I'm not against urban improvement where it's justified. If a city needs ballparks, gardens, parking lots, etc. . . . well, build them. However, it's hard to justify more steel-and-glass offices when you have millions of square feet of them standing empty and the number has been rising for years. It's especially iffy when the space in question isn't in the city's main business district. And it's morally questionable to act via expropriations and evictions – doubly so when you're citing "urban renewal" as your justification but really using that as a cover story to disenfranchise people who lack a voice.
I realize that it's common to have moral objections to lap dancers, strippers, and prostitutes, but let's be honest: There's enough of them in business in one area because the demand exists. The demand won't go away. Why put these people out of a workplace and then lie about the reasons? ("We need more office space!") How is lying a moral thing?
Setting that aside and getting to something I actually know about: There's also the fact that the same district supports alternative entertainment. A percentage of that is risqué, like most fetish shows and some burlesque. However, much of it – like a lot of niche dance and performance art – simply lacks a venue. How do the forces crushing a red light district on two-faced moral grounds justify tossing artists in the street in order to build empty towers?
It's a complex problem. However, it has its roots in the fallacy that the square feet of city you get to have dedicated to your particular interests should be proportional to the tax dollars you pay. Thus, wealthy developers and suburbanites feel entitled to dictate how the inner city is used, despite rarely going there. Meanwhile, people who work or perform there are silenced.
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I realize that it's common to have moral objections to lap dancers, strippers, and prostitutes, but let's be honest: There's enough of them in business in one area because the demand exists. The demand won't go away. Why put these people out of a workplace and then lie about the reasons? ("We need more office space!") How is lying a moral thing?
Setting that aside and getting to something I actually know about: There's also the fact that the same district supports alternative entertainment. A percentage of that is risqué, like most fetish shows and some burlesque. However, much of it – like a lot of niche dance and performance art – simply lacks a venue. How do the forces crushing a red light district on two-faced moral grounds justify tossing artists in the street in order to build empty towers?
It's a complex problem. However, it has its roots in the fallacy that the square feet of city you get to have dedicated to your particular interests should be proportional to the tax dollars you pay. Thus, wealthy developers and suburbanites feel entitled to dictate how the inner city is used, despite rarely going there. Meanwhile, people who work or perform there are silenced.