Fresno Famous

According to ABC 30, the Fresno city council approved expanding the area for six-story buildings to Copper River Ranch in north Fresno. Builders there want to construct "town homes built in six-story buildings." We're not sure what that means. A six-story townhome is pretty tall. A townhome in a six-story building is pretty weird. Council member Tom Boyajaian doesn't like it one bit, complaining that this type of "up, not out" growth should be happening downtown, not in north Fresno. We wonder how Boyajian would feel about Suburban Lofts, a New York Times Magazine pick for "important idea" in 2005.

The "loft look" - also known as "factory chic" - has since proliferated across the Sun Belt and Midwest, often in so-called soft-loft condos (which are built from scratch rather than converted) but occasionally as single-family detached homes. Loft-style houses boast roll-up metal garage doors, cage-ensconced outdoor lights and exposed ductwork - "City living without the city," boasts the developer of Stone Canyon, a loft subdivision in Las Vegas.

Karrie Jacobs writes in Metropolis Magazine:

It seemed that the popularity of the ranch house in the 1950s and 60s suggested a nostalgia for a lost lifestyle, a longing for the atavistic cowboy. The loft is also about nostalgia: it is a monument to the disappearance of industry. As factories migrate to Mexico or China, the factory worker becomes a romantic figure from a bygone era just like the cowboy.