urbanSTL

The Porch outside of Philadelphia's 30th Street Station has been an unambiguous success. Two years ago, traffic engineers paved over a lane of roadway in front of the train station, creating a broad sidewalk 50 feet across and 565 feet long. With about a quarter of a million dollars, the University City District organization then put out some tables and chairs, planters and umbrellas, none of it even bolted to the ground.

Since then, the space has become a popular plaza somewhere in between a pop-up park and a permanent icon like nearby Rittenhouse Square. People read books slouching in the bistro chairs. They take their lunch on The Porch. They come for the food trucks.

Metropolitan Atlanta, long a symbol of car-dependent American sprawl, has recently passed a threshold where a majority of its new construction spending is now focused in high-density, "walkable" parts of town. Since 2009, 60 percent of new office, retail and rental properties in Atlanta have been built in what Christopher Leinberger calls "walkable urban places"

"This is indicative that we’re seeing the end of sprawl," says Leinberger, a research professor with the George Washington University School of Business

The average rent per square foot in the most established walkable places – the study counted 27 of them in the city and suburbs, averaging around a half square-mile in size – was about 112 percent higher than in homes, offices and stores in more classically suburban areas.

onecity wrote:We should just call this thread "interesting links from the Atlantic Cities website."

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighb ... ence/7103/

This link is to an article that discusses the bipolar crime rate in Chicago neighborhoods and its effect on policing, perception, business development, and social class. Obviously applicable to STL. The homicide rate in S. Chi is 15x higher than in N Chi. This year in STL there will be around 100 homicides, about 75 of which will be in the neighborhoods north of Delmar/Page. That part of the city has what, 100k people in it? So a murder rate of 75 in NSL. While the remaining 200k people south of that line will experience about 25 homicides, many of which are concentrated around Gravois Park, so SoSTL has a homicide rate maybe around 12/100k. Has anyone actually done this calculation based on census tracts? Mine is just a ballpark.

onecity wrote:What do you do about UMSL's terrible location? It's practically hemmed in by suburbia, highway, golfcourses, etc on all sides, such that there is almost no possibility of real student life. Its location only works as a commuter school. That more than anything in my opinion limits - severely limits - UMSL's potential.

In north Dayton — until recently a post-apocalyptic landscape of vacant, gutted houses — 400 Turkish families have moved in, many coming from other American cities. Now white picket fences, new roofs and freshly painted porches are signs of a brisk urban renewal led by the immigrants, one clapboard house at a time.

“It’s all about attitude,” Mr. Shakhbandarov said. “Americans maybe have seen better days of Dayton, a better life, better economy. But we never seen that. We have learned to appreciate what we have. And what we have here is much beyond what we ever had before.”

Hwin is twenty-eight, but could be younger. He has a blissed-out grin and an impish dusting of freckles. His hair is buzzed on the sides but topped with choppy bangs, a rocker coif that makes it look as if a wad of hair just landed on his head from a great height. He often wears a miniature harmonica around his neck, over a black T-shirt, to underscore his musical affinities. For several years now, he has been working as a musician, a tech entrepreneur, and an investor in other people’s startups. His two-person band, Cathedrals, just released a début single and is producing an album in the coming months. At the moment, he and a friend are managing investments of up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in private companies.

This is what happens when property in your city becomes a global reserve currency. For that is what property in London has become, first and foremost.

The property market is no longer about people making a long-term investment in owning their shelter, but a place for the world’s richest people to park their money at an annualized rate of return of around 10 percent. It has made my adopted hometown a no-go area for increasing numbers of the middle class.

My friends keep moving to Oakland. Gone from San Francisco for greener pastures and cheaper rents, because it’s just gotten too hard, by which I really mean too expensive. Their move signals that something has gone terribly wrong in this most progressive of American cities.