I was discussing some disturbing demographic trends with a friend when it struck me that you often get the results you seek.  We have a problem with downtown foot traffic and a recent local festival seemed to attract precisely the traffic that isn't needed.  As the trucks pulled in to town I was in the barber chair and my barber said: "Here comes the 'molester festival.'  You think I'm going to let my daughter go downtown for that event?"

Not a good sign, but how often do we try to do some public good and wind up actually harming? 

A few years ago a proposed public housing site was roundly and appropriately drummed off our city agenda when neighbors who had worked hard to improve a few blocks of homes in the area turned out to draw a picture of the damage city planners would visit upon them with yet another public housing development.

Steven Malanga draws on similar lessons in his tale of The Death and Life of Bushwick at City Journal:

"In a massive scandal reminiscent of today’s subprime-mortgage meltdown, speculators bought homes from Bushwick residents for an average of $8,000 apiece, and then, using fraudulent appraisals and a Great Society federal mortgage program that insured home loans to low-income buyers, sold them to poor blacks and Puerto Ricans at prices that they couldn’t afford— on average, about $20,000 per home. Many defaulted, abandoning their homes and massively depressing local property values. By 1972, in one city estimate, some 500 Bushwick buildings stood empty because of the bad loans; others, not part of the federal program, also emptied as housing prices plummeted and buyers balked at investing in the neighborhood."

Read the rest here.