Norfolk Redevelopment And Housing Authority: Fill & Download for Free

Black and WhiteMilwaukeeBorn and raised in a very European community in the Middle West, I was taught to be open-minded, tolerant and to think critically. We were an immigrant community made up from German / Jewish / Catholic / Lutheran / English, most highly skilled, well employed in large manufacturing industries, speaking several languages and being highly educated coming from one the best schools systems in the USA. Milwaukee was 'Leave it to Beaver' country. Times were so much more tranquil then, people were friendly, things were so much more innocent, there was very little crime and neighborhoods raised children. We didn't have all the technology then, no TV and only radio with Edward R Murrow and Gabriel Heater and JC Kaltenborn interspersed between the Long Ranger and Shadow programs; it made life simpler it seems which has changed our life today for the better and also made it worse. Like someone said before, technology has robbed jobs, created laziness, created greed, and has allowed public help for all the wrong reasons. We should be using our technology for good things for our children, like developing wind and solar energy, and cures for diseases and not to increase greed.We only had small handful of blacks in Milwaukee when I lived there as the Great Migration of southern Blacks to the north hadn't hit Milwaukee yet. It was hitting Detroit and Chicago with both good and disastrous results. The heavily industrialized white north needed skilled machinists and such but the blacks were generally uneducated and unskilled field hands and didn't fit in well. This provided opportunities for them to learn and embody themselves into the industrialized culture and advance - some did and some didn't and social dysfunctions and crime went way up and racial segregation found its way to the north.The NavyThen I entered the Navy and was stationed in the south, and found a completely different - hateful, fearful, uneducated - good ole boy society still living in the Confederate culture and fighting the Civil War and racial integration to the death. I found the region was filled with black people, about 30 per cent to 40 percent of the population depending upon the state, all of which were treated horribly; Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia being the worst, as sub human by some, as second class citizens by most. The south was segregated by law with separate public facilities and areas to live in. The police enforced the segregation, the courts supported it and the Ku Klux Klan terrorized those who tried to change things. In the Deep South whites indescribably murdered and lynched blacks and no whites were ever brought to justice for these horrible murders - no arrests and no convictions. Throughout the south there was the black seedy [shanty] section of town and the separate white town house section with street lights being the best. Facilities were separated by race and enforced by the police. Us Northerners though it was just a silly duplication of facilities and an insult to the human condition and southerners were morally bent.On my ship we had lots of black sailors and I liked most of them. I had them in my Fire Control weapons gang, Cousins was my partner in the Main Battle Gun Director, Hawkins was our best 3inch gunner, James was our best street fighter; he bailed me out of plenty of Bar fights across the world. On the ship we got along well but when we went ashore in the south we went to separate sections of town. In Norfolk that meant Granby Street for the whites and Church Street for the blacks. That is why we Yankee sailors went to NYC for weekend liberties, blacks too for the freedom. I never understood the southern institutionalized Jim Crow segregation I saw in the Norfolk area during the 1950s & 1960s. I understand defacto segregation volunteered by cultural choice, like ethnic groups sticking to their own kind, even different social / economic groups doing the same. Whites who objected to segregation would get into trouble with the police for using black facilities as a means of protest; they would be arrested and tossed n jail. . One day I was put off the Norfolk city bus for giving my seat to a very pregnant and in-pain black woman.This segregation was hard for us northerners to understand. We would go to sea for weeks chasing Russian submarines then come back to Norfolk trying to find that elusive femme fatale that must be somewhere nearby looking for a nice good looking young Destroyer sailor man like me. I soon found that not only was she elusive, but was non existent. There weren't those girl meet boy facilities here that were found in the north to meet girls. Hell, we were in segregated and backward Norfolk, and they had signs around town that said "sailors keep off the grass," so where does a sailor go to meet women in a dry and segregated backward place where there are no dance clubs or night clubs and only a few dingy fast food restaurants with lousy Pizza. So, we went to Manhattan for weekend liberty searching for feminine companionship in Times Square - which we found in spades . . . The Big Apple was alive with tens of thousands of all kinds of women, dance clubs and spicy night club adventures.In my early Navy days in Norfolk, when I didn't have a car or a ride for weekend liberty, I would take a Trailways interstate bus to New York City. When the bus stopped for bathroom or food in the South, we left the bus and parted company into separate racial facilities, but when in the North we shared all facilities together. If you were pissed off at Jim Crow and thwarted the segregationist pattern, like entering a "colored" rest room, you could be arrested and put in the local jails, where you would be treated horribly, being crammed into tiny, filthy cells. fed salt without water and sporadically beaten. In the South, the police didn't take kindly to whites who sympathized with the blacks. On one trip I met Mary Thomson, a young pretty Black girl who lived in Manhattan, and we became good friends. She was very smart and had a great personality and I wished I could date her when she visited her parents in Norfolk, but as things are in the South, I knew that was impossible. We could only breathe the fresh air of freedom when we crossed the Mason - Dixon Line.It was totally two different worlds, comparing monolithic Norfolk to an incredibly diverse Manhattan; where the south has lots of guns and say "You' all" and in New York where they have lots of fun and say "Youse guys. Norfolk - as well as the entire south was a dark and dismal region, intolerant, segregated, violent, poor and they lived for Confederate values; where politicians ran on religion, fear and hate and being against the fascist federal government for trying to desegregate the south, hating the communist Martin Luther King and his Civil Rights struggle, and the Yankee liberal north trying to change the south and inspiring all their troubles - again! That was racial integration, they were dead set against it. They like the old ways and understand them, it fitted into their comfort zone.The lynching of Black people in the Southern and Border States became an institutionalized method used by whites to terrorize Blacks and maintain white supremacy. In the South, there was deep-seated and all-pervading hatred and fear of the Negro which led white mobs to turn to lynch law as a means of social control. Lynchings open public murders of individuals suspected of crime conceived and carried out more or less spontaneously by a mob seem to have been an American invention. Most of the lynchings were by hanging or shooting, or both.However, many were of a more hideous nature, burning at the stake, maiming, dismemberment, castration, and other brutal methods of physical torture. Lynching therefore was a cruel combination of racism and sadism, which was utilized primarily to sustain the caste system in the South. Many white people believed that Negroes could only be controlled by fear. To them, lynching was seen as the most effective means of control.The Civil Rights Movement and the escalating war in Vietnam were the two great catalysts for social protest in the sixties. During the 1960s, the civil rights movement changed the lives of African Americans forever. It was a tumultuous time, and things got harder for them before they began to get better, but it was dramatic. Some people began to feel hope that they would someday have equal rights. There was little consensus on how to promote equality on a national level - groups such as the NAACP, CORE, and Dr. Martin Luther King's SCLC, endorsed peaceful methods and believed change could be affected by working around the established system; other groups such as the Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Nationalist Movement advocated retaliatory violence and a separation of the races.The StruggleOne of the first major events in the sixties was the attack on the Freedom Riders, groups of black and white citizens who rode busses across the south in order to test laws enforcing segregation in public facilities. As they rode across the south, they were met by angry mobs and police brutality, which would beat them severely, sometimes to death. Another event, which happened in 1963, was the killing of Medgar Evers, the field secretary for the NAACP, who was murdered in his driveway. Because of all the beatings of the Freedom Riders and the frustration of blacks wanting their rights, many riots broke out in various cities and states, such as Los Angeles, New Jersey, Chicago and Philadelphia. When these riots broke out in the 1960's, the police would use any methods necessary to exert their power, such as the use of clubs and physical force. Sometimes, when black protesters would try to enter restaurants, stores or any other "White" facilities, they would be sprayed with large fire hoses. The photos of Birmingham in 1963 are evidence of these events.In 1962, President Kennedy dispatched troops to force the University of Mississippi (a state institution) to admit James Meredith, a black student. At the same time, he forbade racial or religious discrimination in federally financed housing. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and President Johnson continued the battle. King convinced President Kennedy and later President Johnson to push for legislation to end discrimination and was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1964. President Johnson prodded Congress into enacting (August 1965) a Voting Rights Act that eliminated all qualifying tests for registration that had as their objective limiting the right to vote to whites.The whole USA was on fire: From 1964 to 1968, more than a hundred American cities were swept by race riots, which included dynamiting, guerrilla warfare, and huge conflagrations, as the anger of the northern black community at its relatively low income, high unemployment, and social exclusion exploded. At this violent expression of hopelessness the northern white community drew back rapidly from its reformist stance on the race issue (the so-called white backlash).During this time, we lived in a Bi Polar world, it was a Cold War, us against the Russians, capitalism vs. communism, and that was our nation's chief concern. Within that battle was embedded the Civil Rights movement, centered on the American South, but it also had vast challenges for northern blacks achieving social acceptance and equal opportunity. Although the roots of the movement go back to the 19th century, it peaked in the 1950s and 1960s along with the (Hippy) counter revolution challenging traditional social mores. Civil Rights workers pursued their goals through legal means, negotiations, petitions, and nonviolent protest demonstrations. The civil rights movement was the largest social movement of the 20th century in the United States. These were violent times, the south was ubiquitous for murders of black people, especially in Mississippi, and whites got away with it. No white jury would convict a white man for killing a black person.For example, Emmet Till was a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago who was brutally beaten, tortured, disfigured, shot, and dumped into the Tallahatchie River. Even though the two white men (J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant) confessed and bragged about the killing, when they were tried, they were acquitted by an all white jury. These kind of activities happened over and over again in the south. Between Civil Rights people getting murdered, there were thousands killed in the south with no recompense from the law. But life in Norfolk was hell too - Whites and blacks were separated by law which was joyfully enforced by the police, most whom I regarded as psychopaths. The city was divided into sections, one for whites the other for blacks. Black people had their own churches, restaurants, taxi cabs, parks, beaches, bathrooms, locker rooms and water fountains.The American Civil Rights Movement in the late 1950s and 1960s represents a pivotal event in world history. The positive changes it brought to voting and civil rights continue to be felt throughout the United States and much of the world. Although this struggle for black equality was fought on hundreds of different "battlefields" throughout the United States, many observers at the time described the state of Mississippi as the most racist and violent. In 1955, Reverend George Lee, vice president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership and NAACP worker, was shot in the face and killed for urging blacks in the Mississippi Delta to vote.Although eyewitnesses saw a carload of whites drive by and shoot into Lee's automobile, the authorities failed to charge anyone. Governor Hugh White refused requests to send investigators to Belzoni, Mississippi, where the murder occurred.In August 1955, Lamar Smith, sixty-three-year-old farmer and World War II veteran, was shot in cold blood on the crowded courthouse lawn in Brookhaven, Mississippi, for urging blacks to vote. Although the sheriff saw a white man leaving the scene 'with blood all over him' no one admitted to having witnessed the shooting" and "the killer went free.Mississippi's lawmakers, law enforcement officers, public officials, and private citizens worked long and hard to maintain the segregated way of life that had dominated the state since the end of the Civil War in 1865. The method that ensured segregation persisted was the use and threat of violence against people who sought to end it.On September 25, 1961, farmer Herbert Lee was shot and killed in Liberty, Mississippi, by E.H. Hurst, a member of the Mississippi State Legislature. Hurst murdered Lee because of his participation in the voter registration campaign sweeping through southwest Mississippi. Authorities never charged him with the crime. Hurst was acquitted by a coroner's jury, held in a room full of armed white men, the same day as the killing. Hurst never spent a night in jail."NAACP State Director Medgar Evers was gunned down in 1963 in his Jackson driveway by rifle-wielding white Citizens Council member Byron De La Beckwith from Greenwood, Mississippi.In the spring of 1963 two events changed Americans view on Civil Rights. The first was the march in Birmingham in which Dr. King was arrested and he wrote "A letter from a Birmingham Jail. He wrote a letter in response to criticism for ministers in Birmingham Alabama. May 2, 1963 Children of Birmingham Alabama marched on the city and more than 3000 people were arrested. At that time Bull Conner was in charge of the police and fire department in Birmingham. Conner was a raciest of the highest order. He wanted to make an impression to all black people of Birmingham that he was strongly against Civil rights in America. He had dogs bite students and firemen hose down the students in the street. Hundreds of news out lets from around the world filmed this turning event in America. The imagines of what Americans saw on TV and newspapers horrifying people across the nation. People who had been sitting on the fence suddenly realized something had to be done... Before the events in Birmingham a poll was taken asking Americans if Civil rights was an important issue in America only four percent answered yes and after the events in Birmingham 52% of Americans thought Civil rights.Bull Conner had become a game changer. He alone helped the Civil rights movement more than the President of the United States, a future Nobel prize winner, when America saw a man have so much disliked for a race it was time for change. Over 900 people were put in jail. They amount for bail went from $300 per person to $2500. The Civil rights movement did not have any money to pay for the bail of all the people .President Kennedy knew he had to do something. He had gotten word African Americans wereready to march or riot in the streets of the nation. In the first six months of 1963 978 demonstrations took place in 109 cities Kennedy like many other American could no longer straddle the fence .On June 11,1963 President Kennedy made a speech to the nation about civil rights. Kennedy knew once he made the speech his re-election was not going to be easy. He said if he was going to lose re-election he was going down trying to help people. He knew by making this speech he would lose votes in the south. He felt he would lose every state in the south in the next election except Texas.On November 22, 1963 Kennedy was killed in Texas trying to shore up his base in Texas. The day after Kennedy's civil rights speech was given Medgar Evers was killed in Mississippi.The 1963 March on Washington attracted an estimated 250,000 people for a peaceful demonstration to promote Civil Rights and economic equality for African Americans. Participants walked down Constitution and Independence avenues, then - 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed - gathered before the Lincoln Monument for speeches, songs, and prayer. Televised live to an audience of millions, the march provided dramatic moments, most memorably the Rev Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. On August 28 the marchers arrived. By 11 o'clock in the morning, more than 250,000 had gathered by the Washington Monument, where the march was to begin. It was a diverse crowd: black and white, rich and poor, young and old, Hollywood stars and everyday people. Those assembled marched peacefully. But it was a great peaceful day and I loved it!Perhaps the most notable episode of violence came in Freedom Summer of 1964, when civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner left their base in Meridian, Mississippi, to investigate one of a number of church burnings in the eastern part of the state. The Ku Klux Klan had burned Mount Zion Church because the minister had allowed it to be used as a meeting place for civil rights activists. After the three young men had gone into Neshoba County to investigate, they were subsequently stopped and arrested by Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price. After several hours, Price finally released them only to arrest them again shortly after 10 p.m. He then turned the civil rights workers over to his fellow Klansmen. The group took the activists to a remote area, beat them, and then shot them to death. Dittmer suggests that because Schwerner and Goodman were white the federal government responded by establishing an FBI office in Jackson and calling out the Mississippi National Guard and U. S. Navy to help search for the three men. Of course this was the response the Freedom Summer organizers had hoped for when they asked for white volunteers.Life in Norfolk / PortsmouthAfter the Navy, I started my IBM Career in Norfolk as a Customer Engineer on Unit Record Equipment and then on main frames. I soon got a reputation that I could fix anything and maker customers happy and IBM kept sending to more school in upstate New York. They sent me to never ending TAD assignments on the East Coast - especially in Manhattan, Washington, Cape Canaveral and Disney land. I was a Yankee and never supported the Jim Crow segregation throughout the south. I didn't like the conservative politics and evangelical religion that supported it either. I got involved in politics, helped Jack Kennedy win the Tidewater region. I fraternized with the black computer operators at the Naval Base. We kidded around a lot. IBM got called from naval base people that I was a disgrace to the white race because I had black friends, after all, the south is segregated and I should obey that law. I spoke up and said my piece. All this infuriated the Naval Base people and IBM personnel. I was a good engineer but I was IBM's renegade and after seven years we parted ways. I had become a New Yorker with all my lengthy visits there and I wanted to move there.As throughout the South, black and white children grew up apart, lived in different neighborhoods and went to separate schools. U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr., who essentially controlled Virginia politics, vows to stop integration plans in Virginia schools. In Norfolk, the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority (NRHA) under the direction of Mayor Duckworth works to rezone neighborhoods and keep black and white citizens separate. Norfolk, Portsmouth, Richmond and other cities made headlines by openly resisting attempts to integrate schools. The Governor Almond of Virginia called it Massive Resistance. There were a lot of people who didn't want integration. It wasn't that people hated blacks. They didn't know you. Segregation left scars that have lasted generations.Segregation meant black students never had the same quality in schools as whites; they had to catch up to their white peers after decades of second hand books and second-class schools. Back students' tests scores failed to meet federal standards. But blacks could strut better, on July 4 the two high schools marching bands Woodrow Wilson (white) and Norcom (black) - marched down Portsmouth's main drag - High Street. It was the only time I saw solidarity between the races as the whites timidly marched while the blacks strutted their stuff to the cheers of all the onlookers.The stores along Granby in Norfolk and High Street in Portsmouth, specifically, their lunch counters and the city itself were the site of a battle that also played out in dozens of other cities in the South. They were segregated and Blacks were forbidden to sit at 'White only' lunch counters. One time when I was walking into a Bank on High Street in Portsmouth in my IBM outfit, a blue suit with vest and white shirt, there was a demonstration on the sidewalk and inside of the F. W. Woolworth Dime Store by young black people who were doing a sit in at the 'white only' lunch counter. Outside, the blacks had signs around their neck "Remember the Golden Rule' and they were being screamed and spit on by the whites. The police had large fierce dogs that attacked the blacks and me since I was standing there. I never was so ashamed at being a citizen of the United States and vowed to take up the fight for Civil Rights.I joined the Portsmouth Jr. Chamber of Commerce and became quite active. There were many worthwhile causes we participated in. Meetings were held once a month and were accompanied with famous speakers. Being a Military town, many of these speakers were Admirals, but many were local politicians who openly advocated segregation in the face of the Civil Rights movement being conducted at the time. I associated with all the local politicos and military types. I got involved in many projects, like distributing Bubble Gum Machines throughout Portsmouth. The Chamber sponsored the local Miss America beauty pageant, which afforded me the opportunity to participate in several Miss America Pageants as a Judge and organizer. We had a meeting to discuss what we were looking for, young women with poise, looks and talent. So, what I was supposed to do was audition perspective candidates and sends them on. There were several ladies I interviewed and picked, one was black and really had the talent and personality and figure. Then I got chewed out by the organizers - didn't I know that Ms America was for white women only? I was really angry! I had to tell the black girl she didn't qualify for the contest because she was black. I will never get used to southern racism. One time I made speech on an HUD project being considered for downtown Portsmouth on Effingham Street outside the Naval Hospital, which was nothing but shacks inhabited by poor Black people. Whites were against raising this ghetto and replacing it with decent housing because they did not want conditions for Blacks to improve. I was for the project and was threatened with a ride out of town and a beating by the Ku Klux Klan. I invited them to try it now and I was prepared to beat the Holy loving shit out of them on the spot but they declined and left saying they knew where I lived. I started packing my 25 caliber automatic or P38 then.It's a wonder how small little happenings in ones life can endure major changes, but a good example was my learning how to rebuild car engines. I had this old 1948 Plymouth whose engine had conked out and I was going to try to rebuild it, learning as I went. I figured, "What could I lose, the car was junk anyway." I had the head off and was trying to get the pistons out and was over at the local Car Parts dealer getting some tools and asking for advice. Another customer standing there, a Black man, offered some expert advice, in fact he came to my house, but as was the custom for Black people coming to a White person's house, came to the back door. ("What" I thought) I learned that he was a Baptist preacher in Churchland living in a shanty town off of Route 17, which was not too far from my house on Hatton Point Road. I will tell you this that man knew his cars! That was the beginning of a relationship with him where I took him as my mentor in learning about car engine repair. One day I am at his shanty house getting some advice and sitting at his kitchen table having a cup of coffee. He asked me if I could take his teenage daughter to the grocery store to pick up something and I said sure. She got in the front seat and off we went, it was only just around the corner at a shopping center on Route 17 in Churchland. As I pulled onto a highway, a State Trooper pulled us over.With his pot belly and strong Southern Accent, he said, "What are you doing with this Neegra woman in your front seat?" I explained I was taking her to the grocery store. "Boy, don't you know that you never ride a Neegra woman in your front seat, looks like your taking her out, and you know that is illegal in Virginia." "By the way, you talk funny, are you a god-damned Yankee?" This went on and finally he let me go after the girl got in the back seat. Do I have to tell you how I felt?I belonged to the Sweet Haven Baptist church pastored by Reverend Damon Wyatt and what a God-fearing, Bible-toting, sugary-sweet and loving bunch of racists most of them were, including Reverend Wyatt himself who was the worst racist of all, and a Baptist Pastor at that. They were all bible thumping died in the wool segregationists and KKK lovers who hid behind the scriptures for the worst sins man perpetuated on another man. I heard all about all the bad people - Negroes was this, Jews that and the Yankees were worse for trying to desegregate the South, and even the Catholics had special nasty names. Bible thumping - sweet scripture talking bigots, it was a very twisted and hateful society. Again, I paid little attention to all these horrible attitudes, something to live with while down South I reasoned. After all, it seemed they hated everyone not like them. But little did I know then that all this was burning a hole inside me and that it would explode later.My Grandmother was an Eastern Star and my uncle was a Mason. I belonged to the DeMolay during my high school years, was an officer and participated in the Annual Shriner's Circus as a clown. So when my Virginia Dismal Swamp hunts and Chesapeake Bay fishing buddy wanted to sponsor me for the Portsmouth Masons, I said OK. The Freemasons, also known simply as Masons, is a fraternal philanthropic organization with lodges in almost every community of the world. Masons come from every profession and religious background and joining the Masons' benefits' you in many ways. I was investigated and accepted and did my various catechisms to become a Master Member. But my chapter didn't accept blacks, said Black people weren't free born, but were slaves in the USA or had a slave history, so they didn't meet the free born requirement for membership in the Masons. Blacks joined their version of the Masons called the Prince Hall organization. I couldn't believe such stupidity and reminded them that in the ancient world, the whites were slaves to the Greeks and Romans. They didn't know what I was talking about. It was like I was in a different world of full of organized and accepted prejudice. I refused to be part of an organization that discriminated like that.I lived an interesting life; in the south I was active in Civil Rights, went hunting in Dismal Swamp and fished on Chesapeake Bay for six years, went to never ending assignments to Manhattan, Cape Canaveral and Disney Land as an IBM engineer; taught main frames and peripherals, traveled around the USA, went to the March on Washington (1963), was a volunteer Fireman, rebuilt and sold used cars and started writing. During my ten years in Virginia, I was involved in politics, worked for Kennedy in 1960 and the Civil Rights movement, was active in many community and political organizations, and did the normal southern things like having a large gun collection, hunting in Dismal Swamp and fishing on Chesapeake Bay with my own 18-foot power boat. But I didn't like the south, felt way out of place there, the culture was on the other side of the coin for me, being the Bible Belt they didn't represent anything Christ did, instead supported racial segregation, the antics of the Ku Klux Klan to keep it that way, and all kinds of laws to ensure segregation now and segregation forever with any nefarious means possible. The south was a very evil place for me.On April 3, 1968, the day I transferred to Manhattan, Martin Luther King was assassinated. The King assassination riots, also known as the Holy Week Uprising, was a wave of civil disturbance which swept the United States were the greatest wave of social unrest the United States experienced since the Civil War.1967 - Move to New York CityIn NYC I taught Grad School, hung out with the creative types in Greenwich Village, artists and performing arts folks, wrote books, went to Woodstock (1969), traveled the USA, was a National Recruiter hiring hundreds of professionals, managed large engineering and sales / marketing organizations and married Bettie, the love of my life, a black woman from Aliceville, Alabama. I got involved in politics and was elected and or appointed to various positions on the School and Planning Commission Boards.New York, in fact the rest of the country, has always accused Greenwich Village of being a little well . . . different. There is definitely a personality type that inhabits the area. You need to have an open mind and be someone's who's bold and independent and doesn't mind going out of their way to meet people or at first be out of your element. It's great for people who adapt well to new situation, love having their hands full, making connections and have big-time aspirations and want to be able to submerge themselves into their career from the start. We tend not to march to quite the same drummer as most of the rest of the country, which may be why we have attracted the artists, writers, musicians and all the rest of the excessive personifieds to the Village for so many years.1992 - Semi Retirement in Upstate, NYAfter taking an Early Retirement from Digital Equipment Corporation and working in the Manhattan computer industry for thirty years, I worked Route Sales jobs in Upstate New York for thirteen years, my sales territory being the Hudson Valley, Delaware River Valley and Catskill mountains. I sold all kinds of goods and services, from convenient store goods, to gas station products, Sam's club memberships, cruise travel and janitorial services. I had all kinds of customers, small town governments, food and hard goods distributors, all kinds of institutions, schools, and all kinds of small businesses, hotels, bungalow cottage colonies, canoe liveries and resort operations. Bettie and I lived in the Town of Wallkill in the stunningly beautiful Hudson Valley, which itself was full of interstate highways and shopping centers.I have been in Atlanta many times over the last ten years, many visits were business trips with Digital, and some trips lately have been with Bettie to see family and friends. Every time I come, there are new roads and real estate development being completed with new projects getting under way. Atlanta is growing very fast, more than 400,000 people a year move into the area. Atlanta leads the nation with the highest percentage of new homes sold among major market areas at 41% of all sales. The best way to describe Atlanta is to think about this hot-summer region as an ultra modern African nation filled with four million hardworking and very successful American Black people. This is really a Black town, and except for a very few areas to the North and West of Atlanta, there are few Whites here. The Blacks exude a classy and showy countenance as they ride around in their luxury cars and retire to their colonial brick mansions. In New York, many people say, including Blacks I know, that you cannot put a thousand Blacks together without a riot or some kind of police problem. In New York City, Rap concerts generally become violent affairs. Not here in Atlanta where you could put a million Blacks together with no problems what-so-ever. Perhaps it is because most of the Black people in Atlanta are middle class and there is a strong contingent of the upper class too. Political pundits say that most of the Black intelligentsia living in the United States is in Atlanta.The wealth of the Atlanta area is readily observed anywhere you go. Show off "Bling" is perhaps it is a Southern or Black Thing, but most people drive expensive cars and trucks. Ford 'Expeditions,' Lexus, Acura, and Cadillac Seville vehicles are constantly seen everywhere. There seems to be nothing poor about the Atlanta region, real estate and cars look new and well kept up. Fast food is everywhere and most people are over weight. Atlanta is all about flash, newness, growth. Also, the girl watching is as good as that available in Manhattan, or maybe better. On any given day in Atlanta, there must be a million beautiful Nubian Centerfolds walking around the shopping centers and high rise office buildings.But Atlanta is not like multi cultural and funky New York. Atlanta is a 'classy' Black town. Downtown Atlanta is clean, full of parks, old period homes, high rise buildings, and everywhere you go, there seems to be a nice walk-around neighborhood. Buckhead is an old and expensive neighborhood of extremely elegant homes. It looks like Middletown's Highland Avenue or the suburbs of Greenwich, Connecticut. Atlanta reminds me of Boston, one of the most livable big cities I have ever visited. I do not know where the drug sucking, welfare loving, criminal class lives.2005 - Retirement in GeorgiaIn 2005 our taxes went up again (every year about $500) and the winters were killing me. So, finally, for the easy retirement living and needing cheap living Bettie and I moved into the outskirts of the Atlanta metro area. I am glad that we bought a house out in a rural area, away from the Atlanta congestion, but with the huge migration to our area, the peace and tranquility of rural living won't last long. Remember, to make accurate comparisons, housing in Atlanta, Georgia is less than a third the price of Middletown, New York with a fifth of the taxes. Our town of Monroe is very nice and convenient to getting around as it is located at the intersection of multiple highways. Big box stores have all; been built here, a Wal-Mart Super Center, Home Depot, a new Hospital and dozens of Fast Food restaurants, all sorts of commercial activities - everything is here now.I found the people to be nice and southern hospitality is alive and well - on the surface. The traditions of the southeast U.S. are as vast as they are diverse and as beautiful as they are horrendous. These traditions encourage the behavior of some of the most polite and hospitable people on the planet. People that would give you the shirt off of their back while hosting you in their home with a glass of sweet tea in your hand, rich food full of soul in your belly and college football and NASCAR on the TV. The new south is full of northerners who came south for cheaper living. Underneath there is a southern culture that loves itself, fears the outside world and modernity, hold Yankees in loathing (especially New Yorkers) and loves fast food. There are lots of very obese people. Remnants of the old south are still around. I would say it's all about two things, the reverence for the Confederacy and twisted believe systems around the Civil War - it had nothing to do with slavery they say and evangelism still runs the show here. Being a Christian conservative is square one to being elected. The church is where people connect and socialize; they are not used to the diversity of races, religions, ethnic types and different ideals and hang with people like themselves. I would say overall we are very pleased with the move. The south has become a very good destination for living in peace and tranquility. I don't think it is racist anymore and holds to traditional values. Actually, I suspect most blacks are better off in the south than the north and they are moving back by the millions.But the south has great irritations for me. For example, The "War" ain't over, the confederacy lives on and the south will rise again in the Deep South like Alabama and Mississippi is heard often in churches and town halls... They have a world view separate from the rest of the USA. They want to teach "creationism" in the schools and elect ultra conservative politicians who want to make the USA a Christian nation. From the outside it has looked like a gaggle of incompetent evangelical inbreeds at times. I will never accept evangelicals constantly putting their religion into politics. I don't like the constant Confederate reminders, rants against immigrants and critical thinkers and the unrequited love of guns. However, if you wanted to hear me scream like a chicken in the slaughter house you should have heard me rant against New York's social liberals - the free ride for users and abusers paid for by my taxes.I don't socialize with many neighbors (it's not a southern thing) and know even less of them. But it would be considered bad manners for me to drive past a person without making eye contact nod my head & give a little smile. (If you have a hat/cap, tip it a little in acknowledgment). I like this little custom. It seems to keep my little part of the world a bit more friendly & caring.Black vs. White AmericaIt's not good yet! The perception lingers that justice remains far from being color-blind. We had the Trayvon Martin debacle in the national news and I was more than upset with the idiotic NRA gun lobby mentality and white conservative craziness that goes with it and the acquittal of George Zimmerman for what I called an outright murder, but I am a New Yorker where you go to jail for killing someone, but in Florida it's legal and called "Stand Your Ground." In my mind, there is no doubt that a black man will not get fair treatment in many court jurisdictions, and that angers me and I know it inflames black people too. I think there is plenty of legitimate cause for minorities to suspect the system is not fair and being totally altruistic, it's like the system has a warped agenda that favors the connected, rich and white. However, I also think there is plenty of legitimate cause for white fright and flight too. And it isn't just white flight, that's a racial misnomer, no one wants to live around crime, deteriorating schools and rising taxes to pay for heavy duty social programs, especially when they are retired and have limited incomes. People buy homes in neighborhoods with good schools and flee the neighborhoods with bad ones.To be honest with you, I do not understand the condition so many people keep finding themselves in, the un wed mothers, the crime, drugs and poverty. The lack of opportunity and commensurate skills in the rural south and Appalachia makes daily existence rife with people scheming to get on disability for [sic] asthma and other exaggerated excuses, all cooked up by greedy ambulance chasing lawyers and cockeyed judges. Disability has become the standard fare' welfare benefit when unemployment runs out. It's a farce! In these areas, people are poorly educated and not able to secure good jobs there or anywhere else.Even though there are some Rednecks and good-ole-boys sputtering at Civil Rights advances and trying to reenact the 19th century, the whole south is not the big baddy it once was and actually, in many measurements, it's better than the north and many southern cites are good examples of much improved racial relations and economic progress. I firmly believe that we are a decent county albeit there are many outlandish political and religious extremists and racial rabble rousers running about. Yeah, we have our demigods, it seems that in the throws of our vast technology - global economic and 21st century cultural changes that dogmatism is alive and well among certain peoples (and that goes for white and black).I keep thinking this is the USA and we are the land of opportunity and I have seen our capitalistic and rugged individualism culture advance more people to well being than any other country (and I have traveled the world extensively). In the USA all you have to do is move toward the opportunity with an education and wiliness to work. It seems to me that some people just don't try hard enough to improve their condition and seek the easy way out and most often that is a government program or government job. Or they get trapped by teenage pregnancy, drugs and criminal behavior. And I suspect our ever growing government largesse doesn't help the situation but actually hurts, it just seems to farther encourage irrational behavior. And that goes for those at both ends of the spectrum, the needy and self sufficient who both get undeserved and wrong-headed benefits from the government. But maybe I am stupid for not seeing the light . . . being our brother's keeper and all, but in my opinion, working hard, perseverance, and flying right are easier and more fun than going bad and into the pit. And I object paying for people who don't try or behave themselves.Well, here I go, going to raise a storm among the liberal - conservative body politic. I think many of our problems are caused by our political dysfunction in Washington which I chalk up more to republican extremism, and our class dividing social problems which I chalk up more to the democrats, each having gone over board with big government largesse and exasperating the status quo with fire brand rhetoric. It seems pissing each other off is the new normal instead of trying to work through problems. So what is this thing about social problems and the democrats? I think they didn't look critically enough at what I consider to be the main social problem and its collateral damage consequences - and that is an epidemic of unwed mothers. It used to be called illegitimacy but now it is part of the new middleclass normal.After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of the births to American women less than 30 occur outside marriage. According to the most recent government reports, the black female accounts for 73 percent of out-of-wedlock births; 66 percent for Native American women; 53 percent for Hispanic women; 29 percent for white women; and 17 percent for Asian American women. The report says that overwhelmingly, the more educated you are, the more likely you are to marry before having children. About 92 percent of college-educated women are married when they give birth. A wide range of studies suggests that children born and raised in single parent homes tend to do more poorly in school and have greater developmental problems than those raised in two-parent households.From an empirical viewpoint, however, the traditional conservative explanations are no more appealing than their liberal counterparts. These explanations fall into three overlapping categories: the culture of poverty, the scarcity of two-parent black families, and genes which affect every aspect of an organism, from appearance, to thought processes and personality. This is why many members of the same family will have similar likes and dislikes. Some children will have a particular temperament, and family members will say "you're just like your father". This also explains why related children raised by different families will often have likes and dislikes similar to their siblings raised elsewhere even if they never met. The geneticist Dean Hamer had traced belief in God to a specific gene. Actually, the bottom line is you get your genetic makeup from your parents completely. If they don't have it, you can't get it.Blacks are angry because of the incredibly amount of socio-economic disparities between them and other races of people, particularly white people, in the country. It's honestly as simple as that. It's not so much about racial prejudice, and mistreatment, but it's about socio-economic disparity and the seemingly endless effort of people to keep black people down.The real reason there's so much beef between blacks and whites is because of the social lies. Lots of blacks blame racism for things they could've accomplished but didn't. And lots of whites pretend they don't understand how being white still gives them advantages, but the vast majority fully grasp that it does and they lie about it because it's a leg up in a cutthroat competitive society and denying you have something is a good way to keep it.But what I have seen in the USA is more people getting better rather getting worse. However, there is always the poor, they will always be with us as the Bible says, and I would say they exist that way in the USA more for lack of opportunity and not because they are lazy or dumb. There are cultural reasons too but that is for another day of discussion. Let's remember that the poor are made up of both white and black and you ain't scene nothing until you go to a white trailer park full of toxic waste. Every downtrodden area I have been to, and that includes the rural south, Appalachia, and northern inner cities, is laden with crime, drugs, poor schools and few jobs.For example, if a factory went there with jobs instead of welfare, everyone would be better off. If there were high educational standards and good teachers went to the schools instead of those bad ones that couldn't be fired because of tenure, the kids would be better off. Not that we could ever totally remove welfare, but it should be a short term 'helping hand' tool and not developing a 'way of life' habit. In other words, our poverty approach is not what is working and I don't think you can fix all the problems that make an area downtrodden. It's kind of like the Middle East; it will always be what it is because of cultural, geography and the pain it suffered.And lets remember, when an opportunity exists, some people will take it and some won't! And maybe we shouldn't worry so much about them - if that's possible in a western egalitarian oriented society?

My guess would be parts of central Glasgow. This article appears to support that impression: Glasgow RevisitedGlasgow RevisitedYou can stick your Englishman's castle - Camphill AvenueWith Scottish secession a distinct possibility we face the horrifying prospect of a permanent Tory Westminster. Even worse, the ex-industrial Midlands and North (and Cornwall) will be the only remnants of Empire left to the incompetence and condescension of the Establishment. Emigration to Scotland seems a very attractive option especially with the dividend of global warming (I may be wrong about that). Scotland with its wonderfully urban cities and towns, boundless countryside and wilderness, magical coast and islands – who would not want to live there? Well of course there are some deep seated social and economic problems too, and these are especially pronounced in Glasgow and Strathclyde. There is a real danger that the new Scotland will reflect the English north/south split in a Caledonian west/east divide with the capital city of Edinburgh, like most European capitals, dominating political, financial and creative life to the detriment of its larger neighbour.A city where this is ordinaryI love Glasgow – I just get such a buzz from being there. The only place I know which can compete is Chicago, a city which shares many similarities although not the skyscrapers. Glasgow is so American in feel, but also so European, actually so British as opposed to Scottish or English. It is so much its own place. The sadness is that with most new development it is becoming less distinctive, more second rate. Glasgow must be sick of all this advice. Fifty years ago Gomme and Walker’s tome captured the city in all its splendour but just when it was losing so much of it. Ian Nairn pronounced ‘unless the city wakes up to a sense of its greatness Glasgow is heading for disaster’. Thirty years ago local historian Francis Worsdall published ‘The City that Disappeared’ (a bit of an exaggeration).Twenty years ago the Buildings of Scotland catalogued Glasgow’s outstanding architectural legacy. Gavin Stamp spent years raging against the iniquities of the City Council and its neglect of Greek Thompson and the rest of its extraordinary heritage and many, probably most, Glaswegians supported him. Most recently Owen Hatherley told the city it was looking for the future in all the wrong places – but I don’t think the Glasgow authorities are listening.Pioneers of the Modern... well actually it's 1927 but stillCertainly the decline of manufacturing and especially of shipbuilding meant Glasgow was in a difficult position. The very fact that it had been such an enterprising and innovative city meant that the decline was steep when world conditions changed. Glasgow had to reinvent itself and this helps explain, even if it does not justify, its often philistine approach to new development. However, despite the needless self harm to its fabric, Glasgow remains largely a very coherent city – far more so than other big British cities and especially its nearest rival, Liverpool. It is far grander and culturally richer than Manchester, Birmingham or especially Leeds. And Glasgow is a proud place, proud of its achievements and its special identity, which makes it all the more puzzling that it is not as passionate about its architecture.New tenements and per cent for art near Caledonia RoadOf course there have been big achievements. Perhaps the most important has been the reinvention of the tenement block after decades of clearance. Tenements, despite their often negative connotations, are the glory of Glasgow - the real WOW factor. Across great swathes of the city they create rich, diverse and intensely urban townscapes, reinforcing the street as a public, legible and social place. The West End provides one of the most attractive, congenial and consistently urbane urban environments in Europe. The extent and quality of tenements is quite staggering, in middle class suburbs like Hyndland and south of the river at Queen’s Park as examples, but also in working class districts like Govan as we shall see. Since the 1980s new tenement buildings are again achieving this quality of urban coherence, albeit with somewhat less quality of design and materials than the pre 1914 originals.Welcome to Glasgow, twinned with ChicagoThe city centre is also successful - notably lively and the biggest shopping destination outside London. The decline of Sauchiehall Street is sad – once an upmarket destination, now the shabby former Willow Tea Rooms face a closed Pound-Mart. The Buchanan Galleries are boring but the splendour of Buchanan Street makes up for this and whilst the destruction of St Enoch’s station was unforgivable the St Enoch’s Centre, a huge 1980s steel and glass tent, is arresting although internally bland and confusing.Boring BroomielawThe striking thing about the city centre is not just how grand the buildings are but how so many of its buildings are so technically and stylistically adventurous. On Jamaica Street there were fine early iron framed buildings, some shamefully demolished quite recently. On Argyle Street you see this amazing Chicago like confidence with proto skyscrapers rising amid more modest scale, built with the expectation that everything was going to be like that, but WW1 intervened. On St Vincent’s St you find the fin de siècle inventiveness of buildings like the Hat Rack designed by James Salmon with Beardsleyesque and Gaudiesque features. Between the wars commercial confidence was asserted in the grandest neo-classicism. Post war commercial architecture was also confident if often insensitive, but so much recent development is just dim and dreary. The Clyde end of Jamaica Street is now a disgrace – Jury’s Inn one of the main culprits as usual. It actually manages to be worse than its Nottingham namesake. Fronting the river at Broomielaw, new offices could be anywhere. They are not absolutely awful, just so bloody boring and lacking in life. Interestingly plans to build new restaurants on the wide quayside opposite have sparked a big local protest, suggesting this space is valued although in December it is maybe not seen at its liveliest.Jury's Inn: the canny ability to downgrade any townscapeAcross the river from Broomielaw there is an immediate Chicago-like transition from the dynamic city centre grid to an urban wasteland with a few buildings rising out of the debris. The new M74 thunders through. On Eglinton Street a Greek Thompson terrace was needlessly demolished as late as the1980s. Carlton Place fronting the Clyde opposite the Suspension Bridge is a fine Georgian enclave providing an elegant screen, but there is urban chaos behind. This is of course the Gorbals, in the post war years a byword for appalling slum housing. The demolition of the fine tenement terraces of the Gorbals was meant to exorcise the injustices of the past and even the name of the area was temporarily expunged. Now most of this urban renewal scheme has itself been cleared, including the highly sculptural Basil Spence flats, although some monumental tower blocks remain. In places a third Gorbals has risen from the ashes seeking to learn from the past and at least in part succeeding.Great stuff: the Gorbals facing the ClydeDown Gorbals Street, past the massive Norfolk Street flats and the Citizens’ Theatre, on through a wasteland and beyond the railway bridges you will see the magnificent ruin of Greek Thompson’s Caledonia Road church. The neglect of this masterpiece, gutted by fire in 1965, epitomises the Glasgow problem of not realising its own greatness. But even as a ruin and in the middle of a traffic gyratory it is absolutely compelling and fundamental to creating a sense of place and identity in the adjacent third Gorbals development. This is broadly based on the tenement tradition with four or five story blocks flanking broad, legible streets and crescents. Car parking is largely in the streets, at times in right angle parking, so there is not the usual fussy and confusing domination of layout and design by cars. The tenements themselves, although of the right scale and massing, are a bit fussy, trying too hard at variety within order and not always succeeding. The artworks – I think flying angels – are certainly OTT. However there is certainly a sense of place and the numerous views of Greek Thompson’s church create very satisfying compositions. The biggest problem is the ridiculous barriers against Laurieston Road which make it virtually impossible to get to the bus stop. The concept of the multi functional street is obviously not fully re-embraced in Glasgie.Black Hole SunTwo miles downstream from the city centre, past Foster’s Armadillo and its hinterland of car parks, is Zaha Hadid’s new Riverside Museum, the focus of ourGlasgow blog last summer. Great exhibits, shame about the location and the unsuitability of the building for them. However in its first six months the museum has attracted a million visitors which is one hell of an achievement – so well done. But visiting again in December my reservations were reinforced; indeed the greyness and bleakness of it was overpowering in a howling gale and driving rain. This is the problem with the global warming thing. Extreme weather seems to be here already, which is why an exposed riverside location is not such a good idea for regeneration, especially in Scotland.This is GovanThe best view of the zinc icon is actually across the Clyde from Govan, although few visitors will see this. Govan – that redoubt of anarchic working class resistance to global capitalism as embodied in Rab C. Nesbitt (although in the latest series he seems to have become a pillar of the community rather than the scourge of it). The place is not quite as I had imagined. It is almost a town in its own right - and was until 1912 - with its own monumental Beaux Arts town hall in red sandstone, built around 1900, the time of greatest prosperity based on the shipyards. There are other fine buildings of this period, like the Pearce Institute, a working people’s club disguised as a C17th Scottish town house whilst churches, schools, libraries and grand banks all attest to Govan’s heyday.Govan - side streets and shipyardsDespite these dignified buildings however, on arrival by Subway (apparently not to be called the Clockwork Orange) Ian Pattison’s inspiration is immediately apparent. The irregular space of Govan Cross is the visual centre. The Govan Centre opposite sums up the poverty not just of its architecture but also of many of the shoppers. Appropriately it was built in the early years of Thatcher and illustrates her visionfor Scotland – I don’t think Meryl Streep quite catches that. But turn west along Govan Road towards the Fairfield shipyard and you cannot fail to be impressed. This is a fine street lined with four storey tenements, interestingly showing the transition from the earlier light sandstone and square bay to the red sandstone and bow window model which is so quintessentially Glasgow at its zenith. Majestic side streets of similar red sandstone tenements lead down towards the river with the cranes of the old shipyards still in view – thrilling townscape.No artifical colours?The long monumental offices of the Fairfield Shipyard (later Glasgow Shipbuilders) built in 1890 of red sandstone in an Italian Renaissance style utterly dominate Govan Road. Although empty they are apparently being converted into offices and community space funded by Europe and the Scottish government. There are other heartening signs of renewal nearby with new flats nearly completed – not exactly new interpretations of the tenements but of the right scale and reinforcing the life and urbanity of this part of Govan. The block on Golspie Street feels the need for a Smartie assortment of coloured bays, which actually look ok. Back towards Govan Cross another nice touch is the palimpsest image of the original 1937 Lyceum Cinema on the curved façade of the husk of the old building which bingo could not save.Intimacy - the back of Govan RoadBehind Govan Old Church is the ferry to the Riverside Museum, if you are lucky, but anyway you get the good view. There is a bleak Clydeside promenade, part of a featureless low rise 1970s redevelopment. The east side of Govan is really very depressing. The urban fabric has been blown apart by demolition without any apparent thought, leaving an utter wasteland. The saddest thing is the recent destruction of Napier House designed in 1899 by the little known W.J. Anderson. At once precocious in its steel frame and concrete floor construction and wilful in its eccentric version of art nouveau, it still exists on Google street view but all I found was a hole in the ground, which is what Govan needs like a hole in the head. The only encouraging development nearby is Collective Architecture’s scheme for the Govan Housing Association. The curved façade of the 6 storey block to Govan Road is unpromisingly defensive but has the good sense to embrace the fine sandstone bank building at the corner of Orkney Street. Here a crescent of linked 2 storey houses, brick with gold panels, creates an attractive, intimate environment. Opposite, small scale industrial buildings have been nicely converted into an Enterprise Centre.New Govan TenementsI had intended to walk back to the city centre through the Clydeside redevelopments but despair set in as I trudged through the ugliness, anomie and sheer misery of the alleged regeneration of the old Govan Docks. I got as far as the titanium clad spheres of the Glasgow Science Centre at Pacific Quay, designed by BDP and interesting in an ascetic way. Opposite is the RIBA award winning new BBC Scotland HQ by man of the moment David Chipperfield. Although a serious, carefully considered, scrupulous and elegant building, the bleakness of the site and the heavy security serve to alienate if you are in the cold outside its magnificent atrium. Why the BBC has chosen quite such hostile locations for its various new studios God only knows. I bottled out and took a cab from the luvvies’ taxi rank.The city centre doesn't care what the weather man says...The ride back to the city centre is through identikit acres of regeneration, no different, no better, no worse than much of London’s Docklands, Salford Quays – you name it. Maybe it is unfair to review the Clydeside version in the wind, rain and snow of December, but really that is the point. How does it work as a place? Well it just doesn’t. Despite the involvement of Foster, Chipperfield and Zaha Hadid there is no coherence, no hierarchy, no enclosure, no diversity, no street life, no shelter. These are all fundamental to successful place making. Glasgow city centre is thronged in the downpours. I walked round Hillhead and Langside in the snow and they are really civilised places with cafes, shops, libraries, parks. They are designed for the reality of the climate.Woulda coulda shoulda beenI still love Glasgow, but maybe I’m in love with the image of Glasgow as it could have been – should have been; the finest, most adventurous, most ambitious, most exciting of British cities. I wish it were so today.

This morning Quora had a question, “Does it seem like cities outside of the USA tend to be nicer than cities in the USA?”. It seems to have disappeared. Because the Answer I composed speaks to this topic as well, I am providing it.Martin"Nicer" can mean all sorts of things. In this context, it could mean a combination of pretty, pleasant and easy to live in, peaceful, cultured, interesting, tolerant, and walkable.I have seen a fair number of American cities, Canadian cities and cities overseas. There are a lot of cities outside of the USA that are not nice at all, except that they are lively and the people are mostly friendly. I have lived in New Delhi and Manila. I met some very nice people there, but those cities are very far off being nice.Perhaps this question meant, "Does it seem like cities outside of the USA, in countries with a comparable standard of living to the USA, tend to be nicer than cities in the USA?In general, with some very notable exceptions, maybe they are. I believe that American political culture has objectives that are much more important than a city being nice.What Does City Mean?American cities tend to consist for the most part of a core municipality, plus a number of suburban municipalities. The metropolitan area of a city, is not a city in the political sense. Rather, in the USA it is a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). Wikipedia gives a description at:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_areaIn the United States, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) is a geographical region with a relatively high population density at its core and close economic ties throughout the area. Such regions are neither legally incorporated as a city or town would be, nor are they legal administrative divisions like counties or separate entities such as states; as such, the precise definition of any given metropolitan area can vary with the source. A typical metropolitan area is centered on a single large city that wields substantial influence over the region (e.g., New York City or Philadelphia). However, some metropolitan areas contain more than one large city with no single municipality holding a substantially dominant position (e.g., Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, Norfolk-Virginia Beach (Hampton Roads), Riverside–San Bernardino (Inland Empire) or Minneapolis–Saint Paul (Twin Cities)). MSAs are defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and used by the Census Bureau and other federal government agencies for statistical purposes.If Americans want a given MSA to have a region-wide administrative apparatus, they have to create it separately. (Sometimes a county government can provide a little bit of overarching, region-wide functions.) Quite often they don't. A given suburb may be in a much better fiscal situation than the core municipality, with a better tax base, and may not be willing to share. Or, it may be racially, ethnically and linguistically quite different. Any given suburb may have a very different political culture from the core municipality (generally more conservative). The core municipality may have a greater proportion of people living in non-traditional lifestyles that social conservatives find offensive. Also, there is considerable distrust of "big government" in the USA. A suburb might have a readily accessible town hall and municipal offices, where you get personalized services from local staff who are quite familiar with your needs. By contrast, in a SMA with a with a metropolitan or unitary government, city hall could be thirty kilometres away, and very impersonal, or you may have to apply for services online.Having said that, I know that, in the State of Texas, core municipalities are empowered to annex their suburban environs:http://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Annexation/annexation.html" In the State of Texas, the Local Government Code defines a city’s rights and responsibilities regarding properties within its boundaries and the area immediately surrounding its boundaries (called extraterritorial jurisdiction). This Code is where cities are given authority to change their boundaries either by annexation or disannexation."I am not aware of other American jurisdictions where core municipalities are permitted to expand geographically on a unilateral basis. If an American reader knows of other states that have similar arrangements, please advise me.A lot of the larger metropolitan areas in Canada are not the same in governmental structure as most of their equivalents in the USA. In Canada, the provincial governments are solely responsible for how municipal governments are organized. Some years ago, the Province of Ontario (much the most populous province in Canada, with some of Canada's largest metropolitan areas) compelled several of its larger metropolitan areas to amalgamate under single municipal governments. Many years before, the Province of Manitoba reformed the governing structure for Winnipeg (Where over half of all Manitobans live). Metro Winnipeg had had a number of municipalities, with an overarching metropolitan level of government. The Government of Manitoba replaced this with "Unicity", with Winnipeg City Hall the single governance point for most of the metropolitan area. The major metropolitan areas in the other two Prairie Provinces, similarly, have just the one municipal government for most of the population.It is not flawless, but unitary municipal governments, that cover most of the metropolitan area, can do some things to make the area, nice. They can create region-wide road and public transit infrastructures. There isn't any scope for a separate suburban municipality, with a lot of property-tax adverse residents, to "skimp" on its public infrastructure (including fire services and policing, or even just letting public areas and parks, be untended, weedy and unsupervised) or to refuse to participate in rapid transit initiatives. A unicity government will impose common standards. It can make all property tax payers in the metropolitan area contribute to municipal amenities like parks, concert halls, museums, libraries, children's playgrounds, bicycle paths, sports facilities, etc.Cities in Europe tend to be the same, with one municipal government for the metropolitan area. Sydney, Australia, experienced a local government merger in 2004.Car Suburbs Have Their LimitationsA unitary city government can ensure that all suburban areas have generally adequate infrastructures and services. However, it is quite difficult to make a car-oriented suburb look nice. They need wide, and sometimes featureless, roads. They are zoned so that a lot of the streets are completely residential and quite homogenous. Shopping generally isn't walkable. Instead there are big box stores, strip malls and enclosed shopping malls, typically with large parking lots that extend right up to the sidewalks. Big box stores and strip malls are not known in particular to have exceptional architecture. What you have is a utilitarian, structured environment, focused on the attempts of city engineers to provide for the efficient flow of many vehicles. This type of suburb is not very common in Europe. There isn't the land for it and it does not represent how a lot of people want to live. However, in Canada and Australia, it is very common indeed.Run Down and Beat-UpInner cities in much of America have a rather rough history, that to a large extent started at the 1929 stock market crash. During the Great Depression, there wasn't the money to maintain what were already aging, large, inner neighbourhoods, some of them partially made up of tenement-type housing. Then, during the Second World War, there wasn't labour and supplies. Together, there was a sixteen-year period, from 1929 to 1945, where not much could be done.When peace and prosperity resumed, the family car very quickly came to dominate. A young family could migrate to a new, greenfield suburb. At the same time, the Second World War had begun an era of great minority population migration, from the country into the cities. So many of these people were poor and discriminated against. They could not afford the suburbs, even if they could find one without legal and private bars against non-white residents. They had to live in the inner cities, in areas that were already run-down, and that became stigmatized ghettos. The run down areas received little private investment. When they became a large part of the core municipality (Detroit is an extreme case.), the municipal tax base became run down.I don't know of any urban areas in the developed world, outside of the USA, that had the same problems. Canada urbanized much later than the USA. It had little to compare to the American city, late 1800's and early 1900's, tenement and impoverished factory worker areas. Canada did not have the same urban racial issues as the USA (nor did Australia). When governments in many of the larger municipal areas were consolidated, there was then one, common, tax base.In Europe, the family car era started later and there wasn't the room for sprawling suburbs. Some inner city areas were so heavily destroyed by bombing that they were rebuilt anew. When racial diversity finally arrived, the minority groups were frequently "stuffed" into public housing apartment blocks, in districts at the edge of, but not in, the inner city. It was sort of, out of sight, out of mind, while those historic areas that had survived World War II, were carefully preserved.The GridThe ancient Romans sometimes built new towns with a street grid. But, medieval Europe and the British Isles didn't. Feudal towns had winding streets, When they grew into cities, for the most part, they didn't lose that street pattern. Winding roads have a certain charm. You can't see very far in front of you (which contributes to slower, calmer, traffic). You come around a small curve and there is something different and possibly interesting to see there. In a city that did not have much wartime destruction, this can be a very old, unique-looking building. It could be an outdoor cafe.The much newer cities of the United States, Canada and Australia did not attempt to replicate winding feudal streets. The grid pattern was the most obvious way to create a city from near scratch. You can see ahead, sometimes for a few blocks, with no surprises. Of course, there are not a lot of very old buildings to discover.A grid pattern of streets tends to leave a city without too much common focus. Roads don't radiate out from a central square or cathedral. Unlike the rebuilt centre of Paris, the roads don't run on diagonals. You could be a visitor to a grid-pattern city, be only a block away from a notable park, building or monument, and, without a map or a guide book, you wouldn't know it was there.Make American Cities Nicer?Despite being a Canadian answering in Quora, I will not take a supercilious stance towards an American problem. Living here in Ottawa-Gatineau (Ottawa, one city only, Gatineau, one city only. There used to be a number of municipalities in the metropolitan area. Some years ago the Ontario and Quebec governments consolidated them.), I do not have to walk in American urban shoes. The single, City of Ottawa, is constructing a light rapid transit system. The single, Ville de Gatineau is working on it. Until the 1960's neither city was at all racially diverse.What if I was a resident of a prosperous American suburban municipality, maybe with high-tech manufacturing and high-end service industries? Would I want my suburban municipality to share its commercial property tax revenues with an impoverished inner, core, municipality? No, I am not that altruistic.Would I support a massive programme of physical and infrastructural redevelopment in the core, inner municipality. Sure, unless my taxes had to pay for it.Would I support measures that would limit how I can use my car? No way! If I choose to live in a suburban municipality that is not walkable, that is my right as an American. I do not want retail stores of municipal service centres popping up on my quiet, safe, residential street. Most of my equity is in my property values. Watch me fight anything that would reduce the market value of my property!To suggest anything, I would almost have to go back to the answer I gave on Tuesday, to "When will the big cities of the world get that futuristic look that is familiar from science fiction movies?" Some core American inner cities have been depopulating (Again, Detroit is an extreme case.) Maybe a case could be made for bulldozing parts of town. The bulldozed areas could be left to be natural areas or parks. Maybe, as the housing stock deteriorates, a business case could be made for rehousing many of the residents in the type of very high, slender buildings that are a standard feature of science fiction skylines. If new technology allows the old, lost, manufacturing jobs to be replaced with new, very productive, high-skilled, well-paid ones, the residents could have very nice apartments and even buy them as condominiums. Maybe, airborne passenger and delivery vehicles could replace ground based systems, and unify transit throughout the metropolitan area, whether there is only one municipal government or not. With an airborne transit system, grid pattern streets would not be so necessary. Maybe most shopping will be done online, with airborne delivery, so there won't be any need for big box malls and the attendant huge parking lots.This is sort of a Canadian trying to dream a new American dream, urban style. As others have said, a lot of what makes a city nice, is lively, friendly, interesting people. American cities have plenty of people like that. There are plenty of Americans around, who could agree on long-term plans that would create entire metropolitan areas that are physically and socially nicer.Martin Levine