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<p>Middletown is not a violent place; i don’t even think of it as a particularly dangerous place. It’s a place of contrasts, which, I suppose, is a polite way of saying that there are poor people as well as a thriving professional class all within walking distance of each other. Let’s start with the thriving part. Middletown’s Main Street has undergone a real renaissance. Twenty years ago it was dotted with boarded up storefronts, today I would compare it favorably to such typical college towns as Middlebury and Northampton. Judging from the number of cars seen parked in metered spaces on a recent Friday night, however, I’d say, about ninety percent of the commerce comes from people living in Higganum, Berlin and nearby Portland and Meriden. The people in the immediate neighborhood seem strangely insular from the town’s nightlife.</p>
<p>And, therein lies the rub. Only about 14% of the two and three blocks that lie between campus and Main Street are made up of owner-occupied homes. About ten percent are people living in heavily subsidized settings like senior citizens homes or public housing; the rest are people living in some of the old Victorian homes that have been converted to apartments. They are not bad people, just not the sort of people who contribute foot traffic after dark.</p>
<p>I think a lot of this will be solved by way of increasing the size of the business district, but probably not without a lot of opposition:
[Planning</a> & Zoning Commission Approves Zoning Text Change | Wesleying](<a href=“http://wesleying.org/2013/03/13/planning-zoning-commission-approves-zoning-text-change/]Planning”>http://wesleying.org/2013/03/13/planning-zoning-commission-approves-zoning-text-change/)</p>