Building on the thoughts of others, one of the charactoristics of an urban environment is the mixed land use pattern. On a single block there maybe single family homes, an apartment building, and a retail store. And a block away is a light industrial area. Occasionally, there will even be apartments above some of the retail stores. To me, this goes along with the mix of architecture that can be found in an urban neighborhood. On the block on which I live, there is a modern, '70's style ranch home, a Queen Anne style home, a builder's style 1 1/2-story bungelow, and other styles of which I do not know the names. It seems to me that many suburbs like to cleanly segregate styles and land uses. I often seen whole blocks of apartment complexes which are seperate from whole blocks of single family homes which are seperate from acres of shopping/retail districts, etc. There are areas in the urban cores that are like that, but they tend to be smaller and occur less often than those of the suburbs. I guess to some people, this looks messy and disorganized. Maybe city planners like to see their land use maps covered with big solid blocks of single use land. Maybe it satisfies some peoples need for order and structure, but to me, the urban "mess" feels organic and natural. I recognize the need for some planning and order, but I like the "mess" that history has brought to the urban cores. I hope that we do not lose that as we go forward. Scott McGerik Hawthorne Minneapolis http://www.visi.com/~scottlm/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - Minnesota E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
