All posts tagged: what people are saying

Love that Dirty Old Boston

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A new Facebook page has been blowing up my Newsfeed lately…Dirty Old Boston.  This community page, which features pictures and images of “Boston before the gentrification of the 1980s,” started just weeks ago on September 22 and has almost 4,000 likes and 8,000 comments.  Last week was its most popular week, with photos of the 1970s stripper Princess Cheyenne (who became a bit of a recurring theme for a moment there), the original Boston Garden, a hit list from WRKO, lots of arson and other historic urban fires…you get the idea.  Many of the images aren’t “dirty,” so much as they are retro: women in vintage swim suits, old nightclubs in Cambridge, dudes in bellbottoms, etc.  These images draw a sense of the city’s bohemian roots. Its rise in interest on Facebook has been rapid, and has been primarily among folks between 35 and 44.  Which means, probably not people who remember a lot of the things in the photos, except as kids and teens. Posted 10/18/12: “There was an arson ring that was burning …

of memory and myth-making.

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Frank Rich’s as-always-spot-on Sunday article this week is about the power of revisionist history to challenge accepted narratives and remake the most basic concepts of history, identity, and responsibility in our country.  I hope to talk more about the changes to the history curriculum proposed in Texas and other conservative states which, terrifying as they are, are a powerful testament to the importance of history in our educational system.  But for now suffice it to say that attempts to change or even destroy memory must be challenged and resisted with equally powerful campaigns to restore the collective memories we share, however unpleasant.

detroit’s 20th century ruins.

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The NYTimes published an incredible article about Michigan Central Station, a Beaux Arts train station that hasn’t been in use for the past twenty years.  It now sits abandoned, a 20th century ruin.  Its walls are covered in grafitti, the fixtures have been stripped and plundered.  The images are haunting and beautiful, and the article tells the story of a building that is a symbol of its city’s decline and depression.  Read it, look at the pictures.  Incredible. Ok, so urban ruins. People have been interested in them for centuries.  Piranesi taught us to see ruins as tools to help us design a grander future.  The Romantics saw ruins as manifestations of the picturesque, as the ultimate expression of the patina of history.  When we allow buildings to go to ruin, we allow ourselves to contemplate the insignificance of human time, the power of nature to overcome any feat of human ingenuity or creativity.  But how do we allow buildings to go to ruin and not allow our economies to do so alongside them?  Do …

what’s a town to do?

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The Globe has been buzzing this week about a growing controversy in Milton.  Faced with dwindling assets and crumbling buildings, the Milton Poor Farm is now embroiled in a heated and all-too-familiar debate about its future use.  Designated in 1701 by Governor Stoughton as land to be used in perpetuity to benefit the city’s poor, the Poor Farm sits on 35 acres of desirable undeveloped land surrounded by large single-family homes on suburban roads and cul-de-sacs.  As you might imagine, the question is: should the land be developed? I’ll be writing a series on this story as it progresses and as I learn more.  So by way of introduction, I invite you to read the editorial, and comments, posted in today’s Globe.  Also check out Jenifer McKim’s good overview article, published on Tuesday.  They discuss how local residents resist the development of affordable housing on the site, in favor of creating a historic site that could be used for tourism, farming, and the existent animal shelter use.  The town is in favor of restricted affordable …

thank you, roger cohen.

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My heart went pitter pat this week, when my boyfriend passed along “What Makes Cities Live,” an article about New York city by Roger Cohen of the NYT. It’s rare to read such an empassioned discussion of zoning that is not written by an urban planning wonk, and Cohen’s subject is at the heart of my goals for this blog. I could say a million things about this column (the least of which being my one unfortunate experiment with Chinese duck tongues), but I want to focus on one issue that is at the heart of his discussion.  This is the 21st century conflict between authenticity and cultural tourism.  In other words, how do cities create environments that are authentically local without making them into an amusement-park version of themselves?  He introduces this quandary with very precise, searing language, calling Times Square “a once seedy part of town re-imagined as the tourist-filled set for a movie called “New York.”  The idea of a movie set suggests the appearance of Times Square as a performance, an …