Editorials from SF, and "Times Square in Venezuela?"

There were two new editorials this Sunday in the San Fransisco Chronicle on the Justice Center proposed for the Tenderloin District: one by the editorial board and one written jointly by Mayor Gavin Newsome and the city District Attorney Kamala D. Harris.

Further afield, I was fascinated by this article (from the New York Times). For the past few months the government in Caracas has been clearing street vendors supposedely associated with black-market sales and crime from an area along the Sabana Grande.

It contains so many of the same elements as the story of the "New" Times Square in New York City -- cleaning out a central district for arts and commerce were minor crime and street life have come to be perceived as emblematic of larger lawlessness and neglect -- but with particularly Venezuelan political, social, and economic forces at play.

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