Without Merit

Why merit pay won’t reform public education.

Nick Gillespie from the October 2000 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Keith E. Whittington
Assistant Professor of Politics
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ

Planning Pittsburgh

As a person who has lived and worked in Pittsburgh, I was most intrigued by Bill Steigerwald’s article ("Death By Wrecking Ball," June). While in the main I agree with his conclusions, I’d like to present a different spin on Pittsburgh’s redevelopment efforts. Such yuppie-style redevelopment is unfortunately inevitable.

I say unfortunately because I love the old-style city: shops, streets, independent businesses, the variety and diversity that can be found only in the core of a major city. I’ve lived in Pittsburgh, and I loved it for its people, its hills, its neighborhoods, and, most important, its being urban (not urbane, but urban). Unfortunately, I’m in the minority and I’ve had to witness the centers of many fine cities become "yuppified." I’m not saying that re-gentrification or redevelopment per se are bad; rather, the problem seems to be that the city fathers are jumping the gun on both the market and the economic realities. It’s actually a civic version of keeping up with the Joneses…and an expensive version at that.

Pittsburgh has evolved dramatically over the years. While it lost thousands of blue-collar jobs in the steel industry, it has gained thousands of white-collar, high-tech, and office jobs in their place. To a certain degree, there must be an out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new mentality, but the city fathers are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Many other rust belt cities are not destroying their blue-collar past; rather, they are turning their past into a tourist-oriented future, a future with the small(er) businessman in mind.

On the other hand, the same small businessmen could be facing very similar problems even if the redeveloper were a private business and no taxpayer funds were involved. Perhaps a good example of this would be Rockefeller Center in New York City. We now see a modern, urban multi-use commercial complex; however, hundreds of small(er) businesses were forced to relocate so that Rockefeller could build this monument to his ego.

Times change, and the laws of supply and demand should be allowed to guide the transition. Unfortunately, many of the taxpayer-funded, municipally ordained redevelopment agencies know nothing about the laws of supply and demand. There’s no need to worry about economic realities when you’ve got your paws in the taxpayer’s wallet!

Fred Bluestone
Lauderhill, FL

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