Comment 45750

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted August 15, 2010 at 18:21:30

It's important not to confuse who's responsible for downtown's ills by introducing classist, ageist, ableist and racist assumptions. Poor, downtrodden people are using downtown, and spending what little money they have there.

Wealthier people are not. It isn't homeless people who are buying up buildings and leaving them to rot, nor is it "people on scooters" who refuse to shop downtown because they don't like the looks of marginalized people. This always ends the same way - a policing blitz that targets everyone who looks poor (it's happening again right now).

I've lived in the middle of downtown - used to be able to see the City Centre out my bedroom window. It was dirt-cheap and they didn't ask for a credit rating. And everything I could think of was available within a five minute walk, once I knew where to look. Buying homes around downtown, especially in some of the nicer but undervalued neighbourhoods (like the North End or Deleware), costs a fraction of what similar homes would go for in other areas. If you're having a hard time living downtown, you're not trying.

Not everyone who's dirty and tired-looking is homeless or a crack addict - some of them work for a living. And every time you take money you could be spending downtown and take it to Limeridge or Meadowlands instead. If you're rich, and you want to see more rich people downtown, try setting an example, instead of just whining from the suburbs, which only makes the "image" problem worse.

"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford

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