"Gritty" urban areas.

[wenzit420]

this is a good thread. towns get a bad name and it is hard for those places to break those labels. If U aren't an idiot, you can usually avoid most of the B/S. This coming froma guy who had his 2500 scooter stolen from his front yard today. But this is also in Richmond Va. MASS here I come again!!!

[missionhill]

One difference between now and the Jane Jacobs era is that then, within the fields of city planning, architecture, and urban policy, "slum" was considered a verifiable condition that could (and should) be alleviated through such measures as urban renewal for the greater good. And so you had the West End Clearance, the Washington Park (Roxbury) Urban Renewal Area, and others. Every city did it, none more than New Haven. Now, 50 years later, those professional fields are now more likely to be champions of whatever fragments of diversity and difference remain in our urban areas after all the decades of emptying out, suburbanization, and gentrification. People in general have their prejudices and use terms like ghetto without much reflection--twas ever thus. The real change is in the professional discourse. And these days, the slums (in the sense of overcrowded, poor, substandard) hardly exist in this country, but Brazil's favelas certainly meet the standard, as do irregular developments in many countries.

[redpanda]

Originally Posted by brightdoglover

I don't like anyplace with streetwalkers, drunks and junkies on the street, and gangs of menacing-looking young men loitering around glaring. This is not diversity, it's poor and dysfunctional, and its opposite is not lily-white Quichetown.
I noticed a friend who liked the local transvestite hookers on his street (made him feel "authentic and not middle class") changed his tune the second he had a mortgage and kids.
Different incomes, difference ethnicities, lively street life? You bet. Public failure and dysfunction, no.

Exactly. There are quite a few places I no longer wish to live now that I have a son I plan to send to public school. I value diversity of all types (income, ethnicity, etc etc.) but would not want to send him to school someplace where he'd be competing for a teacher's attention with students who were sent to school without breakfast.

There is a large difference between an area with lively street life with some lower income residents and an area with dirty, ill-kept streets and apathetic residents.

[clevedark]

My kids' public school has a significant number of low income students and breakfast is served before school so everyone is prepared. At the same school there are a significant number of students from rich families.

So it can be done.

[HenryAlan]

Originally Posted by clevedark

My kids' public school has a significant number of low income students and breakfast is served before school so everyone is prepared. At the same school there are a significant number of students from rich families.

So it can be done.

Yep, that sounds like the school my kids attend. Mixed income, mixed ethnicity, mixed levels of external support. Breakfast is served everyday, free to all who want it. It is not disruptive at all, and my children receive a very solid education. They like the school, they like learning, and I am quite pleased to say my kids attend a BPS school.