How does interstate construction harm communities?

[wburg]

Originally Posted by Malloric

Pretty much nobody except Sacramento still thinks that cities can succeed solely by encouraging suburbanites to drive (or even more hilariously, take transit) downtown to spend their money. Actually, Sacramento probably doesn't even believe that anymore. Lately they've been more focused on paying for cameo residents to replace a few of the old residents it had when it decided to depopulate downtown. That's proving to be a very slow and costly process especially since Moonbeam took away the honey jar of free moneys. Getting actual residents who aren't paid to live there by the taxpayer is even less successful.

The Galleria isn't really concerned about getting urbanites on transit to spend all day getting to and from the mall like Sacramento keeps thinking will happen in reverse. There are actual people with money that live in the area that shop there. For the small middle-class population that Sacramento hasn't driven off to the suburbs by its Amusement Park for Suburbanites and Lobbyists First policies, Arden makes more sense. It's a quick 10-20 minute drive from the suburban middle-class areas of Sacramento (East Sac, Land Park, Pocket, North Natomas), not much longer than K Street would be.

Things are improving a little bit. They're actually using the Measure U funding as was intended by voters even though it's not required they don't spend it on building Ed Hardy-themed pizza parlors, bars, arenas, marinas, luxury hotels, night clubs, or the usual things the city spends money on.

You aren't going to get any argument from me about Sacramento city government's obsession with attracting visiting suburbanites instead of city residents. But in terms of repopulation of downtown, that's actually going pretty well lately: since 2010, about 1000 new housing units have been built, and another 1000 or so are currently under construction or well into the planning stages. It has the potential to be the biggest downtown population boom since 1990, and that increase took 20 years rather than 5. And the funny part is, a lot of it is happening without redevelopment TIF. Taking away the "swiss army chainsaw" that was redevelopment has forced developers and cities to look at other methods, one of which was simply making housing easier to build in the central city. The result, visible to anyone who walks around Midtown today, is a building boom and population renaissance. Downtown is another matter because everything is on hold while the arena project sucks all the air out of the room. However, if downtown Sacramento gets a few thousand more residents, it might save the city from the worst effects of the economic kerfuffle that the arena is still likely to create. 1000 new residents will provide the same economic positives as a 20,000 seat arena--and 10,000 new residents would be the equivalent of 10 arenas in terms of small business receipts, sales tax, property tax--just less of a payday for the crony capitalists who traditionally catch all the public-funded cash.

Although, I'm not so sure about the Measure U business...many folks now think that the funds collected will get diverted to pay for the arena's funding gap instead of the promised police/fire/parks etcetera.