Fresno, California, is the fifth-largest city in the nation’s most populous state, though there’s nothing else to distinguish it. Explosive growth has pushed the population from just over 350,000 when my family moved there 17 years ago to more than half a million today. Most all of these people have been accommodated through the construction of tract homes in the northwest and southeast sections of the city, where fig orchards and agricultural canals were once the only features on the otherwise flat horizon. To knit these new developments into the existing city, new roads have been built and once far-flung farm homes are now surrounded by strip malls and gas stations. There are predictable side effects to such sudden saturation of the landscape. Smog is thick, asthma rates are on the rise, and a three-bedroom home can be purchased for $48,000. The Daily Beast recently rated Fresno the least intelligent large city in the nation.

Unfortunately, Fresno is simply the example with which I’m most familiar from a broad sample of American cities that follow a similar template. When my roommate and I took a road trip in 2004, I lost count of the number of times that I said, “Look around. This is just like Fresno.” Houston and San Antonio; the eastern coast of Florida; Phoenix and Las Vegas glimmering in the desert night like the gaudiest bling in America.

If you looked at a cross-section of a human body, you would find it dense and multi-purpose. Bone supports the surrounding tissue, muscle allows for strength and flexibility, nerves report stimulus to the brain, which controls the movement of this intricate system. A body that is not dense, that has no central nervous system to process the effect of action, that has a single purpose is a mosquito. And it’s a lousy model for a city.

Yet the brainless, irritating mosquito is Fresno’s model. In 1992, Manchester Mall, at the intersection of Blackstone and Shields Avenues, was considered the dirt mall, while Fashion Fair, further north, was the tony center of consumption. By the time I left for New York in 2000, Manchester was all but dead, its central tenant a drug store, while Fashion Fair was struggling after the arrival of River Park, a collection of shops built on empty acreage farther north, anchored by a multiplex theatre that, on opening in the summer of 1998, showed Godzilla every 15 minutes. The most expensive homes are those that require a half-hour commute to downtown. And as long as there’s more cheap land, the cycle can pointlessly spin ad infinitum. The city isn’t expanding because it has run out of room to develop, which has fueled suburban growth since time immemorial – it’s expanding because it can, much as a mosquito gorges on blood even if it’s just fed. The suburb grows without the urb.

In addition to its gluttony, Fresno, shares brainlessness with the mosquito. Earlier this year, Ashley Swearengin, the mayor of Fresno, received a follow-up to a 2003 report, “Meeting the Challenge.” The new report found that on the eight key issues identified in the 2003 report, no progress had been made. City government allowed the mosquito to continue filling itself, and now, in 2009, the mosquito is about to burst. Unemployment, always a problem, is nearing 20%. What employment there is pays so little that the city’s per capita income is less than half that of San Jose. The gated communities built during the bubble are being auctioned off one tract home at a time at fresnoforeclosure.com.

Oops. There is, of course, no requirement that elected officials do anything about anything. Preserving the status quo has long proven an effective strategy for staying in office. It does seem odd, though, that the previous mayor of Fresno, Alan Autry (you may remember him from such second-banana law-enforcement roles as Bubba on the TV version of “In the Heat of the Night,” and the Klansman deputy from “A Time to Kill”), would bother to commission a report that would aid him in meeting the challenges that faced Fresno during a period of double-digit population growth and yet his successor finds, six years later, that all eight key findings were left unaddressed. Odder still, Swearengin’s politics and policies (generally Libertarian-style Republican, with the usual emphasis on law enforcement) force her to follow a similar path of inaction. The boldest action by Herroner has been the hiring of a police department auditor to address officers’ unfortunate habit of shooting the citizenry.

But then, given that the largest single contributor to Swearengin’s campaign was the California Real Estate PAC (care to bet what their position on building more strip malls is?), it makes sense that the city just blew $53.4 million on that freeway expansion. It likewise makes sense that there have been no announcements on how the mayor’s proposals to expand mass transit and rebuild downtown are proceeding.

Maybe there is a brain in Fresno; but the question it ponders is not, “how do I fix these problems,” but “how do I get re-elected.”

The answer? Keep taxes low. No matter the consequences.

But I am very happy that they do.

I saw “Public Enemies” by myself at the Court Street multiplex in Downtown Brooklyn early on a summer evening.  My fellow theatergoers included a crying baby and a guy who yelled “Yeah, fuck the po-lice!” after the cop who beats up Dillinger’s girlfriend gets reprimanded.

The movie is a step up from “Miami Vice,” which is faint praise at best.  There’s one good sequence (the night shootout/car chase) and two memorable scenes (the aforementioned beating and the guy who played Jose Yero in “Vice” explaining to Dillinger why the mob won’t protect him any longer) and a whole lot of shaky camerawork and thin chracterizations.

I don’t need to see the movie again, wouldn’t recommend it to any of my friends and think that the $100 million spent making “Public Enemies” could almost certainly have been put to better use.

Here’s why I’m glad that they bankrolled this rather useless movie: it’s not a can’t-miss sequel, a can’t-miss sequel adaptation of one of the best-selling books in history or a can’t-miss sequel adaptation of a twenty-five year-old cartoon series that was created to sell toys directed by the fucktasticingest man-boy currently blowing shit up in Hollywood.

Michael Mann probably doesn’t have another great film in him.  That’s cool.  He gave me my favorite movie; a fatless, full-throated adaptation of one of the worst books ever written; and one of the only truly adult movies ever made.  He seems far more interested in pushing the envelope of what digital cameras can bring to the screen than in story, character or dialogue, though his eternal theme of Men Doing Work That They Love But It Destroys Them In The Process is thankfully still present.

At least the man still tries to do something his own self rather than bogart off an established audience.  At least he’s still engaged (albeit marginally) with the workings of power, capital, addiction and lust on both individuals and society.  Michael Mann may not be vital any longer, and I certainly wouldn’t give him a nine-figure budget until he feigned interest in telling a good story once more, but I’m willing to fork over my twelve bucks in acknowledgment that he is now The Last of the Mohicans.

The poison sign is true.

The vacant lot at 156 Morton Place, in the Bronx neighborhood of University Heights, is being sold by its current owner, Kadima Builders, for $249,000.  They purchased it in 2006 for $190,000.  Included are plans similar to the rest of the homes on the block, which the company said have already been approved by the city.  The company gave no reason for its sale of the property before building the housing, saying only that the time was not right to build and that the land would be sold in its current condition.  ‘Kadima’ means ‘forward’ in Hebrew.

Space is a precious commodity in University Heights.  The overcrowding rate is 33.2% in Community District 5, which encompasses University Heights.  The census tract around the vacant lot at 156 Morton shows a rate of 34.1%.  In contrast, the overcrowding rate in Community District 4, just to the South, is 29.6%.  The overcrowding of occupied space is compounded by a lack of vacant space for developing.  Only 3.1% of the land in CD5 is vacant, compared to 5.7% in CD7 to the North.  Moreover, there is a need not only for housing but for services that require space, such as parks and parking lots.

“Land use is, along with crime, the biggest issue we as a community face,” said Xavier Rodriguez, the District Manager for Community Board 5, which oversees University Heights and three other neighborhoods.

Rodriguez said that the city could not afford to purchase long-vacant lots for development.

“They’re only interested in taking things over through eminent domain,” he said.  “So for anything to happen, it pretty much has to be through private development.”

Because the median household income is $20,159, the community is unable to purchase the lots for development itself.

In addition to potential developers, land has been purchased by some of the 45 non-profit centers for alcohol and substance abuse, mental health and other projects that operate in the district.

“We feel that we’re being oversaturated with supportive needs projects within our district,” Rodriguez said.

He said that, in addition to developing vacant land for halfway houses and shelters, the non-profits had purchased private parking lots, forcing locals to park on the streets and constraining the options for open space or housing further.

The Board and the community it represents were at odds recently over what can be done to improve the neighborhood, and who should do the improving.
Rodriguez and the Board have retained an outside consulting company, Insight Associates, to help compose a comprehensive plan for development.  Among the proposals was a Business Improvement District along Burnside Avenue and the removal of parking structures along Jerome Avenue below Tremont Avenue.  The area is currently a mix of automobile service shops and parking facilities, while the strip above Tremont has more restaurants, shops and delicatessens.

While many in attendance were enthusiastic about the plans, there was grumbling over misplaced priorities.

“There’s still so much crime right now, and you’re going to redo Burnside,” a woman asked the Board incredulously.

Deputy Inspector Kevin Harrington, who commands the New York Police Department’s 46th Precinct, which oversees the area, said that overcrowding, vacant houses and vacant lots all contributed to the problems that plague the neighborhood.

“Vacant lots, you get rats,” he said.  “Vacant houses, you get drugs.”

Inspector Harrington pointed out that the non-profit organizations’ increased presence was not a stain on the community.  They take over vacant lots and occupy vacant houses.

“They’re not negative neighbors,” he said.

Gloria, who lives in a massive apartment house on West Tremont Avenue that overlooks a vacant lot, and refused to give her last name because she was afraid that the government would take away her Section 8 benefits if she criticized it, said that the situation hadn’t changed in years and wouldn’t change anytime soon.

“Four years I been here, and they ain’t done shit,” she said, wiping away tears.  “I’m sorry, I’ve been drinking,” she continued, “but how long could it really take?  They wanted to, they would’ve done something by now.”