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aemeijers

On 3/29/2011 9:08 PM, zzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 17:39:45 -0700, wrote:

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
m...

A lot of it is availability. Nobody gets upset about supermarket
redlining.

Some folks do, I recently saw a news story about how few supermarkets are
located in the poor parts of Detroit, it's a fraction of how many there
would normally be in an area with that population. The result is less
availability of healthy foods to the people who live in those areas, and
various activists and politicians are trying to lure more stores into
servicing those areas.

Ever wonder why?

Lack of available food (hunting, gathering, or sold retail) is one of
the limiters of carrying capacity. Most humans and animals, if they
can't find food nearby, move elsewhere. Once a city gets so bad that the
profits merchants think they can make there are outweighed by the
expenses of doing business there, guess what? They go out of business or
move. 'Food Desert' is the yuppie buzzword for the condition. Various
governmental units and do-gooder groups are trying to bribe/guilt
companies into opening new stores, and a few have made it and are doing
okay for now, but the sad truth is, a lot of these old urban areas never
will come back to life. I feel sorry for the folks that have lived there
fifty years, and don't have the money to leave, or are too scared to
leave familiar surroundings, but pouring tax money into endless
'redevelopment' programs almost never succeeds. It would be kinder to
pay these people to move elsewhere, and probably cheaper. Bank the land,
tear down the buildings that are past sensible repair, clean up the
polluted sites where possible, and put a package together that some
developer may risk money on. One of the few Detroit redevelopment
success stories in last 20 years is a neighborhood where they tore
everything out, including the old streets, and got a developer to build
a modern subdivision. People actually wanted to live there, and the
houses sold well.

--
aem sends...