News-Record.com

You got that one right Doug. Asheville is known as the SF of the east. They meet all the requirements that you have listed above and then some. Since you have spent some time in this neck of the woods , you know that it is true. We can be glad we moved when we did.

With million dollar "lofts" and highest property cost in the state, the highest tax rate in the state, one of the highest crime rates, a town full of panhandlers that you can find on every corner or almost wall to wall on Lexington Ave and College, uptown shops that hate kids, and true SF culture from Lexington to Riverside. The cancer is spreading rapidly but fortunately the ultra lib groups don't like the small towns with lots of woods to get lost in so I guess I am safe for a while.

I imagine the biggest problem is the high property costs. Unfortunately, word gets around that such places are a good place to live so a lot of rich young professional types come in and drive property values way up. The same thing is happening in many rejuvinated neighborhoods and Washington, D.C. and places like Portland, Oregon. Basically, the city is governed relatively well, attracting people until housing costs go up, starting a downward spiral. Unfortunately, it's a cycle I can see the beginings of here in Charlotte.

Conservative economist Thomas Sowell, who's out Stanford University, blames high land and housing costs on San Francisco's restrictive development policies.

That could be, I don't know, but the other side of that is unrestricted development leads to a big box, sprawl nightmare Charlotte has turned into.

It's kind of a conundrum. Sprawl is fueled, in part, by the search for less expensive land. Measures aimed at containing sprawl tend to increase competition for land, driving up costs.

Of course, sprawl entails its own costs -- loss of open space, longer drive times to employment centers and so on.

Doug, I think the broad-brush sneering statements about "liberals" are beneath you and the position you hold at the paper. Can't we leave that stuff to Fox News and talk radio?

Would sneering at "conservatives" be OK, Ed?

Great comeback, Doug! Right on point!

Because every argument can be broken down into neat ideological categories, and everyone with whom you disagree given a label and dismissed, and everyone else thinks that way, too!

Once again, you uphold the standards of a professional writing at the company site!

We all apply labels when they're convenient and try to dismiss them when they're uncomfortable. Often they're a useful shorthand, conveying some degree of meaning that most of us can understand. Who doesn't know what it means to refer to San Francisco as a liberal city and, say, Salt Lake City as more conservative?

All of which leaves unanswered a couple of significant questions: Why is San Francisco apparently, and increasingly, family unfriendly? Are there policies and circumstances at work there that we'd rather not take root in Greensboro if we don't want the same result?

Having been out there lately, I'm guessing that high home costs and rents are the main reason why SF has proportionately fewer households with school-age kids than other large, urban areas. ("Kid-unfriendly" is a subjective characterization that I won't agree to use without an agreed-upon, objective definition.)

Why are the costs so high? I imagine it's a complex mix of reasons involving both market forces and land-use regulation.

But as someone who has spent a lot of time in downtown Asheville (my mother has a place in nearby Montreat), I strenuously object to the negative charaterization of that city. Downtown Asheville has a lot going on. Given all our efforts in recent years to revitalize downtown Greensboro, I think we ought to look carefully at what works and doesn't work there that might work in Greensboro, rather than simply dimissing the place as "SF East."