Bulldozing Memphis neighborhoods? (Philadelphia: new house, subsidized, property taxes)

[JMT]

I ran across an article in Britain's Daily Telegraph which talks about how the Obama administration is considering a plan to bulldoze entire neighborhoods in some of America's shrinking cities and returning those neighborhoods to nature.

Interestingly, the article refers to these cities as being in the "rust belt" but lists Memphis among them (along with Flint, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore).

I'm curious which neighborhoods in Memphis should be bulldozed.

US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive - Telegraph

(I love Memphis and don't want this to turn into another anti-Memphis thread.)

[JoeCartpath]

There are certainly neighborhoods in the inner city (north and south Memphis & Frayser primarily) that are pretty much already a wasteland....full of vacant houses, vacant lots etc. Although returning the land back to nature might sound like a good idea on the surface, imaging what would happen in those areas if that were actually done with large tracts of land.

[jkratze1]

The Mall of Murder, umm Memphis, has already been bulldozed.

[bjh]

wth? If that's true it verifies that the press here are not interested in reporting news. It takes the foreign press to tell us what may happen.

[thenuegeye]

Kinda sounds like the early stages of Agenda 21 to me. The pale horse cometh.

[DiderotsGhost]

Are you f'in kidding me?

This makes absoultely no sense.

The problem is that we've neglected these neighborhoods in favor of sprawling infinitely outwards based on a massively subsidized automobile transportation system that passes on enormous costs to taxpayers. Instead of fixing the problem, expanding public transit, creating incentives for people to move back to the city (how 'bout non-exboritant property taxes?) --- you're telling me he just wants to bulldoze properties that can easily be turned into housing for people and could very easily provide a ready-made infrastructure as gas prices continue to creep upwards?

Absolutely ridiculous.

America's public planning policies have been backwards in the extreme over the past few decades. This is yet another step in the wrong direction.

[DiderotsGhost]

I mean ... I have to wonder if the idiots who thought of this plan have any knowledge of urban history at all. Everyone thinks this is a new phenomenon, but it's not. This has happened for centuries. Economic cycles can devastate some cities. But many of the larger cities have gone through major booms and busts.

Memphis itself was devastated for decades before rebounding in the early 20th Century. Then it started going downhill 'bout the 1950s due to the end of rail dominance in America. And yet, Memphis is actually in one of the best positions to benefit from the new, new economy --- that is, a resource-constrained economy.

Baltimore has actually gone through numerous long-term macroeconomic cycles and the city has actually been redeveloping rapidly over the past decade as a result of tax policies that allow people who renovate old urban properties to not pay property taxes for a certain period of time.

Really, the problem is more one of tax policy and incoherent and outdated American political entities than anything. It doesn't really make sense to bulldoze an area of town, because it doesn't solve the problem of sprawl at all. It merely eliminates the areas of town that don't have the sprawl issue and turns entire metro areas into nothing more than incoherent blobs of sprawl. Moreover, you take away potential housing that could help reduce sprawl.

I don't have any problem with private developers bulldozing housing that has become obsolete and impossible to renovate, but for the government just to go in and start indiscriminately bulldozing areas they believe are "unsuitable" seems wrong headed in every way.

[VolDude]

Great posts Jakilla, but what is your answer to municipalities losing money, as the article claims the reason for the bulldozing?

[mrradio]

Cities, Memphis included, have been on an annexing binge for years in search of revenue. Now that the costs of maintaing these marginal, often largely abandoned areas have arrived they will want to dump the bills on the counties.

[2nomadic4me]

In Parkway Village, some houses that backs up to Johns Creek, were bulldozed. But they built new houses.