Some of the biggest cities in the world are proposing the most ambitious real-estate projects in a generation, a sign of growing confidence in urban living even as the current financial landscape grows bleaker.

The list is long and expensive…[f]our in New York City, at least three in Dubai, two in London, Chicago and Milan, and one in Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Paris and Mumbai.

[...]

Most of them reflect the growing popularity of downtowns as places to live, shop and work. For example, developers say New York’s Hudson Yards project, to be built over a rail yard on Manhattan’s West Side, is needed because the city is running out of office space.

Yup. Obsolete. Masked. Big money down the drain. So sez a few adherents of a small minority ideology. Sure.

DS

Do the best you can…I know how much your fingers are frustrated by your mind.

But more seriously, ridership on horse-drawn buggies is up. They’re an amenity to the nostalgic (and subsidized) notion of *downtown*. Yet, the buggy remains obsolete.

Distort prices and obsolescence can be masked, sometimes for decades. If you want respect, bet with your own money. Send us a brochure for Dantown at your earliest convenience.

Your point is taken and understood, largely as a function of affordability.

In the many places finding a resurgence (not obsolescence) in downtown/central population, it is because of the plethora of amenities attracting the demographic that seeks such an environment. In the Kotkin piece (note the mouseover text in the Kotkin link in one of my comments above), it is acknowledged that continued suburban development will be in more compact, efficient development with more amenities within walking distance (viz. pp 24,31).

DS

* good nom d’ e- !

Here, let me type slowly for you: calling an area increasing in population “obsolete” is a strange way to define an area.

HTH.

DS

Evidence from the 2000 census showed that the number of nonfamilies and married couples without children grew far more rapidly in the suburbs than in the cities. In fact, due largely to the growth of singles and aging parents, there are now more nonfamilies in the suburbs tha traditional families *

In addition we have so many of those dern immigants makin babies an they ain’t stayin in the central city like them suppos’da. Dont they know that the burbs are supposed to be monocultures and mono-ethnic.

(That’s what Kuntsler tells me anyway in his romanto-bourgeous prose about New Suburbanism or whatever it is that catches his drama school artsy fartsy fancy (im sorry, for those who like him, fine. Read whatever you want i guess, but that guy’s been getting on my nerves))

*For more related info see The Planning Center’s The New Suburbanism, which has some interesting points, although many here may still not like it since it is from a planning perspective.

obsolete: so thoroughly proven as failure that even government planners understand they have to invent new vocabulary when pimping for subsidies.

eg: “You basically have to wait these [planning] dinosaurs out until they retire or die to have a hope of doing things differently. This is what is happening now.”

HTH

The new breed of planners are onto different schemes … and we don’t know if their ideas will be any more effective at bringing life back into downtowns than convention centers were. And many don’t care about centralized downtowns anyway, they promote urban ‘villages’ each with it’s own ‘center’.

Convention centers make sense in a destination city that people actually want to go to for a convention (San Fran, San Diego, San Antonio, etc.). They don’t make sense in cities that don’t have other things already going on that attract tourism in general … and they make zero sense in Podunk USA where a lot of these old school planners, mayors and city councilors operate.

Basically, you have about a 10-15 year lag time in medium size towns where the pooh-bahs don’t investigate or pay a whit of attention to market changes and what’s going on outside their area. Provincialism.

Same with dated and decrepit zoning and land use laws. The inertia is massive. You basically have to wait these dinosaurs out until they retire or die to have a hope of doing things differently. This is what is happening now.