Alabasata
2d ago
Working-class neighborhood here. I've heard older people in my neighborhood talk about "neighborhood character". I don't know what they're talking about.
If someone knocks on my door, 95% of the time it's a salesman. If I get mail, 95% of the time it's ads for things that do not increase my quality of life. I've lived in my house for 7 years and I still haven't talked with everyone on my block yet. Not for lack of trying.
I don't see a "neighborhood character" that's worth preserving. How do you describe a "neighborhood character" that's worth defending?
Alabasata
12d ago
(Helen Lovejoy: "Won't someone think of the children?")
A YIMBY, /r/FuckCars or Tim Burton fan could use this to argue against any development where children would be driven to school by bus or their parents:
"Disconnecting children from their neighborhood robs them of the ability to learn from the excellence of those who live within it. They go off to college out-of-state not because of their wanderlust or Hero's Journey, but because they never learned of the value in where they lived. Thus the value must live somewhere else."
It is not hard to claim (with evidence!) that children live in an environment that was not built for them. They are less important to land use planners than any adult, cishet or degenerate. The adult outranks the child or the unborn, and rank has its privileges.
So I live in a Blue-ish neighborhood with a large immigrant population, I can point-for-point compare your predictions with what's actually happened.
We still have more churches than libraries. But our schools are closing due to lack of enrollment. If a church wants to move in, that's where the room is. And when it happens it'll probably be Black-led.
We had a titty bar about five miles west of my house. It got demolished, and a three-over-one apartment complex with wraparound services is in its place. I've never been to either - couldn't tell you what they're like.
We had a lesbian-owned bar across from the library. Mural-sized portraits of Frida Kahlo, Sandra Day O'Connor & other progressive saints were on the walls. They've since picked up and moved to a bigger location ten miles away. It wasn't a great place for me to drink, but others seemed to like it well enough.
We have an immigrant on city council. He's a Republican.
I won't go full Op-Ed and try to create a story about all this. It would create an incomplete map - and we know about the differences between maps & territories here.
None of this answers the original question: what is a "neighborhood character" that's worth defending?
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