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America’s Cities Are Unlivable. Blame Wealthy Liberals.
New York Times ^ | May 22, 2019 | arhad Manjoo

Posted on 05/22/2019 5:38:01 PM PDT by EdnaMode

[snip]

At every level of government, our representatives, nearly all of them Democrats, prove inadequate and unresponsive to the challenges at hand. Witness last week’s embarrassment, when California lawmakers used a sketchy parliamentary maneuver to knife Senate Bill 50, an ambitious effort to undo restrictive local zoning rules and increase the supply of housing.

It was another chapter in a dismal saga of Nimbyist urban mismanagement that is crushing American cities. Not-in-my-backyardism is a bipartisan sentiment, but because the largest American cities are populated and run by Democrats — many in states under complete Democratic control — this sort of nakedly exclusionary urban restrictionism is a particular shame of the left.

[snip]

That’s why, aside from Elizabeth Warren — who has a plan for housing, as she has a plan for everything — Democrats on the 2020 presidential trail rarely mention their ideas for housing affordability, an issue eating American cities alive. I watched Joe Biden’s campaign kick off the other day; the only house he mentioned was the White House.

Then there is the refusal on the part of wealthy progressives to live by the values they profess to support at the national level. Creating dense, economically and socially diverse urban environments ought to be a paramount goal of progressivism. Cities are the standard geographical unit of the global economy. Dense urban areas are quite literally the “real America” — the cities are where two-thirds of Americans live, and they account for almost all national economic output. Urban areas are the most environmentally friendly way we know of housing lots of people. We can’t solve the climate crisis without vastly improving public transportation and increasing urban density. More than that, metropolises are good for the psyche and the soul; density fosters tolerance, diversity, creativity and progress.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Politics/Elections; US: California; US: Delaware; US: Maine; US: New York
KEYWORDS: cities; democraticparty; democratparty; democrats; leftism; leftists; liberalhypocrites; liberalism; urban
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But people keep voting for Democrats. Even when they move to get away from blue states or blue cities.
1 posted on 05/22/2019 5:38:02 PM PDT by EdnaMode
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To: EdnaMode

They get what they vote for.


2 posted on 05/22/2019 5:40:11 PM PDT by Carriage Hill (A society grows great when old men plant trees, in whose shade they know they will never sit.)
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To: EdnaMode

arhad Manjoo should go back were he came from.


3 posted on 05/22/2019 5:43:38 PM PDT by A strike (Import third world become third world)
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To: EdnaMode

I just watched the documentary “Seattle is dying” again - for more incentive to sell my home get the hell out of the Puget sound area. Liberals are poopy heads everything they are in charge of is eventually destroyed and then they move like a plague of locust and destroy the next city, state, laws, stuff.


4 posted on 05/22/2019 5:51:04 PM PDT by ezo4
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To: ezo4
I just watched the documentary “Seattle is dying” again -

It's pretty much "{Insert Name of Any Big City Here} Is Dying"

5 posted on 05/22/2019 5:52:16 PM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: dfwgator

Thats why Im moving to some nice small Christian based mountain town in Idaho that has far better gun laws and no leftist. Ill spend my retirement money there and go fishing


6 posted on 05/22/2019 5:54:43 PM PDT by ezo4
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To: carriage_hill
They get what they vote for.

Unfortunately we do too.

7 posted on 05/22/2019 5:58:34 PM PDT by pfflier
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To: EdnaMode

“””More than that, metropolises are good for the psyche and the soul; density fosters tolerance, diversity, creativity and progress.””””

What a load of horseshit! This article is not a condemnation of cities but a condemnation of the fact that progressives aren’t rounding up people and shipping them into cities.


8 posted on 05/22/2019 5:58:40 PM PDT by raybbr (The left is a poison on society. There is no antidote. Running its course will be painful. You)
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To: EdnaMode

Liberals tried to fix affordable housing with socialism and built housing that turned into crime infested “projects”. Then they tried more socialism with rent control and renters rights and got even less housing.

It’s also weird that democrats resist relaxing zoning so they could stack their voters higher and deeper, but they do.

It’s a peculiar kind of stupid.


9 posted on 05/22/2019 6:00:44 PM PDT by Valpal1
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To: EdnaMode

But people keep voting for Democrats.

************

They’re gullible and fall for the promises of utopian largess from a “beneficent and caring” government. They believe what they want to believe. Democrats exploit their naivete.


10 posted on 05/22/2019 6:04:11 PM PDT by Starboard
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To: EdnaMode
Dense urban areas are quite literally the “real America”...

No. Dense urban areas are where America goes to die. And it dies at the hands of liberal Democrats.

The "real America" is in all the red counties, flyover country, where people have to work to survive. Liberal Democrats can't survive in real America. It's too hard to feed families on fantasies in real America.

11 posted on 05/22/2019 6:05:52 PM PDT by DakotaGator (Weep for the lost Republic! And keep your powder dry!!)
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To: EdnaMode
the cities... account for almost all national economic output.

Except for, you know, food and raw materials, without which civilisation comes to a screeching halt. Never ceases to amaze me how urban rats seem to think cities exist in a vacuum.

12 posted on 05/22/2019 6:06:33 PM PDT by Valpal1
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To: EdnaMode

”Urban areas are the most environmentally friendly way we know of housing lots of people. We can’t solve the climate crisis without vastly improving public transportation and increasing urban density. More than that, metropolises are good for the psyche and the soul; density fosters tolerance, diversity, creativity and progress.”

I can’t imagine living in a teeming rat warren with idiots like this, along wth gangbangers, vagabonds defecating in public areas, and hardcore leftists constantly asurrounding you. To this writer it might be nirvana; to me it’s the scariest part of Dante’s Inferno.


13 posted on 05/22/2019 6:07:07 PM PDT by SharpRightTurn (Chuck Schumer--giving pond scum everywhere a bad name.)
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To: Valpal1

They produce bits and bites. Let them fill their bellies with them.


14 posted on 05/22/2019 6:11:29 PM PDT by The Toll
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To: EdnaMode
Headline: "America’s Cities Are Unlivable. Blame Wealthy Liberals."

Publisher: New York Times

Wait...what???

The SLIMES wrote this?? At first, I thought it was a joke. It looks like 4chan snuck in a Breitbart column past the NY editor. Maybe he (the editor) was banging the intern when this got sent to the publisher to hit the "Print" button.

15 posted on 05/22/2019 6:16:31 PM PDT by GOP Congress
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To: GOP Congress

Yes, the true believer libs are a little annoyed that the happy to virtue signal while remaining hypocrit-libs won’t allow the poor and unwashed to dirty up their pristine neighborhoods that they’re all paying $1M+ to live in.


16 posted on 05/22/2019 6:23:16 PM PDT by Behind the Blue Wall
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To: raybbr
This article is not a condemnation of cities but a condemnation of the fact that progressives aren’t rounding up people and shipping them into cities.

Yep, this guy's the whole package. "High-density urban areas are great, let's build some more! Cities are where the smart people live! They produce 105% of the wealth!" Uh huh. The classic mistake of people who insist that the money's all downtown is that it's really only traded there. That's not quite the same thing as pumping oil out of the ground or growing wheat.

17 posted on 05/22/2019 6:26:15 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: EdnaMode
Visions of Blade Runner going through my head...
18 posted on 05/22/2019 6:26:37 PM PDT by ZOOKER (Until further notice the /s is implied...)
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To: Starboard

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy. “


19 posted on 05/22/2019 6:29:23 PM PDT by BwanaNdege
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To: pfflier

Unfortunately, you’re 100% right.


20 posted on 05/22/2019 6:35:48 PM PDT by Carriage Hill (A society grows great when old men plant trees, in whose shade they know they will never sit.)
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