When my mother was young, our street was full of small shops and low rents. Then the city built a station two blocks away. (11) Rents went up, the old shops closed, and coffee shops opened where the bakery had been. People said the street was better now. The families who had lived there for forty years could not pay the new rent, (12) most of them moved to the edge of the city. (13), the coffee shops are closing too: the people who filled them have also gone. A street is not its buildings, (14) we learn that only after the people have left.
Every famous part of a city was once a cheap one. (15) A young cook, a new band, a small group with an idea and no money: none of them can start where the rent is high. They need a room that is not expensive and a street that does not yet care what they do. A colorful, fashionable sign costs nothing to hang. A city that loses all its cheap places keeps its buildings, (16) it stops making anything new. (17), the shops people travel to see are the result of years when nobody was watching. You cannot plan that part, (18) you can leave room for it.