GOP convention's host city is a disaster, reflection of where Tea Party politics will lead cities

[flamingdem]

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/18/tampa_americas_hottest_mess/

The GOP convention's host city is a disaster, and a perfect reflection of where Tea Party politics will lead cities


Poke around the White House website and you can still find the hopeful “fact sheet” for a 324-mile high-speed rail line linking Miami, Orlando and Tampa.

No such system exists, of course — it was killed by Florida Gov. Rick Scott. Today, there’s a 40-acre vacant lot where the Tampa terminal would have stood. And when Republicans arrive for their national convention in about a week and catch a glimpse of it, they’ll likely see a big win. In fact, the GOP will find a lot of things in Tampa that exemplify their commitment to not investing in the future.

“The trend [in Tampa] today is to say, ‘We don’t need it — no new taxes — we are not going to invest anymore,’” former Pinellas County Commissioner Ronnie Duncan recently told Tampa Bay Online. “And that message resonates from not only the constituents, but the leadership of the Republican Party.” You could fairly call the GOP vision for the country the Tampafication of America.

Tampa is a hot urban mess, equal parts Reagan ’80s and Paul Ryan 2010s. Urban renewal projects decimated the city in the ’60s, but its current persona was forged in earnest starting three decades ago, when finance and insurance companies started moving their back-office operations there, attracted by the sunshine and low-cost labor. The 1988 bestseller “Megatrends” declared Tampa “America’s next great city.” Real estate joined the service economy as a major economic pillar, and the city embarked on a building spree, sprouting large glass towers disconnected from the city itself, a development pattern that offered little incentive to invest in things like parks, transit or walkable spaces.

This left little of the quality urbanism people now pay a premium for. And while other cities made similar mistakes, Tampa has been slow to correct theirs, stymied by tight-fisted Tea Party politics. “We look at Dallas or Houston, with all the same challenges we have; they’ve managed to start changing their patterns of development and attract the creative-class younger folks who are looking for alternatives to the suburban lifestyle,” says Steve Schukraft, the Tampa Bay area’s representative to the Congress for the New Urbanism. When you’re wistfully pining for Houston’s urban virtues, things are not going well. MORE AT LINK

[TwilightGardener]

1. Tampa sucks. They do have one "walkable" neighborhood, Ybor City--

but that is mostly given over to stupid shit like Gasparilla (fake cheesy Mardi Gras/New Orleans ripoff) and bar crawling. Could not wait to leave that ugly-ass, mean-spirited city. What a disappointment.

[Doctor_J]

2. I have often wondered why, when the GOP ran ads saying,

"The Dems want to turn the whole country into San Francisco", our party didn't fire back showing pictures of San Fran juxtaposed with Repuke strongholds - like Mississippi.

[formercia]

3. I hope a lot of people go to Tampa for the GOP Convention

if only to document the duplicity of the so-called 'Christian Right' as they troll for hookers and generally misbehave.

Do like occupy and cover every angle with live feeds.

Now, that would be entertainment and fodder for the coming election.