While this colonization is still in its early stages, it is different from the suburban flight of decades earlier, when young parents fled a city consumed by crime and drugs. These days, young creatives are fleeing a city that has become too affluent…

He is not the only one. Mitchell Moss, an urban-planning professor at New York University, said that funkier suburbs like the river towns are getting a new look from “overeducated hipsters,” not just because they have good schools, spacious housing and good transit, but because lately the restaurants are good enough to keep them in the suburbs on a Saturday night. “The creative class is trying to replicate urban life in the suburbs,” he said.

…The fact that there is a main street to stroll is a big draw for former Brooklynites who find sprawling, car-culture suburbs alienating. These pedestrian-friendly towns, filled with low-rise 19th century brick buildings and non-chain shops, offer a version of village-style living that Jane Jacobs, the Greenwich Village urbanist, would have approved of.

nytimes, 15.02.13.

interesting that the resuburbization is happening already..

i wonder when people will start moving back to the more typical suburbs, though, and not just the smaller, older suburbs. and if the creative class can help revive shuttered main streets in decaying manufacturing suburbs like rockford, il.

…in a report released on Thursday, the nonprofit Urban Green Council makes the case that the country’s largest population centers needn’t rely on a federal breakthrough. Specifically, the 51-page report, titled “90 by 50,” finds that New York City could slash its emissions by a whopping 90 percent by 2050 without any radical new technologies, without cutting back on creature comforts, and maybe even without breaking its budget…

The report takes as its starting point this foundational statistic: 75 percent of the readily measured carbon emissions in New York City come from buildings. That makes it very different from the nation as a whole, where agriculture and transportation are among the biggest culprits. 

…But the Urban Green Council’s plans would carry these standards to unprecedented levels — not just double-glazed windows, but triple-glazed windows — and apply them to existing buildings as well whenever they’re updated. That’s an awful lot of work, but the potential payoff is bigger than you might expect. Think of how much a heater has to run just to keep a room at a constant 70 degrees on a 35-degree day — and then imagine instead that the room is so thoroughly sealed that it can stay near 70 for much of the day on its own.

grist, 16.02.13.

“The process of gentrifying Brooklyn is not necessarily making Brooklyn a better place to live,” says MIT professor Craig Wilder at one point during the movie. Later he adds, “The process of gentrification in New York is not about people moving into a neighborhood and other people moving out of a neighborhood. The process of gentrification is about corporations sectioning off large chunks of those neighborhoods and then planning out their long-term development.”

hyperallergic, 01.02.13.

My Brooklyn by Kelly Anderson and Allison Lirish Dean. watch trailer.