Ad about the benefits of urban (center city) living, Live Baltimore

From the Express, 3/6/2009. Live Baltimore is a resident attraction program in Baltimore City.

I went to an urban studies seminar at GWU last week, and learned that there is a thread in the academy that believes that as suburbs became browner and blacker, with crime, etc., this led to a resurgence in urban, center city, living because people began to believe they could no longer escape the problems of the city, that the problems of the city are everywhere.

Not having read any of these articles and books, I can't claim to know the ins and outs of the position. But I don't think that has much to do with the increase in interest in urban living. I think it has to do with greater numbers of people feeling comfortable with asserting their preference for the benefits of the amenities available to them, as well as great transit systems where such exist, in the city, and the slow improvements of municipal services, drops in crime spearheaded by wider adoption of problem-oriented policing methods, etc.

I was always surprised when I would discover people moving to the city because it was trendy, but where their jobs remained in the suburbs. Eventually, many of these people ended up returning to the suburbs, partly because their jobs and lives were still centered in the suburbs, and/or they weren't prepared to deal with the hard reality of urban life, such as crime (many people, especially in more hard scrabble neighborhoods like H Street NE are going to experience crime, robberies, burglaries, theft from auto, etc., and not all are prepared to deal with this).

In short, urban living isn't necessarily how it was pictured on Friends and Seinfeld.

Original photo source unknown. Central Perk, set, from the tv show Friends.