Man complains about decline of old neighborhood, lives in Cranberry (Pittsburgh: low crime, mortgages)

[szug-bot]

Originally Posted by erieguy

Many like clean, safe, less congestion, big yards, etc...

I just wish they were designed for much less car dependency. That, to some people would be a winning argument. Personally, the fact that the vehicle becomes an extension of your survival, your sense of being, your PERSONALITY (at times) is a deal breaker with me.

Arlington, VA comes CLOSE to providing suburbs with ample options for being mobile. There are home owners there that never move the car, using instead metro rail, bikes/walking trails, or the bus. There certainly are other 'suburbs' that are mature in that sense and offer life amenities without having a car be a family member, but I haven't experienced any others.

Outside of Philadelphia, there may be one (the name escapes me now), but that DID start as a TOWN and became a more bustling 'suburb', as the term applies.

The city is not "congested"if you zip around on your feet, a bus, or a bicycle. Yes, yes, yes, I know that is not for everyone - and not having a car sucks at times (like summer evenings if you are freshly scrubbed and want to get to your destination in the same clean, fresh state). But the thought of driving EVERYWHERE is just trifling. I'll never go back to that until I'm a bit older.

[erieguy]

Many are not interested in walking or biking everywhere. Those are not suburban desires, however, if you want to do it here you certainly can.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by erieguy

Many are not interested in walking or biking everywhere. Those are not suburban desires, however, if you want to do it here you certainly can.

No. You can't. Unless you illegally trespass on privately-owned land (i.e. ProFiction as a youth) you can't as easily walk or bike from a home to a point of interest in Cranberry Township as you would be able to in a denser city neighborhood. If Cranberry Township cared about walkability or bike-ability it would have bought narrow strips of land to build public walking/biking trails between subdivisions and shopping centers, like my past example of Reston, VA, which was developed not long before Cranberry Township, has done.

Cranberry Township could have provided people with large yards while still being on at least a rigid enough street grid system to give people direct-line routes to access points north, south, east, or west without having to meander around loop-de-loops and cul-de-sacs everywhere. I'm not saying Cranberry Township had to be built around a Manhattan-styled street grid; however, look at Point Breeze, North Squirrel Hill, West Shadyside, etc.---city homes with large square footage on relatively large lots, many with off-street parking, that are still walkable to a lot of things in a relatively short period of time because they're built upon streets that intersect other streets at right angles instead of in weird twists and turns.

I don't think anyone in a mansion on Devonshire Street would complain about feeling "too cramped", AND they are able to easily walk to Oakland or Shadyside's business districts, too, along with the emerging Baum/Centre Corridor.

[erieguy]

You certainly can. It may take you longer than you would like but you certainly can.

Again, we don't care about being able to do it or do it "easily". That's urban concern. It's nice not having people flying through one neighborhood to get to another.

[JayDiFiore]

Originally Posted by PghYinzer

Pittsburgh didn’t suffer as much from white flight as other cities, however it did suffer from urban population loss. It also has a very small footprint, and is constrained by it’s topography which led to much higher population densities. These higher densities supported all of the things that the letter writer discusses being gone.

Less people living in the city proper caused a significant drop in the tax base. Also, those who did leave for the burbs were often wealthier than those who stayed, so again less tax revenue.

The general concept is though, less people (black or white) is less money paid in taxes, less money spent at stores, less people to attend churches and so on.

What strikes me about the letter is how it really shows how things have changed. People really miss those things of the past, but aren’t realizing that their lack of participation in such things as community (wherever that community is) is what causes their decline. They miss the lifestyle of their childhood, well then they should take a moment and think about what THEY are doing differently. Sitting in front of a TV every night eating junk food while staring at their phone is probably part of the problem. Get out and meet your neighbors, get involved, be part of your neighborhood rather than just living in it.

It’s like saying you are really sorry to hear that GM is not doing all that well these, however you have been driving a Honda for years, and would never even consider driving a GM product again. Well if you aren’t part of the solution, you most likely are part of the problem.

I suppose that’s true, especially considering the rosier times the author recalls. Back then, if you misbehaved, a neighbor could discipline you and then you’d catch it twice as hot when you got home. Now if you catch a kid hucking pears at your dog in a fenced-in yard, the parents tell you to “eff off and worry about your own kids.”

What should the people leaving the city be expected to do? Perform citizen’s arrests? Be parents to the kids destroying property and throwing firecrackers at cars? Paint their neighbors’ houses, mow their lawns, shovel their walks, or simply pick up their trash because they can’t be arsed to do it themselves?

Or is just staying and paying taxes to provide “services” enough? That’s a great solution if said “services” included providing law enforcement that got known dealers off the streets or could put people who shoot up homes or school buses behind bars. Do Pittsburgh tax dollars provide “services” such as discipline to the packs of fatherless kids stealing property and vandalizing cars and homes? I know for a fact those services didn’t include a trash receptacle at a bus stop in front of my old home, because I requested one, and the city kindly told me that they couldn’t afford it, especially since some anonymous hero was already cleaning up all of the trash (ranging from condoms to soda cans to food wrappers to pregnancy tests–run out of condoms, genius?) every other day.

I think “white flight” is easily said, and justified by the anecdotes of “hearing” someone say something racist in conjunction with moving. But anecdotes of actual felonies and general, perpetual buffoonery are dismissed out of hand because those people are somehow victims.

Some people just leave the city because they’re tired of the BS.

[ProFiction]

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

Unless you illegally trespass on privately-owned land (i.e. ProFiction as a youth)

How dare you. I just illegally trespassed on privately-owned land last weekend as well

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by erieguy

You certainly can. It may take you longer than you would like but you certainly can.

Again, we don't care about being able to do it or do it "easily". That's urban concern.

We're all in society together. Today's Millennials look at our bridges and streets that have been crumbling for decades and grumble at the Baby Boomers who decided to kick the can down the curb for US to fix via HIGH tax increases instead of just grumbling and accepting MODERATE tax increases years ago to invest in our infrastructure so WE could have things better than they did. Similarly if we, as Millennials, ALSO kick the can down the curb the cost will only grow exponentially higher from merely HIGH to outright ABSURD for the next large group in power to fix such ailments.

I feel the same way about our environment, which is why I choose to live in the city, where if it wasn't for being a delivery driver I'd be able to live sans car and, to quote other East Enders, "be part of the solution". Why so many people want to selfishly live in a place that encourages you to be harmful to the environment by relegating you to a vehicle for 100% of your tasks so you can "have your cake" (be close to the city for work) and eat it too (pay lower taxes) is beyond my realm of comprehension. Nobody in Cranberry Township is going to be thrilled about having to walk three miles around loopy roads to reach a destination that should be accessible on foot in 1/3 the time and distance IF the township's forefathers weren't so short-sighted and HAD designed an interconnecting trail system.

In Reston, VA I lived in a suburban wasteland (because that's where my job was, and it would be kinder to the environment to drive in from the same suburb than to drive in from the city). Nevertheless I was able to walk numerous PUBLICLY-OWNED (not privately-owned) direct trails through the woods to get to shopping/dining on foot much more quickly than walking around the loopy-doopy roads there.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by ProFiction

How dare you. I just illegally trespassed on privately-owned land last weekend as well

I did that as a kid, too, growing up in a subdivision of 35 houses in the middle of nowhere due to no sidewalks/shoulders along the roads. I was also yelled at by the private property owners for doing so, which, to me, made the community "not walkable". Now all those woods house distribution centers and warehouses instead anyways, meaning there's no safe way---legal OR illegal---to walk to other things.

[jay5835]

Originally Posted by erieguy

Again, we don't care about being able to do it or do it "easily". That's urban concern. It's nice not having people flying through one neighborhood to get to another.

I like that, too. I was over a friend's house in Greenfield on Saturday night. He lives on a street, part of an urban grid I suppose you'd say, on which there's very little traffic. We could hear crickets (or something like that).

[ProFiction]

I sympathize with that. A lot of the greenspace that I enjoyed as a child is gone and I have a feeling that eventually MOST of it will be gone.