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Originally Posted by RU OX Alum
Yeah it's pretty much every other thread we have about anything. I tried to learn something though. I guess I did.
I don't think utopia will ever be achieved, but I think we should all want to make our cities as best as they can be. I think people today lake civic identity. Meaning, I don't think people care at all where they live, that places and neighborhoods have become interchangeable.
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But here is the question...how many times can you keep changing between living in the suburbs vs living in the city and at what cost? It's not so cut and dry as it seems. What is it that you are willing to give up and get in return? Convenience, a nice environment, crime free areas, good school systems?
People do care where they live. Think about when you chose to move wherever you are now and where you plan to move in the future. What factors do you take into account? Better yet, if you plan on becoming a homeowner, how long do you plan on staying there? I just had this conversation with someone yesterday about the fact that due to this so call 'gentrification' issue, so many people are losing on both sides. You have owners who cannot afford to sell their property because although their credit is great, the area itself is a depressed area. And then you have people who are renting at the same price they would pay to own. It's a risk and a gamble in this economy and a question that has not been answered. How does gentrification benefit everyone? The answer is, it doesn't.
When areas a reshaped and transformed you have to sacrifice something for the desired effect. And as it's already stated, it's not just "Section 8ers" or the poor.
And as some of us have been around long enough to see some of these effects, the next question is, how long will it stay this way until people start to change their minds and decide to move back out of the cities because they don't want to be confined living up under other people, the cities have been run down, the cost of living in that area is is too high or crime forced them to the suburbs.
RU, cities lost their identities because it's more about dollars now than about 'community togetherness'.
Sidebar: Don't forget desegregation is also what lead to a destruction of 'community identity'. If you wanted tax dollars (as alluded to earlier in this thread) then governments had to bar practices about where people could live. Again another win/lose situation.
Disappearing are your "Chinatowns", (DC's Chinatown is a joke BTW), Little Poland, Little Italy, etc. These were communities that thrived at the early pert of the 20th century creating an identity because naturally the US wasn't as crowded then as it is now. But now with people scrambling to make every bit of space habitable, these communities with identities will lose them because it's all about the color and depth of green.
So, I am willing to bet you, in 10 to 20 years, this trend may reverse again.
The problem now, of course...is urban sprawl so it may not be too much suburbia left to live in within that time.
Something else you may want to look at regarding back and forth living
Hybrid Mode
