As you can see this is a neighborhood with high transit accessability, and yet the areas near the station has been almost completely demolished.
This area is the Garfield Park neighborhood, which you may remember from a previous post was a hot spot for violent crime.
This image is from 2009. Unfortunately I haven't been out there to take 2012 pictures but I know that this neighborhood has seen a few more building razed over the last year and a half. An interesting question is: is this policy effective at combating violent crime?
I'm admitting that I didn't realize tearing down buildings was a way to combat crime. But now that I think about it a little more (how buildings are probably reported as abandoned and then torn down), I see why. If a building is abandoned it's assumed people will use it to do "bad" things like sell drugs or pimp prostitutes.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe the buildings are town down because they're really ugly.