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Friday, August 31, 2018

Demolishing urban blight


Grandson of billionaire William Pulte of Pulte Homes is going all around bulldozing abandoned inner city neighborhoods creating open space...





10 comments:

  1. Renewal. The Dems are going to be furious.

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  2. They will fine the hell out the developers and use city hall to prevent development to keep their voting base impoverished, dependent and intact.

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  3. This is actually a pretty huge deal, since the cost of removal makes a lot of projects too expensive to undertake.

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  4. Step one of gentrification. Now there is vacant land just begging to be developed.

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  5. It's not just a matter of removing urban blight. Here in Iowa City land downtown is quickly rising in value so much that not only are perfectly good structures being torn down and replaced by high rises, but also landmark buildings, the removal of which has sparked protests. High rises were unknown in Iowa City until recently when three stories was unusual and four stories was a high rise. Now the buildings going in are ten or more stories. You say, "high-rises." Hey, this is Iowa. There are still cornfields on the outskirts of the "city," which in many other places would be a medium-size town.

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  6. High rises, in Iowa City.
    Des Moines stole our Hockey Team.

    What is happening to the world.

    Next thing you know Ottumwa will be a hipster destination.

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  7. Next thing you know Ottumwa will be a hipster destination.

    Did you know that Fairfield is the likely the largest spiritual community in the US relative to total population and is a destination (by Iowa standards)?

    Fairfield is 25 miles east of Ottumwa, home of Radar of Mash fame, and Riverside (which has no river nearby), the (future) birthplace of Captain Kirk, is 60 miles northeast of Fairfield.

    And even rural Fairfield has become (somewhat) gentrified (by Iowa standards), too.

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  8. That's the cool thing about Iowa, Tom. Flying over it looks like cornfields and a couple sleepy towns. My personal theory is because Iowa didn't boom and form haphazard like Chicago or Cleveland, Iowa's towns were planned and grew carefully, thoughtfully and created a much higher quality of life.

    While people are leaving the messes in Cleveland, Chicago and until recently, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee -- cities like Iowa City have grown steadily faster than national population growth rates every decade for more than a century. It's affordable and there are good high quality jobs and profitable businesses.

    Still surprised about Ottumwa, pretty small little factory town. A friend moved to California from there when they had a meat packing plant close quite a few years ago.

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  9. Iowa has gone through a lot of changes since the Eighties, when the traditional small farm was eclipsed by Big Ag. Many of the smaller towns were pretty much wiped out economically.

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