No accusations from me about your not blogging like it keeps you from the DTs. I’ll take them as I always have: as an enjoyable bonus to the rest of my day.

Damian: Yes, that’s certainly true of Paris (and has been, to some extent, for a very long time, though it might have become worse over the past twenty years). I think the rich city/poor suburb pattern is much more common in Europe than here, but of course in most European conurbations, social welfare programs are extensive, income inequality is less extreme, and there is ample public transportation, so the economic effects of any displacement are less painful.

Another possibility is to have cities demand that all high-density housing in desirable, central areas be mixed income–such that not every unit is ‘luxury.’ But then we are faced with the ugly social and psychological fact that having mixed-income or mixed-race buildings would likely drive down the value of their higher-end units.

Governments could try to encourage middle income coops, like the late ’40s one I live in in NYC. But the unions organized mine and it’s unclear to me who would do so today.

Recently, my suspicion is that those who want urban living and are priced out of NYC or Chicago, might seek out smaller cities (like Portland, ME, or Scranton, or Lexington, KY) that are affordable, where they may be able to float up on the rising tides of urban real estate prices.

It’s also true, of course, that our assumption that we can read human emotions accurately is problematic. There’s lots of room for misinterpretation there, too, for which generations of arty European filmmakers must be grateful.

I would go so far as to say that if one spent a bit of time observing an octopus and getting a read on its baseline behavior in different situations, a human might be able to infer a few things about its mental state — whether it feels threatened, or hungry, or territorial.