Out and about

More urban prairie exploration went down to-day!

The wooded wastes immediately to the northeast of downtown are rather vast, encompassing several city blocks of undeveloped property. Concealed in the crook of the Interstate, this dense forest in the heart of a major metropolitan area is both fascinating and puzzling all at once.

Not that this area was always undeveloped:

The city street network still criss-crosses the area. On this very street, houses stood until a couple of years ago.

At least the city keeps the grass clipped and manicured to a reasonable level. This could be a scene from a park for all the casual viewer can tell.

A few noble stragglers remain among the woodlands.

Just on the opposite side of the Interstate are the Capitol Park and Spanish Town with their dense urban environments.

In the declining light downtown skyscrapers make their presence known, hovering in the distance beyond the growing wildlife.

Here's a better photo, from the lighted side:


Walking back thru the neighborhood, one sometimes encounters these charming scenes:

And who said Baton Rouge doesn't have grace and class.

You can never go back

(Graphics heavy poast this evening since I am tired of typing today.)

A while ago I paid a visit to that lost paradise, the Lower 9th Ward of Orleans Parish:



Now having largely reverted to its feral natural state in the post-K world, the storm events only vastly accelerated the ongoing process of urban prairie creation which has been occurring for many decades now:












This is the ultimate lost city, the urban prairie at its most spectacular, rivaling Detroit in its scope and breadth, presenting a visage of peaceful open fields and country lanes where there had once been a dense urban neighborhood largely engulfed by poverty, violence, and despair.

Of course, in this case, most of the damage occurred all at once due to natural disaster. Detroit's problems are a disaster of another sort.

A memorial to the genocide victims has been constructed at the foot of the Claiborne Avenue bridge:





The future portends little hope for a revival. With the area already in decline before the storm, and development practically uninsurable, fate does not bode well for redevelopment of this neighborhood. I believe that, along with the rest of the city east of the Industrial Canal, it will eventually revert to the swampland from whence it came. For the purposes of reducing the destruction to human life and property in future storms, this may be the best and proper fate.

As dey say: You can never go back.

Potpourri

It's 6:30 PM and the only thing worth watching on all of cable TV, with its 70 channels and which costs me over $50 a month, is a cruddy Matlock rerun.

So I turn to Headline News and encounter the bloviating of Glenn Buck (sic), telling us how desperate the Amerikan people are, that they are "crying out for a leader" in these times of peril.  Yes, times are perilous indeed, but the last thing we need is a Leader.  You would think, given that our faith in past and present Leaders has been shattered time and time again, we would reject anyone claiming to lead us.  But the Leader Principle is the last thing to die in the fascist mind. Even as the walls crumble around them, they cry out for a Fuhrer to lead them by the nose to the gas chambers.

Yet he also says, despite the imminent collapse of civilization, that it will all be okay, since "we are Americans, and we are resilient."  Now he sounds like Oprah.  No batch of psychologizing and doublespeak can prevent the coming disaster.  It will have to be faced in all its gory monstrosity, sooner or later.

In other news, Rush has been provided a contract extension for his right to impinge on the air, until 2016. I highly doubt, by that time, that radio as a technology will exist, due to the philosophies of Rush and his fellow travellers. Thanx, Rush.

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Brought to you by the inner city, here are some rare urban prairie images!





Not two months ago there were houses (occupied homes, too!) on these very properties which now lay vacant and bleaching in the summer sun, the green wilderness of prairie grass rising rapidly to reclaim this once urban land into the jungle.

The loss of the houses was likely no tragedy; they were dilapidated and weren't rare or special specimens of architecture.  But the disappearance of any structure from the built environment removes part of the urban form and only serves to accelerate the process of decivilization - a constant devolution from the intelligent and man-made to the bovine and animal.

What productive use will this property be put to?  Likely nothing. This patch of green will likely continue to expand, as the bleached bones of the inner city give up the ghost.

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Thought this photo was appropriate for the end of the day:



The essence of our city - largely urban banality somewhat tempered by natural beauty which attempts to assert itself from time to time.

The parking lot you see here is for a restaurant that is considered a local landmark.  Can't say much for its surroundings, however.

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A short photoessay, entitled Death of a Building!

The old State Welfare Department building (aka the A. Z. Young Office Building) was constructed by the state in the 1950s, and was a fairly decent example of Mid-Century Modern architecture, if nothing else positive could be said for it (considering what ridiculousness transpired inside its walls).  But as all things tend to go down in the Stick, progress came along - in this case, because the state decided it wanted a brand spanking new Capitol office complex, squandering millions of our dollars in the process.  So the Welfare building had to go.

Here it is when it still stood, gutted and in the process of demolition:



A few months later, all traces had been removed from the face of the earth:



(Note the white sign in both pictures, touting 'progress'.  It lists all the politicians responsible.)

The sole machine on the site was removing the last of the rubble of the former structure as I snapped this photo.  The squat white building behind it is the under-patronized Capitol visitor center, of which the Lieutenant Governor is so proud. Be proud also, taxpayers!

Across Lafayette Street (to the left of the above photos) a former parking lot is being readied, along with the old welfare building site, for its planned future role as an "outdoor ampitheatre and park":



(Not a very people friendly environs, eh?)

This should be as popular with the public as the visitor center, or the visitor center parking garage (seen at upper left, when it was in its last phases of construction).  

Well, at least the State Library patrons have a nice view of the river now!  Yay for progress!

I took a drive through the countryside....

What a pretty day out in the rural area, the trees green with new foliage sprouting in the spring weather:

Wait, what's that fire hydrant doing there? Oh no, this isn't the countryside, it's urban prairie!!!


This vast expanse of verdant urban greenery is within bipping distance - practically adjacent - to downtown and the Cap. It more closely abuts a blighted inner city neighborhood which is home to members of a racial out-group.

Really, it would make a nice park or something. If you're going to have large tracts of empty space in the heart of the city, try to put it to legitimate use. Otherwise, this is a tremendous development opportunity just waiting to happen. Let's see if the civic cheerleaders of the next great Southern city will put their money where their mouth is.

Of course, new investment in, or near, our thriving downtown area may not necessarily be a financially practical proposition:

Downtown's main commercial street at the height of a climatically pleasant Sunday afternoon, remains the precinct of the hobo and the zombie.

Yes, downtown has come along in the past few years. The city solons have been mostly successful in their attempts to attract warm bodies for special events, and there has been new investment (mostly public sector initiated). But as this image testifies, downtown still has a long way to go.

As long as something is going on downtown, there is brief liveliness - otherwise there is no reason to be there. Downtown still remains largely an 8 to 5, Monday to Friday governmental and office precinct, the restaurants and other businesses open only for a brief midday period to serve the office drone lunch crowd, with a few sterile cultural attractions thrown in. After visiting the same handful of museums a dozen times, the attractions do get old. There are few full schedule eateries and virtually no full schedule retailers.

That's why those lifestyle developments out in the suburbs get so much traffic. Not that they have anything truly special to offer, but their newness is a magnet (for now), plus they offer shops and eateries which remain open for intervals convenient for consumers to splurge their paychecks. Once their novelty wears off, hopefully by that time downtown (as opposed to its suburban facsimiles) will have become lively again. If not, well....

Urban Prairie Blogopedia Entry #2

Brought to you by the letter G and the number 5.

Since this is supposed to be an urban prairie related blog, I guess I'd better add some pertinent content, lest they yank my license to blog (no Hillary, that wasn't a suggestion for addition to your political platform). And what better than to add Urban Prairie Schooner's well researched, comprehensive, and long anticipated definition of URBAN PRAIRIE:

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Urban prairie is the term given to vacant land which appears in developed areas, primarily central cities, as the result of demolition, deterioration over time, or other destruction of the building stock. Urban prairie primarily consists of vacant or underutilized building lots, and creates often weed choked eyesores in the heart of many cities.

Most vacant open space in the inner city comes about through condemnation and demolition of abandoned and dilapidated structures, though some urban prairie is comprised of never developed property. Many structures in the inner city are several decades old, and over time deteriorate to the point where they must be replaced or removed. Unlike in economically growing areas, though, most inner city structures are never replaced due to shrinking population and demand for residential or commercial occupancy in the urban center; thus most of these removed structures are simply demolished and not replaced, leaving only a vacant parcel behind, which remains in this state indefinitely.

Sometimes urban prairie is created by environmental disaster, such as what occurred to some parts of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Sometimes urban prairie results from large scale clearances for public projects, such as freeways, that were in the end never constructed or fully completed. A great example of this type of urban prairie is the cleared corridor for the canceled Park Freeway West in Milwaukee. Rarely, urban prairie is created intentionally, such as the urban prairie buffer zone formed around many petrochemical refineries, where land in residential neighborhoods has been purchased by the refinery owners and cleared of residents (and buildings) in order to reduce potential litigation and liabilities arising from the possible negative health effects on people living adjacent to a petrochemical plant. Most large cities have at least one or two inner areas somewhat or largely covered by urban prairie, for whatever reason.

Urban prairie manifests itself as unexpected green space, usually of an unkempt and unattractive nature, in what would normally be a fully developed urban area. This should be contrasted with urban parkland, which is land formally dedicated as open green space by government for public recreation purposes and is generally continuously maintained. Property which has become urban prairie will generally contain unmaintained vegetation, broken foundations, debris, trash dumped by area residents, and other junk left by hobos and other derelicts. Sometimes environmental pollution has also affected the land, rendering it as a ‘brownfield.’ Urban prairie can manifest itself in sizes as small as a smattering of empty lots within an otherwise densely developed neighborhood; however, a few scattered, well maintained undeveloped properties in an otherwise stable neighborhood would not generally be viewed as urban prairie. More commonly, urban prairie occupies large tracts of land within neighborhoods, outnumbering occupied and developed space in acreage. This is the type of development pattern commonly understood to be urban prairie, and is recognized as symptomatic of a deteriorating urban neighborhood.

Sometimes the land is left in an urban prairie state for so long that vegetation reclaims the property and returns it to nearly its natural state. This is especially common in cities with large swaths of urban prairie in their core areas. The inner areas begin to resemble forested rural areas far more than a cityscape. Greatly deteriorated cities such as Detroit are notorious for containing more natural space than the lower density suburban fringe, all due to large urban prairies that now cover the majority of the area of many Detroit neighborhoods. Much formerly developed space has been converted to urban prairie in Detroit and other depressed industrial cities over the past forty years, to the point where open land exceeds developed land in most areas. Green natural space is on the increase in these areas, balancing the elimination of this space at the expanding urban fringe. This contributes to the ‘doughnut hole’ phenomenon regarding urban distribution of population.

The inner city urban prairie is symptomatic not only of economic deterioration and the movement of population to outlying areas, but symbolic of the collapse of civilization in inner city ghettos, an environmental manifestation of the moral atrophy which follows in the wake of the rise of the thug and the superfly. Wild animals (besides thugs) are finding a more suitable habitat in the inner city than in the exurban areas being consumed by new development, and porcupines and opossums can be seen skulking the streets of many a downtown area in the most far-gone ghetto metropolises.

Urban prairie is most prevalent in the innermost ring of poorer residential neighborhoods closest to the downtown of a central city. These are usually the most economically depressed neighborhoods in their regions, and are the oldest residential areas containing the oldest and most deteriorated housing stock, unrestored by new investment or residential in-migration. Demolition of the remaining housing stock is continuously occurring in these areas even to the present day, thus the urban prairie continues to grow.

Abandoned but still standing structures, while not technically part of the 'true' urban prairie, certainly leave the same impact on the urban environment, and can easily be claimed by the urban prairie over time if surrounded by vacant land and rapidly growing vegetation. In a sense, abandoned housing, businesses, and even large structures such as factories, skyscrapers, and public facilities can be considered ‘virtual’ urban prairie as their lack of use render them superfluous consumers of urban space, much like vacant land. Eventually structural failure or demolition fells them, and true urban prairie inevitably consumes their space.

Fascist follies, aka Kwame and friends

The American empire is crumbling by the hour. In addition to the obvious signs - mortal stalemate and military quagmire in overseas parts which few if any Americans could identify on a map, a collapsing dollar, an economy about to slide into a lethal abyss which will make the Great Depression look like a mild downturn by comparison - the antics and high jinks of our exalted solons (which would be comical if not so serious an indictment of our attitudes toward whom we as a society deem fit to reward with high political office) give casual observers such as myself and others little confidence and comfort in the future of our society as it is presently constituted.

Consider the erstwhile mayor of that veritable kingdom of urban prairie and decay, Kwame Kilpatrick. Today comes the news that the well deserved indictment has descended down from on high for his role in covering up the illicit and shameful affair between himself (a married man) and his now-exiled chief of staff Christine Beatty, a cover-up which caused the wrongful termination of two police officers. With all hope it will end with these scions of reprehensibility paying for their perverse actions, literally - this entire affair has cost the hardworking taxpayers of Detroit over $8 million. An expensive price to 'have a thing going on', in the words of Billy Paul....

Why, you ask, do politicians always fall for this sort of stuff? With the monumental amount of illicit and licit enrichment opportunities at hand for the average public official in this era of the bloated welfare-warfare-hand over the goodies State, why do politicians always seem to go down in flames due to silliness such as this, survivable if they would only use a bit of common sense discretion?

The reality is that this goes beyond illicit carnal behavior, or even the petty and amazingly ignorant actions of one man with obvious mental and moral issues, who is anyhow soon to depart the theatrical stage that is American public life.

The fact of the matter is (with one known exception) that the average politician, much like the well heeled and powerful supporters he relies on for sustenance, believes himself to be a special sort of person, not bound by rules or other precepts (such as being faithful to your wife and mother of your children) which mere mortals have to contend with.

With great power comes great authority, and unfailingly it takes a certain sort of person to be drawn to such a position, with the power of life and death over other bodies. In psychology he is defined by the terms 'narcissist' and 'sociopath.'

In the worst cases where authority and power are greatest, he imagines himself a near godlike figure whose very will and whim should be construed as law. The "smallest" things bring out the greatest of personal hubris in that individual.

I believe I can think of at least one or two particular rulers within the last hundred years who sufficiently demonstrate what I am talking about. Again, with power comes authority, and with that comes the power to conceal any immorality, blackness of character, or human depravity in which the State supported and fattened power playa may wish to indulge.

The same impulse which drives fascism, social Darwinism, ghetto thuggery, and all other forms of strong man collectivism is that which has moved sociopaths throughout human history - a desire to forcibly take that which is others' and keep it for himself, despite this being clearly contrary to the natural law, and then justify the action by introducing the morality of 'might makes right.' The modern incarnation of this ancient strain of the banality of human nature is the modern State, where the civilized modern counterpart to the despots of antiquity practice theft and plunder but call it taxation, and instead of sacking cities make it all very convenient and painless for us, with pay deductions and harmless paperwork. Hooray for the State!

No wonder that from a moral standpoint, an outsider observing our modern 'civilized' society might be justifiably mistaken in believing that he is witnessing a pack of raving lunatics scraping for the last subsidy they can find, in order to stave off the abyss of death for one minute longer.

As a society we permit this type of anti-civilized activity to flourish, thanks to the comforting bosom of the almightly State and its military-industrial-ruling elite appendages and auxiliaries, which sustains and rewards this behavior. And thus it spreads, and moral dry rot grows to infect the entirety of the social body. This is the root of our present dilemma.

Welcome to the blog

Welcome to my blog. This insignificant bit of the web will be henceforth dedicated to whatever crosses my mind - mainly social commentary, political views (Ron Paul REVOLution! - I promise not to overdo it), topics related to my hobbies (urban development, history, highway transportation, classic cinema, and whatnot), and anything else I care to spout about.

For those diehard handful of you out there in online land who are just dying to know what the title of this blog means....let's just say that I live in a rather undesirable area, where much urban prairie can be found. Besides that fact, the phenomenon of 'urban prairie' is that which best represents to me the decay of our modern society - the regression of civilization back toward the wildness of primitivism and social dissolution. For those not familiar with the concept, I direct you to this site to educate yourself on that topic.

Truly, when we all educate ourselves to understand the unadulterated truth, we can make small but crucial steps to improve this world.