Lol whatever you say, chief

It really depends what your priorities are. Every neighborhood has pros and cons.

Fox Point is the most well rounded neighborhood in my opinion: walkable, nice architecture and curb appeal, good shops, diverse population.

Hope has the best most neighborhoody Main Street.

College Hill has great architecture but it’s only main drag (Thayer) is basically a student ghetto, so it’s really not that walkable.

Mount Hope has nice architecture and is a short drive to a lot of places but isn’t that walkable.

Wayland has great architecture, nice parks, and a nice main square, but is sleepy and boring (great for families but maybe not for non-families).

Federal Hill/West End have great night life and are walkable but can be less attractive blocks than the east side and not much green space. The exception is the area around the armory which is a fantastic community and pretty pocket though hemmed in by highways and the hood.

Downtown is actually a great place to live without kids. Walkable, great architecture, a lot going on.

One of the reasons east siders are pushing for this policy is that currently, individual families are having trouble competing with slumlord investors when trying to buy single family houses in college hill and fox point.

Normally, in suburbia, single family houses are priced based on the single family housing market (ie how much a family is willing to pay for a single family house). In the parts of Providence near Brown, however, rent is high enough now where the the economic gain from renting a shingle family house to a lot of students has surpassed the single family housing market. So if the market for single family homes in this part of Providence is, say, $800,000, but renting to 8 students allows for a 10% return to investors if they pay $1 million, then the highest value of the house ($1 million) is based on its investment potential, not the single family housing market.

This means people who are trying to buy houses to live in them can’t compete with investors, and the whole neighborhood turns into a student ghetto at the expense of being a family neighborhood. This is the logic.

All that said: I’m still against this policy. If College Hill residents want fewer students and more home owners then they should just make their neighborhood more appealing to home owners. Plus, non-single family housing neighborhoods already face this challenge of investment being the basis of cost, why should fancy college hill be protected? In fact, why is there still single-family zoning at all in Providence?

It only drives up housing costs in that you can squeeE more rent out of each unit so the cost of the building goes up. In other words: more people crammed into one space makes BUYING more expensive but not renting. Wannabe east siders are griping that they can’t compete on the housing market with investors renting to students.

This, and walk down benefit street. End with food on wickenden or near the pedestrian bridge.

Walk down Westminster, the great downtown street.

Walk down Atwells, our little Italy, and go to Venda market.

The Saturday farmers market on simms Ave is also eventful and there are good breweries next door.

This will be underwhelming to a visitor.

Disagree. Moniker has the best outdoor space and location. Great to be out by the fire pits and food trucks and on west fountain.

I love the beer at long live but dont send this guy to deep west end rather than the cool part of federal hill.

It is a fact, researched over and over again, that stadiums and sports teams in general are terrible public investments. Stadiums are empty 99% of the time and the whole area sits dormant. It only supports business a few hours here and there when it’s open. The “civic pride” factor isn’t worth it. This was an incredible waste.

Elmhurst is less expensive and has a similar vibe to Hope but not the same great village that Hope has. Smith Hill is near downtown and less expensive and has some basic food options but is a little sketchier and less green than Hope.

First off: are you really so cheap that you can’t spend $4 on a parking meter? The meters don’t exist to screw over drivers, they’re there to help businesses—they don’t want people to just park all day while they go and do other things, they want the street spots to be for visitors and store patrons. No one is avoiding downtown because of meters, that’s ridiculous. Any serious urban main street has meters.

Secondly, you’re right that more workers would also help the cause but that’s not going to happen. Even before the pandemic, the trend was moving away from old school financial districts. Businesses were just as happy being in lofts in Valley as they are being downtown. Also, finance jobs generally have been declining for years, even in Boston. Work from home exacerbated the problem.

These days, more housing means more workers Most professionals work from home 2-3 days a week. So if they live downtown that means they’re going out to lunch and shopping just like office workers used to, but unlike office workers they’re also around on nights and weekends. The line between home and work is blurred so we need more homes downtown.

Finally: of course, luring people from the burbs is an important part of the equation, but that happens by being a great place. If it’s worth coming to, people from the burbs will come to Providence, even if it means paying for parking. For it to be worthwhile, however, it needs to be vibrant and walkable and fun. It doesn’t matter if parking is easy if it’s not a place where people want to go. In fact, parking is ONLY easy in places where people don’t want to be. If a place is successful then it’s inherently difficult to park because a lot of people want to be there and will be fighting for parking.

We need more dynamic people in their 20’s and 30’s here who breath life into the city’s nightlife, culinary scene, and cultural life. If that means people who work in Boston and live here then great.

Childless, professionals are the lifeblood of cities because they have money, time, and energy to go out often and be involved. Providence skews very young and very old compared to other cities, and we just don’t have enough good jobs to support more dynamic people here.

BTW: dynamic doesn’t necessarily mean “affluent” it just means ambitious, curious, high energy, culturally engaged, etc.

More housing across the board is good. Luxury, workforce, affordable. It all makes providence more robust vibrant and affordable. Just build more housing in general in walkable, we’ll-serviced areas.

The only negative would be if affordable buildings were knocked down for luxury buildings to be built in their place. That’s not really happening here though. Providence has so many vacant lots. Let’s turn these lots into housing rather than keeping them empty.

There just aren’t enough people living and working in providence to support a full-service food hall type place for one niche ethnic cuisine. That place was built for a dense big city. It’s too bad, it was a good experience to be in there.

The answer is no. High rise construction is extremely expensive to build. In theory, the people living there, however, would not be living in low density apartments in the neighborhoods, which in theory helps prevent those units from becoming more expensive (not going down in price, but having more competition so they don’t go up as fast).

Give me a break—how on earth is providence saying fuck off to drivers? There are many parking lots and parking garages downtown, there’s virtually never traffic downtown. Personally, I’ve never had to pay for parking downtown. The longest I’ve ever had to circulate to find street parking is 20 minutes at the absolute worst and that’s because I refused to pay for a parking lot. It’s right off of multiple highways. There are only a couple bike lanes in the entire downtown on the quiet Empire and Fountain Streets. The whole downtown revolves around drivers.

The key to success in downtown Providence is much more housing. Full stop. You can’t have a successful downtown that completely revolves around people driving in from other places, which is still pretty much the case here—you can’t even get there that easily from the adjacent neighborhoods (west side, smith hill) without driving! There needs to be lots of people there 24/7, using the local shops as their primary liquor store/market/bookstore, having Burnside Park be their primary green space (lots of city parks of homelessness challenges, but they usually they have a lot of non-homeless people to balance it out—there just aren’t enough people living downtown to do this at burnside which is why it feels as it does. Housing at Superman will help). More people living downtown means it feels more vibrant all the time which also makes it more attractive to people who visit from other places.

The best way to draw people from outside of providence is to have downtown providence be awesome and worth coming to. That requires a big 24/7 population to create an around-the-clock pulse to the place. Otherwise, the bones are already great: great architecture, riverfront access, a good foundation of shops and restaurants, train access, etc. We now just need people.

Try friendship market on messer street

What does this mean? We grew by 10k since the last census.

This just isn’t true. Developers do not want empty buildings and risk default if they are empty. You’re talking about luxury condos bought by rich investors. What you’re talking about doesn’t apply to apartment buildings.

For the same reason gun control advocates aren’t trying to ban knives: https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/09/13/americas-most-dangerous-dog-breeds-infographic/amp/

The city didn’t lose millions. This project was never possible. Now something else can ACTUALLY get built here and the city will get tax revenue.

There’s actually a tremendous amount of affordable housing in Manhattan. It’s middle income housing that’s missing.

A W: now the site can actually be developed.

Residential buildings with limited parking actually don’t generate that much traffic. 200 parking spots may only yield 20 cars coming and going at any given hour, especially in a center city environment and with remote work.

I don’t understand how he EVER could have gotten financing, even a few years ago.

Enough of allowing Rottweilers and pitbulls. Yes, they’re just animals, but it’s the same argument as gun control: most people with guns handle them safely but guns are still extremely dangerous and you can’t rely on people to not behave dangerously. Most attacks are by these dogs (contrary to popular rhetoric this isn’t a recent thing but a long time reality). It’s so selfish and irresponsible that people put vulnerable people like kids and other people’s dogs at risk because they selfishly want a dangerous breed of dog.

Cue up responses that your pit Bull is sweet—I’m sure they are! But we can’t know that the other pit Bull next door won’t snap at any minute and kill our kid. Enough already.