[PRCo] Re: Fw: North side details

[Ken & Tracie]

Off Topic Warning!

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Harold G." <transitmgr2 at earthlink.net>


> Most European cities have not had this urge to redevelop.  Thank God.

The day of the average urban dwelling U.S. citizen being guaranteed 
reasonable stability in a given neighborhood for even one generation is long 
over.

Do Europeans have the same issues with violent, poverty stricken "victim 
class" people being moved into working class and middle class neighborhoods 
by well intended but misguided social programs? Programs which give the 
former the opportunity to prey on the latter, forcing the latter to flee to 
outlying areas in order to recapture the security and quality of life they 
are accustomed to?

I have friends who grew up on Pittsburgh's North Side. Some told me the 
horror stories about "the projects" built below their neighborhood during 
the late 1950s and early 1960s. It started out okay, but by the late 1960s, 
the officials responsible for the housing programs began losing control over 
this housing project. At first, the crime was confined within the housing 
complex, but it spread into the surrounding  old, established areas.

Only the most politically connected and wealthy can establish themselves in 
a nice neighborhood and have some control over what the local, state or 
federal governments dump upon them!

I am amazed that so many mass transit supporters and environmentalists align 
themselves politically with people whose social programs destroy good 
quality, high density urban living. The very thing which would be conducive 
to rail transit development. And such development would also protect 
outlying rural areas from urban sprawl.

Try to displace the criminal element and rebuild these "war zones" and you 
are accused of "gentrification." Kick longtime, established homeowners out 
to give their land to either deep pocketed commercial developers or public 
housing projects and it's called "urban renewal."

K.

P.S.- Please do not read anything racist into this! The last neighborhood we 
had to flee was next to a Section Eight apartment complex full of WHITE 
single parent households....households full of out of control children who 
vandalized and burglarized the longtime homeowners nearby. We were lucky. 
They never bothered us (READ TWO LARGE DOGS!) We got out just in time.