To the editor,

The city commission appears to be making a consistent and determined drive to change the face of downtown by continuing to approve tax breaks for upscale residential apartment buildings.

If this continues, downtown will look like countless other urban areas I’ve seen in Orlando, Atlanta and many other cities.

When Lawrence is indistinguishable from all these other, cookie-cutter (aka stylish) cities, why would anyone choose Lawrence over any of them? What will remain unique about our city?

Decreasing the sprawl of the ever-expanding housing developments is an admirable goal. I hope we can all agree with that. I hope we also agree that providing a small percentage of “affordable” housing, or a grocery store is nothing but a diversion to take our attention away from the privileged (and subsidized) housing we are giving to those who are able to pay for it.

The city is subsidizing housing for those who don’t need it? Isn’t that what we complain about with large corporations and the 1% in general?

We are emulating the same things we despise about Washington.