Just Like Mickey?

The Milwaukee article I posted yesterday got me to thinking, once again, about what may be the real divide in downtown redevelopment - the bourgeoisie vs. the bohemian (or, if you ascribe to David Brook's "bobo" idea, the various shades of bobos sorting out their place in the pecking order). In that context the debate over gentrification and affordable housing is really a matter of set dressing and the poor are themselves relegated to extras in the BG, adding texture to the scene. Some thoughts on the subject I wrote awhile back in Knoxville's Metro Pulse. Note that I've cut out some of the lead, context involving Chattanooga's surprisingly divisive mayor's race:

the real rift, it seems, was over the “authenticity” of the city’s rejuvenated downtown. “Downtown is like Disney World to me now—nice looking but too manufactured,” said one former resident of downtown Chattanooga in a recent Chattanooga Pulse article on the divide over downtown’s development. And it’s an attitude that, according to the article, apparently mirrors many of her contemporaries who called downtown home either before it was cool or when it truly was (depending who you ask). “A lot of us thought Chattanooga seemed poised to be a hip town with artists and musicians, but bohemian types can’t afford to live downtown anymore,” said the same resident who dissed downtown as Disney-fied.

You can hear similar arguments here, of course. The shape of downtown development—albeit on a more conceptual than concrete level—was certainly a factor inKnoxville’s 2003 mayor’s race. And, as more and more downtown redevelopment projects push forward, the debate seems far from over. Just the other day a photo on the local weblog South Knox Bubba of some picturesque urban decay along Jackson Avenue elicited the following comment from a poster:

“That picture really works your sense of longing, either for the archaeology of the scene’s past, or for its possibilities. I spent the weekend in Asheville and, for all the primped and trimmed corners of its downtown, I’d never sensed what Asheville was really like until late last night, when some friends of mine walked me through an industrial back lot not too unlike this one, up some clangy wrought iron stairs, and into a dusty letter press studio where some zany looking folks were playing ukulele and mandolin. Anyway, I had the same sense then that your photo gives me aboutKnoxville, and how you find your history in the secrets of stockyards and ghettos. And you hope that sort of indelible history gets written into whatever redevelopment lies ahead…you know, maybe create something out of its industrial vibe, like studios and such, instead of just dormitories for yuppies.”

Now, it should come as no surprise that I too have a soft spot for urban decay (for what it’s worth, the desktop photo on my laptop was once an artsy-fartsy shot of the neon “air-conditioned” sign that graces the crumbling façade of the Fifth Avenue Motel). But I also realize that “archaeology” becomes more than just a metaphor if downtown’s picturesque ruins remain unrepaired for too long. Note that even the preservationists who pushed to save the S&W wrote off another of the block’s historic buildings as too far gone to save.

And, as much as I like Asheville and its funky alternative attitude, I’m not sure that “authentic” is the adjective I’d use to describe it. The same goes for zany folks with letterpresses and ukuleles. Interesting? Yes. Authentic? Well, not exactly. Or, to bring this back to whether a downtown has to be “Disney” to be a cartoon, consider this: The works of counterculture cartoonist Robert Crumb may have been edgy and avant-garde. And they, perhaps more importantly, made the squares uncomfortable. But at the end of the day they were still pictures drawn with pen and ink, just like Mickey.