Jim Graham writes: The soul is still there, it is just
covered with some new cells that you are unfamiliar with. The condo livers
will be nostalgic for this same new face when forty years have passed and
some new wrinkle or gray hair begins to appear on what you now think of as
the "New" face of the City.
I have to admit in reading this passage I took the analogy a bit two
far; after reading of Jim's "new cells" I went on the the Condo livers and
envisioned just what they looked like: cirrohitic? Like they used to be? It got me
to thinking of the old Gateway. In addition to seeing the old films on Public
TV, since I had roots here and came back nearly every year from my native
California, I remember the Minneapolis of the Sixties and beyond.....not quite as
well as Los Angeles. At the opening of some townhouses my neighborhood had
helped leverage with NRP funds, I listened to some old timers describe how they
killed a chicken for dinner; they swung it around by the head a bit to confuse
it and whack....it was done and dinner would follow a bit of prep. Now all
that gets done in factories well away from our lives, and I guess that's fine; I
don't feel any sense of loss eating my chicken not having killed, plucked, and
gutted the creature myself.....but I do wish I had better control over those
factories that do it for me sometimes.
"Good planning," as Jim calls it, is sort of a holy grail. Young and
would-be planners look for it and sometimes believe it exists....might even
believe they have grasped it, but it remains somewhere always out of reach because
so much gets in the way. NIMBYs, city councils, planning commissioners,
developers, and the rest all make you wonder if planners should wear striped shirts
and caps as a uniform instead of business suits and business casual.
"To look at, and experience, what true density and vibrancy of a inner City
can bring, and be, look at Vancouver, B.C.. The vibrancy that one
experiences in downtown Vancouver is because of density of both people and
small shops and restaurants to serve them. A lot of people and a lot of
amenities in a small walkable area. People are what is needed to support
the economic infrastructure that most of us enjoy, seek out, and are willing
to pay for." --Jim Graham
Ah, the grass is always greener somewhere's else. I drove through Vancouver
once, not at three in the morning when most folks are asleep, but it seemed
like any other city to me. You like it or you don't. I love New York; I didn't
think I did at one time, but that was before I visited. I agree that cities can
be wonderful places, but I also know that what is once shiny and new gets old
and decrepit. You can describe them as living things, but cities are human
artifice just as bee hives are bee artifice; they get old and fall apart.......
they don't die. When they start falling apart, you have to rebuild them or
replace them; if you don't have the money to do so, you have New York at its
worst. If you are "in the money," everything is just hunkydory, isn't it. Are we
"in the money?" We'd better be certain; that's the only point I was trying to
make. I'm not talking about nostalgia. I'm talking about money. Give me some of
that stuff 'cause I'm in debt up past my liver. Imagine a whole downtown of me
and perhaps you'll see the old Gateway again somewhere.
Bill Kahn
Prospect Park
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