Local son John Tierney, now with a little newspaper called the New York Times, dismantles Pittsburgh's redevelopment history in today's column. A sample:
I recommend a trip to my hometown to see the long-term effects.
Pittsburgh has been the great pioneer in eminent domain ever since its leaders razed 80 buildings in the 1950's near the riverfront park downtown. They replaced a bustling business district with Gateway Center, an array of bland corporate towers surrounded by the sort of empty plazas that are now considered hopelessly retrograde by urban planners trying to create street life.
At the time, though, the towers and plazas seemed wonderfully modern. Viewed from across the river, the new skyline was a panoramic advertisement for the Pittsburgh Renaissance, which became a national model and inspired Pittsburgh's leaders to go on finding better uses for private land, especially land occupied by blacks.
Bulldozers razed the Lower Hill District, the black neighborhood next to downtown that was famous for its jazz scene (and now famous mostly as a memory in August Wilson's plays). The city built a domed arena that was supposed to be part of a cultural "acropolis," but the rest of the project died. Today, having belatedly realized that downtown would benefit from people living nearby, the city is trying to entice them back to the Hill by building homes there.
In the 1960's, the bulldozers moved into East Liberty, until then the busiest shopping district outside downtown. Some of the leading businessmen there wanted to upgrade the neighborhood, so hundreds of small businesses and thousands of people were moved to make room for upscale apartment buildings, parking lots, housing projects, roads and a pedestrian mall.
Tierney is right. It is not that Pittburgh has been behind the times, or that planners have failed to incorporate new ideas. Remember that Renaissance I not only led to Renaissance II, it created a stampede for similar projects around the country.
Those projects do not work. They just don't. Unless you are one of the lucky few who gets to steer the public private partnership towards your own end. Tierney does a good job of pointing out who that group typically does not include. Namely minorities. Isn't it interesting, then, that these are the people these projects so often claim to be helping.
Rubbish, all of it.
People can complain all they want about the evils of the market and the Corporate Meanies who run it, but it is hard to imagine that even the most exploitive Robber Baron could have destroyed the Hill District and East Liberty as utterly as the Renaissance projects did--all with the full support of local elected officials. That support, in fact was the democratic imprimatur and political cover the exploiters needed.
Yes corporate power is dangerous. And yes, municipal authority can be dangerous. But bring the two together and you have a real problem.
Let's think twice before we develop another one of these monsters.
Comments