Rioters destroyed storefronts in downtown Oakland, California five months ago, filling the area with sadness and boarded-up windows. All of the businesses have fixed up their public faces except one. One retailer’s huge building still has boarded-up windows and looks abandoned. Local residents call the blighted storefront “depressing,” and the city issued a citation for “blight.” The blighted business? Sears. [More]
urban blight
LA Has 4,000 Illegal Billboards, But City Looks On Helplessly
By 4.30.08
In 2002, LA banned any new billboards from going up in the city. Since then, an estimated four thousand have been put up by advertising companies who have ignored the law, which obviously the city’s billboard inspectors—”a tiny, and some say incredibly inept, group”—have never bothered to enforce.
