Why "urban" and loft units are being built in places that aren't gritty

Gritty (3rd and L Streets NE, Washington, DC).

"Urbanists can walk or take a bike to restaurants, pick up their newspaper downstairs, but don't have to deal with the inconveniences of downtown blight," said Randy Jackson, president of the Planning Center, a private urban-design firm in Costa Mesa.

From "Urbanist explosion: Realtors are paying attention to a growing group of buyers who want hip, higher-density living in pleasant surroundings -- like Hollywood, not downtown," in the Los Angeles Times.

It's why I describe Bethesda Row as being "urban," meaning dense and mixed use, "without being urban" meaning racially, culturally, economically, and age diverse.

From the article:

Living in suburbia is as appealing to Katherine Winston as a prime-rib dinner is to a vegetarian. "There will always be people with suburban tastes," said the 30-year-old television-marketing manager. "I definitely am not one of them."

That's why she and her Realtor husband, Darren Winston, 30, are moving into Kor Group's Sunset Silver Lake loft-style condominiums in Los Angeles, one of several new residential projects in Southern California geared to what marketers are calling "nouveau" buyers -- those roughly between the ages of 25 and 45 who want an urban environment but don't necessarily dig downtown.