Cities love to brand themselves as vibrant, creative, and welcoming places. Cities put these terms in strategic plans, redevelopment materials, banners, and websites. However, anyone who has attempted to open a business, change the building's use, expand a patio, hold an event, or make a place work differently understands that what makes a city is not its promise of being welcoming but what it allows. The true form of the city is shaped by zoning ordinances, conditional use permits, planning commissions, fees, hearings, parking requirements, occupancy regulations, design reviews, and myriad other small decisions about what is allowed and what is not.

In most of these cases, neutrality seems apparent since these decisions come packaged in procedural language. There is an application. There is a checklist. There is a report by the staff. There is something to find out and something to tick off. The language sounds administrative enough to give the impression that this is an objective exercise, yet permission is never a matter of mere procedure. Every regulation presupposes some assessment of what sort of city is desired. A restaurant offering wine service is not seen as a restaurant without it. A nightclub is not seen in the same light as a bookstore. A tattoo shop is not treated as a bank. Coffee shops with sidewalk tables might be welcomed in one area while considered a nuisance in another. While all of this can be justified in terms of traffic, safety, parking, compatibility, noise, or character of the neighborhood, there is something more fundamental at stake, who gets to shape the city?

The role of alcohol in this process is that the politics related to its consumption are usually not limited to just alcohol itself. The presence of a bar, brewery, wine store, or restaurant can serve as a proxy for fears about class, race, nightlife, crime, development, morality, and change. While one community sees a wine bar as a sign of sophistication, in other cases it is associated with potential dangers of overconcentration. A hotel lounge is seen as an amenity, while a neighborhood bar is seen as a problem. The product does not change. The context and the people consuming it do.

The same logic extends beyond permits and zoning. It also shapes how residents relate to the people who hold public office, creating a culture in which legitimacy is often treated as something granted from above rather than exercised from below.

Somewhere along the way, representation became the audience. Residents stopped treating elected officials like employees of the public and started approaching them like people whose presence confers legitimacy.

The same culture appears in smaller, almost ceremonial ways. Residents take up meetings with council members to explain projects that do not require council approval, invite elected officials to community events as though their presence validates the work, request proclamations, organize photo opportunities, and publicly thank politicians for simply showing up. None of this is inherently wrong. The problem is what it teaches. Proximity to power starts to become confused with civic legitimacy, and participation begins to look less like self determination and more like seeking recognition from the people who were elected to serve you.

Furthermore, there is something revealing about the physical arrangement of public comment itself. Residents stand below the dais and look up at elected officials while asking to be heard, even though the relationship is supposed to run the other way or at eye level. Council members are not our superiors. They are our representatives. During public comment, we should not feel as though we are appearing before authority. They should understand that they are sitting there because the public put them there.

I have watched enough council meetings to hear the same language over and over: “We urge you to…” “We ask that you…” “We hope you will consider…” The tone is almost supplicant. But elected officials are not granting favors from above. They are exercising authority temporarily delegated to them by the public. The language should reflect that relationship.

This is why the politics of permission matter beyond any individual business. The city quietly decides what types of economic activity and cultural life are worthy of promotion. The city decides whether an empty storefront will remain empty, since there is no intended use that meets a criterion established long ago. The city decides whether an individual entrepreneur has the capacity to cover additional expenses to open their business. The city decides whether adaptive re-use is being promoted or simply lauded in speech but never in practice.

The cultural habit of asking for permission mirrors the formal systems that already govern so much of civic life. One operates through deference, the other through policy, but both reinforce the same idea, that possibility has to be approved from above.

There is an irony about how the language of city revitalization works. One is often told that a particular area requires investment, energy, eating establishments, commerce, arts, nightlife, housing, and pedestrian traffic. And when one tries to provide all of these things, one finds a regulatory process that was designed almost exclusively to manage risk. The government that demands vitality turns out to be extraordinarily conservative once vitality presents itself in an unexpected manner. Community protection can become institutional conservatism when the path of least resistance is to maintain the status quo.

This does not, however, imply that every proposed development should be allowed. There are legitimate functions of the cities concerning safety, noise, traffic, accessibility, environmental effects, and the rights of those living around. It cannot simply allow anybody to do whatever he wants. The question is whether the regulations help meet such functions or slowly turn into a form of ideology in which not changing becomes more important than assessing change. It is possible for a city to regulate itself into paralysis and yet call it prudence.

Those who have more assets generally do better with these systems. Big developers have consultants, lawyers, architects, lobbyists, and permit people who speak the institutional language. The smaller players come in with an idea and find out that the price of approval is the same as the price of production. A family wants to start a restaurant, someone younger wants to start a gallery, or a local entrepreneur wants to bring back to life an empty shop front, but all enter the same system with a different capacity to take the wait.

That is where permission becomes political. Power does not always announce itself through a prohibition. Sometimes it appears as another form, another fee, another required study, another hearing, another six months of rent on a space that still cannot open. Sometimes nobody ever says no. They simply make yes expensive enough that only certain people can afford to hear it.

We tend to think cities are built by architects, developers, business owners, artists, and residents. They are. But cities are also built by permission. Every coffee shop table on a sidewalk, every loft inside an old warehouse, every apartment above a storefront, every music venue, every market, every mural, every restaurant, and every empty building represents a decision about what was allowed to happen there. Sometimes the most revealing thing about a city is not what it has built. It is what its systems have taught people not to attempt.

Julian Lucas is a darkroom photographer, writer, and bookseller, though photography remains his primary language. He is the founder of Mirrored Society Book Shop, publisher of The Pomonan, and creator of Book-Store and Print Pomona Art Book Fair. And he will charge you $ 2.5 million for event photography.

Illustration by Julian Lucas. Imagined from original photographs and realized with generative AI slop, because artists are flaky even when they’re offered money for the work.

By the time the second bottle arrived, we'd moved past dinner conversations. We always do that, too. We start with whatever we have in front of us and somewhere between our first wine and the dessert, we wind up talking about architecture or music or retirement or art or some fascinating lesson the cities have taught us about life.

The roasted beet salad had already disappeared. Red and golden beets lay on top of whipped goat cheese and toasted pistachios, with a little citrus, a little dill and a beautifully restrained sherry vinaigrette that knew when to say 'stop'. There was nothing trying to dazzle in the dish. Everything was simply true to the ingredients. A wood fired mushroom pizza followed, taleggio melting over roasted mushrooms, caramelized onions, thyme, and just enough black truffle to remind you it was there without overwhelming everything else.

She lifted her glass and smiled. “Isn’t this wine insane?” It was a Puligny Montrachet. A quiet, mineral, so elegant enough that it never had to brand or announce itself. “I knew you’d order the white,” I said. “You always know.” “I’ve been paying attention.” She laughed. “I’ve been predictable for years.”

I looked around the dining room. Nobody ever seems interested in leaving. Conversations lingered. Servers moved deliberately without rushing anyone toward the check. An old savings and loan bank had somehow become a place where time behaved differently than money.

“So,” she said, looking around the room, “you finally built it.” I smiled. “I think I finally understood it.”

She followed my gaze down to the market below. We watched through the window as folks filled their baskets with peaches, tomatoes, herbs, olive oil, cheeses, and freshly baked bread. Cooking students shuttled back and forth between the market and the culinary schools with boxes of vegetables picked that morning. The restaurant wasn’t out of sight of the market, and the market wasn’t out of sight of the cooking school. Every inch of the structure knew about the others.

“This isn’t really a restaurant,” she said.

“No?” She shook her head. “It’s an ecosystem.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

She watched a student disappear through the kitchen doors carrying a crate of basil before turning back toward me. “You know what I love most about all of this?” “The food?” She smiled. “No. The system.”

I waited.

“The market promotes local farmers. The culinary program makes sure that the students cook what is really being grown rather than trying to make it seem like there are strawberries in January. The restaurant adapts according to what the harvest is bringing in.” She tore another piece of bread and dipped it through the last of the olive oil. “That’s what sustainability looks like.”

“It isn’t farm to table,” I said. She looked back toward the market. “No.” She paused for a moment before smiling. “It’s farm to community. Those three words stayed with me.

We seem to have an odd way of thinking that culture is exclusive. As if loving architecture, cooking, photography, music, or wine somehow belongs to another person. It doesn’t. Culture is for anyone interested enough to be a part of it. It’s for communities and museums; backyards and galleries; food trucks and fine dining restaurants. It hasn’t ever really been an issue of who culture is for. It’s always been an issue of investment.

For many years, I had planned the building’s design, its lighting, the menu items, the guest rooms, the market, the art gallery, and even the classrooms. The bakery location, the feeling of the wine cellar, and the way the building would make visitors stop and enjoy rather than rush through yet another night were among my thoughts.

She captured everything the building stood for with just three words, from farm to community.

We’d spent years complaining that you couldn’t find a truly thoughtful salad in Pomona. Not one that respected vegetables enough to let them be the meal rather than the obligation before the meal. She laughed. “Remember all those conversations?” “I do.” “We weren’t really looking for a salad.” “No?” “We were looking for people who cared.”

She wasn’t talking about lettuce anymore.

The server cleared our plates while we wandered downstairs into the market. Bakers were already pulling another round of country loaves from the ovens while someone signed up for Saturday’s pasta workshop. A retired couple studied the schedule for a Rhône Valley wine tasting, and a young family filled a basket with peaches, tomatoes, herbs, and fresh pasta before heading home. Nothing felt staged. Nothing existed simply for appearances. Every part of the building seemed to justify the next.

he existence of the next.

She stopped beside the staircase and looked upward. “What happens up there?” “The gallery.” “And above that?” “Guest suites.” “For tourists?” “Sometimes,” I said. “The rest are for visiting artists, chefs, writers, photographers, and culinary students. Some stay for a weekend. Others stay for months.” She nodded slowly. “So people don’t just come for dinner. They stay. They learn.” “They leave with something besides a receipt.” She smiled. “I think that’s exactly what cities have forgotten.”

I looked around again. Banks once taught people how to save money. Places like this teach people what it’s for.

We made our way downstairs toward the vault, and the air changed almost immediately. It grew cooler and noticeably quieter, the sounds of dinner giving way to the heavy silence that only old buildings seem capable of holding. The steel door remained exactly where the bank had left it nearly a century earlier, its weight and presence reminding everyone that this room had once been designed to protect something considered indispensable.

“What did you do with it?” she asked. I reached for the handle. The vault opened slowly.

Rows of Burgundy, Barolo, Champagne, Riesling, and California Pinot Noir rested where cash and securities had once been locked away. Wheels of Parmigiano aged beside handcrafted cheeses from small California creameries. Charcuterie cured patiently overhead, while walk in refrigerators disappeared behind steel that had once been built to keep thieves out.

She ran her hand across the vault door before looking back at me. “It still protects something valuable.” “It does.” She smiled. “Just not money.”

We stood there longer than either of us expected. Funny how a building can continue doing the same job while completely changing what it protects. The vault hadn’t lost its purpose. It had simply traded currency for patience. Wine, cheese, bread, and ingredients all ask for the same thing money never could. Time.

Back upstairs, the mezzanine wrapped around the old banking hall, overlooking the restaurant below. Guests wandered through the gallery carrying glasses of wine before drifting back downstairs for dessert or another bottle. Nobody hurried them. The evening unfolded at its own pace, and the building seemed perfectly content to let people discover it one floor at a time.

“This is my favorite part,” she said. “The gallery?” She nodded. “It’s because it isn’t trying to separate everything.”

One side of the exhibition featured photographs by Herb Ritts, presented in collaboration with the Herb Ritts Foundation. Across the room hung my own photographs. His work possessed the elegance that made him one of the defining photographers of his generation. Mine asked different questions, grounded in migration, neighborhood, and belonging. We weren’t competing for the wall. We were participating in the same conversation.

She stopped in front of one of the photographs.

“I like this.” “What?” “You didn’t make people choose.” “Choose what?” “Food or art.” I smiled. “That was never the point.”

She looked over the railing toward the dining room below where people laughed over another bottle of wine while others wandered through the exhibition carrying dessert forks they hadn’t quite finished using. “Culture has never lived in one room,” she said. “We’ve just gotten used to separating it.”

She was right. Somewhere along the way we decided restaurants belonged over here, galleries belonged over there, bookstores somewhere else, and classrooms somewhere farther away. We built cities around categories instead of curiosity. Yet some of the most memorable places I’ve visited refused to recognize those boundaries. You ate. You learned. You looked. You talked. None of it felt scheduled.

The conversation drifted the way it always does. Art gave way to work. Work became retirement. Retirement became family. Before long we found ourselves asking the same question we’ve returned to more times than I can count. Why do we spend forty years working for freedom instead of building our lives around it from the beginning?

Neither of us answered. The speakers did. Mary’s Prayer floated quietly through the dining room. She smiled before the first verse had finished. “My friend had the album.” “I remember.” “We used to play it ridiculously loud.” “I remember that too.” She laughed and shook her head. “I hate that you remember everything.” “I don’t.” “No?” “I remember the important things.”

A few songs later Kids in America found its way through the room. She laughed before the chorus even arrived. “Oh no.” “What?” “I completely wore this song out.” “I can picture it.” She smiled. “No, you can’t.” “I think I can.” “You probably imagine me looking cool.” “I do.” “I wasn’t.” “Were you at least dancing?” She laughed again. “Terribly.” “So was everyone else.”

For a while we stopped talking altogether. Below us, dinner continued. Students cleaned their stations in the teaching kitchen. Bakers prepared dough for the following morning. Someone downstairs signed up for a cooking class while another couple reserved seats for next month’s wine tasting. A guest checked into one of the rooms upstairs. Two visitors left the gallery carrying a book they had purchased before heading back through the market with a loaf of bread tucked under one arm.

The building no longer belonged to a single idea. Food lived beside art. Agriculture supported education. Hospitality created room for conversation. Every floor depended on the one below it until the entire building felt less like a restaurant than a cultural institution. It wasn’t simply a place to have dinner. It was a place to spend time.

We finished the last of the wine before walking outside. The old stone façade glowed softly against the evening sky while people filled the sidewalk café beneath it. Some had just finished dinner. Others lingered after visiting the gallery. A few carried bags of produce from the market, while another couple disappeared through the front doors with suitcases on their way to one of the guest rooms upstairs.

The old bank had once measured prosperity in dollars carefully counted behind a vault door. Ledger measures it differently. A loaf of bread still warm from the oven, a remarkable bottle of wine shared with friends, a photograph that lingers in your memory long after you’ve left the gallery, a farmer whose harvest appears on tonight’s menu, a student learning to cook with the seasons instead of against them, and a conversation that quietly outlasts dinner all become different ways of measuring abundance.

The building still safeguards wealth. It has simply changed its definition. Perhaps wealth was never about what we could lock away. Perhaps it has always been about what we are willing to share.