You're Our Little Zwischenstadt, Yes You Are

The funny German word means something like "in-between city," and it has to do with replacing the old notion of the city as central core with with a more diffuse, polycentric amalgam that contains suburb and urb. (We know! It's hard to focus on work with this kind of exciting thinking going on.) This flies in the face of pro-density dogma, so we're glad to see the Stranger hasn't turned on its own, what with Zwischenstadter Matthew Stadler coming to town.

The Slog suggests you make your way to Stadler's talk, "What Has Become of Cities?" at Town Hall tonight (7:30pm, $5). He'll be talking about how cities are becoming (and here we're lifting copy right off the Town Hall page) “bourgeois pleasure grounds,” while it is in the suburbs that the urban virtues of economic and ethnic diversity and increasingly, density, are lived out. We expect City Comforts to attend and provide a full report.

But before you go, you can prep by reading Stadler's article on the subject in the Stranger, and then Clark Williams Derry's critical response over at the Daily Score. In the comments section, Stadler defends himself, arguing that this isn't just the kind of theory you cook up when you move to Beaverton and try to make that sound like a great thing.