While housing obviously takes center stage in real estate market discussions, these quirky little elements in cities all but evaporate when you get past a certain price point. In cities I've lived in, like Boston, the areas I spent time in got so bland in a vaguely upscale, premium-end-of-mass-market sort of way. I moved to a smaller city cheap enough for people to do neat things sort of like this and will never move back to a big city while it's drowning in housing costs and a thoroughly "upmarket basic" cultural bent.