Putting flea markets in walking distant of everyone is a terrible logistical model.
If you've ever lived in a town where shops, parks, living quarters, and government buildings are cheek-by-jowl within walking distance, a "zoned" area feels like a desert - unable to sustain life.
This is intentional. You shred the fabric of society, then you can let companies sell all of it back to people and tax the value.
No tax revenue when your Auntie cools lunch for the neighborhood kids.
Tons of perfectly fine things that don't really bother anyone are not allowed because wealthy people don't like the aesthetics.
The blue collar dude with five cars and a project boat in his yard is totally unwelcome as far as the "muh property values" types care. He's not driving up the crime rate or leaving used needles around though.
That's not inherent though. A nice French brocante sale basically sells tat, but its nice and acceptable.
I don't think its impossible that this flea market could become a hipster hang out. One of the eateries starts making a name for itself, and people start seeking it out. It isn't just poor people that want a functioning high st.
Edit: Spelling
Reminds me of Camden market
Cities cost money. Lots of it.
Often, when they do, it is either:
(1) Because of state funding specifically for rural counties, which amounts to a revenue transfer from urban counties, or
(2) Because the rural town is in a county with, and deriving revenue from, a city, funding county libraries in the rural town as well as the city.
Even more often, tiny rural towns don't have public libraries, and you have to go to a neighboring town or the nearest city.
I think your bias is showing.
I have lived in rural, suburban, and dense urban areas in my life (currently high density urban), and there is a bias on HN toward the idea that rural communities are unsustainable on their own and mere leeches on the city dwellers. That's likely true in some places, but not universally. Sustainable rural communities have exports of resources, housing, and/or tourism, that outweigh their cost.
As the parent comment describes, one model for remote communities is volunteers who work at the library because they care. The cost of everything is lower -- labor, food, matetials -- so what looks too expensive for a town might actually be fully sustainable.
The sustainable rural community is exceedingly rare - most are propped up by ag subsidies and state aid. For much of the central part of America, there's no housing benefit or tourism to speak of, just resources (corn/soy in general, maybe livestock).
You then counter by saying that's wrong and actually small towns have a small library that has a crappy selection but they can get you any book you want if you can wait.
Pop quiz hotshot: Where do you think there is enough built up infrastructure, wealth, and surplus labor capacity to have a large centralized store of books and to organize and distribute said books?
Probably just another small town, am I right?
The problem with direct democracy is that the people who have the most time to waste (or the most money at stake) on playing politics are the ones who show up. It's also why your HOA is probably governed by a hand-picked selection of devils from the Fifth Circle of Hell.
Isn't TFA a wealthy guy raving about how great the flea market is? Clearly a lot of wealthy folk do like the aesthetics.
You’ll see things like the “Sunday Farmers Market” that closes a block of a street somewhere because temporary event permits are much easier to get and harder to block, but the kind of semi-permanent marketplace described in the article remains rare.
And he’s right, cities don’t have a lot of incentive to try and make space for these sorts of entry level incubator environments because in most cases they can’t skim any tax off it - the underlying property is still just a parking lot and they usually can’t reassess the value for impermanent activities happening on top.