Higher car theft per capita than Chicago these days. Turns out financial conservatism creates desperate people
I’m currently living at home in Tangerang. It’s a commercial city in the local metropolitan area of Jakarta. My city went from rice fields and factories to modern office buildings for major international businesses.
They usually say that in Tangerang, everyday they build something new. It could be just about anything. It could be a shopping mall, an apartment building, or a place of recreation. I’ll never get bored in here.
Even more brutalist buildings.
In a lot of ways not much. No zoning for mulit unit lots so population probably has stayed about the same. The area around has become a lot more developed with a biotech boom. There used to be a forest across the street and now it’s been turned into a whole foods and business park. The college town nearby has exploded and taken over every square inch in apartments. You can walk around town though and it looks mostly the same but hippies and college professors have been replaced by yuppy tech bro families that like their gardens much more manicured instead of lush and wild.
Loads of renovated parks and buildings, parts that used to be sketchy have mostly improved, the town center has become richer, while a lot of people who grew up here have moved to the suburbs.
Small town Canada: rampant drug use
It was kind of a dying former factory small city for a long time, only notable for producing a pair of famous serial killers of all things, and in the last ten years it got an arts centre and suddenly the downtown is thriving. I wouldn’t want to live there again but I’m glad for the city that it has some rejuvenation.
I grew up in Fort McMurray, home of the Canadian oilsands.
I remember this being a small place and the local newspaper running the story that the place moved from “town” to “City” status.
In the early 2000s this place boomed. Went from about 35000 population to 90000 (there was talk of about 140000 in the region, many people flying in and working out of campus).
During this time, we were getting lots of bad press… The media running stories of rampant drugs in the area and that sort of thing. They used footage from outside the seediest bar in town at 3 a.m. of you go to any town or city and hang out at the lowlife bar at 3 a.m. you can claim how horrible the place is. In reality, this place is filled with young working families. Sure, we have some problems but then any place in earth.
The 2008 financial crisis was kind of a break. By this, I mean that this place was so busy that this slightly impact to the region meant that, for the first time in about 5 years, I had an opportunity to hire some semi-qualified people. In the past 5 years, some of the interviews I had with people (this is for IT jobs) were just ridiculously bad.
2014 saw the price of oil crash. That definitely slowed things down here, moving it from a boom town to a normal place.
2016 brought the wildfires. You may have seen it on the news. 88000 people evacuated from the city.
In 2020, a flood struck our downtown area. Folks from that area were evacuated to other areas.
Currently, we have another wildfire in the region. About 6000 people are currently evacuated but as I understand it, the fire still a ways away and it has been raining a bit over the last couple of days, so I am not overly concerned for the homes of evacuees.
So, my home town has gone through lots of chance and challenges over the years. It was built on a real pioneering spirit and I’m proud of the that the people have demonstrated through the hard times.
My hometown was in Canada’s top-ten communities in decline for years. These days, it’s got two-thirds the population it used to, the streets are full of deer, and quite a few farmers’ fields have turned into forests. Almost everyone my age that I knew moved away long ago. Going back is always shocking.
Well, they finally finished the shopping center they were building for like 15 years.
Some company bought some land and had it all setup for construction (giant mounds of red clay and everything). Then they ran out of money. And it sat there for years, visible to everyone who drove by. A few years back, some company bought the and created a shopping center.
Less trees. A lot less.
The only change I think anyone would notice is the town got big on graffiti art. It’s everywhere now.
My town let some kids go around and paint stuff where graffiti usually pops up. Zero graffiti. They do a little upkeep so it doesn’t fade and I haven’t seen tags in a decade.
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They have fiber internet now. I grew up offline, had to fight for every improvement from 56k modem to ISDN to DSL. Now their internet is faster than mine.
A village nearby my hometown got fiber for the church and installed directed wifi antennas on the church tower to solve their internet problems
They built a tower not for God, but for the Internet? Blasphemous!
Blasphabulous!
They’ve reinvented confession for the modern age
Technically you do not confess, but the Big5 internet monopolists track your every move like a vengeful god would do.
Lots and lots and lots of empty places.
At least half of the retail space is basically dead.
My old shopping mall filled the half-empy food court with a climbing gym for kids and a massive video arcade, which is cool. It’s more like a flea market than a mall now because the storefronts that are occupied are all local retailers.
Oddly enough, the old cookie shop in the mall is still going strong and making the same great stuff. Apparently that place is timeless.
