Do Things Need To Burn for New Things To Grow?

The Philadelphia studies suggest that place-based interventions are far more likely to succeed than people-based projects. “Tens of millions of vacant and abandoned properties exist in the United States,” write Branas and his team. Remediation programs “make structural improvements to the very context within which city residents are exposed on a da

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Zoning is losing its power. New ventures are able to reach a meaningful scale before regulators (and competitors) react. The boundaries between different uses are blurring, with people lodging in apartment buildings, living in hotels, working in restaurants and retail malls, and sleeping or socializing at the office.

People on the site would have to be removed—evicted, dispossessed, thrown out, relocated—and removal would rend the fabric of their lives. The lives of those near the site might not be rent but they would certainly be altered, for the physical environment which did so much to shape their daily existence would be altered, not only in dramatic ways s

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Instead of worrying about where enough work is to come from, the first problem is to identify where, in residential districts, it does exist and is being wasted as an element of primary use. In cities you have to build from existing assets, to make more assets. To think how to make the most of work and dwelling mixtures, where they exist or give pr

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First, we must understand that self-destruction of diversity is caused by success, not by failure. Second, we must understand that the process is a continuation of the same economic processes that led to the success itself, and were indispensable to it. Diversity grows in a city area because of economic opportunity and economic attraction. During t

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