Big cities are dying. This should shock you.

[Steppenwolfe]

I watched the first minute or so and I had to shut it off. I will go back and watch it I suppose when I have some time but I right now I don't want to feel the depression and sadness of a city I used to love.

I'm not sure where the "blame" of all this should land, but Seattle is indicative of where society across the world is heading. My wife say's it is a de-evolution of mankind, I think she may be right. Small wonder people are running for the country...

 

[Tomtint]

I can't think of every large city that we have worked in...But there are dozens of them... I can't think of a single one that wasn't a chithole. ... The majority of the "nicer" ones...Were basically lipstick on a pig.

 

[TheMan419]

Our mid size city seems to be revitalizing its downtown. They keep building condos/apartments and they keep selling them out quickly. Before COVID the downtown was becoming a place with lots of nightlife. Good places to eat, see a show or go out for a drink. I like living in the country but having a good downtown nearby is a plus.

 

[dragoneggs]

I'm not sure where the "blame" of all this should land, but Seattle is indicative of where society across the world is heading. My wife say's it is a de-evolution of mankind, I think she may be right. Small wonder people are running for the country...

I keep harping on 'term limits', whether it be in national or state elections. I think most go (or used to go) into politics wanting to serve and make society better. Now, I am convinced once people 'get in', they make it a career if they can, corruption breeds, and the cities suffer.

Our mid size city seems to be revitalizing its downtown. They keep building condos/apartments and they keep selling them out quickly. Before COVID the downtown was becoming a place with lots of nightlife. Good places to eat, see a show or go out for a drink. I like living in the country but having a good downtown nearby is a plus.

Seattle has been going through a tremendous revitalization with incredible urban development and transportation improvements over the past decade. Many young people moving to the city with high paying jobs at Amazon, Microsoft, and others. Unfortunately, at the same time we have decided not to hold law breakers accountable anymore. We hamstring and blame law enforcement, we look the other way rather than deal with the root causes of homelessness. All in all, I believe the decay is a lack of taking personal responsibility.

 

[DrRod]

One thing to consider . . .

Back before the Interstate, industry had to be clustered around the railroad. And the people had to be able to walk to work. This created a concentrated city of jobs and middle class people. Then industry moved to cheaper areas and overseas. So people weren't compelled to live in the city. I remember when Altoona was concentrated on the tracks running through the valley in town. Aside from the huge number of jobs on the railroad, all the factories and warehouses lined the valley. Then rows of streets worked their way up the sides of the steep hills with houses close together so that everyone could get down to the center of town. As the railroad steadily cut workforce and the industry moved out of town, Altoona became a shabby shell of itself. No easy fix here.

 

[Alien]

Cities around here are booming, so much so they are running out of development land.
Particularly at the moment there is an extreme housing shortage, new and rental.
Since the main covid scare, thousands of people are moving from NSW and Victoria to Queensland and Northern Territory.
This has put a huge demand on rentals and more than 1000 people are waiting in line in our local city. This has driven rental prices up more than $100 week in some cases. Not sure how folk can afford to rent and cater to family needs but it must not be easy. Both work and one pays the rent and the other basic needs I guess. If they could raise a deposit it is cheaper to buy a new home but at the price of rentals it is impossible to save.
A home might be on offer for $400 per week but people are offering a lot more just to secure a place. Some beautiful farming land disappearing into sub-divisions and still not enough.

 

[MossRoad]

Our mid size city seems to be revitalizing its downtown. They keep building condos/apartments and they keep selling them out quickly. Before COVID the downtown was becoming a place with lots of nightlife. Good places to eat, see a show or go out for a drink. I like living in the country but having a good downtown nearby is a plus.

Were you here in the 60's and 70's?

When I was a kid, downtown was bustling with two-way streets, many shops, restaurants, 5 theaters, department stores, etc... Town and Country shopping center in Mishawaka was the big shopping district that wasn't in a downtown. Scottsdale Mall was built, downtown businesses started moving out. They curved Michigan St. around the downtown area, blocked off Michigan St. and made it a pedestrian mall, and made all the streets one-way. It killed downtown.

They also did "urban renewal", the predecessor to gentrification. Where the main post office is now, that entire area was all houses. They knocked them down. The corner of Western and Chaplin was all houses. They knocked them down. Basically, the knocked down the worst neighborhoods and either put up office space or public housing.

I worked downtown for 30 years at the Newspaper. My wife also worked downtown at a financial institution for those same 30 years (still does). We got to watch downtown die. Now it's starting to come back, but it's like a revers donut. The hole and the outside are good, but the donut ring itself is rotten.

As the inside of the donut expands, the donut ring moves out, pushing the high-crime/low-income neighborhoods farther and farther out from the center.

 

[MossRoad]

While I do like what's happening downtown with the living quarters that are going up, they are quite expensive, relatively speaking.

 

[lilranch2001]

I havent been to SB in 10 or so years, last time I was there, along parts of 20 looked almost like a abandoned war zone

 

[MossRoad]

I havent been to SB in 10 or so years, last time I was there, along parts of 20 looked almost like a abandoned war zone

I wouldn't call it that. I've been to Detroit, Gary, and the south side of Chicago. We were nowhere near that level of dereliction. Not even close.

But we did have 40% vacant housing rate. They addressed part of that with 1000 houses in 1000 days initiative. If they were salvageable, they got fixed up. If not, they got torn down. There are now many blocks that used to have 20 houses that now have just a handful. Lots of vacant lots. Some are being developed with new housing. Some have been divided between adjacent home owners. There are many urban gardens now.

Don't get me wrong. While downtown is really picking up, there are still some very large problem areas. Those areas consist mostly of older homes that are rental properties, and typical small old neighborhood buildings where there used to be mom and pop stores 50 years ago. It's hard to address those areas. The people that live there are gonna have to step up. No one from outside can do it.

By the way, that's not 20 anymore. It's 933. 20 is a 4-lane freeway that goes around the south sides of Elkhart, Mishawaka, South Bend, then curves north on SB west side, then heads out west again like it used to.