"Fixing" our inner cities......
 

I see lots of stories about this effort. I live near a city that is a poster child for this. It seems to me a lot of people have good intents, but the money gets basically spent with no positive result = wasted. New civic centers that can't pay their way. New hotels built when the existing hotels have low occupancy rates. New housing that is quickly destroyed by the occupants.
Is there any hope of reviving these cities?

No. Not until the people who live there decide to.

The focus is always on the outward appearences. That isn't the problem.

Nailed it on post #2. You can't force improvement on a city, just as you can't force freedom on a nation. If the indigenous people aren't willing to fight for it, it won't take. If indifference and apathy are the order of the day then nothing will ever change. You have to address the root cause rather than the symptoms, something few have the stomach for.

I think I'm talking about something totally different (i.e. not "the projects"), but I've seen quite a few old "inner cities" revitalized with outstanding results around these parts and other areas. Today they are "thriving", and attract the "upscale" types for the most part. Of course I've seen some real "boondoggles" too :)

To me, if you want to "fix the inner city", focus on law, order and property rights. If the area is safe, people will move back for the convience of being close to work. This is what has happened in Houston.

Bike trails, convention centers, sports stadiums, etc. will not fix a city if the core is rotten.

And What I mean by property rights is allowing people to develop what they want on their property.

Ibt(parf)

You mean like the renovated downtown areas that are now centers of entertainment, upscale condos, etc? We have an area of Wichita called "Old Town" that is an old downtown warehouse district transformed into an area of bars, restaurants, shopping, and condos. KC has a similar area called "Power & Light District", OKC has "Bricktown". All are pretty cool areas, we go stay at KC P&L pretty frequently when my wife and I escape from the kids for a weekend. It's appealing because we stay in a restored early 1900s hotel (Hilton President) that has major charm, and there's plenty to do within a block's walk. I'd say the common theme is that the cities have to go all-in, this is an entire area that has been completely renovated and repopulated, with major attractions and upscale entertainment. All three feature some form of arena, and all have a pretty significant police presence to keep away the previous inhabitants.

That's exactly what I'm talking about Matt...

The only issue I see with those projects is that they really don't fix anything. They kick out the poor and homeless from an area then fix it up for the rest of us. Those people (and their problems) just end up somewhere else.

I remember going to the Oklahoma City bricktown warehouse district back when it was still a warehouse business district. I remember thinking I would not want to go down there at night. Downtown OKC was a empty place 25 years ago. Now it is a great place to be.

We passed a 1 cent sales tax and paid for everything with that money. It was called Metropolitan Area Projects or MAPS. That has evolved into Project 180.

Now we have a top NBA team an official Olympic training center, a canal and a lot more. It is really an amazing transformation with more yet to come.

Other cities send their own city leaders here to see how we did it.


Oklahoma City MAPS 3 Initiatives - Brief History of MAPS, FAQs, Status and List of MAPS 3 Initiatives

Making a former slum into a renovated, trendy area sure looks nice. But it doesn't fix the problem of the folks who lived there when it was slum. BTW, where do they send those people? If it's all Section 8 housing, do they make the developer build new Section 8s somewhere else? I always wondered where the people went who lived in slums just before they got cleaned up. It sort of reminds me of when my friend's mom made us clean his room. We just shoved everything under his trundle bed, draped a comforter over the side and then she gave us candy. But we left a really big mess hidden.

Glen I agree, Bricktown is a pretty cool place. We've spent a weekend there as well. I know Wichita city leaders spent some time in OKC to study Bricktown as well as the execution of the arena.

Perhaps these downtown 'renovations' are the reason a LOT of cities are looking bankruptcy squarely in the eye.

Of course, the solution is not to spend less but to raise taxes by 1%.

Tackling cultural entitlement and fighting ignorance are the steps to fixing the inner cities.

The solution is to provide opportunity, motivation, and knowledge of how to be successful and take advantage of opportunities. Not only does that provide Jobs, it also provides positive role models and changes sub-cultures for the better.
There are people out there who want to work and provide but simply don't know how. that's where the biggest weffort should be focussed.
teach them what to do, how to do it.

Giving hand-outs while well-meaning is counter-productive and only makes things worse. it makes slaves of people for generation after generation. It robs motivation and opportunity.

Teach a man to fish etc.

I know it sounds old fashioned, but IMO the biggest problem - the thing that needs to be "fixed" the most - is the breakdown of the family unit.

Too many divorces, kids born out of wedlock, etc., i.e., "broken homes." That's how poverty cycles are made.

How to fix it? I have no clue. We are living in a culture that does nothing to dissuade broken homes, and in fact one could argue that we socially, economically and politically encourage it in many ways. It may be unfixable.

In Baltimore, "those people" were given houses in the burbs at fractions of market value. This in turn dropped the previous market value for the people who have been WORKING and paying on their house for years. Then bringing in the crime and hood mentality dropped the property values even more, until the entire hood because a slum.

No need to even argue about it. As far as being fixable; it is. Just stop subsidizing it and it will go away. This won't happen of course.