Quote:
Originally Posted by exit2lef
I stopped reading that blog after the author started to write condescendingly about Phoenix from self-imposed exile in Portland. Nevertheless, I recall some advocacy of duplexes even when it was a Phoenix-based blog. I disagreed then and I disagree now. I know many people who like living in apartments or condos, but I don't know anyone who likes duplexes. They occupy an uncomfortable middle ground between the autonomy of a detached single family home and the anonymity of an apartment building. I can't imagine people being lured Downtown for the privilege of living in a duplex.
Regardless, it's funny how that blog post is being used by the Save Roosevelt Row movement to argue against "high rises." In actuality, nothing being proposed for Roosevelt meets any widely-accepted definition of a high rise.
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Exactly. There's a reason that the concept is all but extinct. The few duplexes in Evans Churchill are the only structures that haven't seemed to find a creative use. If anything, duplexes complicate the already fragile state of downtown by being unattractive as a living arrangement, and not conducive to adaptive reuse.
The word high-rise has been thrown around like crazy since the recession. Anything multi-story has been described as a high-rise in the press (example: AZCentral's report on Edison on Central; 5 stories) and now that seems to have spread into the attitudes of the community. 5 stories has widely been accepted as the tipping point between residential projects that connect with the street and ones that add little vibrancy despite additional height. I'm not sure why that notion has suddenly come into question, nor does it really matter. 5 stories is more than appropriate for the majority of vacant lots in Evans Churchill, and quite frankly, even that might be too low for building the needed residential base when you consider how many lots are banked for things like the PBC.
Since when did the Roosevelt Row neighborhood become NIMBYs? Between their ageist fight against The Row on 2nd and now their fight against 5-story "high rises," it's pretty shocking to me that a neighborhood in center of the city is so irrationally anti-development. The owner of Songbird was quoted as saying that he knows people need to be added downtown, but that "apartments and condos aren't the way." Why are these people self-deprecating? Why do they not want their businesses, and future businesses similar to their own, to succeed by fostering a community where living in the area in which you play is an option? It's all so bizarre to me.
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