Toellner Tells it has a good post up about the way tax-subsidized shopping and entertainment centers (Zona Rosa, The Legends) often perpetuate urban blight. Check it:
It’s time to get back to helping the neighborhoods. In the long term, focusing subsidy dollars on rebuidling and repopulating urban neighborhoods is a benefit for the city. We can increase the populations in these neighborhoods (which increases tax revenue) without needing to build more infastructure (it already exists) — and leaves less infastructure that has to be supported long-term. The improved density makes public transportation more viable. And it would remove the blighted abandoned homes that are more common in many neighborhoods than ones with people living in them. And these abandoned houses increase the feeling of disrepair (ie: Broken Windows theory), and provide a safe-haven for criminal activity. Meanwhile, they hamper efforts to build communities and to have effective neighborhood watch programs. It’s time to change the focus of our subsidized dollars…and put an end to the popularity of abandoned houses in our own city.