Tag: suburbs

A (mostly) Fair Reading of Why it is so Expensive to Live in the Bay Area

If you’re wondering why people are protesting you, how we got to this housing crisis, why rent control exists or why tech is even shifting to San Francisco in the first place, this is meant to provide some common points of understanding.

This is a complex problem, and I’m not going to distill it into young, rich tech douchebags-versus-helpless old ladies facing eviction. There are many other places where you can read that story.

It does us all no justice.

How Burrowing Owls Lead To Vomiting Anarchists (Or SF’s Housing Crisis Explained). No: it isn’t just the fault of the tech world, but a combination of a highly-restricted housing supply, plus rising demand, plus a volatile local economy prone to booms and busts, plus strict rent control without vacancy control, and entrenched interests which is almost never aligned.

The Fauxtopias of Detroit’s Suburbs

McDonald's neon sign :: Henry Ford museum

Starting with a painstaking replica of his childhood farm built on a plot of land not far from his Dearborn estate, Ford created what has since grown into a major regional tourist-attraction called Greenfield Village. Today 1.5-million people annually visit this place which boasts the world’s largest concentration of historical buildings moved from their original locations to a new site. Today, there are nearly 100 historical buildings “preserved” in the walled 240-acre compound, many of them chosen and situated to represent a typical American village somewhere between 1870 and 1910. There’s a town square, a courthouse (where young Abe Lincoln practiced law), a general store, and a chapel. Seersuckered historical interpretors as friendly as Mormon missionaries prowl the streets in straw hats, pouncing on unsuspecting tourists:

It’s a living diorama of nostalgia. Visiting Greenfield Village is like wandering through Mitch Albom’s cloying fantasy of “the good old days.” If you don’t watch out, you might get serenaded by an impromptu BARBERSHOP SEXTET.

via The Fauxtopias of Detroit's Suburbs | sweet juniper!.