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Slightly off-topic, but over time, wouldn't gentrification hurt people who already do own homes in lower income neighbourhoods by way of increased property taxes? I own my cheap home in Penn Hills outright, and the property taxes are fairly cheap because it's not assessed at a crazy amount. Hypothetically, if there was a crazy boom because it became the hip place to be, wouldn't my property taxes skyrocket if other homes around me were snapped up at double, triple, quadruple the amounts? This is extremely unlikely to happen, but I'm sure it does in other cities where the housing market fluctuates to a greater degree.
Yes, but you're more likely to see all of the people who rent in the area leave first. Gentrification is nice and all, but it essentially destroys the makeup of a community to some extent by forcing many of its members to relocate eslewhere.
You're like the poster that couldn't understand why there are no sidewalks in so many of the suburbs. You're so fixated on the present, that you don't understand the past. The fact that you didn't grow up in Pittsburgh prevents you from really understanding the role that the redevelopment of the Hill District played in the 80's and 90's when Pittsburgh was transitioning from a blue to white collar city.
Oh lord, not this again. I understand exactly what was motivating urban redevelopment in the 1950s and 1960s, and no, it wasn't something that just happened in Pittsburgh. I also know about the neighborhoods that have improved in recent decades not only in Pittsburgh but other cities, and having some perspective on what has happened elsewhere is quite useful in understanding what has happened, and what has not happened, in Pittsburgh.
So, no, I am not going to agree that only people who grew up in Pittsburgh understand these issues, and I frankly think the people who insist as much are being self-aggrandizing to the point of silliness.
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A lot of the lower Hill District was more or less a ghetto, and the parts that weren't, would have become either a ghetto, or a ghost town after the steel bust.
I think you are very wrong about that. The steel bust was a big blow to the region, but again, parts of the City didn't collapse into ghetto, and one of the common denominators is an inverse relationship with the extent of urban redevelopment efforts. What you are failing to account for is just how much of much of a negative effect the mostly-empty Lower Hill site had on its surroundings.
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The redevelopment brought a hospital, an arena, hotels and more. Those were all jobs that remained after the steel bust. These jobs, and the taxes were sorely needed in the 80's and 90's. None of those jobs, or the taxes would have been there if the Lower Hill District was a ghetto or a ghost town. Now imagine if all of the Hill District became one large ghetto. Imagine how that would have affected the redevelopment of the downtown area.
Again, I think you are just wrong in what you are imagining. Imagine instead if instead of a bunch of surface parking surrounding an arena that is empty most of the time, the Lower Hill looked like Bloomfield or the South Side. Imagine how much better that would be for jobs, the tax base, Downtown, and on and on.
The great irony is that the razing of the Lower Hill caused blight, and now you are using that blight it caused to justify the razing of the Lower Hill. But it really didn't have to happen that way.
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Only looking at the lower Hill District the last 10-15 years, you will never understand what it was, and what it did at a difficult time in Pittsburgh's history. The redevelopment was far from perfect, but it has/is serving it's purpose.
Not being able to imagine how things could have been different--perhaps because you lack the necessary experience to have any sort of perspective or awareness of alternatives--means you will never understand how razing the Lower Hill was a huge mistake that is continuing to impede progress in the City. And the sooner that mistake is undone the better.
Saying Pittsburgh declined because of the failing steel industry is like saying Detroit declined because of the failing American Auto industry. It's only a piece of the puzzle. For example, Detroit had serious problems that were completely unrelated to the auto industry that have had a major role in its decline.
Pittsburgh has had a population decline since 1950. The city lost 72,000 people in the 1950s alone. That was long before the steel industry died.
That's a pretty large piece of the puzzle. The other things that occured at the time didn't help for sure, but they were merely isolated incidents. The construction of the arena would have affected only the lower hill. Not the upper hill, not the south side, not the suburbs, etc. The collapse of the steel industry had an affect on everything. The decline of it directly coincides with the decline of these particular neighborhoods, and the city in general. Without the collapse of the steel/automotive industries in the US Detroit and Pittsburgh don't experience the blight and depression that they've dealt with for the past 30 or more years. The failings of a single public works project won't cause anything close to that. People did not leave the city over the past 50 years because of a urban planning, but because they had lost their jobs whether it be in the mills or the industries that income from the mills supported. The decline actually started shortly after WW2, and some would say prior to that even.
You dont have to be from pittsburgh to understand how these renewal projects were largely failures...in this respect pittsburgh is not unique. First, theres nothing wrong with eminent domain for the public good such as a road,etc but taking land because someone isnt rich enough and handing it over to your buddy? Wrong.
Id also add cities were quite fond of these projects because uncle sam bankrolled most of the land acquisition and site clearance. The fact that most went for public housing or politically connected civic projects that failed to reproduce any of the vitality shouldnt be lost on us. I think its a useful.excercise to look at comparables. Bostons north end, despite being sliced off by a highway, remained a mostly stable immigrant community until became more popular in the last 15 years or so.
Then look at philadelphia. Old city declined but eventually the old slums gave way to artists lofts. The neighborhoods ringing downtown were the first and fastest to be reinvented...particularly those adjacent to downtown not separated by a highway. For a time they were a liability for downtown but now downtown is turning them around. The more intact the neighborhood the faster it turned around. Small structures allow people to take small risks. The massive parking lots will take large scale developments to turn them into functional parts of the city. I dont buy the parking arguments as the most successful cities are those where its hardest to park.
I think the article does a good job painting both sides but its hard to argue the city is better with an asphalt wasteland than a vibrant neighborhood. I think viewing these redevelopments as good is borne mostly of nostalgia.
Of course I just agreed that familiarity with how other cities are progressing is quite helpful in understanding these issues, and thus I reject entirely the notion that people whose only experience has been Pittsburgh are somehow the only ones capable of contributing to these discussions. But it is also frustrating to me that even people without that perspective still can't see what is in front of them here in Pittsburgh: the steel bust delayed this process, but nonetheless it is also true here and now that relatively intact core neighborhoods are starting to be redeveloped.
So the fact we are even debating this is bizarre to me. It is like we are still debating whether the Earth was the center of the solar system or not: this is an issue that most other places consider long settled, and nothing in Pittsburgh's experience is inconsistent with the general experience of everywhere else, notwithstanding the steel bust.
Actually, the nostalgia seems to be for a neighborhood most posters never knew. 1961 was 50 years ago.
I don't think that is accurate. I don't think we would be better off with the neighborhood of the 1950s, I think we would be better off with the neighborhood it would have become by 2011. In other words, it is a false choice to say it is either the 1950s neighborhood or parking lots, because it wouldn't still be the 1950s neighborhood today.
I highly doubt that. People like to place blame on a particular thing for causing the decline of a neighborhood, when the reality is that it probably is the cumulative effect of a number of occurences. Its like blaming the Allegheny Center for the problems that the North Side has, when equal blame can be put on the construction of I279 north of the city (and how the city handled that at the time), as well as a number of other things.
The highways definitely contributed, and in fact were part of the same urban vision. In that sense, I don't see those as distinct factors.
That said, I would agree that the disasterous urban planning of the time wasn't the only negative factor. But it did have lasting effects that we are still struggling with today, and in that sense it may outlast a lot of the other factors.
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I don't think building the arena helped that much, but caused the current state of the bluffs? I highly doubt it.
Keep in mind it is not just, or even primarily, the Arena itself, but also the sea of surface parking around it.
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No one wants to point fingers at the Bedford Dwellings
I'd make the same point about public housing projects as about highways: they were all part of the same disasterous urban vision.
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and everyone tends to forget that we had a major economic collapse of the area's most dominant industry that coincides with the decline of many of these neighborhoods.
But again, all this was going badly long before the steel bust. So it didn't actually coincide: the steel bust took a bad situation and made it worse, but this urban vision was a large part of why it was a bad situation to begin with.
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Everything else hasn't helped, but it was the loss of jobs and people leaving the area that caused the current state of these neighborhoods. Not some failed public works project.
Again, it was both.
Not to keep harping on this, but this is where understanding the history of other cities is really helpful. This same set of policies--urban highways, public housing projects, and razing existing neighborhoods--was implemented in many cities in the same era, and they all suffered as a result. But because they didn't go through the steel bust, many of these other cities have seen more core area renewal than Pittsburgh.
So the steel bust doesn't somehow make the mistakes of that era any less mistaken. It just means Pittsburgh has done less to overcome those mistakes than many other cities at this particular point in time--although I think that gap is starting to close.
That's a pretty large piece of the puzzle. The other things that occured at the time didn't help for sure, but they were merely isolated incidents. The construction of the arena would have affected only the lower hill. Not the upper hill, not the south side, not the suburbs, etc. The collapse of the steel industry had an affect on everything. The decline of it directly coincides with the decline of these particular neighborhoods, and the city in general.
But again, why doesn't Bloomfield look like the Bluff? Why doesn't the South Side?
The steel bust has not in fact affected every part of the City equally during the last 25 years. And that raises the possibility that it didn't have to affect the City as a whole as much as did in the last 25 years, which in fact I think would have been true if more areas has looked like Bloomfield or the South Side and fewer like Allegheny Center, the Lower Hill, or East Liberty.
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People did not leave the city over the past 50 years because of a urban planning, but because they had lost their jobs whether it be in the mills or the industries that income from the mills supported. The decline actually started shortly after WW2, and some would say prior to that even.
Again, it is not an either/or proposition. Lots of people did in fact leave the entire Pittsburgh region due to the steel bust, which no amount of urban planning was going to stop. But since then the City has done a lot to rebuild its employment base, and yet its population is still way down, which means long-distance commuting is way up, as is congestion. And now vacancies in the core area are very low and rents are climbing. Meanwhile, we have had, and are still having, suburban and exurban sprawl.
You can't blame all of those patterns on the steel bust. And the City could have made a lot more progress rebuilding from the steel bust by now if large tracts of prime land were not devoted to surface parking lots.
Of course I just agreed that familiarity with how other cities are progressing is quite helpful in understanding these issues, and thus I reject entirely the notion that people whose only experience has been Pittsburgh are somehow the only ones capable of contributing to these discussions. But it is also frustrating to me that even people without that perspective still can't see what is in front of them here in Pittsburgh: the steel bust delayed this process, but nonetheless it is also true here and now that relatively intact core neighborhoods are starting to be redeveloped.
So the fact we are even debating this is bizarre to me. It is like we are still debating whether the Earth was the center of the solar system or not: this is an issue that most other places consider long settled, and nothing in Pittsburgh's experience is inconsistent with the general experience of everywhere else, notwithstanding the steel bust.
and no neighborhood had a better location, in the long run, than this one. it's interesting to see so many naighborhoods that were deemed hazardous back in the 30-60's that are now being revived. a few years back the wall st journal examined neighborhoods in london around the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. they found those neighborhoods that had been left alone fared best. places that had been poor because of poor air circulation (small streets, etc) often changed completely and became desirable. OTOH, neighborhoods that had been targeted for government improvement had remained poor (ostensibly because projects were built there) and had not improved whatsoever.
I don't think that is accurate. I don't think we would be better off with the neighborhood of the 1950s, I think we would be better off with the neighborhood it would have become by 2011. In other words, it is a false choice to say it is either the 1950s neighborhood or parking lots, because it wouldn't still be the 1950s neighborhood today.
But that's not what I said. pman brought up nostalgia for the Civic Arena, and I expressed my opinion that it seems like there is more nostalgia for a neighborhood that most never knew. I expressed no value judgement whatsover.
I do think that what's past is past, urban renewal is not done that way any more, and people should get over it. There's no point in speculating on what the Hill would look like if this project hadn't been done. I will also say that I think there was a need for a building like the Civic Arena.
There's no point in speculating on what the Hill would look like if this project hadn't been done.
Considering what most of the Hill is like, I think it is obvious if that area was left alone, it would look really bad. Thankfully the Civic Arena was built to separate the Hill from Downtown. Of course the cool Civic Arena will be torn down and 40 years from now people on this forum will say, wow what were they thinking tearing down a building that could open like that?? It must have been amazing to see a concert and they opened it to a beautiful view of the city. What a bunch of idiots to build some common structure (consol) like any other city and tear down one that could have had outdoor hockey games and great venues outdoors and indoors!
This will no doubt happen, but we will mostly be gone to enjoy hearing about how dumb we are.
Last edited by gg; 04-18-2011 at 08:22 AM..
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