NP: "Chronic City"

[Henry Musikar]

My favorite example is close to home: Washington, DC, a city in which only
the poor and extremely wealthy live in distinct neighborhoods featuring old
brick, there are "townhomes," and there are no factories or a working
waterfront, vs. Baltimore, where middle class people live in some of the old
brick row houses, and there are factories, and a working waterfront, and a
thriving middle class bar and music scene.

Henry Mu
Sr. IT Consultant
http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20/ 

-----Original Message-----
From: Monte Davis

Malignd sez:

> I'm fond of the outer boroughs too and I certainly understand 
> your sentiments, but as someone ?? said, it isn't necessarily 
> either/or...

I lived 15 years in Manhattan, 15 in Brooklyn, and I'm with you: *any* big
city, certainly any world city, contains more worlds than any of us has time
to savor. And to the extent that "frat town" and "society people" signify
non-natives and aggressive money/status climbers, well... that's what cities
have been about for a long, long time, drawing young optimists in from the
sticks and enriching them, disillusioning them, or both. Meanwhile the
real-estate wheel keeps gentrifying one neighborhood as another, formerly
fashionable, slides downhill. 

Cities that stop doing that -- cities full of Real [Cityname]ites who've
lived there all their lives in stable, traditional neighborhoods -- are dead
or dying.

-Monte