md wrote:
Here's a series of fine articles from the Skyway News related to the pros and cons of the loft issue we recently discussed:
City of no industry http://www.skywaynews.net/articles/2004/06/25/news/news02.txt
Downtown too industrial? No, too quiet say residents http://www.skywaynews.net/articles/2004/06/25/news/news02.txt
Perhaps if one has megabucks and a view of the Mill Ruins Park, a downtown loft would seem great, but if you have whole sections of the city that are lofts, lofts and more lofts you've got a glut of too much of one type of structure, and many vacancies...
And not enough diversity, no GREEN space, and no room
for such things as art studios, legacy industries, a hardware
store, a grocery store, a school, etc.
Madeline Douglass
Kingfield
No surprise. Developers in general have a terrific lack of imagination, as well as a short-term profit motivation. They jump on a trend and over-do it until it is beat into the ground, and then jump on the next trend. Because they make their money up-front on the sale, the economic, cultural and community repercussions of their little projects 10 to 50 years down the road doesn't even enter their minds.
The last people we should be listening to with respect to land use policies and city planning are developers and real estate speculators. They also have next to zilch expertise when it comes to commentary on economics, with thoughts like "industrial jobs are moving overseas, so why worry about industry here" being quite representative of the breed.
Chris Johnson - Fulton
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