Right on your heels

look at this:

http://www.citynoise.org/article/2588

I one who loves cities and thinks they should be viable thing sit here at a lost. It's true any city that goes through a serious change seems to end up a corporate strip with no character and a hollow frame. Wherever there is juice/life they are hot on the tail. No matter what the artists find, the local community forages, if it's a gem there the corporation is hovering ready to snatch it up and make a profit. The homogony we fight against but at the same time seem to go tail spinning towards. The internet I think is one of the few places that manages combat it, by allowing people to connect easily, cheaply, and faster than the corporations can keep up.

But back to the city. What is a real city scape and what is poised? And maybe that's the new challenge, now that cities are revitalizing, keeping the revitalization real and local, backed and made by the people, not the far off giants motivated by profit.

How does Santa Barbara do it? That's a good question. How many chain restaurants can you think of downtown? Not many at all.