Posted on 06/04/2013 8:12:45 AM PDT by US Navy Vet
Omaha should cut down on suburban sprawl, restructure incentives for inner-city development and do a better job sharing data between government departments, according to a new report from IBM business consultants.
The city was one of 33 communities that received a grant last year for a study. A team of five consultants visited Omaha in October to assess the city's planning and development efforts and offer their recommendations.
Monday, the city released the consultants' final report.
(Excerpt) Read more at omaha.com ...
I would live in a city if I could. Due to physical handicaps I cannot drive, so I take a van to work. Most cities are either very expensive to live in or fill with urban decay. I lived in downtown Minneapolis in 2001 it was alright, except there was no grocery store. They have fixed that problem since then.
My husband was at STATCOM J-6 & J-8...AFCW, space, cyber, global weather, worked on E4B and looking glass....then was asked to open a military contracting office on Wall st in Bellevue. Bet you met.
One other upside to living in CB is a conservative vote in a purple ? state.
This is no surprise, 64% Hispanic and 26% white.
http://www.greatschools.org/nebraska/omaha/1013-Ashland-Park-Robbins-Elementary-School/?tab=demographics
Students eligible for free lunch, 83%
I live in Los Angeles and this is the school my kid would go to if I didn’t care.
http://www.greatschools.org/california/reseda/2342-Reseda-Elementary-School/?tab=demographics
82% Hispanic, 4% white, School eligible for free lunch, 91%
Home language of English learners 89% Spanish
At the forefront of Agenda 21 is Maurice Strong. He is a wealthy guy that believes in Mother Earth.
At the U.N. Summit at Rio in 1992, the Conference Secretary-General, Maurice Strong, said “Isn’t the only hope for this planet that the industrialized civilization collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
Then he said:
“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class—involving high meat intake, the use of fossil fuels, electrical appliances, home and workplace air-conditioning, and suburban housing—are not sustainable.”
Then George Soros said:
“America, as the center of the globalized financial markets, was sucking up the savings of the world. This is now over. The game is out,’ he said, adding that the time has come for ‘a very serious adjustment’ in American’s consumption habits.”
In 1996, Club of Rome member and CNN founder, Ted Turner, told Audubon magazine, “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.” A 95% reduction!
White House Science Czar John Holdren
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/75388
“Resources must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries,” Holdren and his co-authors wrote. “This effort must be largely political, especially with regard to our overexploitation of world resources, but the campaign should be strongly supplemented by legal and boycott action against polluters and others whose activities damage the environment. The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.”
Van Jones, Obama’s Ex Green Czar:
”If we want to survive as a species, we will have to live in massive mega-cities. Living at one with nature is just crap idealism from the past, and the suburbs are nothing more than archaic residue of racist white flight patterns.”
Snip
”Sprawl is a response to racial fear and anxiety on the part of white elites. The ‘burbs were designed as a vehicle to get away from people of color, investing more in the white infrastructure as they moved away from the city, and the neighborhoods where people of color live. Does that mean the only environmentally-sound, antiracist thing for whites to do is move back to the inner cities. Yes, it does.”
http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_23369605/eric-garcetti-won-race-mayor-message-and-mantra
Garcetti works for the illegal aliens
http://www.ericgarcetti.com/office_of_immigrant_affairs
He is a Bloomberg Nanny Stater that will tell us where to live and work. He will construct high-density housing along Villaragossa’s transportation corridor and force us out of our cars and into electric golf carts.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-adv-garcetti-hollywood-20130511,0,3072338,full.story
We did that. We bought and renovated an old house on the edge of downtown, a block from the RR tracks, catty-corner from the tack & feed store, with a Church of Christ down the street. Our street was just placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The town was only 16,000 when we moved here in 1976, now its about 90,000.
The town fathers, with no God or principle, look at the large lots surrounding downtown and lick their chops at the number of people they can crowd into apartments, if they can only get rid of us pesky homeowners.
We are, for the second time in a year, fighting a "blight" designation. Not "blight" like crummy houses, but "blight" like "inadequate street layout" and "obsolete platting." It's unsettling when you sit in meeting and are told "We spent $38 million dollars on renovating the downtown and we need to start making a return on our investment."
What was the point of this, oh, the point--No one's property is safe anymore, no one's.
IBM’s probably really putting together a whole big show, but only a few lines of the script are what is truly intended for Omaha politicians.
Those lines are the ones that refer to “information sharing”.
IBM: “Blah-bady-blah-blah you really need to get some better software and hire capable consultants to properly implement it.”
IBM has historically had great products, and no doubt a city government is probably a mess.
However, with the maxing out of demand for computer hardware and software sometime in the mid-90’s, the large, old, proprietary software and hardware companies have been, since then, struggling to catch up and participate in the bubble business model of overcharging the customer on services. Though these large companies (and IBM is NOT the only one) are run by those trained in the financial oligarchy’s favorite training institutions, they (true to the oligarchy’s intent) can’t see that the formula only works in a labor demand bubble, which is always created when there is a bubble of a new interface paradigm to fundamental, classical machinery, be it logical or physical. That’s a longwinded way of saying “the client-server and web thing was new, even though it architecturally sat on top of the same old hardware; processor, memory and disk”. The bubbles resulted from this new programming model which very few people knew at first and everyone was rushing to learn and implement.
Trouble is, the fundamental growth function of labor-intensive businesses is linear; you want more revenue, you need to hire more people.
So revenue climbing seemingly asymptotically (every steeper growth curve) is a a financial mirage that disappears at the point when most companies have successfully implemented the new programming model. Since people continue to learn the new model anyway, not knowing the peak demand has been reached, a massive oversupply of labor occurs, amidst demand dropping like a rock.
The situation in the year 2000 was further exacerbated by the conclusion of all Y2K projects, which were virtually all successful. The year 2000 saw a “quiet collapse” of the programming labor market which was not covered in the financial oligarchy’s news media, as the oligarchy sought to minimize public awareness of their Wall Street’s pump and dump activities in 1998-1999.
Though proprietary software IS the best software model, when companies (all, not just IBM) gain too much market share they tend to use monopoly tactics and therefore start drastically overcharging for their products and services. It’s not the “proprietary” that’s the “problem”, it’s the monopoly. Prices will be quite reasonable as long as there is honest competition. The operative word, of course, is honest.
Regarding open source, the overcharging by M$ (for, in their case, a single grossly inferior product) was the real impetus behind the spread of Linux. M$ felt a desperate need to increase profits as much as possible by increasing the price of their entire software suite to business customers who could afford to pay, in order to establish a cash warchest of many billions of dollars in guilt-ridden anticipation of needing to fend off a competitor of their crappy operating system who might be as ruthless as themselves. However programmer-types who craved having a decent set of software tools to play with but could not afford to pay M$’s increasing prices for the whole suite were more than happy to download a free copy of Linux, or pay the $39.95ish price for a “distribution” of the full OS and set of tools (to play with).
Back to Omaha’s sprawl, it’s suburban sprawl, not urban.
And, like wolfman says, the smart way to develop land is to leave farmland and woodland alone, and make towns and cities that are well designed.
Agenda 21 must be opposed simply because it undermines national sovereignty, even though it may have good ideas included in with it.
All one has to do is look very closely at New Jersey to see the good, the bad and the ugly.
Suburban towns change farmland into housing developments where each home has a small parcel. But each home is not in a rural setting at all - they have just enough land to be a pain in the neck to maintain, but typically not enough to be a country estate. You have your little yard and that’s it. Ok, perhaps you’re satisfied with that. The real dumb thing is for all the housing developments where there are virtually NO stores and consumer businesses within walking distance. EVERY thing you want - you need to get in your car and drive. Everything. And what is your little “neigborhood” then ? After a few years - boring. We sit inside and watch TV, play on games, surf the web. We barbecue outside. Rinse. Repeat. If we want to have a good time, a special treat, just like the farmers of old - we go to “town” ! We get in our car and drive. We park the car. We get out. We stroll around the town, browsing the retail stores, sitting on the benches, eating in the restaurants. In fact, basically every family that goes on vacation drives or flys great distances, spending inordinate amounts of money, on doing just that. And as they sit their having their ice cream or what have you, listening to the music, relaxing, they never stop to think - their own town could be just as nice, if it wasn’t crappy suburban sprawl. A housing development is not a vacation destination.
It only makes sense to leave all those farms as farms. And build the houses within WALKING distance of the downtown. You can still have a car, you just won’t always need to be driving for every jug of milk and pack of cigarettes.
How NICE that could be for the elderly - they would do VERY well on the first floor in a “walkable” town, in 1/2 size apartments that would cost 1/2 a typical rent.
The reason why we have suburban sprawl is because our good friends the financial oligarchy wanted that kind of arrangement. They made a lot of money off it.
The oligarchy has been forcing a new housing paradigm: the “stack and pack”. Trouble is, since “we the people” are not owning and developing our towns, and big developers are, they simply want to throw up townhouses, as many stories high as possible, and they will just as happily place them next to the interstate as put them nicely in a completely re-done, walkable town that has a nice mixed-use center.
New Jersey has lost a tremendous number of farms over the years, and it’s really disheartening. Where will those “city” and “suburban” kids go to be in “farm country” ? NOWHERE - because the big corporation that owns the farm does not have a farmstand or welcome visitors. Those farms are not owned by individual people or partnerships, but by huge corporations, so they have no connection to people at all. And if they run a chemicalized farming operation that makes a mess, they care not in the least, because the only “they” is a board of directors far away, who hang out in their beautiful, walkable towns with top-quality restaurants selling delicious, healthy meals. It’s really nice, you just have to plunk down 1 mill+ for a home there, and your r/e taxes are gonna take a bite outta your butt. IMHO, everyone can live in such a place - and the r/e taxes DO NOT have to be inordinately high.
You can see your future - it’s going on all over the country.
Every time I hear local government, it makes me sick, because they’re just operatives of special interests.
Anything that infringes on national sovereignty should be rejected out of hand - we should not even talk to any international organization, and they all should be outlawed and have their assets confiscated and officers imprisoned if they don’t pack up and get out. That goes without saying for the financial oligarchs.
We also should be rebuilding our entire nation - the SMART way. Ourselves, not the big publicly-held corporations, but privately-held corporations and real actual individuals without alterior motives who are elected to office.
Set the right wheels in motion, and things are better than ever. Leave the banksters in power, and we’re headed towards misery.
Enough rant for now...
Omaha is a nice town full of smart people, but the REALLY smart people have already left for greener pastures in Texas or Colorado.
Of the top 20% of my 1983 Burke High School graduating class, maybe a handful still live in Omaha. The Majority of the “top 20%” are in Texas or Colorado creating jobs in those states.
Not much you can do to keep these people in Nebraska.
People in Omaha move west for one reason: to avoid crime/Criminals. “Its the criminals, stupid”.
If you have a crime free “Inner City” people will stop moving west. Period, problem solved. No IBM consulting fee required.
What killed the cities was the crime and oversensationalism of it. Personally, I like the “inner suburbs” better than the “city”. Mine is set up like its own town. I can walk to get basic goods, and for some good, locally owned restaurants and a decent pub or to a convenience store. I still have my own yard, sidewalks, privacy, etc... think “The Wonder Years”. The “city” (I live within the city limits, but not in an urban area), and where I work, is about 4 miles away... an 8-12 minute drive depending on red lights... never any traffic congestion (reserved for the outer suburb/interstate commuters) or if it is nice out, a 20 minute bike ride. There is some minor property crime and an occasional domestic dispute, but if you lock your car and house doors, your chances of being a victim of any kind of crime are about as good as hitting the lottery. I really find that my quality of life is much higher than my friends who have moved “out”. They have a type of road rage that seems to infiltrate into the attitudes toward the rest of their lives as well and they seem overall resentful toward their wives and kids. There are strip malls with the necessary Wal-Mart, Olive Garden, and even nicer chains like PF Changs and Ruths Chris in the more upscale developments within a relatively short hike, but there is no character and no originality to it. You could simply take a picture and it would be the exact same as any other outer suburb of any other city in the US.
To stop crime the word simply has to be put out by the top guy. It’s amazing.
In the ‘90s when I worked in NYC for awhile, Giuliani had it very safe and pleasant.
No massive hirings of cops, etc. Just put out the word amongst the cops and prosecuters. The signal was given to illegal street businesses to get it off the street, to not bother civilians. Everybody thrived - even panhandlers.
Streets were clean, no “unrest” problems; it was like a dream world, much safer and nicer than the NJ cities at that time.
Bingo. It can be so nice. I used to love driving years ago; I can’t stand driving now when there are other cars on the road. In general, it’s not fun any more, it’s just a pain.
It’s wonderful being able to walk to a store.
In NJ, there are over 500 municipalities. The nice ones with a town center are destination towns and have a nice bit of tax revenue from commercial real estate.
Those towns with little to no town center, or a town center that consists of a supermarket 10 miles away - all those residents drive to some other town to do things.
Omaha is a nice town full of smart people, but the REALLY smart people have already left for greener pastures in Texas or Colorado.
Of the top 20% of my 1983 Burke High School graduating class, maybe a handful still live in Omaha. The Majority of the “top 20%” are in Texas or Colorado creating jobs in those states.
Not much you can do to keep these people in Nebraska.
People in Omaha move west for one reason: to avoid crime/Criminals. “Its the criminals, stupid”.
If you have a crime free “Inner City” people will stop moving west. Period, problem solved. No IBM consulting fee required.
I had a teacher in OPS that left choke marks on my 8 year old son because he looked at her wrong. She was moved to another school. Then something even worse happened to my other son in Jr high. Thinking about it makes my blood boil. (if I knew then what I know now)
Here is a perfect example over what I call the road rage. Suffolk is full of such outer suburb communities, though it is inherently a rural area.
Nice /sarc...
IMHO...
Neighbors are a difficult situation in secular societies.
The closer, the more chance of rubbing each other the wrong way.
A crucial aspect of apartment/condo living is adequate soundproofing.
Nothing like having the tiny apartment where your neighbor plays in a band, and they all come over between about 3am - 7am about 4 days a week to sort of practice and party at the same time.
To them, they’re just chilling out after work.
The practice is not the challenging part really, it’s the party, with the inevitable love triangles, money/drug disputes, etc.
Interesting about IBM, etc., but your comments on “suburb sprawl” really angered me. While you may hate the suburban lifestyle, many, many people love it. They love the status,” Oh, I live in Big Buck Acres” and “I live in Bigger Buck Acres”. They come to town for festivals or parades, otherwise they love, love, love their suburbs. And more power to ‘em.
And who are you to presume that the elderly should live in 1/2 size apartments? And do VERY well? Are you out of your mind? An 1/2 rent? That will never happen.
It’s people like you that want to take my house because you know how to do better with the land. But it will be okay because “we the people” will be owning and developing the land, after you use the power of government to take it from me.
You speak with disgust about big corporations, but they all started out small, and most had good intentions but money, power and greed trump everything, and no corporation is immune. Your ideas are dangerous.
After 12 Years of Democrat Mayors, Omaha finally elected a Republican, so maybe there is hope to clean the place up.
The Malls I went to as a Kid and Young Adult (Crossroads & Westroads), I would not let my 14 year old son go there, today.
When we were bussed to the near northside (we went from 135th street to 30th street every day) in the late 70’s, it was us just us suburban white kids going to school, getting rocks thrown at our bus from the “local” dropouts our age.
So much for “diversity”.
I’m sure the unemployement rates/ dropout rates and single parent rates in those areas are a lot worse today than when I was a kid and they all moved west into the cheap houses/neighborhoods we abandoned to get away from the crime they brought with them.
I moved to Texas to one of the greatest “suburbs” in the country - Southlake. It is so nice, the whole state of Texas hates us.
We have 2 rules: 1) No Lot smaller than 1/2 Acre and 2) No Multifamily residences (except for 55 and older retirement comunities or $700K+ “Brownstones” downtown).
Our schools are the among the best in the country, the whole town is walkable and we’ve had 1 murder in the last 15 years (a Mexican drug lord Lawyer/informant living in a $1.3M house). Our Police, Firefighters and Teachers are world class and they love working in a place where the kids want to learn, Crime is low and their equipment is top notch.
In Texas, we don’t have Income Tax, and the main source of revenue is Property Tax. Good Neighborhoods have higher property values, so they pay more property tax. Suburban City planners that are smart, realize that Property Values = Money and they do everything they can to keep the Property values high to keep the money coming in.
Please do not misunderstand me. I think walkable communities are great. My husband and I love taking the dogs for a walk in the park then crossing the street to get a loaf of French bread from the grocery store, walking to the post office, etc.
We have a “walkable community” in this city. Of course, the developer came to the city for TIF money to build the commercial areas to serve his walkable community. And the nature trails for his walkable community? Given to the Park Department so the maintenance costs could be enjoyed by the entire city.
In our city the Planning & Development Department has been completely shut out of the economic development process. Of course, they know that high property values=money, but I think the powers-that-be would rather have the prestige of having XYZ project built, rather than deal with the lack of taxes XYZ would bring in. Sad, really.
Great answer, I need to clarify.
I don’t hate the suburban lifestyle per se, since we don’t all have to sit in front of the TV, we may enjoy tinkering in the yard, we may really love barbecues with family and friends, we may live where traffic is not that bad. And if it’s not my version of the ideal, at the end of the day, I have to face reality and make the best of it (actually joyfully, but that’s the hardcore, stringent Reformed in me).
However, there is the reality point of view from a state like NJ that already has suburbs and is running low on farmland. Buying houses and turning them back into farmland would be kinda expensive !
Once there is no more buildable land for new suburban homes, we will simply have X number of them. And for those that love that lifestyle, eventually the limited supply will make the price appreciate.
It’s just beginning to be noticeable now in the annual property tax bill, where in the nicer towns, many of which are fully built, it can get into the $15,000+ range. As homes appreciate, buyers need to have more money to buy in to the area, which means the area becomes more affluent. Homes are improved, more is demanded of schools, costs go up, taxes go up, area gets more exclusive. There are always a few folks that lived in the area for 50 years - who look out of place cuz they’re not so wealthy, but they stay there in their nice little home.
As there is more population, more and more will live in more densely packed housing, like it or not, since the suburbs will be relatively pricier.
As far as “forcing” things...
For each of the 500+ towns in NJ - how the town develops should be rightly left completely up to the duly elected town government, within the bounds of the law, considering that owner’s rights can not be infringed upon, right up to the point of there being a real and just necessity for town-level decisions to be negotiated and finalized at the County then the State level.
I’m simply stating what I believe to be optimal, though perhaps there is a better idea. The fact that I - or any one particular person - has some “wonderful idea”, however, certainly carries no weight other than as a suggestion to a the citizens of a town. It is up to the people of a town to determine, via their process of law, how and where they want to live. Do they want to redo the town center ? It’s up to the property owners and the town, and the property owner’s rights must be respected.
As far as the elderly, I’m just suggesting that if such units were built by local, private developers (preferably not big chains), they might sell well. I see the elderly very often preferring less snow shoveling, yard work, etc. I see them opting for living in large retirement communities where they have a little condo. This idea is nothing more than that, other than instead of putting 1,000 units on the side of a hill on the side of highway, perhaps both young and old might enjoy living together. Back in the day, sometimes kids and the old folks got along very nicely.
Often elderly want to stay in their own home. Everyone today (especially big companies) is trying to grab the old folks’ stuff before they’re even gone. A person that owns property owns it no matter how old they are, and they have every right and legal claim to their property that a young person has to their property. I hate it when the elderly are forced or tricked.
Also, I see transportation being a big difficulty for the elderly. My suggestion is just that with a nice small apt in a good location, they could get their rollator, etc., and walk to the a) store and b) doctor. Or, in a town with a cab, walk to the sidewalk and hop in. Maybe they want to ride a bike, whatever. I just think that they may find a “close” town easier than driving 20 miles every couple days to run their errands. If I get old and I want to remain self-sufficient, I have every right to be left alone and allowed to be self sufficient. I should be able to own my property, etc., without there being some contract that when I die my assets get grabbed. No reverse mortgage, no taking my stuff. Everyone has this right.
I hate the fact that food, housing and medicine costs are purposely run up to the point of overcharging, making it very hard on elderly who are of little means. They often try to pay as little as they can for these things, but everyone is out to trick them. It is no joke to be older and on a tight budget, and the elderly should not be disregarded. I only suggest the small apartment because I see a lot of elderly prefer that, and I think it could financially work out for both the developer and the elderly if done right. Usually developers and realtors want bigger homes that sell for more, and specialized senior housing is sold to seniors. I’m just suggesting possibly a better alternative both financially and regarding buyer preferences.
Housework tends to make elderly who can’t afford maids and don’t have anyone to help them want a small house or apartment. They often simply can’t take care of a huge house and don’t want to. But if they can afford a huge house and they want it, they have every right just like everyone else.
If an elderly person wants to live a different way, more power to them. It’s all just a suggested idea.
No land should every be “taken” by eminent domain, etc., except in the rarest of cases - and ONLY where there is a government FREE of special interests, which are actually pillaging by getting the government to take property. I Hate it, hate it.
I am aware of the small corp that gets big, you make an essential point.
Thus... I always talk about a “legitimate” private enterprise system with “legitimate” competition.
If, for example, I have a propane company, privately held, and I keep growing until I’m the only one left in the state, that means there is zero competition in the whole state. If there is a real government regulator in the state, who is really doing their legitimate job legitimately, they’d ensure that there never got to be only 1 propane company in the state. It’s not hard, just create a merger approval process, and a required split process for cases where the competitor just goes out of business.
It’s not hard to split up such a company, it’s not the end of the world financially, even if the last say 4 or 5 companies are owned by the same guy, having them as separate companies is better competitively than having just one. It’s really not asking too much to have the remaining 4 or 5 be required to have different owners. If I’m that successful that I have 20% of the market in a state, I would have the ability to run a business in a different industry.
I the businessman have to accept that there are some rules.
What’s hardest, though, as you point out, is once a business gets very big and profitable to actually split it up and diversify it. It’s so tempting to just grow like crazy, since the bigger it gets the more political clout you get, which makes more growth that much easier. Gotta know when to say when.
IMHO...
Wow, who’da thunk it ?
Wow, Omaha Nebraska. I always imagine small cities aren’t so messed up; guess everyplace can have its problems.
There are Liberal, Social engineers in every state. About 50% of Nebraska embraced socialism until Reagan, and then about 1/2 of that 50% realized, that the government giving poor people stuff, just makes them greedy and needy (while they remain poor by their own choosing).
As Conservative traditionalist Fled to outside Omaha’s western and southern borders in the 1980’s, the tax base fled with it, so it got to annexing what it could to get some back. The Liberals staying in Omaha is why they still vote Democrats Mayor, when even Bill Clinton never Visited the State while he was President.
A liberal reading this would see this a Rethugican that has no heart. Having no heart is accepting that those 14 year old minorities throwing rocks at our bus in 1979 were “victims of society” and not victims of a welfare state. What they needed was not TV, free food and free housing, but a kick in the @ss from a male adult and the Parents (including the sperm donor) threatened with Jail if the kid didn’t go to (and pass) school.
I agree, it’s far more cruel to lie to the person, induce them to lie to themselves, and let them be enslaved to ignorance and sloth.
Proverbs 23
“12 Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge.
13 Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.
14 Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.
15 My son, if thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine.”
Proverbs 24
“30 I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding;
31 And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down.
32 Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction.
33 Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep:
34 So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth; and thy want as an armed man.”
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