for the love of jacksonville

EU, by policy, doesn't really publish a lot of political editorial. However, i WOULD like to shed some light to the great media coverage that is happening around town regarding our city, the way it is being planned and people doing something about it. with that said, i'd like to turn your attention over to some really interesting posts/articles:

1. The Case Against Roads was an entry Joey posted last Friday over at the Urban Jacksonville blog, it is an article that Michael Lewyn wrote in Folio about the increasing sprawl happening in Jacksonville. You can read the article, and maybe even more interestingly, the comments that follow (including one by our new city planning director, Brad Thoburn).

So if middle-class families move to outer suburbs, some Duval suburbs will simply be unable to compete; property values will flatten out, schools will deteriorate, and Duval’s suburbs will deteriorate just as older automobile-dependent areas around Beach Boulevard and Philips Highway deteriorated when faced with competition from newer, shinier areas such as Baymeadows and Southside. In short, sprawl is a revolution that eats its own children.

2. Metro Jacksonville posted Is Jacksonville Serious about helping Small Business Owners? yesterday.

Mark Hemphill’s two venues (Mark’s and Dive Bar) do extremely well on Friday and Saturday night, and Club TSI has a strong following, but a three block district has to be more than three places. The main reason downtown areas become vibrant has to do with connectivity, one place feeding off of another. Imagine going to the Avenues Mall, and seeing over half of the storefronts vacant – it wouldn’t work, and would collapse in little time. The Mark Hemphill’s are doing their part – will others follow?

.... so on top of all the issues raised in the above articles and comments... i have one (slightly off-topic) question, why in the world wasn't someone from the city knocking on the newly resided Art Institute of Jacksonville's doors and asking them to put their school in the heart of our city, downtown, rather than sticking it in another bland Beach Boulevard building? I mean look at what happened to downtown Savannah since SCAD got involved. I don't know, I'm speaking without having researched (maybe someone did ask them [AI] to come downtown), but I think that would have been ONE logical move to help get people downtown and staying downtown.