The one nice thing about urban centres essentially throttling themselves is that it's chased those quirky small businesses to the burbs and even further. As someone that will never be able to...
The one nice thing about urban centres essentially throttling themselves is that it's chased those quirky small businesses to the burbs and even further. As someone that will never be able to afford to buy downtown, and doesn't want to pay the prohibitive cost of rent for the rest of my life, I've been quite happy to see privately owned board game shops with event calendars, artisan cheese stores, cafe/used book store combos, and small chef owned-operated restaurants popping up and thriving within a 10 minute walk from me. These people and businesses didn't disappear, they moved, like the rest of us that got priced out. From where I live now, I'd have had to drive half an hour or to an hour to find any of those things not even 10 years ago. Of course there are Wal-Mart based "smart centre" plazas and drive thru fast food joints all over the place out here too, and they're not going anywhere, but I've been happy to see little splashes of culture making their way in the "Clevelands".
I wonder how long that is going to work out. Will the urban sprawl just keep going until eventually all the cities meet at their edges and the nature in between vanishes? Or will the suburbia grow...
These people and businesses didn't disappear, they moved, like the rest of us that got priced out.
I wonder how long that is going to work out. Will the urban sprawl just keep going until eventually all the cities meet at their edges and the nature in between vanishes? Or will the suburbia grow a life of it's own and form it's own new centers, which will eventually grow into a new downtown only to repeat the process?
I don't know if they're going to be centres in the way we think of them now. I'm speaking from the sprawl 30 minutes to an hour (depending on traffic) north of Toronto, so I won't claim to know...
I don't know if they're going to be centres in the way we think of them now. I'm speaking from the sprawl 30 minutes to an hour (depending on traffic) north of Toronto, so I won't claim to know what's going on in Austin. What I'm finding is working remotely slowly starting to become an acceptable thing to help reduce the disgusting commutes we're facing. The business are still physically located downtown, but it is (I reiterate, very slowly) becoming possible to work for them without dragging your sorry ass down there every day. I don't think that my little piece of the sprawl is going to start sprouting 50 story buildings or a proper subway/streetcar system, but we're certainly building low rise condos, getting more bus stops, and the line into the city is running more and more trains. I think it'll be more like if Toronto is the heart, these smaller centres are becoming the arteries.
The one nice thing about urban centres essentially throttling themselves is that it's chased those quirky small businesses to the burbs and even further. As someone that will never be able to afford to buy downtown, and doesn't want to pay the prohibitive cost of rent for the rest of my life, I've been quite happy to see privately owned board game shops with event calendars, artisan cheese stores, cafe/used book store combos, and small chef owned-operated restaurants popping up and thriving within a 10 minute walk from me. These people and businesses didn't disappear, they moved, like the rest of us that got priced out. From where I live now, I'd have had to drive half an hour or to an hour to find any of those things not even 10 years ago. Of course there are Wal-Mart based "smart centre" plazas and drive thru fast food joints all over the place out here too, and they're not going anywhere, but I've been happy to see little splashes of culture making their way in the "Clevelands".
I wonder how long that is going to work out. Will the urban sprawl just keep going until eventually all the cities meet at their edges and the nature in between vanishes? Or will the suburbia grow a life of it's own and form it's own new centers, which will eventually grow into a new downtown only to repeat the process?
I don't know if they're going to be centres in the way we think of them now. I'm speaking from the sprawl 30 minutes to an hour (depending on traffic) north of Toronto, so I won't claim to know what's going on in Austin. What I'm finding is working remotely slowly starting to become an acceptable thing to help reduce the disgusting commutes we're facing. The business are still physically located downtown, but it is (I reiterate, very slowly) becoming possible to work for them without dragging your sorry ass down there every day. I don't think that my little piece of the sprawl is going to start sprouting 50 story buildings or a proper subway/streetcar system, but we're certainly building low rise condos, getting more bus stops, and the line into the city is running more and more trains. I think it'll be more like if Toronto is the heart, these smaller centres are becoming the arteries.