The city is not losing population, it's looking attractive, the region has a high-tech boom and a robust economic climate. But, there are still problems of segregation and 45 percent of the people living in the city are poor. The challenge is that in the euphoria of the boom, you don't want to lose track of the problems. We are beginning to look at where communities want to build and develop more urban villages. Retail trends help us here, as old 1970s malls fall out of fashion, and now are being replanned and rebuilt.
People are afraid of mixed-use and density.
We dealt with parking and rooming houses. We had no space for parks, but we could provide performance standards. Then we ran into the political will. Before we did the zoning overlay, we had to go out there and pick up trash. We needed to get the peoples' trust back.