I wonder if the cost of rent downtown is too high for the folks that might want to live there. I'm thinking young people without kids who want 24/7 access to entertainment and low cost of living, public transit etc. And also currently, I'd imagine housing is expensive in downtowns because there isn't a ton and they're on "expensive" land driven up by the prices of some of the large business towers with big money corporations? It's interesting to think about.
I have wanted to write an article about this in Greenville. Our mayor mentioned that downtown needs three components: residents, business, and tourism. And like most American downtowns, Greenville lacks the first one, which is people actually living there.
Of course there is the challenge of presenting this concept of living downtown to local people, which it's often met with: "who would want to live downtown? I don't". And that's about as far as the conversation gets. Apparently, if you don't want something, nobody else should have it either.
There's a broad consensus from those living in the low density areas surrounding the city, that they can come in and use the city as they wish, but we don't need to build that as a place for people to live. As people want space, their own house, a yard, etc. and they want to live outside of the city. Yet all over the globe, this pattern is very different.
If you want to sustain great urban life, which includes eyes on the street, and safety that you cannot buy by paying wages of police officers, you need people living downtown. You need more options for different types of living arrangements throughout American cities.
Of course there is the challenge of presenting this concept of living downtown to local people, which it's often met with: "who would want to live downtown? I don't". And that's about as far as the conversation gets.
"
Are they asking who wants to live there? Is that the only question? Are is that one of many questions that come out when citizen push back on tax breaks and subsidies for devleopers?
With Pittsburgh just days away from the much-heralded NFL draft and the related ribbon-cutting of a multi-million dollar downtown park this hits especially hard. The psychological reasons that cities engage in downtown attraction building vary. In Pittsburgh it feels like city/regional leadership is constantly engaging in Pick Me behavior as a reaction to the trauma of losing the steel industry and the nostalgia to “bring the city back,” which is most strongly held by the boomers in the suburbs rather than the actual residents of the city. So we are spending millions of state dollars to prove to residents of rich suburbs and viewers of ESPN that Pittsburgh is a place worthy of visiting. It’s a nice amenity, I’m sure we will use it, but maybe the money could have been spent on initiatives that serve the residents rather than a football theme park.
I live <2miles from our downtown, and this really makes me wonder about how I maybe do treat it as a playground. We bike downtown to go out to brunch, or street festivals, or dinner or just a ride around town etc and I’ve always been proud of myself for supporting the city but am I a part of the problem?!
I do NOT think patronizing downtown is bad! Neighborhoods always are meant to be enjoyed by outsiders! The problem is when it is OPTIMIZED for this, especially with car centricity. Most of my writing is never going to be about blaming individuals. Perhaps I'll mention tools to make your neighborhood worth staying in sometimes, but we are meant to frequent other places!
I don’t know if you have it, but it would be interesting to see if the same balance holds true in non-American cities. Part of me suspects that America’s aggressive focus on “individualism” helped empty out American cities. No one wanted to live in and contribute to a community anymore. Luckily it feels to me like America has reached “peak individualism” and that the pendulum may begin to swing the other way.
Post-war suburban development in the US was designed and constructed by people who had been through multiple consecutive social traumas, including major disease outbreaks and witnessing the destruction of many European cities. Cold War anxieties about nuclear bombs meant that dense population centers started feeling really risky. And we’re all familiar with white flight and redlining. But the urge to live in less dense configurations makes a lot more sense when you think of it in terms of trauma and anxiety, not just selfish individualism.
They’d also been through the deprivation of the Great Depression and war rationing, but come through the war with savings thanks to wages earned supporting the war efforts. The success of mass manufacturing was applied to housing developments that were also intended as starting points that would then become the central hobby of its residents, buying the manufactured output of companies that wanted to pivot wartime capacity to home goods rather than just winding down. Suburban women who were pushed out of the labor force by returning veterans became professionalized housewives expected to use the fancy new appliances. Many households only had one car, which was often dedicated to the husband’s commute, so women were limited to interacting with people within a radius of walking and public transportation and their childcare responsibilities and arrangements. (The Feminine Mystique is clinical depression from the combination of social pressure and isolation.)
Over time the idea of citizenship got subsumed by the paradigms of consumerism, but it wasn’t just the idea of individualism that precipitated this process. A lot of US civic dysfunction comes from ways in which the public sphere has become more and more inaccessible over time, and much of this isn’t that people organically rejected community. The time and space necessary in order to build, maintain, and practice community have been eroded because of all the ways being anxious, overworked, and isolated make us more convenient and lucrative workers and consumers.
But we’re a social species, so we’ll rebuild our communities out of affinity and not just necessity. Rebuilding better urban spaces and reclaiming our time to devote to these things are already underway.
I took American Studies and history classes that specifically looked at the development of post-war suburbs and American consumer culture, and they really changed and refined my ideas about the built environments we’ve inherited. My comment was a bit long, but I’ve spent a long time looking at the ways American communities function from an American Studies public sector angle, and try to share these more granular facts when I see discussion of American individualism and its impacts on how and where we live now.
This book is useful for understanding how consumerist individualism eventually defined our political paradigms:
And as for urban development and its impacts on community elsewhere (mentioned in your original comment), I think you might be interested in Nixon and Khrushchev‘s Kitchen Debate and Khrushchev-era Soviet domestic developments including the Khrushchev Kitchen, or Khrushchevka. There’s a lot of scholarship on both and they’re interesting to compare and contrast to American development during the same period.
In a lot of ways I think industrial development and the idea of scientific optimization of domestic spaces and housing had a deeper impact than American individualism or that era of Soviet Communism did. We’re still basing new housing on these ideas, both as individual units and as whole developments.
The value of land grows exponentially as you get the center. A natural outcome of that is the most price sensitive of uses will not be found there. You won't find many if any laundries or fast food there for the same reasons you don't find much in the way of residential.
This made me think the missing unit isn’t just the resident, but the household.
Getting more people to live downtown is essential. But a residential tower can still be part of an urban playground. If the people inside have to leave the district for groceries, childcare, schools, a clinic, a hardware store, or somewhere an elderly parent can comfortably spend time, the place is populated without really becoming a neighborhood.
The stronger test may be whether ordinary life can keep going there across different ages and incomes. Can a young renter stay after having a child? Can a small shop survive on recurring local demand rather than festivals and office workers? Can older residents meet daily needs without planning a trip?
That changes what cities should measure: not only housing units or evening foot traffic, but household retention, essential services within walking distance, and whether ordinary businesses can still afford the ground floor.
A playground is somewhere people choose to visit. A neighborhood is somewhere life can continue without being scheduled.
This made me think the missing unit isn’t just the resident, but the household.
Getting more people to live downtown is essential. But a residential tower can still be part of an urban playground. If the people inside have to leave the district for groceries, childcare, schools, a clinic, a hardware store, or somewhere an elderly parent can comfortably spend time, the place is populated without really becoming a neighborhood.
The stronger test may be whether ordinary life can keep going there across different ages and incomes. Can a young renter stay after having a child? Can a small shop survive on recurring local demand rather than festivals and office workers? Can older residents meet daily needs without planning a trip?
That changes what cities should measure: not only housing units or evening foot traffic, but household retention, essential services within walking distance, and whether ordinary businesses can still afford the ground floor.
A playground is somewhere people choose to visit. A neighborhood is somewhere life can continue without being scheduled.
Every city is a very different place to when it was built though - I was tempted to say "when it was designed" but most cities weren't really "designed" as such, they just came to be what they are. Of course there were urban master plans in some instances, but I don't believe they turn out like the theoretical model suggested in most cases. The city doesn't come into being for decades if not generations after the plan is set down, by which time the world has moved on and patterns of life and of use have already changed. I've written quite a bit in the past about crime in cities and how models that were very good at limiting crime in some instances will never work again because of the way people's lives have changed. I have just started a new publication looking at what the future of some cities might look like as we try to adapt to changes in urbanization patterns around the world and different ways of living. https://futuredwelling.substack.com/p/same-same-different-different?r=1yq22x
Some good observations. If you want to see this playing out in real time, Toronto is living through a few things simultaneously- lots of residential development downtown but also increasingly mega projects for those who don’t live there: a risable hodge podge of a spa, airport, and more to come
I really enjoyed your text. Yet, I think a missing piece is the importance of convenient and reliable public transport that works as a connector between the residential parts and people’s destinations. Easy and fast public transportation can blur the line between downtown and suburbs.
I wonder if the cost of rent downtown is too high for the folks that might want to live there. I'm thinking young people without kids who want 24/7 access to entertainment and low cost of living, public transit etc. And also currently, I'd imagine housing is expensive in downtowns because there isn't a ton and they're on "expensive" land driven up by the prices of some of the large business towers with big money corporations? It's interesting to think about.
I think allowing other areas to upzone would relieve some downtown market pressure, but you're right, cost is a barrier right now.
I have wanted to write an article about this in Greenville. Our mayor mentioned that downtown needs three components: residents, business, and tourism. And like most American downtowns, Greenville lacks the first one, which is people actually living there.
Of course there is the challenge of presenting this concept of living downtown to local people, which it's often met with: "who would want to live downtown? I don't". And that's about as far as the conversation gets. Apparently, if you don't want something, nobody else should have it either.
There's a broad consensus from those living in the low density areas surrounding the city, that they can come in and use the city as they wish, but we don't need to build that as a place for people to live. As people want space, their own house, a yard, etc. and they want to live outside of the city. Yet all over the globe, this pattern is very different.
If you want to sustain great urban life, which includes eyes on the street, and safety that you cannot buy by paying wages of police officers, you need people living downtown. You need more options for different types of living arrangements throughout American cities.
"
Of course there is the challenge of presenting this concept of living downtown to local people, which it's often met with: "who would want to live downtown? I don't". And that's about as far as the conversation gets.
"
Are they asking who wants to live there? Is that the only question? Are is that one of many questions that come out when citizen push back on tax breaks and subsidies for devleopers?
With Pittsburgh just days away from the much-heralded NFL draft and the related ribbon-cutting of a multi-million dollar downtown park this hits especially hard. The psychological reasons that cities engage in downtown attraction building vary. In Pittsburgh it feels like city/regional leadership is constantly engaging in Pick Me behavior as a reaction to the trauma of losing the steel industry and the nostalgia to “bring the city back,” which is most strongly held by the boomers in the suburbs rather than the actual residents of the city. So we are spending millions of state dollars to prove to residents of rich suburbs and viewers of ESPN that Pittsburgh is a place worthy of visiting. It’s a nice amenity, I’m sure we will use it, but maybe the money could have been spent on initiatives that serve the residents rather than a football theme park.
Ok I’m sorry to ask but were chunks of this drafted by AI? Trying to figure out if I’m seeing ghosts
lol, no but now my feelings are hurt! haha
Mea culpa!! Honestly it’s the “emoji’s as bullet points” that threw me off
Probably a vestige of writing for linked in.
I live <2miles from our downtown, and this really makes me wonder about how I maybe do treat it as a playground. We bike downtown to go out to brunch, or street festivals, or dinner or just a ride around town etc and I’ve always been proud of myself for supporting the city but am I a part of the problem?!
I do NOT think patronizing downtown is bad! Neighborhoods always are meant to be enjoyed by outsiders! The problem is when it is OPTIMIZED for this, especially with car centricity. Most of my writing is never going to be about blaming individuals. Perhaps I'll mention tools to make your neighborhood worth staying in sometimes, but we are meant to frequent other places!
I don’t feel like I was being blamed; I just really never thought about it from that other perspective! Thanks for sharing!
I don’t know if you have it, but it would be interesting to see if the same balance holds true in non-American cities. Part of me suspects that America’s aggressive focus on “individualism” helped empty out American cities. No one wanted to live in and contribute to a community anymore. Luckily it feels to me like America has reached “peak individualism” and that the pendulum may begin to swing the other way.
Post-war suburban development in the US was designed and constructed by people who had been through multiple consecutive social traumas, including major disease outbreaks and witnessing the destruction of many European cities. Cold War anxieties about nuclear bombs meant that dense population centers started feeling really risky. And we’re all familiar with white flight and redlining. But the urge to live in less dense configurations makes a lot more sense when you think of it in terms of trauma and anxiety, not just selfish individualism.
They’d also been through the deprivation of the Great Depression and war rationing, but come through the war with savings thanks to wages earned supporting the war efforts. The success of mass manufacturing was applied to housing developments that were also intended as starting points that would then become the central hobby of its residents, buying the manufactured output of companies that wanted to pivot wartime capacity to home goods rather than just winding down. Suburban women who were pushed out of the labor force by returning veterans became professionalized housewives expected to use the fancy new appliances. Many households only had one car, which was often dedicated to the husband’s commute, so women were limited to interacting with people within a radius of walking and public transportation and their childcare responsibilities and arrangements. (The Feminine Mystique is clinical depression from the combination of social pressure and isolation.)
Over time the idea of citizenship got subsumed by the paradigms of consumerism, but it wasn’t just the idea of individualism that precipitated this process. A lot of US civic dysfunction comes from ways in which the public sphere has become more and more inaccessible over time, and much of this isn’t that people organically rejected community. The time and space necessary in order to build, maintain, and practice community have been eroded because of all the ways being anxious, overworked, and isolated make us more convenient and lucrative workers and consumers.
But we’re a social species, so we’ll rebuild our communities out of affinity and not just necessity. Rebuilding better urban spaces and reclaiming our time to devote to these things are already underway.
Thanks for giving me a different perspective I had never considered!
I took American Studies and history classes that specifically looked at the development of post-war suburbs and American consumer culture, and they really changed and refined my ideas about the built environments we’ve inherited. My comment was a bit long, but I’ve spent a long time looking at the ways American communities function from an American Studies public sector angle, and try to share these more granular facts when I see discussion of American individualism and its impacts on how and where we live now.
This book is useful for understanding how consumerist individualism eventually defined our political paradigms:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/29448/a-consumers-republic-by-lizabeth-cohen/
And as for urban development and its impacts on community elsewhere (mentioned in your original comment), I think you might be interested in Nixon and Khrushchev‘s Kitchen Debate and Khrushchev-era Soviet domestic developments including the Khrushchev Kitchen, or Khrushchevka. There’s a lot of scholarship on both and they’re interesting to compare and contrast to American development during the same period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Debate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchevka
In a lot of ways I think industrial development and the idea of scientific optimization of domestic spaces and housing had a deeper impact than American individualism or that era of Soviet Communism did. We’re still basing new housing on these ideas, both as individual units and as whole developments.
妳的觀點與提出的參考資料都太有趣了。我直接聯想到德國Bauhaus的法蘭克福廚房與東德當初的建造方式。值得再來深入。謝謝妳參與討論與觀點。住宅與廚房的標準化，究竟是如何改變家務勞動、家庭關係，以及人對自己生活空間的控制？ 這正是社會學與建築史可以對話的地方。
The suburbs should be taxed out of existence.
The value of land grows exponentially as you get the center. A natural outcome of that is the most price sensitive of uses will not be found there. You won't find many if any laundries or fast food there for the same reasons you don't find much in the way of residential.
This made me think the missing unit isn’t just the resident, but the household.
Getting more people to live downtown is essential. But a residential tower can still be part of an urban playground. If the people inside have to leave the district for groceries, childcare, schools, a clinic, a hardware store, or somewhere an elderly parent can comfortably spend time, the place is populated without really becoming a neighborhood.
The stronger test may be whether ordinary life can keep going there across different ages and incomes. Can a young renter stay after having a child? Can a small shop survive on recurring local demand rather than festivals and office workers? Can older residents meet daily needs without planning a trip?
That changes what cities should measure: not only housing units or evening foot traffic, but household retention, essential services within walking distance, and whether ordinary businesses can still afford the ground floor.
A playground is somewhere people choose to visit. A neighborhood is somewhere life can continue without being scheduled.
This made me think the missing unit isn’t just the resident, but the household.
Getting more people to live downtown is essential. But a residential tower can still be part of an urban playground. If the people inside have to leave the district for groceries, childcare, schools, a clinic, a hardware store, or somewhere an elderly parent can comfortably spend time, the place is populated without really becoming a neighborhood.
The stronger test may be whether ordinary life can keep going there across different ages and incomes. Can a young renter stay after having a child? Can a small shop survive on recurring local demand rather than festivals and office workers? Can older residents meet daily needs without planning a trip?
That changes what cities should measure: not only housing units or evening foot traffic, but household retention, essential services within walking distance, and whether ordinary businesses can still afford the ground floor.
A playground is somewhere people choose to visit. A neighborhood is somewhere life can continue without being scheduled.
Every city is a very different place to when it was built though - I was tempted to say "when it was designed" but most cities weren't really "designed" as such, they just came to be what they are. Of course there were urban master plans in some instances, but I don't believe they turn out like the theoretical model suggested in most cases. The city doesn't come into being for decades if not generations after the plan is set down, by which time the world has moved on and patterns of life and of use have already changed. I've written quite a bit in the past about crime in cities and how models that were very good at limiting crime in some instances will never work again because of the way people's lives have changed. I have just started a new publication looking at what the future of some cities might look like as we try to adapt to changes in urbanization patterns around the world and different ways of living. https://futuredwelling.substack.com/p/same-same-different-different?r=1yq22x
Yes. And we're not talking about the paid turf and courts.
Some good observations. If you want to see this playing out in real time, Toronto is living through a few things simultaneously- lots of residential development downtown but also increasingly mega projects for those who don’t live there: a risable hodge podge of a spa, airport, and more to come
I really enjoyed your text. Yet, I think a missing piece is the importance of convenient and reliable public transport that works as a connector between the residential parts and people’s destinations. Easy and fast public transportation can blur the line between downtown and suburbs.
This made me think, thank you!