From 1990 to 2010, the number of low-income neighborhoods in Chicago rapidly expanded, high-income neighborhoods expanded and stayed strong, and middle-income neighborhoods almost disappeared. An economic neighborhood map of Chicago was the perfect way to begin the conference. It was the foundation of a subtle theme expressed throughout the day. Middle-income neighborhoods are the most fragile, the most difficult to create, and the most important to a city. It is the middle class neighborhoods that are the lobby for schools, parks, services, and amenities, areas often ignored by those in the poor and rich neighborhoods. Middle income neighborhoods are made up of people that make a city run: shopkeepers, small business owners, tradespeople, school teachers, firemen and police.Without those dull middle-class suburbs - and by middle-class I mean folk like I was growing up not people with nannies who go on skiing holidays and pay school fees - cities don't work. Yet the policies we follow - densification, building a mix of very expensive housing and social lets,urban containment, restricting permitted development rights - are destroying those suburbs.
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You're right to define 'middle-class' - in America the titles 'poor' and 'middle-class' refer to the 'non-working' and 'job-holders' respectively, very different from the UK definition of middle-class which usually implies 'the professional classes'.
ReplyDeleteCome on, Simon.
ReplyDeleteYou know as well as I do, that the likes of Rees-Mogg, Johnson, and company, have enlisted White Van Man etc., with a view to destroying the middle classes, since they are the only group who pose any genuine threat to their unbridled power
So your words here ring rather hollow, so long as you persist in giving succour to that movement.