[FRIAM] NO LANL IN SANTA FE! Wednesday, 12; 00 outside SF City Hall; bring friends

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One example of the fine-grained downward feedbacks that can be installed is mixed-income residential requirements. Many people where we used to live complained that the people on the "other end of the street" didn't "show pride of ownership". To translate from Modern Suburban, they didn't have well-manicured grass lawns, the paint on their house is peeling, or they have too many cars ... whatever made that property look bad to them, basically.

But what I saw was different socio-economic strata. I *enjoyed* living near that 90 year old who decorated his yard with old broken tile (I could stare at his designs for hours [†]) and the 20 year old high school dropout who's trying to make a living playing in a death metal band while he works 2 jobs as barista and bartender. My other neighbors did not *enjoy* living next to those people. It's not clear to me _why_.

I don't think it's a matter of getting out of the house after your day job ... because I almost never do anything after I quit for the day, either. There's something else going on ... something aesthetic. My persnickety neighbors have some need for regularity that the rest of us don't have ... like they want their "jigsaw" puzzles to have all square pieces or something.

[†] He died about a year ago and the property's now occupied by people who "fit in" much better. [sigh] All the tile is gone. There's a new shed, new driveway occupied by a Prius and a Toyota pickup, ... Ugh. Homogeneity reigns.

On 1/15/20 9:30 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Before brainstorming about how to integrate LANL, etc. into the St. Michael / Cerrillos area, it might be worth asking why the town of Los Alamos is so abysmal.   Los Alamos county has one of the highest per capita incomes in the country, and yet there is not a thing to spend money on up there besides real estate.   One reason I've heard is that the folks that own the lots in the town find it more profitable to hold on to them and rent to the lab when the need arises.   Thus there is no way to build anything.   Another is that it is a family town, and oddly enough not a town that facilitates workism -- people more-or-less work 9 to 5 and then hang out at home, and want to.   Or on the weekends they ski or hike.   Its always been astonishing to me that there aren't more restaurants.   The only conventional sign of progress is the big Smiths facility.

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