Liberty City: An Eye Opening Look Into Miami's Ghetto

[Keith-N-Jax]

Stop with the highway excuse. Bad choices, bad parents, and laziness. Lets start there first. Not everyone can be Puff Daddy and Beyoncé.

[Keith-N-Jax]

No just stop with the excuses and take responsibility for your own actions.

[Wacca Pilatka]

I'm a black guy who believes in cause and effect. As a whole, we've never recovered from the damages of the slavery and Jim Crow eras and we probably won't for several decades. That's probably another entire discussion to have though.

Highways as a form of urban renewal isn't exactly absurd. It's actually been pretty well proven throughout the years. Many of our mid-20th century expressways took out the economic hearts of older black communities (as well as other minority districts throughout the country). The placement of high density housing projects, black flight (due to desegregation...those who had the means.....left the city just like their white counterparts), a declining inner city industrial base, and 1960s riots all played a role to destroy what the highway's didn't.

Lake, out of curiosity, have you read "The Big Roads" by Earl Swift?  Many fascinating stories on this subject.  The desperate fight by middle-class black communities to save their neighborhoods from I-70 in Baltimore, only to see the neighborhoods decline just because of the threat of the highway's approach, is chilling.

[Keith-N-Jax]

No just stop with the excuses and take responsibility for your own actions.

unless you are a corporation or a planning board.



Well I'm neither and I still graduated high school, raised by a single parents and certainly didn't have everything I wanted. You have rich kids who fall by the waste side also with no highway, so was it a stop sign at the end of the street? We lived right off Beaver st next to I95, some us made good decisions some bad. People make neighborhood decline not highways!! 

[I-10east]

Well I'm neither and I still graduated high school, raised by a single parents and certainly didn't have everything I wanted. You have rich kids who fall by the waste side also with no highway, so was it a stop sign at the end of the street? We lived right off Beaver st next to I95, some us made good decisions some bad. People make neighborhood decline not highways!! 

+1000

[thelakelander]

They say a rising tide lifts all boats. This is certainly true with urban development.

Create an environment where all the people who have the means to avoid it, do, and I'll show you a blighted community.  The color of race really doesn't apply.  Of course you'll have some exceptions (ex. me, Keith, etc.) but we're just that.......exceptions.

If there is a goal to improve the overall population, we have to find ways to make exceptions become the rule.  That won't happen by taking the Bill Cosby approach of "I got mine, now you take personal responsibility and get your own." Personal responsibility is a huge part of the equation but we can at least attempt to develop our communities in a manner that better facilitates personal improvement, as opposed to reinforcing and stimulating the proliferation of negativity.  This is the reason most communities don't purposely build high density housing projects anymore.