Urban Redevelopment + You (NRR)

kenny

inspired by the closing down of a well-known record store in NYC due to a redevlopment quite a while back, and the public transport thread, put some of your local urban redevlopment in blast here.here's one in my town: one of the favourite tourist attractions, the "sneaker street" here in Hong Kong is about to disappear. local government is about to swipe out all the sneaker shops within this small precinct and all the old flats on top of them, into a new redevlopment including squashing those sneaker shops all together into a huge indoor shopping mall which will help create a "sport precinct" or so they envisioned to do.the shop owners could still do their thing of course, but the whole street atmosphere will be gone since all of them will now be moved into an indoor shopping mall.

street_muzik

I live in a little neighborhood off of Fairfax in LA that is a mix of old APT buildings and small homes. Over the last 3 years I've seen quite a few homes go to these big ass, blocky condos. Real yuppified LA shit. It's destroying the feel on my street.

street_muzik

Damn Drez, that shit wa wrong.

grandpa_shig

alright look. there's a lot of graffiti in LA. and yes, some of it is just ugly ass no style writing on the wall. but we also have public art which is paid for by the city and dumped down the escalators to the metro stops. now when i look at this new ugly piece of shit in my neighborhood, which mind you, we all [angelenos] paid for. and not only did we pay for this asshole to paint this ugly shit, but we also paid for like 8 other assholes to sit around in a air conditioned room and pick this ugly piece of shit out. so frankly i really would never ever ever like to hear someone complain about graffiti again. not at least until the actual city art starts to look better.

CousinLarry

alright look. there's a lot of graffiti in LA. and yes, some of it is just ugly ass no style writing on the wall. but we also have public art which is paid for by the city and dumped down the escalators to the metro stops. now when i look at this new ugly piece of shit in my neighborhood, which mind you, we all [angelenos] paid for. and not only did we pay for this asshole to paint this ugly shit, but we also paid for like 8 other assholes to sit around in a air conditioned room and pick this ugly piece of shit out. so frankly i really would never ever ever like to hear someone complain about graffiti again. not at least until the actual city art starts to look better.

I thought it was an ad for the pink floyd reunion.

G_Balliando

I live downtown in Denver right now (until this coming weekend) and one block over is the projects (maybe the largest concentration of low income housing I have seen in the city). A bunch of these projects border a park (Curtis Park), which has now become prime real estate. This area is roughly 10-15 blocks NW of Coors Field in downtown Denver. The downtown area is expanding at an alarming rate with more construction cranes downtown than there's ever been. Tons of brand new modern town homes and flats are goign up all over town (not to mention plenty of new giant high rise buildings and a couple new sky scrapers in the works), especially up by my neighborhood. So now you've got signs in empty lots next to Curtis Park that read "Town Homes starting in the mid 500's" and whatnot, right next to the projects. I think it's safe to say the neighborhood is being gentrified. The projects won't be there much longer. It's not like down town is losing a bunch of cool shit, but it's pretty sad to see not just these families who live in the projects, but also a lot of other older families and people who've lived in the nighborhood for years being pushed out. I mean, this is basically the western-most part of Denver's predominantly African-American neighborhood (known locally as the East side) with a very histroic African-American district right in the middle (5 Points), and a lot of the people who live here are going to be forced out due to the ridiculous increase in property value and replaced by overpaid yuppies who want their piece of the pie in downtown. It's economics, capitalism, whatever, and it was bound to happen, just sort of sad to see happen right in front of your face. I'm kinda glad I'm moving to the South side. If 5 Points becomes predominantly white, I won't be surprised, but I won't be too excited about it either. I just hope they don't shut down the amazing soul food/carribbean/fried chicken joints up in 5 Points. Shit is real over there!

SPlDEY

Here in Las Vegas our Downtown has gone from those ratpack days with all the iconic imagery to a Disneyland style shopping mall. While some of it still looks kind of cool, alot of it is mad corny. Our mayor is really trying to turn our Downtown into some semi-metropolis complete with too expensive high rises, and a full baseball stadium.

Which I'm not entirely against, but I don't think you need to tear down things that are established or being established. Such as the Arts District, which is now starting to bring alot of talented artists together once a month. From when the baseball stadium comes they're getting rid of the arts district.

The overall problem here is that our local government only does things for the tourist, and really doesn't give a shit about the people who live here. So, what do we do? Adjust, cause we can't control anything. We only have 1 small commercial record store now, and a few record citys that hardly get any new products.

In fact the record store we started was pretty much forced to shut down, because the land owner thought the land would be more valuable flattened and put for sale for high rise investors.

Oh well.

- spidey

G_Balliando

Our mayor is really trying to turn our Downtown into some semi-metropolis complete with too expensive high rises, and a full baseball stadium.

Haha, sounds like they've been taking cues form the success of Denver's downtown area.

HarveyCanal

In Austin, Liberty Lunch is long gone. And it always pains me to see an abandoned Baja Fresh where Sound Exchange used to be.

Despite the people voting in favor of Save Our Springs protections every other couple of years, developers have still managed to build on the Green Belt and over the Edwards Aquifer (which supplies San Antonio with its water as well).

The old Moeller airport is currently being developed into a virtual Disneyland of shopping centers and upscale neighborhoods.

Eastside Austin is currently facing all sorts of gentrification. The latest is that today some dimwits are voting on whether or not to make Ed Bluestein Road a toll road which would singlehandedly force many from remaining in adjacent neighborhoods.

Las Manitas was scheduled to be torn down and thankfully the people spoke up enough to have it somehow salvaged.

But ye olde Austin residents...you wouldn't believe the number of high rise condos that have gone up in the mere course of the past few months.

Very hot topic down here...

SPlDEY

I forget where, but in the newspaper they said Oscar Goodman was modeling after some other city with a new stadium. Right now he's fighting to get us a sports team optioning the Marlins for 2008, or maybe even an NBA team. However there is a regulation here that allows a team to petition gaming regulators to prevent betting on games. That could be holding back prospect investors into spending any time building anything here.

- spidey

billbradley

But ye olde Austin residents...you wouldn't believe the number of high rise condos that have gone up in the mere course of the past few months.

Very hot topic down here...

The Ginger Man is going to be torn down to build more condos also.

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/column?oid=oid%3A534874

G_Balliando

I forget where, but in the newspaper they said Oscar Goodman was modeling after some other city with a new stadium. Right now he's fighting to get us a sports team optioning the Marlins for 2008, or maybe even an NBA team. However there is a regulation here that allows a team to petition gaming regulators to prevent betting on games. That could be holding back prospect investors into spending any time building anything here.

- spidey

I been saying for a minute, send the Sonics to Vegas. And the Clippers to Oklahoma City.

sno

the shop owners could still do their thing of course, but the whole street atmosphere will be gone since all of them will now be moved into an indoor shopping mall.

The thing about sneaker street is that for some reason urban planners and government officials never quite seem to grasp the idea of "VIBE".
They never realise the reason for its success lies in the shops along the street frontage, and that is the key of the vitality to the street and the area as a whole. There's a place for shopping malls, but this is not one of them.