I read with interest veteran N&R reporter Taft Wireback’s twopart series on Greensboro’s effort to revive the High Point road corridor, which has been in decline for several years now.

No surprise that the city’s vision for the corridor is a New Urbanist’s dream:

City planners and nearby residents look forward to apartment buildings, condos and row homes in neighborhoods that adjoin High Point Road and have not seen a new house in years.

They also anticipate about $7.5 million in improvements to the streetscape aimed at creating a less harsh, auto-centered atmosphere. Plans call for a combination of wider sidewalks, bike lanes, more convenient and comfortable bus stops, and new landscaping.

The proposal even suggests the possibility, someday, of filling the coliseum’s massive parking lot with an array of apartments and other types of housing blended into parking decks to provide the same number of spaces as exist now.

But let’s go back to editorial page editor Allen Johnson’s recent column (unposted, so I’ll link to Guarino’s commentary) where he says the real key to the continued downtown revitalization is —you guessed it —– convincing more people to live downtown.

You gotta wonder where all these would-be residents will come from, considering the fact that they really don’t want to live in high-density developments.