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Old Posted Apr 29, 2010, 8:15 PM
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M II A II R II K M II A II R II K is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2002
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Maybe this Joel Kotkin is thinking ahead to ensure the suburb's survival.

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A Mission to Make Suburbs, Well, More Like the City


June 9, 2008

By PAUL VITELLO



Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/ny...in&oref=slogin

Quote:
ROCKVILLE CENTRE, N.Y. — The “Downtown” that Petula Clark evoked in her 1964 pop song of that name (where “you can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares”) never made much sense to anyone who worked or lived in an actual downtown. It was a song for people who did not. So, blaring from the public address speakers to open a recent meeting here, Ms. Clark’s hit was probably the perfect score for a conference of suburban officials and planners promoting the idea that Creating Cool Downtowns, the conference title, was the future of the suburbs of New York. “Young people are moving to Manhattan. They are moving to Brooklyn,” said Thomas R. Suozzi, the Nassau County executive and organizer of the conference, which was held on Friday in the parish center of St. Agnes Cathedral.

“Why aren’t they moving here?” he asked.

Why young people flee the suburbs was the underlying question of the day. But there has never been much mystery about it: There is nowhere to live; not enough to do; and not enough young adults around to improvise the kind of neighborhood scene born every few years in the big city.

Planners have been promoting the idea of suburban downtown life for decades, not just for the young, but also for retirees and workers of all ages. Corporate employers in the suburbs have long lamented the scarcity of affordable rental housing for workers. The environmental advantages of living and working in the same zip code are obvious.

But recent shocks over gas prices, global warming and the tenuous hold many people have on their mortgaged homes seem to have brought new urgency to the idea — at least among professional worriers about the suburbs.
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