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The City of Long Beach is advertising for planning consultants to carry out their plans. Will they be hired if there is some danger that the consultant will say "We have studied the situation carefully and we believe the city should not impose zoning restrictions on property owners and their uses of the land. Nor do we believe that eminent domain is justified." Would such a consultant be considered or hired?...

...The City of Long Beach is advertising for planning consultants to carry out their plans. Will they be hired if there is some danger that the consultant will say "We have studied the situation carefully and we belive the city should not impose zoning restrictions on property owners and their uses of the land. Nor do we believe that eminent domain is justified." Would such a consultant be considered or hired? The planning consultants are accomplices before the fact to legalized theft. They represent in Hannah Arendt's words "the banality of evil." So too do the officials who hire them.

One of the lessons we have learned in newspaper work is the importance of the long view. It often takes dozens of editorials, written over years, to get a law passed. We thought of that yesterday when we read a headline in the Daily News, "Feds eye bldg. sale at housing projects." The news was that the regional administrator of the federal department of Housing and Urban Development, Sean Moss, said the New York City Housing Authority should consider selling some of its buildings in the city's expensive neighborhoods. It's an idea this paper and its columnists have been pushing...

In the 75 years that followed [the Great Depression], this once-mighty metropolis lost 55% of its population,, one of the 20 most quickly deteriorating [metropolitan] regions in the nation. 27% of Buffalo's residents are poor, more than twice the national average. The median family income is just $33,000, less than 60% of the nationwide figure of $55,000. Buffalo's collapse...—seems to cry out for a policy response. Couldn't Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer use their influence on Capitol Hill to bring some needed relief? The truth is, the federal government has already spent vast sums of taxpayer money over the...

Automated Parking Garage Solutions Hold Key To Urban Development By Carole Fradette Israel News Agency Hoboken, New Jersey ----July 8....... The recent spike in oil prices and growing concern for the environment has sparked renewed interest in mixed-use urban development. Today's leading urban planners and downtown developers are rethinking their allegiance to single-use zoning practices and focusing on building communities in order to create neighborhoods in which people can live, socialize, shop, and perhaps even work - all within a comfortable walking distance. While large suburban yards were recently the sought-after American ideal, today, high gas and petrol prices make...

(Updates death toll, shots fired near interior minister) GAZA, March 27 (Reuters) - Raw sewage erupted from holding pools and swept through a village in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, causing at least three deaths and many injuries, Palestinian rescue workers said. They said dozens of residents of Gaza's small Bedouin Village were still unaccounted for after the sewage overflowed from ground-level treatment pools, knocking down many makeshift homes. Hospital officials said at least 15 people were injured. It was not immediately clear what caused the sewage to erupt from the pools. Palestinian Interior Minister Hani al-Qawasmi, who rushed...

No tax gifts to a big-box anchor would be necessary if the neighborhood around the Skyland Shopping Center in Southeast were in an economic position to support a high-end retailer. That has been the fundamental flaw in the thinking of city officials since they began acquiring parcels of the 18.5-acre tract through the deployment of eminent domain. If the neighborhood east of the Anacostia River were more demographically appealing, all sorts of big-box retailers would be competing against one another to land the choicest locations at no cost to city residents.

LOS ANGELES - It's been called "the skiddiest of all Skid Rows" — 50 square blocks of abandoned factories, burned-out storefronts, rundown hotels, dingy bars and seedy liquor stores, interspersed among hundreds of makeshift homes, most of them built with abandoned cardboard boxes and stolen shopping carts. Located an easy walk from City Hall, police headquarters and other downtown seats of power, this last stop for the destitute has been a fixture of Los Angeles for nearly a century. But with a burgeoning real estate market bringing luxury apartments and condos to the edge of Skid Row, city leaders are...

FREEP THIS POLL! The Pasadena Star News is running a poll (possibly in support of "inclusionary housing" and other interventions in the housing market in Pasadena)as follows: Do cities have a responsibility to prevent gentrification? Yes No Go to this link and enter your response: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ (scroll down the front page under Today's Forecast and Quotables to the "Cast Your Vote" Box:

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Michael Willis has designed an airport terminal in San Francisco and a 750 million-gallon water treatment plant in Los Angeles, but nothing on the architect's resume gives him a blueprint for rebuilding New Orleans. Not since the Nazi blitz of London or the bombing of Hiroshima have architects and urban planners seen a project on par with resurrecting this hurricane-ravaged city, according to Willis. "The scale of it overwhelms the normal city planning process," he said Saturday during a break at the Louisiana Recovery and Rebuilding Conference, a state-sponsored event organized by the American Institute of...

A Wreck of a Plan Look at How Renewal Ruined SW By Charlotte Allen Post Sunday, July 17, 2005; B01 When I read about last month's Supreme Court decision permitting the city of New London, Conn., to use its power of eminent domain to seize working-class homes so that developers can build a waterfront office, residential and hotel complex, my first thought (after pitying the homeowners who thought that their property rights meant something) was: Oh no, not another misbegotten urban renewal program.

BALTIMORE -- Last year, Terence Trader and a friend paid $77,000 for a crumbling, six-bedroom home here with garish yellow asbestos siding. After partially renovating the property, which abuts two boarded-up homes, the former social worker agreed to sell it last month -- for roughly $300,000. The buyers, a young couple from Washington, D.C., say they plan to settle down here. "It's kind of a diamond in the rough," says Jennifer Hoover, a doctoral student in psychology, who is buying the house with her husband.

Jersey City's downtown waterfront market is one of the strongest real estate areas in this country. Developers pay millions to buy small parcels of land. Colgate sold an acre for $10 million. Before Bret Schundler ran for office, he spoke against tax abatements at council meetings. When he ran for office, his campaign literature (Special Election 1992) candidate Schundler said, "... reducing sales and property taxes for all will promote far more jobs than tax abatements for the powerful few." Previously, Mayor Cucci gave abatements linked to affordable housing. Avalon Cove, an abatement that Mayor Cucci turned down because it...

To all good people of countries other than the US- WE are now officially a rogue nation- please don’t blame the citizens of the US as we have been taken over by Nazis. Trust us, we are more frightened than you. There is no possible way that Bush is the most popular president ever. There is no way that he won this election. It is a lie, supported by fraudulent elections and corrupt government officials. There is no popular support for Bush, only Bush freepers on the net paid for by homeland security to convince other nations and naive US...

You all took turns laughing because I am an extreme left, but I laugh at you because you people proved me right. You delete remarks for no other reason but you don't like the thoughts expressed, (though mine was left for assument) inactivate my account, and preach free speech for all. My words weren't for the purpose of starting a war, only to say, "hey, what do you think about this?" I didn't get one intellgent arugment. Name calling yes, insults yes, nothing thought provoking. So you cane prove me right yet again, and delete this post and inactivate my...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - In the vast Baghdad slum of Sadr City, Shiite militiamen direct traffic, search cars, set up roadblocks and even claim to make arrests. Photo AP Photo Special Coverages Latest headlines: · US warplanes strafe Najaf as world oil prices go through the roof AFP - 49 minutes ago · U.S. Forces Wage Major Offensive in Najaf AP - 55 minutes ago · Iraq Militants Claim They Seized 3 Arabs AP - 55 minutes ago Special Coverage On Wednesday, there were no police in sight, as the fighters set tires ablaze to melt the road's asphalt, apparently to...

State prison officials have sent a warning to a large number of New Jersey urban police forces, saying their officers could become targets of attacks by violent street gangs. Department of Corrections investigators say the Bloods street gang is taking an "aggressive posture toward law enforcement" and has called for an "uprising" in New Jersey's largest cities and in the jails, according to internal documents distributed by prison officials to authorities around the state. In response, the State Police will host a meeting Monday to discuss the threat with local police officials, including those from cities where the threat seems...

By now, it should be obvious that the government-sponsored initiative to renew this country’s large cities which began in the 1930s and continued largely unabated in the East and Midwest through the 1960s and beyond has been a profound and devastating failure. More homes were destroyed than were ever built; once-great metropolises like Detroit lay in ruins; once-thriving neighborhoods were overwhelmed with drugs and crime; buildings that were built to last centuries fell to the wrecking ball mere decades after they were built; an entire generation of young people, both those who came to the cities and those who were...

After decades of decline, American cities are on the comeback trail. Among others, three former Republican mayors have left bold imprints of success for their successors to follow: Stephen Goldsmith of Indianapolis, Bret Schundler of Jersey City and Sen. Norman Coleman of St. Paul. Each has contributed to a new philosophy of government acting more as an efficient business and treating residents as valued customers. Goldsmith: Competition Works We begin with Stephen Goldsmith, who served as mayor of Indianapolis from 1992 through 1999 and presided over its revitalization. Along the way, he has become the unofficial dean of the...

Urban renewal millions yield little Federal and state investigators are asking where the $70 million Miami paid out to rehabilitate the Overtown community has gone. BY OSCAR CORRAL ocorral@herald.com First of two parts Politicians have poured more than $70 million of taxpayer money in the past decade into one of Miami's poorest neighborhoods, the Overtown area, but the community has little to show for it, a Herald investigation has found. Promised affordable housing has not been built. Empty lots dot areas where multifamily buildings once stood. Homelessness is on the rise. Money intended for redevelopment has been squandered. And now...

Quality Markets closed its store in the Central Park Plaza last weekend because it "underperformed." That's one of those politically correct euphemisms that masks some hard truths about reviving the [black] East Side. If companies expect to make money in fertile black neighborhoods, and if blacks expect the same shopping opportunities offered others, they have to get past such niceties. In plain English, "underperformed" means three things: lousy product, poor service and theft. All three were in play here. Would-be shoppers arriving this week to find the store closed painted a picture of management, workers and customers who collaborated to...

<p>I assume most people will say the leading cause of death in the African-American community is violent crime, cancer, AIDS or heart disease. The correct answer is abortion. The fact is that more African-American babies have been killed by abortion during the past 27 years than the total number of African-American deaths from all other causes combined.</p>

Is this Los Angeles, the land of the Jetta and the Jaguar, the freeway interchange, the molasses-thick traffic? You couldn't tell it, at least on weekday rush hours, by going to Union Station. The place is full of commuters. None in a car. They pile out of subway stations on their way to work. They run, shoulder to shoulder, to Metrolink trains. They sit on leather seats waiting for Amtrak and stand — with briefcases and baseball hats and book bags — waiting for buses that shuttle to points all over the region.

Hi folks. I'm starting to put together a critique against the policy document of Canada's own RHINO party, the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. Specifically I'm looking for information that could be used to refute the portion of PCPC policy located here: http://www.pcparty.ca/En/policy/Policy_Document.asp#3c I believe that there are conservative critiques of America's own experience with Urban Renewal and HUD and so forth during the Johnson era out there but I'm having a hard time finding them so far. Any help would be deeply appreciated.