Even if the initial price point is high, the cycle of decline brings it down over time. The buildings are auto-oriented – parking minimums force that logical adaptation – and so they present a rather despotic front to people not in a car. There are no eyes on the street, the buildings all orient towards the parking lot. And nobody even cared enough when this was built to plant some shade trees next to the sidewalk so people could walk in a modest amount of comfort.

Are we surprised that two men would be walking in the street here? If they were going to be on the sidewalk, they would need to march single file.

Earlier this year I wrote about Dunkin Donuts and their franchise model. You need a net worth of a half a million dollars to start a Dunkin Donuts. How many people in Ferguson have that kind of wealth? The median household income in Ferguson is 21% less than the state average. The median house is worth 32% less. How would the average Ferguson resident, living in a community programmed for decline, build enough wealth to start a doughnut shop?

The reality is that they can’t. So they don’t. So the business subsidies and the millions of dollars of public investment in infrastructure go to the typical cast of characters. A full 22% of Ferguson’s employed males and 21% of employed females work in retail or food service. Those are low wage jobs where, like the Dunkin Donuts, the profits rarely stay in the community. Where is the wealth to take that abandoned strip mall, convert one of the bays to a donut shop and make a go of it? It’s not there. What little wealth there is being sucked out of the community.

Let’s pretend that there was some wealth. Let’s say we have someone in Ferguson – and I’m sure there would be lots of candidates – with some real entrepreneurial zeal. They want to start a business in one of those abandoned buildings. How many zoning regulations, public hearings, parking requirements, building inspections and general red tape would they need to go through to make that happen? How does that impact the cost of entry? We establish all these things on the way up, insist they are part of the way we will keep order during the stagnation and then stubbornly refuse to challenge our assumptions on the way down. Of course, the city seems eager to help, if you are in the right place and will be paying sales tax. (Note: they at least appear to allow food trucks to some extent.)

This stroad nation we have built is also not well equipped for the transportation needs once a place goes into decline. Despite being relatively poor in comparison to state averages, 86% of employed people in Ferguson drove to work in a car by themselves, an incredibly expensive ante to be in the workforce. Only 3% used public transit while 9% carpooled. That leaves less than 2% able to use the most affordable option available: biking and walking.

If you live in Ferguson, you are essentially forced to drive for your employment and your daily needs. That is the way the city was designed. There was no thought given to the notion that people there might not always be prosperous, that they might desire to – or have an urgent need to – get around without an automobile. When you look through the city’s planning documents, you see that walking/biking infrastructure still primarily means recreation, not transportation, despite the obvious desperate need for options.

Unfortunately, nothing I’ve brought up here is really unique to Ferguson. All of our auto-oriented places are somewhere on the predictable trajectory of growth, stagnation and decline. Racial elements aside, I think we are going to see rioting in a lot of places as this stuff unwinds. The most insightful thing I’ve read on this subject over the past couple of weeks was Kareen Abdul-Jabbar’s column in Time magazine.

This fist-shaking of everyone’s racial agenda distracts America from the larger issue that the targets of police overreaction are based less on skin color and more on an even worse Ebola-level affliction: being poor. Of course, to many in America, being a person of color is synonymous with being poor, and being poor is synonymous with being a criminal. Ironically, this misperception is true even among the poor. And that’s how the status quo wants it.

We’re entering a really dangerous phase of this Suburban Experiment. While we once believed that the path to prosperity was the “American Dream”, a house in the suburbs and an ownership society (FDR saw this as a social equity issue as did GWB), it is now evident that this approach creates poverty. It not only creates it, it locks it into place in a self-reinforcing cycle. Like I’ve said before, how we respond to this is the social challenge of this generation.

So far, I’m more worried than anything else. I joined the Army on my 17th birthday and spent the summer between my junior and senior year of high school at basic training. Despite the total exhaustion, there were two nights I just couldn’t sleep: the night after bayonet training and the night after our first day shooting the M-16 at pop up targets, which were silhouettes of people. Just contemplating, even at a very detached level, the notion that I might be asked to take a human life was a very sobering notion for a 17 year old. Simulating the act was eye-opening. Fortunately I was never faced with the moment where I had to do the real thing. I don’t know how I would have reacted.

It is with that background that I find myself beyond horrified at police officers – not even soldiers but public safety officers – in full camouflage gear pointing their weapons at American citizens. I even saw photos of a sniper. A sniper! Snipers are used to take down targets with stealth – terrifying – and we’re deploying them during social unrest. My mind is just blown. I don’t think we – as sober citizens – can overreact to this reckless display of force. You never point a weapon at a person unless you are prepared to kill them. Is that what we’ve come to?