Week of April 1

Film Showing

Every so often on this campus I get nearly run over by a student on a skateboard. I’m rather amazed at what can be done on a surfboard-shaped piece of wood with roller skate wheels attached. A little over a year ago, I came across an interesting documentary film: Dogtown and Zboys. I've been promising to show this for awhile, and I guess it is time to keep my promise. I'll show as much as possible in the time constraints. I don’t know if any class members are (or were) skateboarders, but skateboarding is, as I hope you will see, a phenomenon created by urban kids in urban environments. The film also demonstrates a number of the points Jacobs makes about rearing kids in urban environments. (If the reaction to the DVD is positive I'll finish up the last bit of it on Friday). I'm finding that this class works better in a once a week format. No readings required for today, but read ahead for Friday.

Note that the illustrations atop

pages 124 - 129 are segments

of a whole. These can be

compared to the sort of thing

one sees at Google Maps.

In fact, you may find remnants

of the remodeling craze still

around. Prowl around your

cities and see if you see similar

storefronts dating to the age

of art deco. Good places to

look are on the fringes of the

central business district or in

neighborhood shopping areas.

Some of these fronts are now protected for their own historic value, though they themselves represent remodeling of earlier structures. This chapter is a good place to check the validity of Jacobs’ views on the need for a variety of structures, including down-at-the-heels ones.

Read, in Downtown America

4. Main Street’s Interior Frontier:

124 - 165

5. The Demolition of our Outworn Past:

166 - 202

There’s nothing very difficult about the material in these two chapters, and once again I encourage you to look carefully at the illustrations. Note, too, that there are significant points of contact between what Isenberg and Jacobs

As you read this chapter you may wind up thinking of some of the ideas Jacobs presents about cataclysmic money and gradual money. Here, the cataclysmic money would have been the boom economy of the 1920s followed by the bust of the “Great Depression,” when real estate prices plummeted and, in many cases, projects were left half completed. (The Masonic Temple in Providence, currently being absorbed into a new hotel, is a case in point. The exterior shell was completed but the building was never occupied). What does one do with a hole in the city fabric? Create a “taxpayer”. Make sure you understand what these are. Also, understand that absence of major investment money may cause landlords to think “remodel” rather than “demolish”.

This short chapter largely continues the story of the feminization of downtown. There are two important points to note here, and again, there are points of contact with Jacobs. Urban renewal, as an attempt of downtowns to compete with suburban shopping areas, is part of the story. So is the re-characterization of the American woman as consumer rather than simply homemaker. The efforts to make downtown appeal to this New American Woman may have led planners in just the wrong direction. Jacobs certainly thinks so.

One of the ongoing trends was the attempt to accommodate more and more automobiles in the city center. Here the two changes most interesting were street widening (at the expense of pedestrians) and the creation of parking lots. It is important to recognize that downtown parking most often occupies the sites of previous structures deemed “obsolete” by someone or other. What were these structures? In some cases we can tell, using our internet resources. Many of the panoramic maps of the 19th and early 20th centuries label the buildings in the city center. If one compares the views available to us through Google Earth, one can spot parking lots and perhaps what was on those sites one hundred or more years ago. This does not assure that the parking lot directly replaced the earlier structure. It may be that there were intervening structures on the site. But looking is a worthwhile activity. I’d like to see you try it in your cities. Post what you find to your journals.

The intersection of Howard and First Sts. in San Francisco, 1876, is marked by a Shot Tower (#28). This would have been used to drop molten lead to create spherical droplets: hardening on the way down, these could be used to fill shotgun shells. Place your mouse on the illustration to see what the area looks like today. None of these buildings survived, whether the great Earthquake or changing times or technologies took them down.