It is however realistic given the the US's urban layout and population preferences. Also nowhere has succeeded in keeping essential, low paid workers living near where they work - gentrification forces them out.
I live in a neighborhood where the median income is below the national average by about 10% and above the national average by about the same amount. This implies to me that there are is a fair bit of economic diversity.
Also, I very rarely encounter a service worker that does not live within 25 minutes of the establishments in my neighborhood unless they do so by choice to live in a much hipper neighborhood.
Part of this is a university that stabilizes the real estate prices and attracts a lot of low income students who take on service jobs, but also a big part of it is housing diversity. Within 1 block of me are a commercial district, a high rise building, many mid-rise buildings, lots of townhomes and a handful of single family homes including at least 2 I’d call mansions. This housing diversity came about due to several phases over the course of over 100 years of urban planning that specifically centered on making it possible for lots of housing desires to be fulfilled in a single place.
It’s entirely possible if there is enough will. But that will is lacking.
My brain is not parsing this sentence properly. Could you elaborate a touch?
I'm reading it as "the neighborhood median income is, at the same time, 10% below and 10% above the national average income", which is only possible if both the national average and your neighborhood median is 0. I presume I'm reading it wrong.
The secret is Japan doesn't let cities run their own zoning, because they'd just use it to ban new people but try to keep the jobs.
EDIT: That's what Henry George said. The reason San Francisco land has so much value and the land in an undeveloped part of California has nearly none is the development, meaning the work of developing it, what human hands do to the land to transform it, the construction. You can sprinkle gold on it and nothing, put a bulldozer there (capital) and nothing, send an entrepreneur or economist to look at it and nothing. It's when people work that it becomes worth something.