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Right? There is nothing appealing about an area that looks like it’s on its last leg imo. I can appreciate a city that looks like it cares to look nice much more.
Gritty and slums are different. I posted an example of gritty, and there's nothing that's not appealing about it. Gritty is not boarded up....slums are.
I am the type of person that likes nice clean cities full of beautiful greenery. I do believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but why would you seek filthy, graffiti sprayed crumbling neighborhoods absent of ANY form of green growing things? This may sound snarky, I don't mean it to be, but please explain to me the appeal of grit!
Gritty neighborhoods are the incubators of innovation and small business. Entrepreneurs wishing to open a new restaurant, gallery, boutique, etc. are priced out of the more polished parts of town by corporate giants such as Starbucks, Pottery Barn, PF Chang's, Gap, etc. This means that the small start-ups in the grittier neighborhoods are locally owned, keeping money in the community rather exporting it to LA, NYC and other places far away. In addition, they imbue their neighborhoods with a unique "feel" rather than the United Colors of Benetton encroaching everywhere else we look.
Gritty neighborhoods are the incubators of innovation and small business. Entrepreneurs wishing to open a new restaurant, gallery, boutique, etc. are priced out of the more polished parts of town by corporate giants such as Starbucks, Pottery Barn, PF Chang's, Gap, etc. This means that the small start-ups in the grittier neighborhoods are locally owned, keeping money in the community rather exporting it to LA, NYC and other places far away. In addition, they imbue their neighborhoods with a unique "feel" rather than the United Colors of Benetton encroaching everywhere else we look.
Charleston and Savannah and the Garden District of New Orleans are examples of places that are extremely "polished" yet NOT overrun with national chains and are still dominated by small locally owned businesses and startups. I believe a lot of Austin, Texas is like that too.
That doesn't look gritty to me at all. Just an alley and cleaner than most I've seen.
Yes in a "gritty" city like Baltimore there will be graffiti covering the walls, the windows will be boarded up and there will be trash littering the pavement.......I also understand New York City was quite gritty in the 70s and 80s (before Rudy Giuliani cleaned things up) and not as much today. I wonder who misses the bad old days there.....
I am the type of person that likes nice clean cities full of beautiful greenery. I do believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but why would you seek filthy, graffiti sprayed crumbling neighborhoods absent of ANY form of green growing things? This may sound snarky, I don't mean it to be, but please explain to me the appeal of grit!
It just seems more natural and real to me... there has to be a middle ground though, not all out piles of trash in the street but no perfectly cut grass and trimmed bushes either.
Yes in a "gritty" city like Baltimore there will be graffiti covering the walls, the windows will be boarded up and there will be trash littering the pavement.......I also understand New York City was quite gritty in the 70s and 80s (before Rudy Giuliani cleaned things up) and not as much today. I wonder who misses the bad old days there.....
Charleston and Savannah and the Garden District of New Orleans are examples of places that are extremely "polished" yet NOT overrun with national chains and are still dominated by small locally owned businesses and startups. I believe a lot of Austin, Texas is like that too.
Well, there’s a Pottery Barn on King Street and 2 Starbucks within a few blocks of one another in Savannah’s historic core. The economy driver of the core of both of those cities is tourism. Businesses that rely on tourists’ dollars can get by with a more inferior quality than those those that rely on the return business of their neighbors. Also, it is much more affordable to open and run a business in a gritty neighborhood than to run that same business in the center of a city’s tourist section.
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