The Scarcity of Nice Places
Nov. 17th, 2021 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis article talks about the scarcity of nice places. Some thoughts ...
* Lack of amenities is a real and serious problem. Just as one example, greenspace improves health, but poor neighborhoods have much less of it.
* Gentrification is a real and serious problem. The nicer something is, the more it costs, and that forces out people who can't afford it. This problem is so bad that some cities have basically emptied themselves of poor and middle-class people because it costs so much to live there. Given this, improvements read as threats to home and survival, so that makes people fight them. If they can only afford to live in shitty places, then they must defend the shittiness that makes those places accessible to them, because it deters predatory rich people.
* In order to make improvements without displacing current residents, you have to find ways of blocking the hikes in everything from rent and home prices to costs in local stores and restaurants. This is difficult at best and often impossible. One approach is to make citywide improvements; if all areas have working streetlights or intact sidewalks, then they will be no financial distinction because of their presence or lack.
* The article's suggestion that we build lots of nice things and places is valid in that this would reduce competition and thus prices. Building new ones is good. So is revitalizing nearly empty old ones. It's when you try to improve shitty places where all the poor people have crowded in for lack of better options that you run into serious problems. So cities also need to build lots of new affordable housing -- about three times what we currently have in order to cover the demand.
* Lack of amenities is a real and serious problem. Just as one example, greenspace improves health, but poor neighborhoods have much less of it.
* Gentrification is a real and serious problem. The nicer something is, the more it costs, and that forces out people who can't afford it. This problem is so bad that some cities have basically emptied themselves of poor and middle-class people because it costs so much to live there. Given this, improvements read as threats to home and survival, so that makes people fight them. If they can only afford to live in shitty places, then they must defend the shittiness that makes those places accessible to them, because it deters predatory rich people.
* In order to make improvements without displacing current residents, you have to find ways of blocking the hikes in everything from rent and home prices to costs in local stores and restaurants. This is difficult at best and often impossible. One approach is to make citywide improvements; if all areas have working streetlights or intact sidewalks, then they will be no financial distinction because of their presence or lack.
* The article's suggestion that we build lots of nice things and places is valid in that this would reduce competition and thus prices. Building new ones is good. So is revitalizing nearly empty old ones. It's when you try to improve shitty places where all the poor people have crowded in for lack of better options that you run into serious problems. So cities also need to build lots of new affordable housing -- about three times what we currently have in order to cover the demand.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2021-11-18 02:30 am (UTC)Funny, that was my thought as well...
Now, consider that in relation to the problem of nicer neighborhoods and how they perpetuate the system of inequality.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2021-11-18 02:37 am (UTC)Yaaayyyy! :D I'm so happy to hear that.
>> Now, consider that in relation to the problem of nicer neighborhoods and how they perpetuate the system of inequality. <<
Ah well, I have more tools now than I did earlier. I've had more time to test what works in this culture. Turns out, the most effective tactic -- the one with the highest throughput of people saying "I did the thing" -- is plain old storytelling. So I describe nice places, and I analyze what makes them nice, and I explain how people can move in that direction if they choose to do so.
What they actually do is up to them. But I find it encouraging that people ask me how to make their hometown more like Bluehill.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2021-11-18 06:45 am (UTC)I have always wished that there could be some way I could live in the top of the Empire State Building. Now there are very tall apartment/condo buildings going up all along 57th street (Billionaires' Row). There's one building referred to as the Sliver, beccause it tapers inward at the top in order to satisfy zoning regulations. It's also called Steinway Tower, because it was permitted because the builders bought the air rights above the old Steinway Building, across the street from Carnegie Hall. Now, I'm not the mistress of an oil sheik from the Emirates, so I can't afford one of those apartments.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2021-11-18 07:02 am (UTC)I like that idea.
"The White Tower of Ecthelion, glimmering like a spike of pearl and silver, its banners caught high in the morning breeze."
It's a challenging model of architecture, but possible.
A lot easier to obtain is a multicolored city. All that takes is some paint and a refusal to be boring.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2021-11-18 02:42 pm (UTC)Also see the murals in Philadelphia.