What I found most surprising about a lot of US city "downtowns" is how utterly dead they are in the evenings and at weekends.
The 'secret' of European downtowns is that they are not uninhabited.
There never was a housing shortage, there’s just a shortage of people willing to live in vibrant urban neighborhoods.
Houses that are in bad areas where no one wants to live willingly isn't part of acceptable housing inventory.
is that a euphemism? DC used to lead the nation in murder rate for decades -- the DC basketball team used to be the Washington Bullets, which stopped being ironic and funny after a couple years. There are still DC neighborhoods where the police won't send cops without 3+ cars of backup.
DC has gotten much better but is still like #12 or #13 in the US, and it's bad areas are still very bad. The rest of the Fed-Gov areas in the city are locked down hard, but no one lives there, and nearby areas Georgetown or Tenleytown are expensive. Source: from the area, went to AU, had to do background investigations on dudes in SE DC.
"In sociology, the third place refers to the social surroundings that are separate from the two usual social environments of home ("first place") and the workplace ("second place")."