The parking issue is moot. It’s not the government’s job to provide you with free parking – it’s your job to have a garage, or pay for metered parking. In neighborhoods that are dense enough for parking to be a problem, density is usually high enough for transit to allow low car ownership. In Uptown Manhattan there are entire neighborhoods of mid- and high-rise buildings with no off-street parking, where you can easily find free parking spots – people just take the subway and don’t buy cars.

There was no more desirable place to live than South Shore where I grew up. If it was safe, I would live there today but it’s not. My mother lived in 7447 South Shore Drive, a 33 story apartment building in South Shore, until just before her 100th birthday in 1998. Toward the end, she was one of three remaining white residents. I spent a few days with her every quarter until she died three years after leaving South Shore. The last few years, her nieces could not visit because they feared crime. I rented a parking space for her even though she didn’t own a car. When someone came to visit, it was always filled by another car. In the 1996 election, she was not allowed to vote although the polling place was in the lobby of the building where she had lived in for 30 years. A Democratic poll watcher challenged her and she was turned away. These are not huge matters but examples of why the whites eventually all left, even those determined to stay.

My point about the apartments was that they were allowed to deteriorate and weakened the neighborhood as less desirable elements moved into apartments first and the crime came with them. One issue about apartments that was not an issue then is the parking. I have served on a planning commission and small cities are constantly dealing with parking issues around apartment complexes because the codes are too lax. It’s not unusual to have four car owners in a two bedroom apartment near a college. Single family home neighborhoods nearby then find there is no street parking.

I’m amused that someone cites Wikipedia over the NY Post but such is political debate these days. I will leave the argument about taxes, spending and the viability of states to the remaining residents of California as I will be leaving for Arizona soon. I already have a home there and was quick to get Arizona plates for my truck there as California plates are police magnets for minor traffic violations. Fleeing Californians are not popular anywhere as it is feared they will bring their voting preferences with them.

Thanks for a great post.

And yes, I know more than the NY Post, which is a tabloid. See Wikipedia for New York’s recent population trend.

Higher state taxes and spending are both correlated, but insignificantly, with better performance on the following three stress tests used by the same data set: increase in unemployment from 9/08 to 9/09, foreclosure rate, and increase in food stamp participation.

So no, taxes and spending don’t hurt states economically. They don’t significantly help, either, but they definitely don’t hurt.

I don’t personally think that any reductivist theory every explains the whole truth. That is, there isn’t one or two simple explanatory variables that explain everything, everywhere. The world is complex, multi-variate, and dynamic.

I will say this, Mike, clearly unscrupulous practices played a role in the rapid racial turnover in various Chicago neighborhoods. I suggest, among other things, looking up “block busting”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting

I missed this the first pass. Yes, there was white flight. Crime will do that. My father was attacked on his front porch. Kids walking down the alley pulled down the branches on two cherry trees we had in our back yard. The neighborhood had been safe as only 1950s cities were safe. Left wing theories about crime destroyed them. Giuliani brought NYC back but the Daleys have not done as well with Chicago.

I think you see racism in normal human behavior. People don’t want to live with crime. Black don’t want to live with it either but they have got to get away from racist preachers like Wright and race pimps like Jackson and Sharpton who convince them not to cooperate with police. My sister lives in Beverly, on Chicago’s far south side. Those are beautiful homes near her but there are still murders in the next block and kids are robbed walking home. People avoid that pathology and that is a lot of the story about the dying of cities.

So you know more about it than the NY Post. I will let you two fight that one out.

I still think you are kidding me and eventually you will tell me that you really don’t believe these left wing chestnuts you are putting out here. If not, I’m embarrassed for you.

Similarly, here’s a list of states by per capita state taxes. Florida ranks 12th last, Arizona 13th last, Nevada 21st last. Among the epicenters of the housing crash, only California has above-median state taxes.

What you say about New York is just wrong. Yes, some people leave – and some people move in. Overall the city has gained residents since 2000; based on metrics like education spending and crime rates, it doesn’t seem to have had net tax base loss.

What you say about apartment buildings being undermaintained is wrong, too. There are plenty of places where owner-occupied homes deteriorate – for example, Detroit. And there are plenty of places where low home ownership coexists with well-maintained buildings, such as Manhattan’s Upper West Side, or any public housing project in Hong Kong and Singapore.

What happened on the South Side isn’t about renting. It’s about incentives for racial discrimination. As blacks started to move in, developers whipped up scares, encouraging white flight. White owners sold their houses at a discount, and white renters left as well. The landlords and house flippers then invited blacks in, overcharging them for rents and mortgages and keeping the down payments whenever they defaulted. The government looked the other way, since at the time whites still considered blacks beneath contempt. At times, the government even encouraged this, by razing intact neighborhoods and building housing projects on the land. This describes Newark and East New York every bit as well as the South Side.