[wburg]

Sign me up for the pro-Grid faction...what's even funnier is that I have a friend a couple blocks away in Midtown who does have a pool.

Actually, part of Midtown's college town feel is because thousands of Sac State and Davis students (not to mention Sac City, the USC extension, etc.) live in the neighborhood, and its general long-term appeal to young people with funny hair and preferences for obscure music. Some of them grow up to become state employees because they still dig it.

The density of Midtown is leaps and bounds ahead of the suburbs. The average Midtown lot is 40x80, with a smattering of 40x160 except for very rare exceptions, and a large number of those lots are duplexes, four-plexes, six-plexes and dingbat apartments having as many as 12 units. While that isn't Super Urban Dense Central, it does work out to around 20-30 DUA, plus the fact that a lot of those houses are shared by many people to save on rent (some friends of mine share a six-bedroom house where I used to live: they turned two downstairs rooms and a chunk of the basement into bedrooms so they could have 8 people living there fore $250/mo each!) Add the dense new developments into the mix and you get quite a total. Compare that to 3-4 DUA in new suburban developments.

And Econgrad is just wrong. He's just too out of the loop to know where the parties are down here. I find plenty to do and more I don't have time to do, and I *never* go to places like 58 Degrees, the Park, or other suburbanite hangouts. The closest I do is walk by and scare the customers with my downtowniness.

People don't want to spend money on a 2 bedroom tiny condo because they can get a kick-ass Midtown bungalow for less money! It really is that simple...