude), particularly with regard to this nation's horrific track record with race relations. racism is by no means the sole cause of US urban decay (you have to be a special kind of idiot to believe that there is a lone single cause to all of it), but it has absolutely played role in the abandonment of US urban cores all across the nation over the past century or so.

[ue]

I don't really get what the point of that post was. I don't think anybody was saying racial tensions didn't accelerate suburban growth and inner city decline in the US, merely that, as you seem to agree, that there are a multitude of factors at play. I was merely arguing against the idea that the single cause of decay in the Rust Belt was suburbanization as a result of racism, and that without it, there would be no decline in cities like Detroit, let alone there be any other factors which also caused suburbanization. It was a direct argument against the North One's points.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by ue

I don't really get what the point of that post was.

it was to clarify that some of the forces that ripped apart US cites are directly related to america's horrific track record with race relation's, which in turn does make the scale and magnitude of the US's urban abandonment and decay exceptional compared against that of other first world nations.

but yes, overall, urban decline/suburbanization is an extremely complex issue; a topic that can take up an entire library's worth of research papers written by people far more qualified to speak on the subject than any of us posting in this thread.

[Reverberation]

Originally Posted by The North One

People would have struggled but large areas of the city would have never had to go vacant, that's all suburban sprawl's doing.



Population has nothing to do with GDP



The notion that people started leaving because of violence is a common misconception, the city's population peaked in 1953 which means it started to decline over a decade before the riots happened. Crime in the city only started to rise in the mid 60's when the homicides went from 125 in 1963 to 214 in 1966 and 382 in 1968.

Violence and crime came AFTER the disinvestment and the flight. It's kinda, ya know, what happens when you segregate people and deprive them of services and opportunities, they revert to crime, who would have thought? Nobody at the start of white flight and suburbanization left for "fear of their lives" that's another excuse racist white people tell themselves to justify segregation.



The white working lower class who "lost" their jobs are still in Macomb country, why don't you ask them why they left the city limits? If it's not already obvious to you.



And you can also still witness all the city's wealth and glory in the suburbs, the economy didn't totally collapse in the metro and neither did the population. Stagnant populace in the metro proves my point if anything else, where the hell did you think all these people went if they never left the metro? OH! that's right! THE SUBURBS. Metro Detroit has always had insanely wealthy communities, and it's always had a sizeable economy. The fact that most of everyone is still there shows that with regulations on sprawl (like what they did in Windsor, a town also conceived in manufacturing and other Canadian cities) would have kept people in their neighborhoods and prevented decay, I'm not saying the woes of the manufacturing industry would not have had a negative impact, because it most certainly would have. But you would have seen a totally different city if government policy so much as even lifted a finger to deter America's fetish with cars and suburban sprawl or at the very least stopped fueling the flames. Funny how there's no decay or blight what-so-ever in Windsor.



My comment wasn't about NAFTA, it was about urban cities. I don't doubt that NAFTA was awful for workers. But the damage that occurred in urban centers was the direct result of white-flight, government subsidization of suburbia and highways and racist American culture. Ever heard of redlining or block busting?



AHAHAHA is this a joke? Metro Detroit's economy does not depend on Quicken Loans, QL hardly even pays their employees shit. They were founded in the 80's and were also in the suburbs not too long ago, Gilbert is forward thinking enough to invest in urban areas and take advantage of the demand for urban living in the new generation. He made a choice to invest in an inner city and it paid off, it's not a surprise that investment brings revitalization. Other companies are also moving into the city from the burbs, these are companies that have already been established in the metro.



Michigan has been seeing population gains for about 5 years now, where have you been bro? Oh, that's right...



There you go with Quicken again, what percentage of GDP do you honestly think Quicken brings to Metro Detroit? Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham, Northville, Grosse Pointe, West Bloomfield and every posh lake community is all fed by Quicken Loans according to you?



Finance didn't miraculously appear out of nowhere, these are jobs that have always existed in the suburbs and even in the city. Tech companies like Google have been in the suburbs for the majority of the 00's, Wayne state has been in Detroit since the 1800's, DMC has been organized since the 80's and is composed of hospitals that were all existing in the city for over 100 years, Beaumont was founded in the 50's. Countless people have been working in the city and living in the suburbs for decades, why do you think there's an income tax? People were making their money in the city and living in the suburbs. Why? please refer to back to white-flight, racist culture, government subsidization, etc.

You're right. Finance didn't miraculously appear out of nowhere. But are you suggesting that African Americans did? I recall reading about how there were loads of them in the US cities for decades before the sprawl took off.

Again, the draw of the suburbs is space. Space is a luxury. The highway system wasn't a cynical ploy to allow whites to finally flee the minorities. The idea was that there are economic benefits to having fast transportation between major cities. If you build a road with no stop lights, the time it takes to travel between two places is greatly reduced. This also means that people who had the money could buy land AND work in the city. The uber wealthy could afford to keep their fancy townhomes because many of them had country homes that they used for hunting and vacations.

The idea that African Americans were so dangerous that frightened white people all fled to government subsidized suburbs is critical race theory (an insult in search of a problem) horseshit and is the type of far left garbage that manages to smear minorities, whites, and government in the pursuit of self righteousness.

It was about lifestyle that could be served by the newly minted highways (originally inspired by the autobahn and it's ability to serve national defense). The elite country life that the European Dukes and Lords enjoyed could now be had by middle class Americans which is why the architecture of the original sprawly places on the east coast resembled European farm houses and then evolved from there.

[The North One]

Maybe I should explain further, urban prairies, abandoned neighborhoods to the extent seen in rustbelt cities is a direct result of suburbanization fueled by racism which could have been avoided.

Duluth is a city that was entirely built on industry. When all of that was gutted the city declined economically, but Duluth never had a sizeable black population, today it's still 90% white. It didn't sprawl as severely because there was no heavily integrated minority community in the city to fuel white flight. In Duluth there are no severely abandoned sections of the city, there are no urban prairies, violent crime is much lower than other past industrial cities because despite overall population decline the people never significantly left the built up urban center.

Economic decline or stagnation is caused by many factors, it's not responsible for gutting urban areas while suburban America was booming at the same time leaving a void in their wake. True economic regions are not defined by city limits, regional GDP and prosperity is a more accurate variable of how the loss of industry jobs affected the economy.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by Reverberation

You're right. Finance didn't miraculously appear out of nowhere. But are you suggesting that African Americans did? I recall reading about how there were loads of them in the US cities for decades before the sprawl took off.

I never meant to suggest that, I'm not sure where you're interpreting that in my comments. The great migration was responsible for African Americans moving to the north.

Again, the draw of the suburbs is space. Space is a luxury.

It's true that's one of the draws, it is not what motivated people to totally abandon cities.

The highway system wasn't a cynical ploy to allow whites to finally flee the minorities.

That's a very controversial statement, many highways were purposefully built on top of black neighborhoods with many black-owned businesses. City planners in New York intentionally built elevated highways just low enough so that buses could not pass into parks and recreational areas, this aggressive and racially motivated urban planning is seen throughout the country.

The idea was that there are economic benefits to having fast transportation between major cities.

Yes, between cities, it was never necessary to plow through urban centers, what is the point of the highway if it destroyed the destination itself? That's like building a driveway through your living room because it's faster.

This also means that people who had the money could buy land AND work in the city. The uber wealthy could afford to keep their fancy townhomes because many of them had country homes that they used for hunting and vacations.

This new ability is one of the draws, but not enough of a motive for a mass exodus.

The idea that African Americans were so dangerous that frightened white people all fled to government subsidized suburbs is critical race theory (an insult in search of a problem) horseshit and is the type of far left garbage that manages to smear minorities, whites, and government in the pursuit of self righteousness.

Did you read my paragraph about crime? My point was the opposite of that, crime began a decade prior after white flight started. How is the "violent black people" stereotype far-left perpetuated garbage? That's a narrative often nurtured by the right and media like Fox news.

It was about lifestyle that could be served by the newly minted highways

Yes, a lifestyle without minorities, which is what most white people have always wanted.

(originally inspired by the autobahn and it's ability to serve national defense). The elite country life that the European Dukes and Lords enjoyed could now be had by middle class Americans which is why the architecture of the original sprawly places on the east coast resembled European farm houses and then evolved from there.

You'll find most homes within city limits in America outside of the East Coast are detached homes with lawns, most people already had breathing room, this was no Kowloon walled city situation.

[mhays]

The most unique problem in the US might have been allowing and even encouraging unlimited sprawl. Racism and racial strife/fear have been huge aspects, but neighborhoods wouldn't have emptied the same way if there was noplace easy to empty to.

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by ue

Except that I just proved that wasn't the case. Wtf. These issues are not one-dimensional and much has been written on the subject, including on how suburbanization still happened at the expense of cities outside the US, which means that the decline of cities is not due solely to racism, in fact it really isn't even a factor outside the US, and yet sprawl happened outside of it. Enough with your American exceptionalism.

Uhh, no you didn't. The extent of the decline of American cities was exceptional. No other country experienced the mass exodus and decay that to the same degree of severity that we did.

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by mhays

The most unique problem in the US might have been allowing and even encouraging unlimited sprawl. Racism and racial strife/fear have been huge aspects, but neighborhoods wouldn't have emptied the same way if there was noplace easy to empty to.

so why not turn those suburbs into employment nodes too? the CBD is an outdated model. annnnnnnd back to earthquakes...

[mhays]

Densifying suburbs is certainly a big trend currently, even while high-paying jobs are often flowing back to the core since that makes hiring and retaining people (especially 20-somethings) easier.

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by The North One

Maybe I should explain further, urban prairies, abandoned neighborhoods to the extent seen in rustbelt cities is a direct result of suburbanization fueled by racism which could have been avoided.

Duluth is a city that was entirely built on industry. When all of that was gutted the city declined economically, but Duluth never had a sizeable black population, today it's still 90% white. It didn't sprawl as severely because there was no heavily integrated minority community in the city to fuel white flight. In Duluth there are no severely abandoned sections of the city, there are no urban prairies, violent crime is much lower than other past industrial cities because despite overall population decline the people never significantly left the built up urban center.

Economic decline or stagnation is caused by many factors, it's not responsible for gutting urban areas while suburban America was booming at the same time leaving a void in their wake. True economic regions are not defined by city limits, regional GDP and prosperity is a more accurate variable of how the loss of industry jobs affected the economy.

this does not compute. of course economic decline contributes to urban decay. all those shotgun homes surrounding factories across the midwest used to house factory workers who worked at said factory. when the plant shuts down, there went the jobs. there go the jobs, there goes the money, and complimentary businesses. i know lots of people on this board want point the finger at white people and white flight for being the sole reason urban centers declined after 1950s but again, its not that simple. white flight, globalization, egregious democrat leadership and the great society has also had an extraordinarily bad affect on central city health and social structure too....