I'm one of those new subscribers; I'd just like to say thanks so far, your essays have been very illuminating! 100% agree with you that there needs to be less restrictive zoning in the urban core. Something that Jane Jacobs mentions in "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" is the need for a stock of old buildings to promote residential density. Right now, my hometown (Omaha, NE) is experiencing a re-densification of its older areas - but it's all new construction, outside the price range of the service workers you mentioned. Also, Omaha has been chasing a new, "shiny" streetcar idea which just got approved last month and will be free for all riders, but which will run along a very high-density, mixed use corridor and will not service the low-income neighborhoods that have the hardest trouble with freedom of movement. You're right to say that such projects seem to just be shiny things that city planners sometimes like to chase, but do they really have utility for the people who need them most?
Have you ever written about raising a family in the modern-day urban core? It's something that's on my mind a lot, and would love to read more about. Thanks, again, for your writing!
Thank you, what a great comment! I have not written about raising a family in the urban core - I don't live in one and we don't have kids yet, so I couldn't say much about that. I do follow some people who seem to do it rather easily and well. (At least some of this has to be generational, some people who remember the crime wave still have trouble seeing cities today as what they are and not how they remember them.) I think there's a lot of energy and curiosity about more urban living arrangements among people my age. I wrote this, which speaks to some of that: https://thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/inhabiting-old-ghosts
I'm one of those new subscribers; I'd just like to say thanks so far, your essays have been very illuminating! 100% agree with you that there needs to be less restrictive zoning in the urban core. Something that Jane Jacobs mentions in "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" is the need for a stock of old buildings to promote residential density. Right now, my hometown (Omaha, NE) is experiencing a re-densification of its older areas - but it's all new construction, outside the price range of the service workers you mentioned. Also, Omaha has been chasing a new, "shiny" streetcar idea which just got approved last month and will be free for all riders, but which will run along a very high-density, mixed use corridor and will not service the low-income neighborhoods that have the hardest trouble with freedom of movement. You're right to say that such projects seem to just be shiny things that city planners sometimes like to chase, but do they really have utility for the people who need them most?
Have you ever written about raising a family in the modern-day urban core? It's something that's on my mind a lot, and would love to read more about. Thanks, again, for your writing!
Thank you, what a great comment! I have not written about raising a family in the urban core - I don't live in one and we don't have kids yet, so I couldn't say much about that. I do follow some people who seem to do it rather easily and well. (At least some of this has to be generational, some people who remember the crime wave still have trouble seeing cities today as what they are and not how they remember them.) I think there's a lot of energy and curiosity about more urban living arrangements among people my age. I wrote this, which speaks to some of that: https://thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/inhabiting-old-ghosts
Cool. Just read it - thanks!