Carol, Just Look Back

On her blog, Carol Coletta of Smart City radio and local downtown activism fame writes:

Walking up and down Union, Monroe and Madison between Front and Third, I saw very few people on the street, new (and old) vacancies, and a disregard for the public realm that is beyond belief. MATA's trolley extension has left Main Street an abomination, and the new sidewalks are, in at least one case, too narrow to walk on.

Gee, Carol, it was civic idealists and urban "planners" such as yourself who also got the ear -- and the money and power -- of City Hall who inflicted those very things on us!

Main Street was a thriving shopping district. Urban planners, awash in social idealism and Great Society dreams, wanted to rip out streets (and parking) to create "festival marketplaces." It killed the business district and Main Street has never recovered.

Beale Street was a thriving black business district going through the same down time affecting Main Street. The very clubs and atmosphere that whites like you groove on today as "authentic" were razed by "urban renewal" experts who knew better. What's left of Beale today is a big drunk zone with a patina of authenticity and a lot of cash registers. The Mecca of Tan Memphis has been replaced by the Disney-fied Beale of today.

We didn't need any trolleys, downtown or down Madison. But again, "studies proved" it was a win-win for Memphis. Developers and builders were ecstatic. They don't care what they build or whether it makes sense; they just want to get paid. Federal grant would be "lost" if we didn't build it. So, we did. Business all along Main and Madison paid the real cost; businesses at Overton Square and Cooper-Young fear having that social idealism inflicted on them.

You, Carol, are just the newest generation of the very same social utopians who have been tearing up our cities and wasting billions of citizen's money in an effort to out-think regular people and make them behave. Or to subsidise your own rose-colored lifestyle. Nice work when you have the ear of City Hall to pay for it all.

Too bad I don't benefit. I live in Midtown.