What Is Old City’s Problem?

In today’s City Paper, staff writer Ryan Briggs asks why the city’s most historic neighborhood still has so much blight, despite being a highly touted tourist destination and thrumming with life in so many other ways.

Like so many neighborhood problems that are entrenched, this one seems, on the surface, to come down to a battle of the wills between longtime residents who often own blighted properties and NIMBY-prone members of the Old City Civic Association.

But Briggs’ piece, though it tries to be evenhanded, ultimately reveals that the slumlords have forfeited their right to complain, due to personal intractability and illegal behavior. What can be done to make peace between the groups? The saddest thing about the piece is the answer to that question: not much.

• The Trouble With Old City [City Paper]