Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

That city you love so much doesn't exist anymore: Baltimore? Chicago? San Francisco? Forget it. Stop looking back and think about how to move forward.
American Thinker ^ | 01/12/2022 | Robert T. Smith

Posted on 01/12/2022 7:09:35 AM PST by SeekAndFind

The place where you want to live doesn't exist anymore. There is no pathway back to the past. The future happens moving forward.

These thoughts became clear recently when discussing Chicago with a friend who had moved there years ago. Some in San Francisco, New York, and other large metropolitan areas, I would assume, now also feel the same. The cities of their desire or memory no longer exist.

The big-city culture, history, entertainment, eateries, mass transit, and general hustle and bustle were the allure. Amenities, job access, decreasing crime rates, overtaking the lower-income areas to create more affordable places to live once drove these large cities to be the targeted growth areas, especially for the up-and-comers.

According to U-Haul, recent moves include to states like Ohio, Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, North Carolina, and Georgia. Moves to the big cities in California and Illinois were the lowest ranked destinations. What are the whys of this migration trend?

The most gentrified parts of our country are these large metropolitan areas. Gentrification as a pejorative depends on your perspective. The rich overtake an area and put downward pressure on the ability of the less well off to remain.

Redevelopment of cheap property into the avant-garde upscale dwellings of the well off fractures the "diversity is our strength" crowd's approach and serves to destroy the social fabric of these areas, one of the alleged reasons for the well off to have moved there in the first place. The poor are driven to the outskirts of these areas, the local culture changed and amenities now unavailable to them or their children.

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


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: city; exodus; migration
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 161-168 next last

1 posted on 01/12/2022 7:09:35 AM PST by SeekAndFind
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

bttt


2 posted on 01/12/2022 7:13:34 AM PST by linMcHlp
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

I feel the same about Seattle. Lived there 2000-2008 and for the most part was enjoyable, but the rot had already started to set in. And I still have a certain fondness for Seattle, but that fondness is for the memory of what it was, not what it now is.


3 posted on 01/12/2022 7:14:37 AM PST by BBQToadRibs2
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

The country that you love so much doesn’t exist anymore.


4 posted on 01/12/2022 7:15:16 AM PST by brownsfan (It's going to take real, serious, hard times to wake the American public.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

Remember Lot.


5 posted on 01/12/2022 7:15:26 AM PST by Allthesaints
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

Downtown Denver too.


6 posted on 01/12/2022 7:16:47 AM PST by G Larry (The "Racism" charge is code for "No Intelligent Argument")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

The big cities need a few Rudy Guiliani’s. Do they have the will?


7 posted on 01/12/2022 7:17:05 AM PST by DIRTYSECRET
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

I lived in Seattle for 46 years and loved it. In fact, I bicycle commuted year round for about 18 years to downtown, the U-district, downtown Bellevue and even just south of Renton (I was an IT contractor). I loved it.

But it changed. I moved to south central, rural Kentucky about 10.5 years ago and love it. Meanwhile, I visit family in Seattle once or twice a year. I no longer have any desire to go anywhere there other than their homes.

And as bad as the traffic was when we moved away, it’s MUCH worse now.

As far as I’m concerned, modern cities steal your soul.


8 posted on 01/12/2022 7:17:21 AM PST by cuban leaf (My prediction: Harris is Spiro Agnew. We'll soon see who becomes Gerald Ford, and our next prez.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

Those were once amazing and glorious places. That was then, this is now.


9 posted on 01/12/2022 7:18:36 AM PST by all the best
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: brownsfan

The country that you love so much doesn’t exist anymore.


Yep. My motto: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Step two is understanding that the US is not a Norman Rockwell painting.


10 posted on 01/12/2022 7:19:05 AM PST by cuban leaf (My prediction: Harris is Spiro Agnew. We'll soon see who becomes Gerald Ford, and our next prez.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind
As a natural setting for a city, there are few locations that match the San Francisco Bay area (Vancouver, BC, Auckand, NZ, Seattle are three I have seen that come to mind).

But it is no longer the city of my younger years, when I visited my grandparents in Albany. Having lived in the bay area from 1990 to 2014, I watched it change from a city my wife and I would go into for dinner or game to a city we avoided as much as possible. Very sad.

11 posted on 01/12/2022 7:19:28 AM PST by Michael.SF. (Never do anything illegal, when you are doing something illegal. )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: brownsfan
The country that you love so much doesn’t exist anymore.

This. If the US had been captured by a cabal working with its enemies it's hard to see how its present state would be different.

Our current elite has thrown away every political, economic, technological and military advantage this country possessed in its mad pursuit of its own wealth and power.

12 posted on 01/12/2022 7:22:08 AM PST by pierrem15 ("Massacrez-les, car le seigneur connait les siens" )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind
Anyone who wants to see San Francisco should watch Vertigo. If they want to see New Yorkm, stick to Breakfast at Tiffany's. The movie versions are much better than the real-life s**tholes.
13 posted on 01/12/2022 7:22:24 AM PST by Sans-Culotte (11/3-11/4/2020 - The USA became a banana republic.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

I was in radio from 1978-2000. Worked and interviewed in many cities. Dallas, D.C., Baltimore, Boston, Miami, Atlanta, Austin, Minneapolis, Portland, ME, Philadelphia.

I wouldn’t touch any of these with 100 mile pole now. I know people that still live in them and they want out.


14 posted on 01/12/2022 7:22:37 AM PST by albie
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

Not only recognize what is happening but why. There no longer exists a reasonable consensus of commonly held values among Americans. Why would a decent, rational person wish to voluntarily live, work, raise a family or send children to school in these Democratic run urban areas. Also why would those rational, decent people want as neighbors the type of people that made those governments possible. Those governments did not come about in a cultural, social or political vacuum. Decent rational people given a preference want little or nothing to do with the people who make such places what they are. The real story is that this country has lost probably forever common values that truly unify. If the printing of money and the corrosive effects of inflation and lack of access to necessities continue, there will be the feared violence that people are predicting.


15 posted on 01/12/2022 7:22:56 AM PST by allendale
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Sans-Culotte

“Odd Couple” is a good one for NYC. 1960’s was Golden in NYC.


16 posted on 01/12/2022 7:23:31 AM PST by albie
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind
The place where you want to live doesn't exist anymore.

Why would anyone in their right mind "want" to live in those hellholes? I hate most cities, but ESPECIALLY those three.

17 posted on 01/12/2022 7:23:50 AM PST by ScottinVA (Enough. Cage the libs.. now. )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

Add New York City to that list.


18 posted on 01/12/2022 7:23:59 AM PST by jmaroneps37
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

Heck, my whole state of Connecticut is gone!


19 posted on 01/12/2022 7:25:55 AM PST by Dr. Sivana ("There are only men and women."-- George Gilder, Sexual Suicide, 1973)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

No Kidding!

Was just at the ProLife Banquet

in the South Loop Saturday

first time back there in a few years

the place has taken on a dreadful

third world look.

sad...

I went back to Chicago

and my city was gone.

7


20 posted on 01/12/2022 7:26:17 AM PST by infool7 (Society has now operated for decades under the (false)base premise that the world is overpopulated?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 161-168 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson