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And yet, thousands of nightlife districts prosper around the world. Like many in Sacramento, you don't get business. Weekends are the bread and butter of nightlife.
Just boggles my mind how people assume anyone who fails to be suitably cheerful about the arena, or happens to mention any down sides to the arena and associated gentrification-type mayhem, is assumed to be "against" it.
Yea when the average K street resident before the arena was a homeless crack head, pretty much anyone with a job is a gentrifier.
Just boggles my mind how people assume anyone who fails to be suitably cheerful about the arena, or happens to mention any down sides to the arena and associated gentrification-type mayhem, is assumed to be "against" it.
Was mostly referring to the OP here, who is not against it for the reasons you describe.
So therein lies the disconnect. WizardOfRadical looks at 1970s New York and the culture it engendered as a bunch of "strung out bums" without value or meaning, so of course when he looks at Sacramento and sees the same sort of people doing the same sort of things, he also fails to see the value of those people or places, and wants to replace them with a sort of sanitized, sterilized, and pre-packaged "big city" experience that is like the experience one gets at a suburban mall, just with tall buildings. That sort of experience is a big yawn, in my opinion. I like my cities with grit.
So what you're saying in essence is that you like "strung out bums." Rather puts them in the category of pets, what?
So what you're saying in essence is that you like "strung out bums." Rather puts them in the category of pets, what?
This thread has people saying the like their bums, dead downtown, and lack of things to patronize.
When you have people trying to make borded up store fronts filled with crack fiend as a viable alternative, you are dealing with people ouy of touch with reality.
Burg, so tell us what exactly is your ideal central city. It seems like you have a bias against "suburban mentalities and lifestyles", or whatever that means to you. You purposely want to prevent any type of housing that would attractive suburban couples and families from Folsom or Roseville from wanting to live downtown. It seems like your bias is against people you don't like. It seems like you don't like the Arena because you don't want "suburbanites" living downtown, you don't want "those types of people" living downtown. Tell us what kind housing you want downtown; should it all be "affordable housing" and who should subsidize this housing, who should pay for it?
Most of the boarded-up storefronts in downtown Sacramento are that way because the owner wants to build a high-rise but can't afford to build it, like the two on the 1000 block of K Street, so really, no, it's the high-rise boosters and arena supporters who are the cause of that sort of environment. I'd prefer to see those storefronts occupied and utilized, rather than left to rot because they owner wants to build a 25-40 story building but can't get their act together to actually build it. There are plenty of things to patronize and things to do in Sacramento; yes, there is room for more, but some people's failure to recognize that is not my problem.
Chimerique, you're absolutely wrong about what you think I don't want to see downtown. I want people from Folsom or Roseville to move downtown and live here because they want to live in a city environment, not those who want to live in a sterilized, suburban environment that happens to be downtown. And my post about New York City in the 1970s should have clarified that Wizz's claim that nobody lived there (or lives in downtown Sacramento now) except for "strung out bums" is patently false--he's just plain factually wrong, or he considers artists, musicians and other creative people who don't have to be rich to be in the category of "strung out bums." In which case, then the "strung out bums" he's talking about are not pets, but rather my friends, my neighbors, and myself. And it sounds like you don't think that we are as "attractive" or "desirable" as people from the suburbs--so, by definition, you are defining myself and other current central city residents as ugly and undesirable. Why should anyone show any respect to someone who dismisses and insults them?
It sounds like you cats consider suburban people to be more attractive and more desirable to be around. Perhaps the best alternative for you would be to move to the suburbs and be around the people you like the most? I assume there are plenty of suburbs that could use some revitalization.
When I said Sacramento was a city of gardeners I meant its residents who have gardens in their back and front yards, which is very likely more than the national average for larger cities. When I mentioned farmers I meant primarily the trade that goes with the Agriculture business.
For most people, the "gardening" they do is pretty much limited to mowing lawns, which isn't really any different from what people in suburban neighborhoods do anywhere else in the country, and I think you'd be hard pressed to demonstrate that Sacramentans are any more prone to do so than anywhere else in the country. Backyard/front yard gardening is a very common pastime pretty much everywhere, it ebbs and flows with fashion. And, again, the trade that goes with agribusiness, as expressed in Sacramento, doesn't really have anything to do with farming--we were a center for trade and industrial processing, not the growing of crops or animals, and the people who did that work were industrial workers, not farmers, even when the food industry was, along with building railroads and locomotives, one of our biggest employers. But that hasn't been the case for decades.
But it's that mythology about every suburban homemaker actually being a yeoman farmer, one that is national in scope but particularly applied here, that you're spreading--a false narrative that denies and ignores the role of industrial workers, migrant farmers, and our city's real urban history. It also denies the present day--the fact that our major employment sectors are knowledge workers, people dealing with information and data and processes, and of course suburban home builders. If you ignore employment sectors that make up 2/3 of the local job market and characterize us based on an employment sector that is less than 1% of that job market, you aren't telling the truth--you're pushing a lie, and justifying that lie because some of the managers and analysts and roofers and HVAC installers have backyard gardens just makes it a particularly pernicious lie.
It serves the myth that if you look out a window in Land Park you can still see hop fields that were plowed under a century ago for suburbs. Your vision for Sacramento seems very mired in suburban idealism--I really think the suburbs is where you belong!
My ideal central city: Lots of housing across all income levels, from very affordable to very expensive. High rises and high densities in the central business district. Multiple modes of transit converge in the heart of that district, with entertainment ranging from the most mainstream to the most obscure. Rather than being a dedicated entertainment zone that goes dead during the daytime and on weekdays, right next to a dedicated office zone that goes dead at night and on weekends, patronized primarily by people who don't live anywhere near the zone and visit occasionally, a zone of mixed uses that includes employment, entertainment, and housing in close proximity. The businesses are patronized by people who live in the neighborhood, who not only become customers but also promoters for those businesses when their friends come to visit; instead of going dead, they transition from daytime customers to night-time customers, serving more than one group, thus resulting in a more efficient, cost effective, and profitable business model. I don't even mind the idea of a downtown arena from a land use standpoint--if there are things to like about it, its multiple-use potential is probably the best part, although it's always better if the area immediately around it NEVER goes dark; if there are lots of residents nearby, then there is no reason why the "nightlife destination" restaurants around the arena shouldn't have the same booming lunch business that other downtown restaurants have, while so many downtown restaurants are packed to the gills at lunchtime but close at 3 PM when state workers go home. Ideally, the same restaurants that are busy at lunch are also busy during the evening crowd. This is the model you see in Midtown: nightlife is important, but most of the great nightlife places also have a great lunch crowd, and do well whether or not there's an event going on. That's the primary difference between a suburban place and an urban place. Suburban places segregate uses because land is cheap and they are driven by the automobile. Urban places can't afford to let spaces go dead 16 hours a day, so they mix uses and are driven by pedestrian traffic, ideally by people who live in the neighborhood and supplemented by visitors.
The intensity of uses and buildings gradually diminishes as you leave the central business district, to neighborhoods that are still mixed use and still very dense compared to the outer suburbs, but on a more human scale, with tree-lined streets and sidewalk cafes backed up by residential uses ranging from single-family homes to multi-story apartments. Parks and schools at regular intervals provide places for kids and families; the central city is for everyone. As in the urban core, your neighbor might be a doctor or might be a disabled person on SSI, but they're all your neighbors and you share the neighborhood.
Housing in the central core means expensive high-rises for the wealthy, and small SRO units for the poor, in the same neighborhoods, in order to minimize the number actually living on the street. Housing in the surrounding central city neighborhoods also uses the same principles but lower intensity--a single-family home is going to be expensive, a large apartment less expensive but still pricey, small apartments so cheap someone on minimum wage or Social Security can live there. In all cases, lots of access to transit allows people living there to minimize their transportation expenses, and transit works best in mixed-use neighborhoods of relatively high density. Cars are present, but they're just one of many modes of transit, not the sole means of getting around. This means suburban visitors will feel uncomfortable driving at 20-25 miles per hour on streets where pedestrians, bicycles and all sorts of distractions make them feel unsafe. That's exactly what you want--drivers that don't feel safe slow down and pay attention, drivers that feel safe and comfortable speed up and kill people. The people in question are my neighbors and myself, so I have a vested interest in that level of safety, which takes priority over suburban convenience via the automobile. That's also why I am not particularly worried about arena traffic, or the arena's lack of parking. I want those suburbanites to learn how to use transit, but part of using transit is realizing that not everyone who rides transit shares your outlook on the world or your social class, and that's just part of life. It is their responsibility to get used to transit, not transit's responsibility to cater to them--but, in all cases, better funded transit serves both purposes by providing more frequent service, better maintenance, and yeah, better security. Poor people riding transit deserve a safe ride too.
In the long run, neighborhoods outside the central city along transit lines should also be encouraged to follow this model: not high-rise only, but mid-rise, mid-density, mixed-use and mixed-income, instead of the single-use, single-price, single-economic-class principles that built our postwar suburbs and are inequitably applied to some of our old streetcar suburbs.
Most of the boarded-up storefronts in downtown Sacramento are that way because the owner wants to build a high-rise but can't afford to build it, like the two on the 1000 block of K Street, so really, no, it's the high-rise boosters and arena supporters who are the cause of that sort of environment. I'd prefer to see those storefronts occupied and utilized, rather than left to rot because they owner wants to build a 25-40 story building but can't get their act together to actually build it. There are plenty of things to patronize and things to do in Sacramento; yes, there is room for more, but some people's failure to recognize that is not my problem.
Bogus, burg, it's years and decades of naysayers, greedy lawyers, the horrible approval process, and a central city dependent on gov't that prevents a high-rise or a highly regarded architectural structure from being built. The naysayers of all sorts come out in groves to prevent projects from being built. They make it so the developer/builder gives up, or caves to the next recession.
It's ridiculous for you to blame a vacant lot on Arena supports, that's insane. The sad thing is you pump out that garage and a lot of people believe you.
You want to keep the central city populated by people dependent on the gov't. I don't believe you when you say you want rich people living downtown in expensive high-rise buildings because if the central city became filled with really wealthy types with "sterile and suburban mentalities" then your "constituents" will become the minority. Currently your constituents are the majority and you want to keep it that way. Lo and behold "sterile suburbanites" want to live downtown and they might "ruin" "your" central city. Open your mind, quit discriminating, there are artistic, creative ex-suburbanites who want to live in a dense walkable urban environment.
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