What Happens to Downtown?

[quadraginta]

Obama once described conservatives bitterly clinging to their guns and religion. You seem to be bitterly clinging to your Covid-19, but the rest of us have moved on.

You are saying that his observations are completely without merit?

 

[The Atheist]

Lack of income for the cities.

Cities need money to maintain infrastructure like roads, traffic lights, overhead street lights, stormwater drains, generation and reticulation of potable water, domestic waste disposal, sewerage disposal, public transport, etc.

If the infrastructure is not maintained, the city decays and turns into a slum.

Take a leaf out of Auckland's book - I think we're providing a good blueprint of how it all goes.

Ignore falling city revenues and borrow more money.

Someone will pay it back in 20 years' time.

Easy.

 

[dann]

Why are you so reluctant to admit that it is now just endemic?

Some people don't know the meaning of the word endemic. They seem to think that pandemic or epidemic = bad, and that endemic = good.
It is a dead giveaway when endemic follows the word just.
Hospital admissions for COVID-19 and influenza, Dec 17, 2021 to Mar 10, 2023.

endemic
adjective
(of a disease) regularly occurring within an area or community.
"areas where malaria is endemic"
(of an area) in which a particular disease is regularly found.
"the persistence of infection on pastures in endemic areas"
(of something bad) regularly found among particular people or in a certain area.
"complacency is endemic in industry today"

What's there to admit?!

 

[ZirconBlue]

Sorry, this may be paywalled, but I found it an interesting article (partly because my city was one of the ones profiled).

The Return of the American Downtown

Reporters and photographers from The New York Times visited 10 cities across the country to examine how the pandemic and its aftershocks have tested and reshaped America’s downtowns.

While some downtown areas remain empty and are struggling to bring back workers and tourists at prepandemic levels, many say they have come back even stronger and more resilient — drawing in tourists and new residents, even as many office workers stay home.

From a related article:

Despite the geographic diversity of the locations, Ms. Louttit said she noticed a common thread: Many of the downtowns that were once heavily reliant on some form of office workers have been reimagined to include more offerings that would lure people for reasons other than work.

 

[quadraginta]

Why are you so reluctant to admit that it is now just endemic?

Polio was "just endemic".

I'm pretty glad it isn't anymore.

 

[novaphile]

Not seeing how this is linked? The downtown areas aren't owned by the local authority are they, they are not gaining income from renting out their properties are they?

Minor quibble.

In my capital city, the car parks are mostly owned by the city council, so they do lose a lot of income if people don't go to work. They also own some buildings which are rented out.
The second part is probably less unusual. I was very surprised to find out that a city church owned a number of high-rise office buildings.

Usually 'councils' are paid by taxes on residents and businesses, which are called 'council rates' here in SA. But it is also common for them to own things like caravan parks, markets, parks and gardens. (Oh yes, and all the local roads).

If businesses move out of the city, the council would have less revenue, raising the rates on residents, could easily result in them having less residents.

 

[Brainster]

You are saying that his observations are completely without merit?

No, I am saying he is monomaniacal about Covid when the rest of the world has largely moved on. The claim that significant numbers of people are not showing up at the office or downtown restaurants because of Covid fears (rather than enjoying working from home) is silly. Some fraction, certainly--I still see people driving their cars with masks on.

 

[dudalb]

It's more like COVID is clinging to us. Rest assured, it has not moved on. Despite what the Cult of Wealth tries to preach, it is still killing hundreds of Americans weekly, especially the elderly and immunocompromised, and we stil ldon't know the full extent of log COVID.

Not to mention the economic, mental, and other types of damage a shock to our collapsing system causes.

If I read you correctly, you are blaming Capitalism for Covid.

Prove it.
And Covid will never go away complety. No virus ever does. But it has been reduced to managable levels.
I do not agree with Brainster a lot but he is right, you are clinging to Covid because you think it furthers your polieical agenda.

 

[Checkmite]

If downtowns are "failing" or being "abandoned" because specifically because they're not needed anymore in the current social and cultural age, then it's silly to waste time and resources on ways to artificially prop up these things purely for their own sake.

We're not talking about residential areas (those have been long gone from modern downtowns), so we're not actually talking about "slums". We're talking about commercial space nobody is using anymore. Yes, if that space is not maintained it will start to degrade; but the entire premise is that already nobody is using it, so what difference does it make?

I just don't understand why losing downtowns as they presently exist is so bad that it's worth consuming resources to prevent, and its seems like the justification is circuitous. We can't let downtowns go away because then we would lose downtowns - despite the fact that obviously people don't particularly need or want them.

 

[dann]

If I read you correctly, you are blaming Capitalism for Covid.

I can't answer for Donal, but I certainly am blaming capitalism for COVID. Not for its emergence, but for letting it rip even though the leaders of capitalism know all about how it spreads and how to put a stop to that spread. They just don't think that everybody else is entitled to the same level of protection. That would require investing in HEPA filters, frequent testing and free quality face masks for everybody, and that's not what investments are for. It is so much cheaper to protect only yourself and pay pretend scientists to tell the rest of the world that the pandemic is over - or 'manageable' or 'mild' or whatever. Brainster has learned the lesson well as demonstrated by the OP.

Prove it.

Prove what exactly? That there's a pandemic? That the virus is still evolving into new and improved versions that are better at evading immunity, rendering vaccinations less effective? (Heard of XBB.1.16?) And that people pretending to be real scientists are being paid to spread the message that the virus is harmless and should be left alone to roam free?

And Covid will never go away complety. No virus ever does.

dudalb needs to read up on small pox, but he seems to prefer prefer alternative facts. (And just to make sure that he gets it: Small pox didn't go away by making people learn to live with it and ignore it. It takes an actual effort to make a virus go away. And the effort is up against more than just the virus itself as if that weren't enough.)

But it has been reduced to managable levels.

Manageable appears to be the dudalb's and his leader's new euphemism for ignorable.

I do not agree with Brainster a lot but he is right, you are clinging to Covid because you think it furthers your polieical agenda.

Pure projection. It furthers dudalb's political ideology to repeat what his beloved leader orders him to think, so people who don't buy the lie must have a 'polieical' agenda.
We live in a post-truth society, not a post-pandemic one, unfortunately, and dudalb is all in with his political leaders from Biden to DeSantis to Trump. The latter was the one who came up with the idea that the way to defeat the virus was to stop testing, which has now become the mainstream view.

The extent to which some skeptics have managed to embrace post-truth and anti-science never ceases to amaze me.

 

[The Atheist]

I think lionking's sig line should go about here:

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

 

[Darat]

...snip...

I just don't understand why losing downtowns as they presently exist is so bad that it's worth consuming resources to prevent, and its seems like the justification is circuitous. We can't let downtowns go away because then we would lose downtowns - despite the fact that obviously people don't particularly need or want them.

I agree that it seems for many folk to be a given that there should be "downtowns" as they were 20 years ago (or even further back). It seems a kind of nostalgia.

People are concerned about the funding of cities and tie that into a vibrant commercialised downtown area and citing a loss of revenues but that would to me suggest that "traditional downtowns" need to be subsidised by the city, in other words cost more than the revenues raised, now some of that may be indirect - reducing taxes/charges etc for a designated area but it is still a subsidy.

Now I do know there can be an issue with local taxes on especially commercial businesses. In the UK with our concern about the High Street dying (i.e. changing) business rates are often brought up as an issue. For instance, in another village near me the rent on one shop was £45,000 a year and the business rates were just over £42,000, which is why charity shops are filling a lot of empty spaces in UK high streets as they are exempt from business rates.

 

[dann]

I think lionking's sig line should go about here:

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

I already answered this one:

The extent to which some skeptics have managed to embrace post-truth and anti-science never ceases to amaze me.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I agree that it seems for many folk to be a given that there should be "downtowns" as they were 20 years ago (or even further back). It seems a kind of nostalgia.

And that's what I was getting at that in a lot of these cases people want these things to exist, but they don't want to actually use them.

People want little quaint mom and pop indie shops they can browse through and purchase the occasional knickknack at, but not actually do most of their major shopping there at anywhere near the rate needed to keep them in business.

Same thing with Downtowns. They want them, they don't want to use even the idealize perfect version of them enough to actually economically sustain them.

 

[Brainster]

If downtowns are "failing" or being "abandoned" because specifically because they're not needed anymore in the current social and cultural age, then it's silly to waste time and resources on ways to artificially prop up these things purely for their own sake.

We're not talking about residential areas (those have been long gone from modern downtowns), so we're not actually talking about "slums". We're talking about commercial space nobody is using anymore. Yes, if that space is not maintained it will start to degrade; but the entire premise is that already nobody is using it, so what difference does it make?

I just don't understand why losing downtowns as they presently exist is so bad that it's worth consuming resources to prevent, and its seems like the justification is circuitous. We can't let downtowns go away because then we would lose downtowns - despite the fact that obviously people don't particularly need or want them.

I don't think you can preserve downtown by any means--note the title of the thread is "What Happens to Downtown?" not "What Should We Do About Downtown?"

And I agree that long-term the downtowns were going to be hard pressed by the logic of working from home. My main concern is the pace of change here. Think about the changes that came to Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s or Pittsburgh in the 1970s and 1980s. Both of those cities hollowed out, but not this rapidly. There's a real chance that we could end up with an Escape from San Francisco scenario. Unless we install hepa filters and give out high-quality masks, I suppose.

 

[Checkmite]

What do you mean by "an Escape from San Francisco" scenario?

 

[dann]

Escape from San Fransisco
I am a little surprised that Brainster comes up with a reference to gay porn after fantasizing about ways to fight inner-city crime and get rid of the homeless.
But it does make HEPA filters and N95 face masks look bland in comparison.

I actually think it may be an allusion to Escape from L.A. (Wikipedia).

 

[Brainster]

What do you mean by "an Escape from San Francisco" scenario?

Never saw Escape from New York? Here's the Wiki synopsis:

In a dystopian 1988, amidst total war against an alliance of China and the Soviet Union, the United States government has turned Manhattan into a giant maximum-security prison to deal with a 400% increase in crime. A 50-foot (15 m) wall surrounds the island, bridges have been mined, rivers are patrolled by helicopters and all prisoners unlucky to be alive are sentenced to life terms in Manhattan.

 

[Checkmite]

I've seen the movie but wasn't sure that's what you meant. But in that case no I completely disagree, there is zero chance that the government is going to turn city downtowns into walled prisons.

 

[ZirconBlue]

I don't think you can preserve downtown by any means--note the title of the thread is "What Happens to Downtown?" not "What Should We Do About Downtown?"

And I agree that long-term the downtowns were going to be hard pressed by the logic of working from home. My main concern is the pace of change here. Think about the changes that came to Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s or Pittsburgh in the 1970s and 1980s. Both of those cities hollowed out, but not this rapidly. There's a real chance that we could end up with an Escape from San Francisco scenario. Unless we install hepa filters and give out high-quality masks, I suppose.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it seems that many downtowns are doing just fine. . . by making downtown more of a destination, than just a place where people work.