We Bought a Mall

Well, Pat's been busy so your old pal Dante is back. I really haven't had much to write or comment on lately. I know campaign season is supposed to be a big deal but it just looks like a lot of the usual posturing to me. I've turned my attention to something that interests me far more:

Sure zoos are cool and everything, but how about your very own piece of retail history? That's what you can get at the George Allen Courts Building on Feb 7 at 10 am. They're have a good old-fashioned cash money auction on the courthouse steps to auction of the not-quite-dead Valley View Mall in Dallas, TX. The same thing was supposed to happen to Six Flags Mall in Arlington, TX last month but a the last second, the seller pulled out. I find this to be a fascinating phenomenon. In two decades, the enclosed shopping mall went from being one of the hottest pieces of commercial real estate to something that you can't get rid of.

This happens elsewhere, too. In the early 1980's people were just dumping their homes in the Lakewood and M-Streets areas of Dallas to move to new neighborhoods in Mesquite. Nowadays, you can't give away a house in Mesquite while home values in Lakewood and the M-Streets are going for 5x - 10x what they were in the 1980's. On the other hand, someone who bought out in the middle of nowhere in the 1980's and moved to Southlake or Westlake can sell their house for a kings ransom today just to watch the new owner knock it down and build a McMansion there. It'll be interesting to see who the winners and losers are 30 years from now.

I think one important factor in Valley View's decline is that it had competition just blocks away. The Galleria is practically next door. This happened in three places I'm aware of in the Metroplex: here, Six Flags Mall/Forum 303, and North East Mall/North Hills Mall. They each worked symbiotically off of each other for a long time. One was the upscale mall. One was the mall for less affluent shoppers. I guess over time, there just wasn't enough business to go around. Forum and North Hills have both been demolished. Valley View likely will be soon.

Just to throw out some Valley View memories, I bought my first GI Joe toy at the Sears there. (It was Cobra Commander for those of you playing along at home.) I also got lost at that mall once. There used to be an indoor play area there. My mom was watching me and lost track of me. I couldn't find her but headed to the bookstore knowing my dad would likely be there. He was.

So if you have some extra cash and are in the Dallas area on Feb 7, you ought to stop by the courthouse. Do it for the fun. Do it for the excitement. Do it for what is probably the last fully in-tact Sanger-Harris tile mosaic (seen in the main pic of the linked article).

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Happy New Year!

Despite his continued crusade against bicycle transportation, Jeffrey has one of the best 2011 round ups I've seen on the internet.

It includes this:

2011: The year NOPD decided it was okay to pepper spray a Mardi Gras parade but later on became pretty much the only police force to not pepper spray any Occupy protesters.

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In The Streets

In a stunning move of progress-prone action, the City of New Orleans recently decided that it would attempt to design streets before it builds them, at least from now on. What is even more shocking is the idea that such designs might take the needs of pedestrians, bicyclists, and disabled persons into account.

If you've ever tried to get from point A to point B in New Orleans, you know why this is so important. The impact also goes far beyond the transportation alternatives for the folks who break out their bikes to ride to Mardi Gras parades or Jazz Fest. New designs can have an immediate impact with regard to demographics and economics. From The Lens:

Despite a media focus on young, white and preternaturally hip pedalers, the data show that the majority of the city’s cyclists are men of color who don’t have cars and rely on bikes to get around. And the injury rate tracks that: Of the injuries reported between 1996 and 2001, 44 were sustained by black males under 18, but only two in the same age group were white males

While it is troubling that policy makers remain far more responsive to the needs of the "young, white" constituents, the end result is policy that helps many people for many reasons. And let us not forget that this kind of policy is something the city should have been doing already. Urban infrastructure is something that property owners and renters already pay taxes for.

Of course, not everyone is pleased with this development. This is New Orleans, after all, and apparently le bon ton roule is culturally incompatible with competent infrastructure (at least to hear some people tell it).

Some individuals seem to equate this type of stuff city governments are actually supposed to provide for their citizens unprecedented civic planning initiatives as the result of external agitators coming into New Orleans and telling people what to do. Pedestrian, bicycle, and disabled transportation access is apparently considered "restrictive" in some circles.

Even if the concern is founded in the idea that the existence of bicycle infrastructure will lead to the enforcement of bicycle traffic rules, I find that concern unfounded. In the first case, bicycles already have traffic rules to follow, they just aren't enforced. As I've noted many times, selective enforcement of laws and ordinances is a problem everywhere it happens, and this will be no different. The proper remedy is not to deny fellow citizens access to infrastructure, but to engage the political system to ease the ordinances as written. Related to that, I know many bicyclists who break these traffic regulations with regularity simply because there exists no safe, legal alternative. Providing safe, legal alternatives - things city governments should be doing anyway - and you may actually see enforcement issues reduced.

Additional concerns have been raised raised regarding the idea that planning will slow the process of fixing New Orleans streets. Maybe this is true - effective planning and implementation of infrastructure upgrades may take additional time and cost additional money. But I posit that the reason New Orleans' roads are in their current state of entropic decay is that past "upgrades" and "repairs" were poorly planned if planned at all.

Driving around New Orleans, you can see many places where the city simply threw three inches of asphalt down over previously existing streetcar and railroad tracks, cobblestones, the South Louisiana mud, or any combination thereof. Most of the time, this layer of asphalt never took drainage into account. Add that to the unique (and unenforced) city concept that the property owner has to maintain the sidewalk in front of their property. Oh, and give the responsible city agencies a tiny budget to keep up with all this. Put that all together, and what do you think happens? A city whose infrastructure and design plan doesn't go further than buying asphalt, laying it down, and calling it a "street."

Maybe if the city continues that type of behavior, again and again, we'll get a different result. But I'm thinking it won't. So you can consider me pleased that the city government is actually taking some sort of design models into account for future planning purposes.

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People Camping in Parks

According to the reality-denial right wing, the Occupy folks are the ones who shut down the Supercommittee.

Yes, the same Occupy folks who are getting the crap kicked out of them by local law enforcement are somehow able to leverage a secret deficit committee in the US Capitol.

I guess you can just add this to the massive credibility deficit being run up by the American right. At least we can give them credit for consistency - it takes some real dedication to go this far down the rabbit hole.

But this represents the run of the mill right-wing defense of their bankrupt ideology: find an "enemy," prove that it has halted some progress, and blame it on the left. That's the right's only political idea anymore. I mean, watch how it works:

Huge majorities of Americans are coming to the realization that the entire US economic system is anything but a "free-market" and more resembles feudalism where the already wealthy get to take advantage of tax breaks, subsidies, and loopholes to pay far less than their share of taxes while the middle class gets stuck with the bill. Not only that, but these same "job creators" take that meme to all levels of government are are able to score even more subsidies or government contracts, further enriching themselves. Now that large numbers of Americans are figuring this out, they want to end that system, and work towards a system that includes more tax justice.

Folks like Norquist and his cronies on the right don't want that to happen, and have proven that with the economically crippling Bush tax rates, the behavior of sponsored GOP allies in the states, and their engagement in class warfare over any conversation involving increasing taxes. Now that they realize most Americans would sacrifice the top marginal tax rates before government services like schools and roads, they've got to come up with some boogeymen to confuse the issue.

(And let's not get crazy, we're simply talking about a return to Clinton era tax rates. Last time I checked, the wealthy did pretty well for themselves back in the 90's.)

That's how we get to the part about Occupy Wall Street having some sort of influence on the right-wing led failure of the Supercommittee. It simply doesn't matter how ridiculous that idea is on its face.

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Downtown Wal-Mart

Athens, Georgia has literally spent hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars over the decades making material improvements to and marketing its Downtown. This has been maybe the one consensus item in Athens decision making. Hell, they spent hundreds of thousands building a Greenway along the banks of the Oconee River through Downtown.

Now, the new mayor has thrown away any idea to positively develop those investments, and repeated denials earlier in the year, there are now plans to build a giant WalMart in Downtown Athens. It would back up to the river and greenway, and heaven knows what it will do to traffic on Hwy 78 (which was a constant state of gridlock when I was in undergrad 10 stinking years ago).

I know the space they're talking about. I used to play music right across the street. I know that land is currently underutilized, and could use some redevelopment.

But the kind of development needed there needs to match the scale of the university and the Downtown, as close as it is. This is an area where high-density and dynamic economy is needed, not another outlet to sell cheap plastic crap from China.

If you feel the same way I do, be sure to go and sign the petition. Even if, like me, you don't live there any more.

After all...

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What Democracy Looks Like

OccupyStuff gets a taste of what "democracy" looks like beyond the protesting, shouting, and chanting. Guess what they found out?

Democracy is hard. It requires endless meetings and taking minutes and sitting through speeches from people who don't just disagree with you, but disagree with the fundamental concept about which you are having a conversation. It requires building consensus among competing and diverse interests. Much of the time, nothing of substance gets done, and you just have to make a call about how best to maintain or replicate the seemingly useless process itself so you can do it all over again.

That's the whole "problem" with "democracy." Or even the representative republic in which we live. This type of thing is a feature, not a bug, and there really isn't an easier way to go about it.

What I do find interesting is that, in their rejection of participation in the already established structures of governing - school boards, city councils, city council subcommittees, state representative elections, etc. - the OccupyStuff crew has effectively established its own subcommittees in which you get all the frustration of participation in democracy with none of the direct affect on policy that participation in "the system" would provide.

Well, at least they got on TV.

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Not-For-Profit Power Companies

Wouldn't that be amazing? We could also go one step further and make them member-owned corporations. That would really revolutionize the game, wouldn't it?

Think this is some pie-in-the-sky idea? Well, Georgia, that reddest of red states, already has 42 of them, and has had many of them since the Great Depression. Hell, the lowest power bills I've ever paid in my life were to Walton EMC when I was living in Oconee County. Some newer ones have even made a committment to clean energy.

You don't even have to go all the way to Georgia to find a model for replication. There are some right here in Louisiana, too.

This is just more evidence that, if you despise the greedy, evil corporations and banks and industries, there are always options available to you in a functioning free enterprise economy.

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Ideas vs Tents

Hell, even the demonstrators themselves were having problems with maintaining a tent city.

"It's not about the park, it never was," he added. "It's Occupy Wall Street, it was never 'Sleep at Wall Street.' The message got confused in the camping, the expansion."

That makes a lot of sense. The OccupyStuff had a powerful, consensus building narrative it was working from with massive demonstrations against Wall Street and the financial industry. The 99% campaign, while oversimplified, put a face on the problems with the unsustainable American economy; a face that too many in the media and the political castes have labeled "the moocher class." Those factors combined to change the entire national conversation for the first time since I've been alive.

And then it became about people camping in parks, as if that was ever going to affect positive political change for any reason. All that did was open the conversation to stories about human pathology that comes from close quarters.

I guess we'll see if they can turn the corner.

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Your Aristocracy At Work

A new report from Republican Senator Coburn indicates that American taxpayers subsidized American millionaires to the tune of $30 billion.

Subsidizing the wealthy. Picking winners and losers. Oligarchy instead of free markets. Class warfare from the top down.

Now where have we heard that before?

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Admissions Policies

It is about time some folks started turning the "affirmative action" debate on its head and pointing out that the real advantages in college admissions are reserved for folks born to alumni.

The alumni - in a country where many non-whites were not allowed to attend colleges until the 50's or 60's, where the public education system has never been truly integrated on terms of educational quality and justice for minorities, and where financial mechanisms of aid were siphoned away from minority candidates - who are overwhelmingly white.

But we've been told for years that we have to remove race consideration from the admissions process because it might give some unfair advantage to someone based merely on their circumstances of birth.

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