Our cities are a little like Charlie Brown.
Every time Lucy puts the ball on the ground, Charlie remembers all the times she’s pulled the ball away. And yet, he has faith; maybe this will be the first time.
Lucy’s back:
Let’s make sure we’re clear on this – the only “fans” of this idea are the members of the non-profit/industrial complex and the consultant class, who’ll benefit handsomely from it.
As they did from light rail, and the “urban reimagining” of which it is a part.
As they did from the Saint Paul Port Authority’s grandiose, costly, failed urban utopian visionmongering.
As they did from “Urban Renewal”, which did the opposite of renew urban life, replacing old downtowns with sterile, brutalist concrete canyons (see also – Downtown Saint Paul, from Minnesota to Jackson).
A friend of the blog emailed:
I94 was built to “revitalize” middle class Black neighborhood and poor white neighborhood. Historically, it is now said to have destroyed the Rondo neighborhood businesses.
But, people were not defeated. Black businesses persisted. Businesses by Immigrants from Asian countries also moved in. Perhaps I94 worked. It revitalized!
How dare they. So the Green Line was built to “revitalize” marginalized neighborhoods of working class Americans (of all races, ethnicities).
It kind of worked-businesses closed or left to areas that were no longer on Green Line. Many Black owned, Asian American owned, and immigrant owned businesses left.
Any hope of retail that appealed to work class neighbors was squashed by Allianz Field construction. It was further solidified once the remaining businesses were allowed to be destroyed in the 2020 riots.
Yet, our elites must believe there are still too many of the wrong people lurking around the neighborhood. We need to be further revitalized out of the community. Maybe Bill McGuire and his soccer fans are scared of us. Thus, people like Councilmember Mitra Jalali and urbanist activists propose to once again destroy what communities have built around.
In a city destroyed, over and over, by urban planning dilettantes, this is yet another fun project for the urban wonk class, which will be paid for literally by taxpayers, and figuratively by generations of the urban miserable yet unborn.
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