This is going to be spotty but it's also months late, so.
No one is saying the design choices are the *driver*, but a sign it's already going on, yes? And I think it's fair to say that certain aesthetic choices are bound to class, race, education level, other demographic buckets, beyond being generally a neutral upgrade. If you gave everyone $50-100 and told them to pick out new house numbers, different people are going to make different style choices. Some of those are signifiers of different kinds of population shifts.
And I think most folks' complaints about investment/new construction/new businesses in an area aren't about those things existing in the abstract, but again, who has access to the capital to make that happen. New businesses and resources in an historically disinvested neighborhood are only great for residences if they've got some protection against huge property tax hikes or access to rent stabilization.
Thanks to Anne Helen Peterson, I've been following a lot of rush content on tiktok this week, and via her instagram (and today's newsletter), and apropos of gentry, this article was mentioned: https://patrickwyman.substack.com/p/american-gentry
Typography! I need to read this post more completely. But first let me react to the numbers on your garage. These are italic numbers. Yet so often they are installed like they are not italic. People force this italic number to stand up straight. The italics like to be on an angle. I made an animated gif that shows the before and after. https://www.spudart.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/9444-straightened.gif Which in all reality, this gif just makes the numbers look like they are dancing.
This is going to be spotty but it's also months late, so.
No one is saying the design choices are the *driver*, but a sign it's already going on, yes? And I think it's fair to say that certain aesthetic choices are bound to class, race, education level, other demographic buckets, beyond being generally a neutral upgrade. If you gave everyone $50-100 and told them to pick out new house numbers, different people are going to make different style choices. Some of those are signifiers of different kinds of population shifts.
And I think most folks' complaints about investment/new construction/new businesses in an area aren't about those things existing in the abstract, but again, who has access to the capital to make that happen. New businesses and resources in an historically disinvested neighborhood are only great for residences if they've got some protection against huge property tax hikes or access to rent stabilization.
Thanks to Anne Helen Peterson, I've been following a lot of rush content on tiktok this week, and via her instagram (and today's newsletter), and apropos of gentry, this article was mentioned: https://patrickwyman.substack.com/p/american-gentry
Typography! I need to read this post more completely. But first let me react to the numbers on your garage. These are italic numbers. Yet so often they are installed like they are not italic. People force this italic number to stand up straight. The italics like to be on an angle. I made an animated gif that shows the before and after. https://www.spudart.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/9444-straightened.gif Which in all reality, this gif just makes the numbers look like they are dancing.
This was excellent. History, humor, education and more. I laughed at loud at least once. Excellent. Actually, twice.