ann arbor is overrated.

Observer writer Vivienne Armentrout has announced her candidacy for the 5th Ward, running on a “quality of life” platform. Now, “quality of life,” as it’s used in A2, is what all the hip blogging kids would call a “dogwhistle.” It signals to a certain constituency that you’re willing to speak their language, while appearing innocuous to outsiders. (Paradoxically, local dog park advocates don’t really have any dogwhistles.) The constituency is, of course, the anti-density crowd.

(We should probably add that since “quality of life” has been a political rallying cry for so long in Ann Arbor, its use at this point is probably somewhat reflexive to anyone promoting an anti-density agenda, rather than a dogwhistle in the strict sense of a carefully engineered attempt to hide such an agenda.)

Could this be unintentional? Maybe, but don’t forget that Armentrout was a major Mike Anglin supporter, serving as his official representative on this Arbor Update thread. Anglin’s campaign, if you recall, was pretty much one long human-audible anti-density whistle.

So what constitutes quality of life? “[G]reen spaces and historic buildings … the small local businesses, the active volunteers in every part of community life, the devotion to social equity as well as to the environment and the arts, and the diverse neighborhoods,” Armentrout says. “Diverse neighborhoods,” of course, is usually code for “keeping out development,” as we’ve seen in pretty much every zoning controversy of late.

And these diverse neighborhoods, she says, need to “remain…affordable to young families, people aging in place, and everyone in between.” The neighborhoods are affordable; the only problem is that they need to “remain” that way, at least for young families and older people and everyone in between, which we guess would have to be medium-aged families. Students and singles, apparently, can fend for themselves.