The inexorable decline of American cities

[estraudi]

But where are people living who come into the US illegally when normal citizens can't afford to live there?

They are living in places where other illegals have gained housing. Section 8, Private landlords and such. I currently lease from a private owner landlord. They rent indiscriminately to illegals.

Mine didn't lease to them for years. Now? She does. I moved from Phoenix to a very nice suburb(still with a private landlord), as a brown guy fed up with illegals' bullshit(brown flight?) and they STILL manage to be able to live in my neighborhood and now as my neighbors. It boggles my mind they can afford these suburbs, big shiny wheeled lardass SUV'S, new phones. It's insane.

Society of St. Vincent de Paul even pays HALF of illegals' rent sometimes. I know this because my boss has rental properties galore and does not shy away from renting to illegals. I've seen countless checks come in from these "charities" to pay their rent. The illegals don't even have to show up to pay their rent at our place of business!
Arrogant non-assimilating assholes. I purposely and continually talk to those who don't speak english IN english. The fuck, I'm not going to be made to feel like a foreigner in my own fucking country.

 

[d'Aversa]

https://archive.fo/mTiOU

 

[BlueMark]

40-50 years from now, unless America collapses or has a civil war San Francisco and LA will have hipster types 'rediscovering' them again.

When I was a teenager I listened to a talk by some economist or urban planner and he talked about cycles of cities that go from establishment, to industrialization, to economic downtown, to crime infested, to 'hipster cool', to bustling again, to be left again when everyone wants to be there and the prices become too high relative to other parts of the country.

San Francisco has already gone through the cycle of getting rediscovered by hipsters during the post 2008 tech boom. The city is now one of the most expensive in the world.

SF and the surrounding areas have painted themselves into a corner: there isn't enough housing for all the new jobs being created there. The homeowners block new construction. Whether this was originally to preserve the character of their neighborhoods or to keep prices up, the result is that more recent homebuyers who bought basic single family homes at over $1 million now have incentive to join the original homeowners in opposing further development.

Add to this the spread out geography of the SF Bay Area and the lack of proper public transportation. Even if new housing were built around the bay, there isn't the public transportation infrastructure to support it. Traffic will get worse if the tech industry continues to boom. And with such high costs for both land and labor, I don't expect that the bay area will ever build sufficient public transit to mitigate the traffic.

On top of that, with the growing numbers of homeless in areas around the bay, homeowners don't want better transportation because it will bring the riff raff into their neighborhoods.

The homelessness, high cost of housing, lack of development, and lack of public transportation all perpetuate one another in a convoluted vicious cycle. On its current path, the SF Bay area epitomizes California's transformation into a third world country where there is only rich (homeowners, wealthy) and poor (immigrants, homeless)

 

[MusicForThePiano]

Can confirm about Chicago. Have family that live there, go during the summertime to visit and check out the many street fests ,avoid the taste like the plague, it's not the fun bustling tongue adventure it was in the 80s and 90s. Some friends I know on CPD say during the heat of summer there can be up to 30 murders a night, most of which the shite news like CNN or FOX or ABC will never report. They will never report all the blacks killing each other but its life for these people day in, day out. If you are white and in the wrong place you will get shot or run over, happened to my friends cousin, the guy was a burnout and a big of a tard, who went to the west side to sell drugs and he almost had to have his leg amputated from a hit and run.

It's hard to say this without sounding biased, but uncontrolled crime committed exclusively by blacks or feral indigenous types from either several generations of welfare breeding / no-father no-work -ethic, or the unknown mystery meat mixture from south of the border, enabled by their liberal white malefactors, with special encouragement, are the reasons all large American cities go to shit. There is no other reason why these cities suck. Its a spectrum of how much control the leftists have over the municipalities and what constitutes criminal code. On the lowest end of the spectrum, LA and SF exist as a near free-for-all for these opportunistic savages being funneled into attacking Euro-America. People get so irritated when I bring this up but "minorities" (which really are majorities if you consider the entire world) are being used as biological weapons in the war of one white people (allegedly) vs another, the home keepers, the traditionalists, the ones who keep their identity. I can't really say which cities are at the opposite end of the spectrum, because it would seem that rogue libtard elements of government programs like immigrant relocation seem to strategically place hostile immigrants in the most unlikely and majority white cities and towns ever (see pirates in Minneapolis).

If you are black, the liberal white expect you to ignore your own roots and thousands of years of history (which may be bereft of innovation, but not of culture and warriors) and opt to take the weak way out by basing your existence off of muh slavery and muh reparations because it will continually weaken you and their enemy, the heritage whites, at the same time. The thought of a free black nation that doesn't require liberal whites helping them or jews secretly steering the wheel scares the libtards almost as much as a white nation without any kin traitors and sellouts conspiring to destroy it.

It's a race to the bottom to destroy all, first the heritage whites, then all the useful idiots they send to kill their culture in the first place. Starting in the big cities, the cosmopolition root of evil per se, then seeping its way into smaller cities, towns, communities, neighborhoods, homes, etc. The only thing different between here and the USSR is the demographics, the strategy is the same, so the means to that end is all that they are tweaking.

 

[infowarrior1]

Everyone in my hometown is fatter and sicker
However I don't believe the phenomenon to be limited to my town

Bad food and drink. Bad lifestyle.

 

[Nordwand]

The biggest problem I've noticed in large cities is the insane ideology of the people living in them, and how that ideology is making them miserable. The unfortunate thing is most of them are too far gone and brainwashed to change their mindset, or realize they're voting for their own destruction.

I live in Seattle, and it's a shame to see what it's turned into. Socialists, rainbow flags everywhere, bums, people addicted to tech, crime, drugs and filth everywhere. You can tell it used to be normal here, but now it's like a freak show and well past the point of no return. You can see the misery in everyone's eyes too.

I'm from Chicago, which sucks ass too, but the West Coast is ground zero of degeneracy and these stupid Californians are spreading it all over. I stopped in Denver before Seattle. It wasn't as bad, but it will get there.

Ditto the UK.

 

[Salinger]

One of the things that bothers me the most is America's ugly, depression-inducing architecture.

Strip malls like the one above are there to turn us into consumers while at the same time steal from us a sense of belonging. You can't feel nostalgic about some corporate run Baskin-Robbins the way you can about an old fashioned ice cream parlor run by a lovable old man who always gave you extra chocolate sauce when you asked for it.

These chain stores and big box stores are very imperceptibly killing the human spirit.

You'll notice in the picture that there's no benches to sit on to enjoy the view. And even if there were, you wouldn't want to because the area is devoid of trees and beauty. It's just one store after another surrounded by concrete for parking.

There aren't even any town centers built around these stores for communities to gather. They are strictly designed to get you to go in, spend your money, and leave so the next consumer can use your parking space to do the same.

This what most communities are made up of these days. Strip malls and office sprawls. The architecture is boring, lacks any type artistry, and has no relation to the town it's built in or its history. All these buildings look the same. They add nothing aesthetically to the town and only end up causing a sort of malaise and unhappiness amongst its people.

Welcome to America.

 

[d'Aversa]

One of the things that bothers me the most is America's ugly, depression-inducing architecture.

While I don't necessarily disagree with your sentiment, I could say that what you've presented is definitely better than this.

https://i.imgur.com/lm2Q9W3.png

Just think how bad it could be.

 

[PharaohRa]

You have to be careful in saying that all of America's cities are facing decline. Cities that are blue-pill and blue zone central such as Philly, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, LA, San Francisco can be argued that they are bonafide shitholes whereas cities such as Boston and New York stay that are in the blue zones stay afloat because of their international appeal even though New York has become WAY too expensive for the average 20 something guy to establish his career. Other cities in Red States are growing and are still able to find that balance but even in 20 to 30 years sometime, they could potentially succumb to the same entropy engulfing current cities.

 

[Athanasius]

I was going to add a similar perspective. I think we are just seeing things change.

NYC was the 'detroit' of america through the 80s. Nashville was pretty terrible. Detroit was losing jobs, but still nice, so was Flint, Gary, Milwaukee, upper minnesota, southern Wisconsin.

Fast forward 40 years. Those midwest areas did not improve and are crime ridden. NYC did experience renewal.

Its my opinion that Detroit and Milwaukee are on the verge of renewal along with other midwest cities. In 15 years they will be the "austin TX and asheville NC" kind of places that hipsters move to and then overprice and then wreck.

40-50 years from now, unless America collapses or has a civil war San Francisco and LA will have hipster types 'rediscovering' them again.

When I was a teenager I listened to a talk by some economist or urban planner and he talked about cycles of cities that go from establishment, to industrialization, to economic downtown, to crime infested, to 'hipster cool', to bustling again, to be left again when everyone wants to be there and the prices become too high relative to other parts of the country.

What I think is different this time around is the insane 'head in the sand'/self hatred that liberals in the declining cities currently have. They will put themselves right in the line of fire/conflict with the decline whereas previous generations were smart enough to engage in 'white flight'

That's an optimistic view but I don't think it's reality. America 40 years was much more homogeneous than today: more white, more Christian-influenced, there was less of an anti-white infrastructure, the cities didn't have the same level of progressive craziness, and you didn't have the flood of illegals. America looks more like something out of The Fate of Empires.

I keep coming back to this, and to his credit it's something Pat Buchanan was saying a generation ago: What are we going to unite around? The left is attacking everything: religion, morality, heritage culture, language, common understanding of the law, and common ethnicity. Vapid, inverted pop culture is a house of sand that can't play that role.

 

[Coja Petrus Uscan]

These chain stores and big box stores are very imperceptibly killing the human spirit.

This is one of the things I like most about Serbia.

You can walk though a whole city and all you will see is family-owned shops, with the exception of a few banks and one or two chain supermarkets, one of which is idea. Unfortunately I saw a Lidl (cheap German supermarket chain) had popped up when I went back this year. So Globohomo is moving in.

I buy all my food from the market.

Home made raspberry cordial - $2
1Kg of Chesnuts - $2
Huge bag of peppers (capsicum) - $3
Ajvar - $1
Home made pasta - $0.90 / Kg
1Kg of Mladi Sir (cottage cheese) - $3

 

[Athanasius]

I never can get over how utterly stupid liberal cities are. A recent Colin Flaherty podcast was an introduction to this growing phenomenon of fare-evasion, which has been exacerbated by cities deciding to not go after it. Now they are reconsidering after large budget shortfalls.

Problems like this are easily solved. There's just no will to do it.

 

[Simeon_Strangelight]

NYC has declined so far that it's barely recognizable from when I grew up there. All of the middle class locals - who were born, raised, and continued to live in their neighborhood - have been forced out by astronomical, artificial rent increases.

What is artificial about them? And what neighborhoods are you speaking of? Manhattan has been gentrified and expensive since the early 90's. You may not be old enough to remember this, but before that a lot of it was a shithole. Crime was rampant and you couldn't drive in or out of the city without being harassed by guys with dirty rags purporting to clean you windshield, but really just shaking you down for a dollar (the windshield was dirtier after they were done). SO, I'm guessing you're talking about Queens? Brooklyn?

our quality of life tok a hit as the city around us showed signs of crumbling. Crumbling how? Culturally and quite literally - the buildings and streets are actually falling apart, with potholes abound in major roads/intersections. The air is terrible, even borderline unbreathable.

Ummmm....i've lived here the better part of 50 years, and would say the exact opposite has happened. With all the new construction, what exactly is "crumbling". It is, admittedly, much more expensive. But there are nicer (and more affordable) places to live in NJ, Long Island, and Westchester.

And the amount of new homeless people I've seen around the city is nothing short of shocking....SF and Seattle are a few other shining examples of this troubling trend.

Homeless under DiBlasio is higher than under Bloomberg, when it was virtually non-existent. But it is a FRACTION of what it was in the 70's and 80's, and NO WHERE NEAR what they have in San Francisco. Not in Manhattan, anyway ...what NYC neighborhood are you speaking of??

Manhatten is an example of an effective city-state where the rich create income and wealth barriers making it almost impossible for the diversity to enrich them - add combat drones and they don't have to give two shits if the rest of the country is a Mexico-Brazil-drug den.

Something similar happened in certain areas in California as well - you have entire areas with median household incomes (including the toddlers and the non-working wives) of 200k/person. That means that the husbands make the x-amount of that. Those public areas sooner or later will have private security added or get special protection. Problem solved when it pertains to the elite.

Such a system can be upheld even better as the country is flooded with low-IQ immigrants who will be bamboozled with stupid non-working solutions while the middle class gets ever more eroded.

Any resistance to it is frankly very illusory. The Euro-Americans who created the US are minorities in the younger generations already. The only remaining hope is a split which the elite won't allow for sure - they didn't back during the secession war even if the South had liberated all slaves and sent them up north (especially not then).

Some European countries can remain by 2100 since their demographics are far more conducive to resistance and it would take decades to reach US status.

The future of the US is Brazil - being nicely shown in a picture from Sao Paolo:

 

[PharaohRa]

NYC has declined so far that it's barely recognizable from when I grew up there. All of the middle class locals - who were born, raised, and continued to live in their neighborhood - have been forced out by astronomical, artificial rent increases.

What is artificial about them? And what neighborhoods are you speaking of? Manhattan has been gentrified and expensive since the early 90's. You may not be old enough to remember this, but before that a lot of it was a shithole. Crime was rampant and you couldn't drive in or out of the city without being harassed by guys with dirty rags purporting to clean you windshield, but really just shaking you down for a dollar (the windshield was dirtier after they were done). SO, I'm guessing you're talking about Queens? Brooklyn?

our quality of life tok a hit as the city around us showed signs of crumbling. Crumbling how? Culturally and quite literally - the buildings and streets are actually falling apart, with potholes abound in major roads/intersections. The air is terrible, even borderline unbreathable.

Ummmm....i've lived here the better part of 50 years, and would say the exact opposite has happened. With all the new construction, what exactly is "crumbling". It is, admittedly, much more expensive. But there are nicer (and more affordable) places to live in NJ, Long Island, and Westchester.

And the amount of new homeless people I've seen around the city is nothing short of shocking....SF and Seattle are a few other shining examples of this troubling trend.

Homeless under DiBlasio is higher than under Bloomberg, when it was virtually non-existent. But it is a FRACTION of what it was in the 70's and 80's, and NO WHERE NEAR what they have in San Francisco. Not in Manhattan, anyway ...what NYC neighborhood are you speaking of??

Manhatten is an example of an effective city-state where the rich create income and wealth barriers making it almost impossible for the diversity to enrich them - add combat drones and they don't have to give two shits if the rest of the country is a Mexico-Brazil-drug den.

Something similar happened in certain areas in California as well - you have entire areas with median household incomes (including the toddlers and the non-working wives) of 200k/person. That means that the husbands make the x-amount of that. Those public areas sooner or later will have private security added or get special protection. Problem solved when it pertains to the elite.

Such a system can be upheld even better as the country is flooded with low-IQ immigrants who will be bamboozled with stupid non-working solutions while the middle class gets ever more eroded.

Any resistance to it is frankly very illusory. The Euro-Americans who created the US are minorities in the younger generations already. The only remaining hope is a split which the elite won't allow for sure - they didn't back during the secession war even if the South had liberated all slaves and sent them up north (especially not then).

Some European countries can remain by 2100 since their demographics are far more conducive to resistance and it would take decades to reach US status.

The future of the US is Brazil - being nicely shown in a picture from Sao Paolo:

New York City is an effective city-state for the time being mainly because of the environment it is located in. Few cities are structured such that an island can serve as the hive for the rich and famous and keep the riff raff in "designated" areas. However, when SHTF, Manhattan can be turned into a prison island and the rich can move somewhere else.

 

[PathofAugustine]

I've been on BART in the Bay Area. A black homeless dude just whipped out his junk 3 feet in front of me and pissed all over a seat. Twice. Within 10 minutes. The minority underclass in the Bay Area knows that in Clown World they get a special pass and piss and poop everywhere without any kind of fear of punishment. Purse, laptop, wallet and cell phone snatching is out of control. There are illegal vendors selling stolen/counterfit goods right inside of the BART stations. I now only use Uber/Lyft if I have to get around in the Bay Area, as the public transit is just downright dangerous.

 

[Simeon_Strangelight]

I've been on BART in the Bay Area. A black homeless dude just whipped out his junk 3 feet in front of me and pissed all over a seat. Twice. Within 10 minutes. The minority underclass in the Bay Area knows that in Clown World they get a special pass and piss and poop everywhere without any kind of fear of punishment. Purse, laptop, wallet and cell phone snatching is out of control. There are illegal vendors selling stolen/counterfit goods right inside of the BART stations. I now only use Uber/Lyft if I have to get around in the Bay Area, as the public transit is just downright dangerous.

Who could have foreseen that this law had consequences?

URINE LUCK: San Francisco Says You Can Pee On The Sidewalk

https://www.dailywire.com/news/urine-luck-san-francisco-says-you-can-pee-sidewalk-aaron-bandler

The argument likely went that most fined/arrested for public urination were non-White, then the law was racist, ergo it's legal to piss in street while whipping your dick around.

 

[BlueMark]

A surprisingly self aware article by a SF resident about what's happened to his city:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea...o-ourselves-San-Francisco-Now-we-14516537.php

For years we have prided ourselves on being a place where anything goes. Anybody could come here and reinvent themselves. It was part of our DNA. “San Francisco is a mad city, inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people ...” Rudyard Kipling said more than a century ago. We loved that quote. In fact it’s inscribed on a railing on the waterfront along with other quotes from notable persons praising the city by the bay.

For years we tolerated, even encouraged, street characters, believing them to be part of the elusive essence of San Francisco. But now the streets, particularly Market Street — the city’s main stem — are clogged with what appear to be truly mad people, talking to themselves, shouting.

Why? Because the community made a decision to allow untreated public mental illness. If questioned about it, many civic leaders will trace the problem to Ronald Reagan, who as governor decided to close mental hospitals and treat mental illness in community centers. Reagan left the governor’s office nearly 50 years ago, but we are still feeling the consequences of that decision.

...

Some decisions have turned out well. For example, when the Army pulled out of the Presidio, the citizens decided the best use of the huge old military post was as a mixed-use park instead of housing. But even that decision had consequences: San Francisco now has a housing crisis created in part by a principle of economics. Scarcity drives prices higher.

...

We’re the city where anything goes, but maybe we’ve gone too far. We’ve made a lot of decisions that have kept this city beautiful but made it unlivable and unaffordable at the same time. And now we have to live with the consequences.

 

[IM3000]

Just an info, I often have trouble seeing links, twitter videos etc. It just shows up blank, this thread is another example. Surely does not affect only me!

If on Firefox, click on the little green lock symbol. There you can unblock the site's content.

 

[TooFineAPoint]

I don't get the fairytale around "Mom & Pop Shops".

Those shops suck ass, and are the worst of both worlds: overpriced, understocked, and lacking in both convenience and expertise.

I remember having to deal with Mom & Pop Shops for most of my life, and it was nearly always terrible. I am glad they are going under. International corporations and boutiques are the better options, in my opinion. You have convenience and low price (due to economies of scale and advanced logistics) in the chain corps, and you have quality and expertise in the boutiques.

When I travel to America (minimum once per year for more than a week), I am always pleased with both. Especially compared to Canada and Europe.

 

[Leonard D Neubache]

I don't get the fairytale around "Mom & Pop Shops".

Those shops suck ass, and are the worst of both worlds: overpriced, understocked, and lacking in both convenience and expertise.

I remember having to deal with Mom & Pop Shops for most of my life, and it was nearly always terrible. I am glad they are going under. International corporations and boutiques are the better options, in my opinion. You have convenience and low price (due to economies of scale and advanced logistics) in the chain corps, and you have quality and expertise in the boutiques.

When I travel to America (minimum once per year for more than a week), I am always pleased with both. Especially compared to Canada and Europe.

I think it depends. My trouble is that when I go to big-box stores they're always staffed entirely by minimum wage, minimum age millennials who couldn't find their ass with both hands.

If I know what I want, where to find it and how to use it then the low prices are great. Otherwise it's a 30-60 minute game of "find the dodgers then work them around to finally admitting they have no fucking clue where the item I want is, whether they even have it, or for that matter how it works". Then they offer to find someone else who can help and promptly piss off to lunch "because I'm not getting paid enough for this shit".