https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/public/ recent bookmarks from robertogreco 2025-11-28T23:06:29+00:00 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-24/billionaires-bankroll-san-francisco-comeback-one-party-at-a-time robertogreco sanfrancisco daniellurie millionaires downtown 2025 chrislarsen philanthropicindustrialcomplex philanthropy charitableindustrialcomplex charity michaelmoritz bobfisher salesforce vc venturecapital conniechan bigtech deanpreston oligarchy ripple eliyahukamisher surveillance governance government democracy crankstart privatization tendrloin indiabasin nationalguard marcbenioff samaltman nvidia jensenhuang openai taxes taxation elitism boosterism politics burningman sholaolatoye revitalization development missynarula siliconvalley gentrification katybirnbaum intothestreets https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:326de2cd9c22/ 2022-08-16T14:27:52+00:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOW03nzWSXM robertogreco fbi defunding law lawenforcement police policing us 2022 alexvitale donaldtrump politics cointelpro blackpantherparty blackpanthers history americanindianmoovement mlk martinlutherkingjr fascism authoritarianism socialjustice republicans crime disinvestment racism race immigration housing health healthcare marjorietaylorgreene communism labor jedgarhoover suppression left blackliberationmmovement waronterror terrorism environmentalism repression corruption operationrelentlesspursuit blacklivesmatter dea atf cities urban urbanism revitalization liberalism centrism property capitalism class statusquo gangs violence stateviolence globalwaronterror https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:4921cc25f2a3/ 2019-09-07T00:55:25+00:00 https://thebaffler.com/salvos/hollowed-out-ray robertogrecoThe hotel is a central component of Whitesburg’s economic development future and revitalization plans. After the structure is stabilized and renovated, it will be a regional destination and economic driver. The project will create 23 jobs, leverage $2,000,000 in private investment, and will attract 9,900 additional visitors annually to the area. [Emphasis mine.] These metrics are how you determine the ambition of the project: 9,900 additional visitors annually to the area. How’d they get that number? Well, they either made it up, or some consulting firm gave it to them, and they probably made it up.” … “It’s clear how the POWER Initiative benefits Appalachia’s new managerial class, disaster capitalists who are forward-looking only in their desire to exploit resources in Appalachia which don’t yet exist. But it certainly hasn’t benefitted the people at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, who don’t have the capital to start their own entrepreneurial “ecosystems” or run countless feasibility tests with no discernable purpose. I realize I’m missing the point here; the eminently wise technocrats of the ARC would tell me that of course poor and working people aren’t going to start their own businesses. The point is to get middle- and upper-class gentrifiers to start those businesses, and then they’ll employ everyone in a community, and their wealth will trickle down. Even if that were possible in a rapidly depopulating region, many people would remain trapped in violent, backbreaking, dead-end jobs. But training poor and working people for different jobs is equally unpromising. The majority of the tech skills that that POWER grantees have promised to teach are in some of the most replaceable jobs in the industry: app development, web development, and dataset management. And even if those jobs aren’t easily replaceable by fellow low-paid workers, in a few years they will be, by machines. One POWER project in Pennsylvania got over half a million dollars to train former coal miners to become pipeline workers in oil and gas, an industry that automates and mechanizes at hyperspeed. Of course people will still be needed to run and monitor the machines, but there isn’t much manufacturing going on in the Appalachian interior, and there never will be, simply because it’s not profitable to put your factory in a remote county in eastern Kentucky, far away from all major ports and transportation corridors. The very people who love capitalism so much that they’d base their entire Appalachian revitalization project on its inerrancy constantly forget its basic premise: things must be profitable in order to matter. All of this is to say that we can identify several themes in the Obama administration’s grand Appalachian economic development initiative. First: never meet peoples’ material needs directly or encourage them to organize. Rather, study the feasibility of giving them things, or throw some money at a community college, which can train people in the art of being a well-behaved and productive worker, so that they can then get things themselves. Second: if you absolutely must build any infrastructure, make sure that it’s in service to something else, like a wildlife viewing facility or a prison. Third: use as many fancy words as possible to make it sound like you’re keeping busy. Target and deploy your dislocated coal workers to maximize creative potential so that we can create a thriving and diverse restorative economy in the mountains. And finally, the fourth and most important thing: remember that you don’t actually owe anybody anything, that the government has ceased delivering people even their most basic needs, that it has in fact altogether stopped caring if they live or die. Remember that agencies like the Appalachian Regional Commission exist first and foremost to facilitate industry, and that the grant they’ve given you is meant to be deployed for that purpose. Remember that the story you tell is more important than the work you do, which should never amount to more than attending conferences and joining conference calls. And through it all, don’t forget to tell your friends and family that you’re helping the poor people of Appalachia who are too dumb and broke and demoralized and addicted to help themselves. Right now, the hillbillies are a rich seam of grant money. Capitalists, being opportunists, will always flock when they see one.” … “In rolling out the POWER Initiative, the Obama administration rarely mentioned poverty; the rhetoric was all about the middle class and their well-paying, skilled jobs. The elite no longer have to manage the lower classes through ambitious national political projects; their single-minded obsession with preserving the middle class does that for them, because it provides a bulwark against working-class solidarity. Those of us who do want a better world often find our efforts stymied by projects claiming to be progressive. The single most important legacy of the War on Poverty is the creation of a massive nonprofit industry in poor, rural areas like Appalachia. As Goldstein writes, “For a select few, antipoverty programs were a means toward political mobility and professional advancement as representatives or intermediaries for the poor. Funding made possible the development of a new class of local political leaders and nonprofessional social workers habituated to the routines of the political process.” These leaders and nonprofessional social workers have never gone away. They tell us every day that the way to turn around our prospects is to work within the system, to be nice to our politicians and oligarchs so that they’ll give us nice things in return, to work out and eat right so we might deserve those nice things. Meanwhile, infrastructure continues to crumble and working people struggle to put food on the table. But at least, thanks to the POWER initiative, we can work out our abs on the walking trail to liberation.”]]> charitableindustrialcomplex philanthropicindustrialcomplex waronpoverty nonprofit nonprofits 2019 rural appalachia revitalization loops powerprogram funding class solidarity ideology capitalism poverty inequality statusquo workingwithinthesystem kentucky westvirginia tarenceray management disastercapitalism gentrification profit philanthropy charities charity https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:e94a6653a82e/ 2019-08-27T19:05:12+00:00 http://xiaoweiwang.com/spicytakes/2019-05-01/post robertogreco xiaoweiwang 2019 rural shenzhen china manufacturing alibaba taobao capitalism platformcapitalism ruraldevelopmentstrategy foxconn revitalization ruralrevitalization future bayarea oakland peripheries nairobi present futures countryside https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:cef549ada5db/ 2015-06-04T00:40:34+00:00 http://decolonization.org/index.php/des/article/view/22155 robertogreco coyote coyoyes trickster decolonization coyotefirstperson language colonialparallelism 2015 kwayneyang evetuck oralhistory revitalization cutcharislingbaldy wayneyang https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:7325d6bef8c1/ 2015-02-27T18:55:00+00:00 http://www.mnn.com/your-home/remodeling-design/blogs/in-rural-alabama-student-architects-jump-start-a-neglected-park robertogreco ruralstudio alabama greensboro architecture design auburn matthickman 2015 parks revitalization sammockbee andrewfreear https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:844f257b7caf/ 2014-11-03T22:05:25+00:00 http://www.diy-manifesto.com/ robertogreco diy hacking urbanfarming mobility bikes biking documentary detroit noramandray hélènebienvenu fabienneservan-schreiber davidbigiaoui urbangardening urban urbanism cities revitalization diymanifesto https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:2e221bd3e7c0/ 2014-07-12T06:30:22+00:00 http://rebuild-foundation.org/ robertogreco chicago art artists theastergates rebuildfoundation revitalization community participatory neighborhoods activism collaboration omaha stlouis place placemaking https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c1ff9b433295/ 2013-11-25T22:22:53+00:00 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpRZH6TZiJs robertogrecocarolbecker cities revitalization creativeurbanization urban urbanization urbanism 2012 gentrification https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b5782f011783/ 2012-08-23T22:28:29+00:00 http://betterblock.org/ robertogreco betterblock participation urban design revitalization urbanrevitalization sustainability planning urbanism urbanplanning https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:8f9806eac87b/ 2012-08-05T01:17:54+00:00 http://www.npr.org/2012/08/02/156980469/marfa-texas-an-unlikely-art-oasis-in-a-desert-town robertogreco travel tourism 2012 donaldjudd cultureclash revitalization art chinatifoundation marfa https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:26d1bb3e17a7/ 2012-02-22T03:50:06+00:00 https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/sympathy-for-the-suburbs robertogreco hilarysample michaelmeredith losangeles oregon illinois california florida newjersey templeterrace theoranges cicero keizer rialto cities edglaeser misregistration repurposing revitalization infrastructure jeannegang WORKac foreclosed barrybergdoll housing andrewzago buellhypothesis moma design planning poverty urbanism urban architecture suburbia suburbs 2012 foreclosure housingbubble housingcrisis edwardglaeser https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:543e0bd7b6e7/ 2010-01-24T07:15:32+00:00 http://www.tnr.com/article/metro-policy/the-detroit-project?page=0,0 robertogreco urbanplanning detroit cities us architecture manufacturing innovation urbanism development planning preservation regeneration industrial urban bilbao turin michigan revitalization https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:1d989579c945/ 2006-12-01T04:11:53+00:00 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/arts/design/30urba.html?ex=1322542800&en=f3474c7abd88119f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss robertogreco architecture design urban urbanism revitalization detroit art museums graffiti streetart https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ecafdbdb28bc/