Quote:
Originally Posted by Knight Hospitaller
There are lots of reasons to dislike this memorial:
1. It's morbid.
2. It's ugly.
3. It builds a wall along 22nd street instead of providing park-like access to Brandywine's proposed tower.
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Most disgustingly, in my mind, is that the "memorial" is an empty, meaningless gesture: the City's regulatory regime - that enables and rewards slumlords like Basciano, Rappaport estates, and innumerable other speculative property investors to neglect buildings to the point of their becoming blighted public safety hazards - remains essentially unchanged from before this accident happened.
Supposedly the City has implemented a few cosmetic modifications relating to demolition activities. But in general, over at least the last 65 years, the backroom influence of purveyors, like Rappaport, of blight-inducing and public safety-threatening property neglect and speculation has infected the policy-making of the clowns in City government. That's why these guys are allowed to run roughshod over the city with impunity and why enormous swaths of Philadelphia, even substantial strips in Old City, Market East/West, Chestnut Street, and South Street, Fabric Row, remain blighted and dangerous.
It seems at least once a year, for example, that an old loft building burns down or collapses in Old City or that a barely maintained low-end apartment rental in Center City or University City burns down. We have been lucky that collapses have cost very few lives over the years, but it is not uncommon for firefighters to suffer serious injuries in fires. And this speaks nothing of the cost to the public of the visual blight we have to tolerate every day, year after year, decade after decade, even in show-case neighborhoods.
So this park, as far as I am concerned, is a farce. It is a sop the families of the victims given by politicians who want to appear like they are doing something when they are doing nothing.
This park will make a few people feel warm and fuzzy until the next blight-induced fire or building collapse kills more people. Then they will see that this is a memorial to hypocrisy and bullshit, not to the tragic lesson that should have been learned from the needlessly lost lives of many wonderful people.
I hate this park.