City and transit planning expert Randall O'Toole famously called out San Jose's ongoing failure to revitalize its moribund downtown as one of local government's "5 Biggest Failures". The pandemic has thrown many other downtowns into serious decline, prompting WSJ reporter Justin Lahart to consider a strategy for a new urban renaissance that dumps all the subsidies, eminent domain, hyper regulation, and race-switching, and focuses instead on conversions of office/industrial space to cheaper housing. It's worked before.

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