Archive
| New Urbanism |
 |
 |
 |
| Written by Pete Theisen |
| Monday, 09 February 2009 00:48 |
|
Back in the early 20th Century cities in the US were developed according to "mixed-use" patterns. You could "live over your store". Once the automobile and the roads to run it on became commonly available you could have a place in the suburbs. Your customers would have no idea how successful they were making you, nor could they get you out of bed if they needed something from your store at midnight. By the fifties, however, "living over a store" made you eligible for pity, or scorn. Today roads, cars and gas cost more than they did then and the intelligentsia presently urge all of us to go back in time a hundred years. Over the next 10 years, the planners would like us to build all of our new stores in the same building where we intend to live above them and leave cars and roads to, well, them, their lawyers and their patrons. Since our current housing and commercial buildings don't fit this model we are to tear them down, now that they are paid for, and start over. We are paying them fat fees for this advice, of course. Never mind what stuff like this means to middle class and poor people. We hardly have any middle class in Sarasota anyway, which was noted in Andrés Duany's 2000 Charrette report; "Ironically, Sarasota also has a substantial number of low-income residents, experiencing a “bar-bell” effect with concentrations of population at both ends of the economic spectrum" and the poor - well, they will cluster around the few aid agencies we have, at least in theory. Along with all this, we have to make the roads more narrow, at tremendous cost, so people won't be tempted to buy big cars or actually drive the older cars they still have. Yeah, right. There is also lip service to "mixed income housing" in the Duaney and other modern urban theories, but it hasn't been demonstrated to work in this town, yet. How can you have a mix of income in housing if the poor can't afford the new development, there is no middle class to speak of and higher income folk won't move there because they can afford a nice place in the suburbs, on the bayfront or on the beach? They are trying "mixed income housing" in Newtown right now. They tore down a few of the project homes to build new "mixed income" homes, renovated some other homes and soon they will be looking for residents. How this development will be received by actual residents remains to be seen. It should be instructive. |
| Last Updated on Monday, 09 February 2009 00:57 |
Political Advertisement paid for and Approved by Pete Theisen for City Commissioner.
