Downtown Minneapolis - News & General Topics

[FISHMANPET]

I'm sorry you hate people that have ever lived in a suburb.

Some people choose an urban lifestyle spontaneously, and some people have it marketed to them and decide it's a good fit for them. But either way they're living in the city, and there's a whole bunch of financial and political and environmental advantages to that. I'm not really sure what your goal is, should central cities be places of poverty where the only people that live there are the ones that have no other choice, and anyone with any amount of money (including the vaunted middle class) is forced into the environmentally and socially destructive suburbs?

Like, dude, I'm sorry capitalism exists I guess?

[FISHMANPET]

Ugh why do I always forget a point I meant to make until after I've clicked submit...

It's not like people moving to the suburbs was some spontaneous decision that happened without any intervention from anywhere. They were influenced by government policy and advertising and popular media and all these things.

What is the stereotypical American dream? It's the suburban home with the white picket fence. And for whatever reason, people on both sides (urban and suburban) have begun to attach their identity to the kind of environment they live in. So if someone needs a little poke to see that "actually, living in the city could work for me" then is that the worst thing in the world?

And again, capitalism exists. Developers are making profits, yes, but that doesn't make them evil. And they want to continue to make profits, and, again, that doesn't make them evil. let them meet the demand, even if they've created some of that demand. Because you know what happens if they can't meet that demand? They're gonna keep creating it, driving up prices on what little of the product does exist, and making them more profitable. Because, you know, that pesky capitalism thing.

I see this weird anti-gentrifcation bend sometimes where it seems the only solution to the problem of "gentrification" (and I put it in scare quotes because it's such an overly used term that it's lost all meaning, beyond "economic change that I personally don't like) is to just make sure that places stay crappy enough that nobody else will want to move in. And I'm not saying that's your view, but I'm certainly getting that vibe from you.

[amiller92]

OK, I guess I was wrong. The tour caters to suburbanites-who-don't-know-anything-about-downtown-and-might-not-live-there-otherwise AND housing-development-insiders*. My mistake.

I'm really struggling to see why we wouldn't want those people to move downtown.

We're supposed to believe that the new interest in urban living is a spontaneous, grassroots cultural shift, and that developers are simply building to meet that new demand.

Who thinks that its all of those things? No matter what's driving it, it is an unadulterated good for more people to live in denser, more walkable, more sustainable areas that facilitate less driving.

Moreover, we have a central business district (and its dying retail sector) that really needs more downtown residents, suffering from a failed policy that left it with almost none.

Which is why the Downtown Council has programs like this.

But marketing programs like this show us that both the demand and the supply are being generated by the same profit-motivated real estate interests.

Oh no! Not evil profits.

[TroyGBiv]

I worked for RT Rybak at the Downtown Council back in the late 1980s and we were marketing downtown living back then... the New Town in Town (Cedar Riverside) and the Towers were marketing downtown living starting back in the 1960s. Suburbs, cities and large scale housing developers have been marketing their "product" and communities since Hausmann redesigned Paris... The truth is that there is a massive cultural shift in America... ( I am a researcher so yes - this is based on actual research) ... a shift across all demographics to see the appeal of "urban living". People don't realize that most major cities' core neighborhoods across the world are expensive to live in... Paris is rich in the core and poor in the suburbs... There is some conflict right now between the wealthy options for downtown living and the displacement of low income and mid income residents. I am hoping that this does level out soon - building booms always tip the balance for a period of time... Being a Whittier resident I am pro- diversity in my neighborhood and city... but I also know that diversity means diversifying the population by income and education as well... I live on a block with million dollar houses, section 8 housing, apartments and group homes... it doesn't get much more extreme than that. The forces that a building downtown are not out to sell the city and downtown short... they are trying to do their craft ---building structures for people. The issue is that the suburbs with few (VERY FEW) exceptions are discriminating against income diversity. They are concertedly fighting against low income housing, group homes and other social services providers... That is the true "evil" if there is any "evil" at all. The disproportionate number of social services in the city should absolutely lead development and city efforts to provide more options for all income levels. But we have to be realistic about land use and land values and allow the city to grow and change.

[seanrichardryan]

So, you live on Pillsbury between Franklin and 26th?

[beige_box]

I don't hate people who have ever lived in a suburb. But I think that the type of suburbanites who need all sorts of amenities (and, probably, heavy racist policing) to be goaded into living in the city are probably not the sort of people who should be the primary target for occupying new housing. Especially when there are plenty of folks already living in the city who are being forced out (or even into homelessness). Again, it just doesn't seem like the real demand, from the lower and middle incomes who comprise the majority of the population, is being met at all. I understand full well how the counter-argument goes, that new high-end housing allows lower-income folks to stay in their homes, but I just don't see it happening. Would many of the people who end up renting in LPM Apartments have rented in a Loring Park brownstone or a Whittier duplex if LPM didn't exist? My bet is still no, not many.

I'm not saying profit is evil qua profit. But increasing the share of high-income housing in the central city while letting supply stagnate for the lower incomes is, well, maybe not "evil", but a glaring policy failure if you have any real concern for equity, with the potential for negative social consequences that reverberate for decades. I'm just saying that profit motives are profit motives, and nothing more. Profit motives will never solve the city's housing problem, because that's not what they are designed to do, so let's stop pretending they will.

TroyGBiv, your Paris examples are really troubling. Haussmann's redevelopment of Paris displaced thousands of people, caused massive social disruption, and had the ulterior aim as a creating an urban design that made it easier for the military to put down the city's frequent armed uprisings emanating from the city's working class. Meanwhile, yes, Paris is a very expensive city, and the region's poor and marginalized mostly live in the suburbs. Do you perceive the social dynamic therein to be a normal, good thing -- what with the severe societal division, and the occasional massive riots over the lack of opportunity and connectivity in those suburbs?

[FISHMANPET]

His point is that people have always been marketing a different kind of living. Also your first statement implies that basically everyone in the suburbs is by default racists means that yes, you do in fact hate people that live in the suburbs. I'm not sure there's much value in discussing fairness and equality with you when you've just with a single stroke of the pen written off like 75% of the metro population as not being worthy enough to exist.

[beige_box]

I want to address this separately because it cuts to the heart of the matter:

I see this weird anti-gentrifcation bend sometimes where it seems the only solution to the problem of "gentrification" (and I put it in scare quotes because it's such an overly used term that it's lost all meaning, beyond "economic change that I personally don't like) is to just make sure that places stay crappy enough that nobody else will want to move in. And I'm not saying that's your view, but I'm certainly getting that vibe from you.

Well, I mean, this is sort of true about me. But the difference is that I don't consider any of the places we're talking about as "crappy" at all. In fact, that's the reason developers are seeing dollar signs in these neighborhoods. But moreover, plenty of folks have wanted to live in central Minneapolis since long before the new construction booms. And lots of people very much want to live in Elliot Park, and Phillips, and the Northside. The real question is, why do you consider those types of people "nobody"?

You'll notice I don't use the word "gentrification" very often, because yes, it is vague and has been so wantonly thrown around that it's hard to use. So I go for "displacement." Why am I against displacement? Because it means breaking up communities. It means teenagers who used to be able to walk down the block to visit their grandmother now have to take the bus to Brooklyn Park to do so, something they only might have time to do once every few weeks. It means people who knew they had a reliable bus that could take them to their job now have to make a choice between getting an auto loan or adding hours to their new, multi-transfer commute from Roseville--which in turns means paying more for their child care services. It means the end of friendships, the end of social networks that provide support and stability to the people who need it most. And for some people, it means not having anywhere to go at all, except the streets.

There can be "gentrification"--influxes of wealth that create opportunity and vibrance in a neighborhood--without displacement. But current policy is not achieving that. Where do you stand? Are you pro-displacement?

[FISHMANPET]

Sounds like a really good excuse to build more housing.

Another thought I had, is that even if I accept your patently ridiculous premise that everyone in the suburbs is racist, your preferred solution seems to be to keep them in their homogeneous white society where they'll never interact with a person that's different from then in any meaningful way. And since they're the majority of people/voters, I'm sure that will lead to politics and policy that are beneficial to the poor and minorities that are left in the core.

[amiller92]

I don't hate people who have ever lived in a suburb. But I think that the type of suburbanites who need all sorts of amenities (and, probably, heavy racist policing) to be goaded into living in the city are probably not the sort of people who should be the primary target for occupying new housing.

Let's see if I follow. We don't want people who are interested in moving downtown to move downtown unless they organically decide to do so without any marketing. Um. Okay. Seems like anyone who can be so easily convinced probably isn't too far out there on the evil terrible racist spectrum.

One of my wife's friends sold her house in the suburbs and moved into Laurel Village. Should we feel bad about having encouraged her to do so? Does it matter that we only actively encouraged her after she mentioned she was thinking about it? Or are we culpable for having set an example in the first place?

Especially when there are plenty of folks already living in the city who are being forced out (or even into homelessness).

This is the real disconnect. You seem to believe that building new housing forces people out of existing housing. I do not see the causation.

Would the people you're worried about be moving in to the buildings on the tour if it wasn't for this marketing? If not, I don't know what you are on about, other than saying you don't like people you think are "rich."

But most fundamentally, I don't know how you seem to think not building market rate and luxury housing will result in more affordable housing. To the extent that the two things are related at all, the are positively correlated. If you say no to building what people want to build, you get nothing, not more of the thing you wish they'd do instead. If you say yes, you get at least some filtering.

[beige_box]

His point is that people have always been marketing a different kind of living. Also your first statement implies that basically everyone in the suburbs is by default racists means that yes, you do in fact hate people that live in the suburbs. I'm not sure there's much value in discussing fairness and equality with you when you've just with a single stroke of the pen written off like 75% of the metro population as not being worthy enough to exist.

I know dozens of people who grew up in the suburbs, hated it, and moved to the city. They are good people who are drawn not only to walkability and convenience, but to diversity, community, and tolerance. They didn't need to have their hand held by promoters who led them from one expensive restaurant to the next in order to decide to do so. By contrast, many suburbs are zones of extreme cultural homogeneity and social isolation, carefully enforced by toxic neighborhood associations and vile police departments. My fear is that these latter tendencies are being imported into these new developments (which, as many have pointed out, are often designed as vertical gated communities of sorts). I wish you and all the others would make a good-faith effort to understand the distinction I'm making here, instead of just trying to tell me how I feel. I'm not the world's best communicator but I'm trying.

[beige_box]

The fundamental disconnect is that you think that new housing means more supply to meet existing demand, no matter what. I think that the new developments are designed and marketed such that they create new demand without addressing existing demand. Meanwhile, at the lower income levels, the population is increasing as well, but that new demand is not being met, so people get forced out anyway. I am happy to agree to disagree on this. We'll see how it plays out in ten or twenty years.

As for the idea that importing relatively racist suburbanites (who I by no means think is every, or even most suburbanites, but I suspect is still the overarching trend within these new developments, relative to their surroundings) into the city will suddenly transform them into tolerant cosmopolitans... well, it seems a bit utopian to me (Paris is a great example of where this has not happened), but in any case, if current trends continue, we'll never find out -- because the poor and people of color will mostly be living in first-ring suburbs and the Northside.

[schmitzm03]

His point is that people have always been marketing a different kind of living. Also your first statement implies that basically everyone in the suburbs is by default racists means that yes, you do in fact hate people that live in the suburbs. I'm not sure there's much value in discussing fairness and equality with you when you've just with a single stroke of the pen written off like 75% of the metro population as not being worthy enough to exist.

I know dozens of people who grew up in the suburbs, hated it, and moved to the city. They are good people who are drawn not only to walkability and convenience, but to diversity, community, and tolerance. By contrast, many suburbs are zones of extreme cultural homogeneity and social isolation, carefully enforced by toxic neighborhood associations and vile police departments. My fear is that these latter tendencies are being imported into these new developments (which, as many have pointed out, are often designed as vertical gated communities of sorts). I wish you and all the others would make a good-faith effort to understand the distinction I'm making here, instead of just trying to tell me how I feel. I'm not the world's best communicator but I'm trying.

For my part, I am trying to make an effort to understand your point (as evidenced by the questions I was asking you yesterday), but you've been resorting primarily to stereotypes. You've pointed out little to no substantive evidence besides your own anecdotal experience to support your claims. For example, on what basis can you claim to know the mindsets of the majority of the people who are moving into luxury apartments? Why are they apparently evil while the people you know who have moved to the city are good people? I'm not sure how you can make these claims. What about displacement? Are people being forced to move out of the city or are they choosing to move out of the city? It is likely some mix of the two, but what is it precisely? I'm sure you could assert you know one way or the other, but how do you know? Support your claims in some way other than simply antagonizing people and you might find that people actually want to engage in a meaningful conversation. Keep up with your self-righteous generalizations while pointing out how horrible everybody is who participates in this forum (with little to no actual knowledge of who these people are or what they do in their lives) and I imagine you'll soon find that nobody is paying attention.

I want to understand where you're coming from and (believe me) I share your passion for social justice (my life and career has been completely devoted to it). I just don't quite understand why you insist everybody drop every other topic they may want to discuss and engage in your way of seeing these issues right now and all of the time. I'm not convinced that luxury apartments or the people who move into them are necessarily the problem. I think our major societal problems are much more complex and intractable. Let's discuss these complex issues while choosing to respect each other and our different viewpoints.

[FISHMANPET]

OK, so we should banish those people to the suburbs where their terrible views can fester without any opposing view? Do you think those are the ones that are likely to even take this tour, much less actually move into the core?

For 70 years the American dream that's been sold is a suburban home with the husband and wife and their 2.3 kids and 2 cars and some people literally can't even imagine living their life any other way. So since we've been poking them in one direction for the last 70 years, maybe we can poke them in the other direction and say "yeah, you can do this."

I'll also point out that in general I have actual proposals and ideas of things that can be done. You seem much more focused on what's wrong with ideas present (and that's fine, I know my ideas aren't always perfect) and without having any proposals on your own. Look, I don't have any idea how to immediately put every single person alive into a housing unit that they want at a price that they can afford. I have ideas about how we can shift things so that as time goes on these problems become less serious, and part of that is acknowledging that by doing nothing for so long we've trapped ourselves in a situation where it's gonna hurt some people no matter what. And that comes off pretty elitist coming from a young white guy who can afford to rent his own single family home while in the apartment across the street, and in other apartments in my neighborhood, landlords are charging tenants who don't speak any english fines for opening their windows or calling to request legally required maintenance.

And I don't have any idea to get all of them into safe, affordable, humane, dignified housing right now in this instant. But neither do you (other than vague calls for a construction of public housing on a scale not ever seen in this country, and without any firm ideas on how to actually make that happen). I do believe that in the long term, more housing supply, at all levels, is the only way to provide humane housing (and how insane is that it could possibly be controversial to state a tautology like "to provide housing we need to provide housing").

But of note, the vast majority of development is happening in parking lots or otherwise unused lots, so there's very little displacement happening. Now if you're concerned about induced demand due to new housing, then I guess we're back to the idea of keeping a place crappy so nobody else moves in. Emphasis on the else since you missed it last time. I'm completely aware that people live in these places, it's not like we're jungle explorers hacking through the underbrush into virgin rainforest where man's eyes have never touched. These are real places where real people live. And maybe some more people can live in those places?

[FISHMANPET]

For example, on what basis can you claim to know the mindsets of the majority of the people who are moving into luxury apartments? Why are they apparently evil while the people you know who have moved to the city are good people? I'm not sure how you can make these claims

Man this is a really good point. By making a sweeping generalization about people that live in the suburbs without any real knowledge of them, aren't you in many ways just as bad as the people you're trying to condemn? It's like saying Some of my best friends are black, but...

For the record, my wife and I are friends with a couple that live all the way out in Shoreview, and I'd probably put the woman on the "racist" side of the spectrum, but she doesn't hold ill will towards minorities, she just hasn't had much experience with them so she doesn't realize the problem with saying "Well I think all lives matter."

[grant1simons2]

The American dream for a lot of my peers is to go to college, get a stable job, pay the debt, rent an apartment, live in the city, think about family later. It's a lovely thing to see change. I used to live in the suburbs, not by choice but by will, and now have escaped to live in the city.

[amiller92]

The fundamental disconnect is that you think that new housing means more supply to meet existing demand, no matter what.

I think that new housing means more supply. Period.

I think that the new developments are designed and marketed such that they create new demand without addressing existing demand.

This is going to sound dismissive, but it's really not: maybe, but so what?

Meanwhile, at the lower income levels, the population is increasing as well, but that new demand is not being met

Okay, but what does the new market/luxury building have to do with that?

so people get forced out anyway.

Hold on now, because this is the crux of the discussion. Demand, whether "organic" or induced, may force people out of existing housing by driving up prices.

Building more supply, by definition, cannot do that. Not building more supply will not stop it unless all of the demand is induced.

There is nowhere in the city where all of the demand is induced.

So, again, how does not building market/luxury units help the less affluent? Are you assuming that not building it will mean that more affordable housing will be built? Why?

As for the idea that importing relatively racist suburbanites (who I by no means think is every, or even most suburbanites, but I suspect is still the overarching trend within these new developments, relative to their surroundings) into the city will suddenly transform them into tolerant cosmopolitans...

They are willing to move into the city, which makes them already more cosmopolitan than most. And, honestly, I'm not really comfortable with any assumptions about who is how racist. I don't think either of us know.

And even if they are, I think you're significantly underrating the power of familiarity to change people's attitudes.

[FISHMANPET]

Beige box, I'm going to reply here rather than on Twitter, but I'm not opposed to the government building subsidized housing. If I've somehow given that impression then that was a mistake. As I said in the Nye's thread, I'm in favor of all of the above. My objection to your points is that you seem to be in favor of only building subsidized housing and opposed to any other type of housing. And it's that specific opposition that I take issue with.

Sent from my phone

[MNdible]

Have we really let Beige take over two threads now, neither of which are more than tangentially related to the topic that he insists we discuss with him? Mods, please relocate these to an appropriate thread in Anything Goes and clear it out of here.

[TroyGBiv]

So, you live on Pillsbury between Franklin and 26th?

yup!