Please... take my house!

I live in a city where this has famously happened for years. Most of the city is under the real estate control of a body called the National Capital Commission, which can oust anyone it wants for nearly any reason it wants to.

I lived in a neighbourhood that had this happen - Lebreton Flats. I lived there near the tail end of one section's destruction. An old brewery right across the street from my house, a marvelous old building of distinguished architecture, was the last building to come down, which I watched happen from my bedroom window. For thirty years the land has sat empty, a vibrant community turned into a field of grass, when the development plans stalled.

Interestingly, I went back there for Canada Day a couple of years ago, and in a spot where one of the old streets is, I noticed the pavement crumbling down to... streetcar rails! The rails had been paved over some fifty years earlier, but were reemerging through the decay....

Chicago Tribune news : Nation/World