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In a message dated 1/11/2004 8:11:00 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
"The first part is stupid - only concerned with image making but he makes some interesting points - see the highlighted part about DOGS almost to the end - Lauren"
Not stupid at all. This is an extremely important and insightful analysis and everyone in University City Village should be forced to read it at gunpoint. How bad can it be to have affluent white people moving back into the core cities and bringing their dough with them? But just remember the cautionary inner city watchword of the '60s:
"Urban renewal means nigger removal."
This time around, as the Mayor reminds us, the brothers and sisters are indeed running the city. Just remember that, and things will be copacetic.
Michael Johns' comments on cars (below) are interesting, but he is wrong -- the car itself is the infernal engine of the suburbs, as Jean-Paul Sartre, Marshall McLuhan and many others observed long ago. If people really want to recapture the HISTORIC FLAVOR of the "streetcar suburb" they'll eat their automobiles and sit in the trolleys with the Negroes.
Ross Bender >> The car in itself is not suburban. But it is suburban to >> expect your very own parking space in the city. Such an >> expectation means new and converted residential buildings >> must include a built-in parking space for each apartment, a >> requirement that turns the first floor or two of a building >> into a parking lot. >> >> Parking is so scarce in some gentrified neighborhoods that >> people regularly park on sidewalks. As a member of a San >> Francisco neighborhood council put it: "There is a >> substantial age and experience divide on this issue. Those >> people who see nothing wrong with it are younger and more >> recent residents of the neighborhood, who bring a suburban >> sensibility to the city." Al Krigman responds:
Honest... I didn't pay Michael Johns to write, the NY times to publish, or Lauren Leatherbarrow to post this interesting condemnation of the shallowness with which people having a suburban mentality are trying to gentrify urban neighborhoods like ours. What a great analysis of the phony attempts to capture what their cloudy sense of nostalgia deludes them into thinking was the essence of the city through ploys like historic designation, which would actually Disnify the area and destroy its real social and cultural fabric.
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