Carol Becker wrote:
>
>There are lots of major cities in the
> country that have downtowns that are completely dead and are surrounded by
> neighborhoods that are slums.
You mean like Near North, Eliot Park, Phillips, Sumner
Olsen?
Though they will never hit the level of slumitude that a
place like Bedford Styvesant or Park Slopes in NYC, for MN,
these neighborhoods are slums, though struggling to rise
from the ashes of red lining, not only by banks and the
insurance industry, but from city infrastructure and
maintenance disinvestment as well.
> We know that there is discrimination that keeps businesses
> from locating in poor or ethnically diverse areas.
But, also contributing to the mess is the discrimination
against minority people getting the SBA and other loan
packages to start and build businesses in those areas
abandoned by Caucasians fleeing to the suburbs.
The free market doesn't work all that well (for another very
good example, look at what is going on with the housing
market).
When the city sits on hundreds of vacant lots rather than
selling them off to small developers, when developer after
developer can tell a tale like Bob Gustafson told the other
day on this list (MCDA) then it's the city itself that halts
redevelopment and infill building. True, market forces
haven't been helpful, but it's we who have nailed one foot
to the floor and keep griping that we're goinng around in a
circle, quacking like a demented duck.
>
> Personally, I always think it is cheating when you shoot at someone else's
> solution without providing one of your own.
I'd disagree. Sometimes its important to shoot and loudly
so that you galvanize people thinking about it into
discussing it together to formulate a solution.
TIF is the only real tool in our toolbox
> Thus the charge of overuse.
WizardMarks, Central
>
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