Urban Renewal
Once the Projects were built and the underprivileged housed, these examples of urban blight pretty quickly became festering sores of crime and misery, leading many to propose bulldozers and wrecking balls as the only solution. What had started in altruism ended in ineffective hand-wringing. Chicago has at least moved toward redevelopment, tearing down some of the slums they’d misguidedly built in favor of low-rise, condo-style units, giving residents more of a feel for having a stake in their homes, and it appears to have been a successful strategy thus far. It’s not an easy thing to start, but once begun is half done, as the saying goes. Still, there’s that other adage: measure twice, cut once. Great care needs to be taken, and even more important is foresight. Think before you speak, and certainly before you act. Cities suffering economic and social decay – Detroit is an example that springs to mind – can dig themselves in deep and end up well beyond the kind of reformations that bring them back from the brink. Philadelphia has had its reforms, though, and they’ve been doing good work. Many more cities need much more work. Sydney has its problems, too, and one of them is Redfern, the traditionally Aboriginal suburb. Prior to last week’s dissolution of the South Sydney City Council, that body had relocated its offices into the heart of that suburb, perhaps making its most pointed effort to engage the population there and the people moving in as the property values rose in the kind of tidal boat-raising such economic booms can effect. Still, it’s a touchy subject, and the calamitous relations between the dispossessed Aborigines and the majority population of the city are nothing if not difficult. Potentially, and probably more often than anyone would really like, the situation reflects race-relations at their worst, more gesture of despair than even gesture, let alone effective effort. Last night’s events tell a bad story, but there’s no point in John Brogden making things worse. His remarks represent the worst aspects of Liberal Party politics.