How Milwaukee didn't grow
From a column by former Milwaukee Mayor John O. Norquist about the late Mayor Frank Zeidler, who was laid to rest today:
Zeidler had launched a plan calling (quietly) for the gradual annexation of what later became New Berlin, Brookfield, Menomonee Falls, Germantown and Mequon, not to mention most of today's suburban Milwaukee County.
Capitalizing on suburban thirst for city water and sewer services, they almost succeeded - annexing large portions of the towns of Lake, Greenfield and Wauwatosa and setting in motion the annexation of Granville (now the northwest side). But in 1955, the Legislature passed the Oak Creek Law, which allowed all unincorporated towns adjacent to Milwaukee and only Milwaukee to incorporate as separate municipalities, without losing their claim on city water or sewers. The discriminatory law ended the annexation program and set up the situation of today, where poor people live in a city surrounded by suburban enclaves zoned to exclude low-cost housing.
7 Comments:
An imperialist socialist?
Those enclaves seem to me to be thriving. I sense a little jealousy in 0's remarks.
Demonstrating that Socialism cannot succeed without hegemonic actions.
See: PRChina, the former USSR, and North Vietnam.
Nor does conservatism.
See: TABOR and its children.
Bill are you suggesting that the only way for Socialism to thrive is the constant conquering of it's neighbors?
It would be great if there were wide-open discussion of the means that many of the suburbs have used to wall off Milwaukee, and especially low-to-moderate income people throughout the area, including:
1. Exclusionary zoning that mandates through law - - not the unseen hand of the free market - - large lots for single-family housing, or large homes as well, making sure there is no housing built for low-to-moderate income residents.
2. The same zoning code manipulation that prohibits multi-family housing.
3. Heavy taxpayer spending on new and widened highways to the same suburban housing and, in some cases, mixed-use developments. (Pabst Farms, for example, and the proposed "lifestyle center " 2,000,000 sq. ft. development south of Delafield.
4. Waukesha County's veto of light rail in Milwaukee County, thus making it harder for workers to get to jobs in the suburbs. Now that the county bus system is being further pared, while highway spending is increasing, the segregation of jobs from the available labor pool in Milwaukee is the highest measurable in the United States.
Waukesha blocked even rail lines that would have ended at the Milwaukee County line, where trains could have been met by shuttle buses.
So public law-making and spending contributes to Milwaukee's relative poverty and some suburbs relative wealth and high employment.
You can blame #1 and 2 soley on the shoulders of enviromentalists that lobbied for larger lots to prevent 'urban sprwall' [sp] therefore making it more expensive so that only the people with jobs can afford to live there.
#3 When people have cars they need to get to the jobs in the city. Unless you want the jobs to leave the city and head for the burbs. Or are you more in favor of a Communist mandate that forces people to live in specific areas - see Milwaukee Residency Requirement
#4 - maybe if there was an educated work force in the city, there would be more jobs for them. Taxpayers are already overspending on MPS to help compensate for the lack of parental responsibility, which is causing taxes to sky rocket which is sending more business out of the area.
Clint is completely misinformed. Large-lot development has nothing to do with what environmentalists wanted or didn't want. These codes were sstablished by local suburban governments to exclude people they felt were undesirable - - lower-income people, which in the real world tends to mean people of color.
Your remark about mandates is laughable: it's the burbs that mandate how big the house has to be, on how many acres, etc. Some communities even mandate what color schemes you may paint your house.
Your attitude about MPS is rather telling. It's full of finger-pointing, but offers no solutions.
Does your community, in the spirit of regionalism, exchange students and resouces with MPS?
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