In a feature titled "Urban entertainment districts: Blocks where no one has fun," Salon writer Will Doig describes the modern “urban lifestyle destination” as a "swath of cityscape whose character has been preordained by a city council vote and is now identified by brightly colored banners affixed to lampposts."

“The problem with these created-overnight districts is that you’re trying to create a culture as opposed to letting one grow,” Nathaniel Hood, a Minneapolis-based transportation planner, is quoted in the piece. “You’re getting the culture that one developer or city council member thinks the city needs, as opposed to the ground-up culture that comes from multiple players.”

Cleveland's Gordon Square Arts District is mentioned as an example of a neighborhood that got it right.

"[Milwaukee's] Water Street is an example of how, when the city declines to step in, citizens will. In a less cacophonous way, Cleveland has done this with its Gordon Square Arts District, where a group of nonprofits got together and created their own urban district where theaters already existed.

“You had three very humble nonprofit organizations, no powerful boards, that just needed capital improvements,” says Gordon Square's executive director Joy Roller.

Read the rest of the good news here.