Urban Prairie or Urban Blight ?

[mam2009]

Abandoned homes & buildings are magnets for criminal behavior! I talk to people everyday who are frightened because drug users and prostitutes use them for their "activities". They are attractive to arsonists...You must not know what it feels like to be sitting in your home next to a vacant builidng hearing people going in and out of the house next door to you all day and all night not knowing their intentions for that building or your home for that matter! Elderly citizens and citizens with children are afraid to sit outside or let their children play outside because of the element that is attracted to these buildings. Children walk past these buildings to get to school. People wait at bus stops near these things. Not to mention the fact that they are also havens for rats, rodents, stray dogs and cats, etc. You've got to be joking [[or naive or a non-Detroiter or delusional) if you have some sort of romantic notion about the value of abandoned, rotting buildings.

[Bobl]

Abandoned homes & buildings are magnets for criminal behavior! I talk to people everyday who are frightened because drug users and prostitutes use them for their "activities". They are attractive to arsonists...You must not know what it feels like to be sitting in your home next to a vacant builidng hearing people going in and out of the house next door to you all day and all night not knowing their intentions for that building or your home for that matter! Elderly citizens and citizens with children are afraid to sit outside or let their children play outside because of the element that is attracted to these buildings. Children walk past these buildings to get to school. People wait at bus stops near these things. Not to mention the fact that they are also havens for rats, rodents, stray dogs and cats, etc. You've got to be joking [[or naive or a non-Detroiter or delusional) if you have some sort of romantic notion about the value of abandoned, rotting buildings.

I agree. It is a security problem. Who would wish to live next door to a crumbling hulk occupied by crack smokers and prostitutes?
Sad, but necessary, to tear them down. Replace them with native vegetation.

[tahleel]

Abandoned homes & buildings are magnets for criminal behavior! I talk to people everyday who are frightened because drug users and prostitutes use them for their "activities". They are attractive to arsonists...You must not know what it feels like to be sitting in your home next to a vacant builidng hearing people going in and out of the house next door to you all day and all night not knowing their intentions for that building or your home for that matter! Elderly citizens and citizens with children are afraid to sit outside or let their children play outside because of the element that is attracted to these buildings. Children walk past these buildings to get to school. People wait at bus stops near these things. Not to mention the fact that they are also havens for rats, rodents, stray dogs and cats, etc. You've got to be joking [[or naive or a non-Detroiter or delusional) if you have some sort of romantic notion about the value of abandoned, rotting buildings.

Couldn't have said it any better myself.

-Tahleel