"I like my [suburban] life. If I wanted to live in a much more dense place I would have moved directly into the big city."
This is a straightforward, compelling argument. Makes me pine away for a comment function on Maggie's site. At least 1x/week I find myself wanting to chime in on MMUSA, but I respect MM's decision not to enable them.
msteger has a different view:
"Banning apartments is not the key to that success. Limiting density is not the key to success. The key to success is setting high quality building standards and strict and continuous inspections, not just during construction but for years and decades afterward.
Richardson residents should resist the urge to stop the project..."
I am sympathetic to the idea of mixed use, urban living. I've seen it work in France, Italy, Germany, and a few cities in the US that have a cosmopolitan, worldly feel. I am concerned that the model, as Bloom remarks about continental philosophy, "does not travel well" to areas that lack an existing sense of place.
You can build it, but you can't make it succeed. Eastside appears to be holding together for the meantime but Brick Row may be stillborn. Perhaps we make any new developments contingent on the success of the old? It'd keep us from ending up with a bunch of boarded-up, never-occupied property development projects.
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That sort of community thrives when you have both good options for local access to amenities but also a lack of easy access to better ones nearby. I realize that sounds contradictory but, while I'm definitely no economy expert, you're essentially building a micro-economy within that community; there has to be a reason and access to obtain high quality goods and services locally within it to keep functioning. If that is successful it should attract the class of citizens which do not overtly act to bring the whole thing down.
...or maybe I'm missing the point and just rambling off-topic?
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