Home » Articles posted by Steve

Author Archives: Steve

But Father, I Love Him!

Posted on by

I spent a few hours watching and re-watching a debate between Modernists and Traditionalists in the realm of architecture. I found it both enlightening and frustrating. The arguments that the three supporters of Modernism gave were compelling and well-reasoned with the only caveat being, well, this:

Architecture doesn’t only exist in the world of theories one posits, but rather it actually constructs the reality in which most of us exist. Modernist cityscapes make great backgrounds for Sci-Fi films and car commercials, they’re cool off in the distance acting as giant sculptures, but they are miserable places to inhabit which, in the end, is the reason buildings are built. (To inhabit, not to be miserable) I could be convinced by the arguments perhaps, if I hadn’t just walked a quarter mile down Chestnut Street in Springfield, strolling by example after example of traditional architecture which, even in a continuum of states ranging from pristine to dilapidated, was consistently beautiful, contrasted with the few examples of Modernism which sit like concrete and steel carbuncles on the face of the neighborhood, darkening the street and weakening the spirit.

(These are some other pictures of Chestnut Street I took this summer)

I’m sure you’ve noticed how futuristic films have nearly all of humanity wearing one piece jumpsuits. If actual individuals were required to buy them, in the way we’ve had Modernist architecture imposed upon us, I could imagine this panel of experts explaining why the jumpsuit is so good for us; we would hear more or less the same compelling arguments for the shiny metallic jumpsuit that we hear for Modernism in architecture. This would include explaining why certain particular shiny metallic jumpsuits aren’t really indicative of the beauty and comfort of some illusory, theoretically possible super comfortable and humane…shiny metallic jumpsuit. Of course all three of the experts would be wearing cotton shirts, cashmere sweaters, and tweed jackets…just as in the actual example they live in traditionally designed historic homes!

The jumpsuit thing hasn’t ever caught on because, as hot as Erin Gray looked as Buck Rogers’ love interest, very few people want to wear Lycra jumpsuits. In the real world, they suck. They’re not comfortable, not versatile, and they usually look like crap.

In my world it’s easy to see which of these two schools wins the day if what you’re interested in is an architecture that fills people’s lives with beauty, meaning, and wonder at humanity’s sublime skill.

Given an entire section of the city as a clean slate, thanks to the bulldozers of urban renewal, Modernism gave us this:

Whatever this or that genius in Geneva or New York City WOULD have done, that is what was done. 

Traditional architecture, in the same provincial place, has given us all this and so much more:


As much as I love my hometown I know that when people make decisions about where to inhabit, it’s pretty low on most people’s list. The sole exceptions are the places gifted with concentrations of traditionally designed buildings and streets. I can’t think of a single example Modernist architecture here which does the same. The Modernists in the debate, in the end, are trying to convince us through reason and logic, to love them. Any of my readers who have ever been in love will know that it doesn’t work that way. We love what we love and whom we love because we love them, not because we should. No one loves Springfield’s “New North”, no one ever has, and no one ever will. Perhaps we should be over McKnight and Mattoon, the Cozy Corner, Olmsted Drive, and Court Square, but we’re not. 

“Keep your shiny towers in the park(ing lot), we’re staying with our dirty little gridded streets, we love them, we’ve always loved them, and there’s nothing you can do about it!”

Burning Hedges

Posted on by

As I’ve exposed myself more consistently to conservative and right wing media I’ve been amused by just how much there is an open distaste for cities. It doesn’t just take the guise of articles detailing how violent and unlivable urban nodes like Baltimore and Chicago have become, but also in immediate responses to any apparent positive news involving any city anywhere. It puts me in mind of the attitude I felt when my parents took me through the Deep South where, as northerners we realized that there were people who woke up loathing us because we existed in places which, truth be told, we only contemplated as existing when obligated to do so.

As time has moved on the two concepts have conflated, that is to say that loving what the South represents and hating cities do seem to go hand in hand with some brands of conservatism; which brings me back to my experiences with right leaning media; the zeal with which all cities are attacked is amusing to say the least. If I read an article on a website which brands itself as “city loving” like, for example, City Lab, they might find the nuances in a report about Millennialls and whether or not they are more given to living in cities than Gen Xers or Boomers, the same report at ZeroHedge will read, without too much exaggeration, “Millenialls leaving cities as urban hell-scapes drive them back to suburban life.”

There’s an enormous racial component in all this, to be sure, but almost as much opprobrium is unleashed on hipsters, tech wizards, and gentrifiers of all sorts. The narrative is that all cities are shitholes, but sometimes the shithole takes the guise of really nice restaurants, quaint cafes, loft apartments, and well used bike lanes and the White people who live in urban areas now will regret their choice when the zombie apocalypse occurs and their big stupid brains are the main course.

It was, in retrospect, one of the finest and most nuanced pieces I’d read, from a truly reactionary website, which set me to writing this present essay. It talked about the dis-ease in our society; how the programming of gadgets, pop culture, and social media turns us into zombies, people going about the functions of daily life but without any underlying meaning or joy to give them significance. It put me in mind of the idea that in a sick enough society the truly sane can only feel an alienated sadness. 

What I found interesting was how the article sets all of this alienation and despair in an urban milieu not just in his contemplation of the Gary Jules cover of a Tears for Fears song which gave title to his essay, but in his entire analysis of the various crises confronting the United States. In terms of the video he describes these scenes, these buildings, and this neighborhood as “decaying, decrepit, and bleak”, the architecture as nondescript, and the apartments as gray and cookie cutter:


In his descriptions of the people I see what can only be described as the projection of his own world’s ennui to a cityscape where it has no place. I live in a neighborhood not totally unlike the one in these images, but the people here are not the ones who spend their time with their faces trapped in the screens of their iPhones, the children in this neighborhood, just as in the neighborhood in the video, are outside playing; by themselves, not on play-dates, not in structured activities. He avoids using screenshots of the automobile and the suburban home which accompany the “worn out faces” in the images which the children create on the sidewalk.

Listen to today’s adults bemoan the circumstances of “the children of today”, and they are the children of today who live in just this type of home:


And are transported in by this mode of conveyance:


Contrast that with the children in this image:


As part of the video it’s clearly meant to be in contrast to the sadness of the poetic voice expressing his existential angst. The original Tears for Fears video even has the singer trapped alone inside a suburban home.

Chris Hedges points out in a recent speech that the enormous spike in suicides in the United States is propelled mostly by White men of about my age. These are people who fully believed in and trusted the American Dream and have been crushed by its disappearance. In contrast, Black men have always known that it was nothing but a myth for them, and so there is no increased angst in its revelation as a hoax. Surely this is a condition which holds true for the cities of the Rust Belt as well. As has been said, the future is here already, it just isn’t evenly distributed. My people, like the children in this video, aren’t unaware of the challenges they face, but the descriptions of people running around in circles engaging in meaningless interactions are not those that they see; they see people with a keen awareness that necessities like food and shelter are not guaranteed, not imagining that they will somehow someday manage to keep up with the Joneses…or the Kardashians.

Situating the unease of the age and referencing specific aspects thereof like school shootings, for example, which occur almost exclusively in White, middle class, suburban schools, in cities demonstrates an awareness that there is a crisis, but an inability to recognize that the crisis is one’s own.

Not Picturesque

Posted on by

Carol Coletta was, quite literally, one of the first urbanist voices I ever heard. I was an early adopter of the Internet, using it for research for a weekend radio program I hosted and produced; a friend hooked me up to do research using an old Mac and a modem (“Whatever that is”) and the next thing I knew I was using the University of Minnesota “Gopher” to find news stories I could use. They came mostly from the San José Mercury News. As access to live and archived radio programs became more common in the early 2000’s, Smart City Radio with Carol Coletta became the first I found with a focus on cities and urban issues.

The program was insightful, but the context, given that the show originated from Memphis, was so different in every way from my situation and lived experiences here in New England that it served more to whet my appetite city centered dialog than to satisfy it. That was one of the experiences which led to the creation of Rational Urbanism. Strong Towns recently reposted one of her essays entitled You Can’t See ’em, if You Can’t Feel ’em. It addressed how our car oriented living arrangement keeps the various economic and social classes from interacting and, therefore, knowing one another. 

I wouldn’t argue against that idea, it seems well rooted in fact. I’ve written about how topography and demography combine to deceive, at least in this region; so much land is occupied by the well-to-do, and the poorest of the poor are concentrated in such small spaces that it gives a false impression of their relative numbers. This leads to many other misunderstandings. As a teacher I earn well over 1.5 times the median household income for the U.S., and yet many teachers I know honestly believe that they are underpaid. I remember a discussion with a colleague whose spouse was a lawyer in which I learned that their combined income of over a quarter of a million dollars a year did not make them rich because “they couldn’t buy everything they wanted”; with a few minutes of research I pointed out that, numerically speaking, if families earning that much above the median were in the middle of the distribution, then families earning less than $300 a month were also “middle class”.

Again, however, we hear this exhortation to mingle with the poor. I do, albeit usually on my own terms. As with the wealthy, they can be very nice, very engaging people. But they are living on the edge. Good manners, another colleague recently commented, are a privilege of the comfortable. It’s easier to defer and delay when you believe yourself to be absolutely certain of your next meal, and your place of rest. You can see that being in that mode can carry over to other, less fundamental, situations and circumstances. On the other hand there are those who clearly enjoy a sojourn amongst the middle class in order to forget how precarious their existence may be.

As I have earlier stated, I wouldn’t argue that a larger problem in this country isn’t that the we do not see how the other half lives, but I do not think increased interaction will lead only to net positives. When I think of issues of race as opposed to class for example, often the least racist people I meet have had either no interactions or constant somewhat thoroughgoing interactions with people of other races. The most fervent racists I know became such while inhabiting a space of some frequent contact but which did not go very deep and were not affirming. In much the same way the poor are often not picturesque, having some insight into their behaviors requires a better understanding of their circumstances. They often are not grateful to intermingle with those of us in the wealthier classes. They are not always kind, not polite, and not always deferential.

By all means let’s have a clearer picture of our reality, but let’s not be surprised by the fact that much of what we see may shock us, sadden us, and make us wish that we didn’t know how ugly living on the edge can be.

Grinding my Gears

Posted on by

Criticism of the way in which local media covers various topics in Springfield in particular, and regarding urban places more broadly has diminished here because, for the most part, I’ve had my say and gotten it out of my system. Death Race 2016 was an enormous part of that; actually documenting as it happened just how much more dangerous the human-automobile interface is than whatever minimal carnage and mayhem occurs on even the toughest streets of a city like Springfield for an entire year both sated my thirst for urban exoneration and filled me with sadness that comes with the narrating the constant premature loss of life we insist upon inflicting on ourselves through our obsession with and worship of the car.

In other ways the coverage has noticeably improved. I wouldn’t ascribe much of the improvements in local coverage to my critique, for the most part I would guess that the pulse of development in the downtown from MGM to Union Station has given people in the media a more positive perspective on the city just as the generalized “magic feather effect” has permeated the zeitgeist more broadly among outsiders. These improvements have included less focus on ordinal numbers where murders are concerned, some slight awareness of road design and automobile speed in connection to pedestrian fatalities, and fewer scare stories on non-events like “shootings” with no witnesses, victims, or evidence.

On the other hand there are areas where I question not so much the motives, as the judgement of local media. Just last week a story, like many stories, was posted to the WWLP 22 News website tagged as Local News which actually covered a horrible, violent crime in Atlanta, Georgia:

The headline was enough to tell the gruesome story. I guarantee that many “local” media consumers assumed the event occurred either in Springfield or Holyoke. Both local television news outlets do this; tagging particularly unusual stories with some prurient or violent angle as local news. I assume it’s done not as an effort to slander Springfield, but to distinguish those stories from “National” or “World” news, which in their view would be stories which have an impact on the national or worldwide level. Thus a panel at UMass discussing climate change might be tagged as world news, but an 8 year old killing a 3 year old sibling in Birmingham, Alabama would be tagged as “local”. Whatever the motive, it obscures rather than clarifies and so I warn my readers to take note.

In a similar way the local newspaper of record will key every report about any crime which is being adjudicated in any of Springfield’s courtrooms to Springfield News,whether or not the crime occurred in the city or involved anyone from the city, and yet will often not tag stories about business and cultural events which occur in the city as relating to Springfield even when the events take place in the city with entities from the city. 

I’m terrible at tagging my own essays on Rational Urbanism, and so I understand that this also does not likely come from any ill will on the part of the reporters, but if a crime story can be placed in multiple news feeds, including “Springfield”, then so can a charitable event, or a concert.

Small things. Things are going in the right direction when these are among the strongest criticisms I can raise.

Dead Shopping

Posted on by

Malls had begun to kill downtown before I was conscious of either. As I wandered through the streets and alleys of Springfield’s core as a “tween” I couldn’t see the evidence of decline because I had never seen what it had been like when it was truly healthy. In retrospect I was witness to the transition of retail dominance alternating visits to the Eastfield Mall and Baystate West but not knowing that the Woolworth’s at the former was the reason for the vacant building near the latter; I purchased my Rolling Stone 

T-shirt just the same.

There may have been a toy store downtown, in later years there was one inside Johnson’s Bookstore, but I bought all my HO toy train stuff at the Kay Bee Toy and Hobby at the mall. 

What did I buy downtown? Records at Belmont Records, “food” at the Orange Julius, Friendly’s, or at the deli in the food court. I enjoyed being downtown more, but I spent more of my paper route money at the mall. 

By the time I was living downtown with my wife and, eventually, two daughters 10 years later I could wait for Christmas Eve to do all of my shopping at a mildly bustling, but not too busy Steiger’s and the aforementioned Johnson’s. They would both be gone before my daughters could shop in them as tweens. 

I remember a glorious trip to a short lived would be replacement for those two venerable stores with my oldest, Xela: We wandered from the Classical Condominium down to whatever that pseudo-TJ/Marshalls/K-mart/ seconds shop was called and bought two arms full of art-work, pillows, lamps and assorted crap for her “new” bedroom; we were giving the girls separate rooms for the first time. On the way down we heard people speaking English, Spanish, Russian, and Vietnamese. On the way back we had a burger at a little diner in the SIS building. 

The crappy, pseudo department store has since been replaced by a storefront college. The burger place is a print shop.

On Thursday 12 year old LuLu and I got a chai tea (her) and a hot chocolate at Kringle Candle as the early snow made us both feel as though we had given Thanksgiving a miss and had jumped right in to Christmas time. We bought her mom two little gifts. We saw workers just starting the job of getting the outdoor skating rink ready. 

Downtown is on its umpteenth iteration of creating a new storefront paradigm. It never ends. What was a family owned furniture store becomes a Family Dollar on one side, and a little family owned department store on the other. The small building next door was razed for parking but the lot sits completely empty except for the owner’s SUV 100% of the time; anyone with a car can get to a better place to shop. I bet they regret not having more space for inventory now, especially since they wouldn’t need to pay anyone to plow their shelves of excess inventory when it snows.

Eastfield Mall is dead. I haven’t been there in years. The owners have widely published a plan to make the area which was the mall a “town center”. It’s far enough from downtown to become the center of its own pseudo neighborhood I suppose. Is there demand enough for living in that sort of place in such a slow growing region as western New England? Perhaps, it is moderately well serviced by public transit and is surrounded by healthy Springfield neighborhoods as well as other thriving towns. On the other hand Springfield’s “other Main Street”, Main Street in Indian Orchard, has great bones, a nice layout, and could be (and for my money should be) the center of that same area miles to the east of downtown Springfield. I’m not sure there’s energy enough for both of them.

Another mall just across the Connecticut line, just as close to downtown Springfield as Eastfield Mall but to the south, is all but dead; it was valued at close to 300 million dollars just over a decade ago but is up for sale for just about a penny on the dollar today.

What this all portends for downtown I don’t think anyone can say for sure; the decline of the old nemesis does not guarantee a return to health. Having witnessed so much of this one particular rivalry play out all of my financial and emotional investment is for the traditional downtown to continue to survive somehow by making itself at least somewhat useful to someone in some way at least some of the time.

Meeting-up with Chris

Posted on by

Until last Tuesday I had never met Chris Martenson nor had I ever met anyone in the area who knew of him; A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country after all. When I contemplate the different forms of resilience capital, as Chris and Adam Taggart explain it, the most ephemeral is spiritual and perhaps the most difficult to assess is social. For those reasons I chose to attend both a concert by Stephen Jenkinson recommended by Mr Martenson, and the meet-up which immediately preceded it.

I’ve mentioned Chris and Peak Prosperity in at least a handful of posts here at Rational Urbanism. I find his Crash Course to be the clearest and best laid out explanation of what we’re facing as a civilization in the near future and his website is a great resource for preparing for impending discontinuities. I place him with Jim Kunstler, John Michael Greer, and Chuck Marohn as thinkers whose messages resonate with me because they do not see the future as being the same as the present, only more so.

Johnny Sanphillippo had written that his experience in meeting with Peak Prosperity members involved mostly alpha-male types involved in the world of investment and high finance. The 8 of us who met Chris and his companion at a local Indian restaurant were of a very different sort; mostly women, no discussion whatsoever of money and finance, with perhaps the only topic of conversation which might have seemed unusual for any random group of people just getting to know one another was firearms related. 

When Chris made his way down to our end of the table we had an interesting, but all too brief, conversation. I started by thanking him for his work on the Crash Course and at Peak Prosperity. I mentioned that I chose to attend the Nights of Grief and Mystery concert because, as a philosophical materialist, the idea of spiritual capital was difficult for me but important, I think, to understand. Chris talked about how Stephen Jenkinson’s performance would be interesting for someone coming from that perspective.

This is when things got really interesting.

My wife and I later discussed that the idea of having a meet-up with Chris and Peak Prosperity members was uncomfortable because, like me, she was raised in a very insular religion which centered around a cult of personality; she has no interest in becoming an acolyte of anyone or anything…excepting me perhaps. Chris is clearly the prophet type, and his ideas are meant to encourage a transformation of life and of self. The message, like the apocalyptic message of my former Mormon faith, is one of exceptionalism; of being among the special few who hear the call, understand the message, and follow Him.

What followed in the interaction between Chris and me was nuanced, but spoke volumes. Whether he asked or I volunteered I cannot recall, but I told him that we lived in Springfield. Up to that moment I hadn’t expressed anything but praise for an orthodox reading of the Peak Prosperity message, despite erring in saying there were “7 forms of resilience capital” when there are 8. In an effort to help me feel as though I was still among the chosen people he responded that, regarding living in Springfield, what really mattered was where in the city of Springfield one lived.

He didn’t have to say any more; I knew what he meant. There are spaces, like my parents’ home: in the woods, away from the densely populated center, with access to land, wood, and water, and with neighbors like, well, like us where a person could live in the way envisioned by Chris’ Peak Prosperity model. When I told him in the clearest terms possible that I not only did NOT live in one of those areas, but rather, I lived in the heart of the beast, the center of the city, surrounded by the poor, desperate teeming masses I saw a flicker of realization take place; I was lost.

I went on to mention that we had a small garden, that our garden had helped us to create social capital in our neighborhood, and that my neighbors weren’t at all worried about the state of the markets or any such thing; they had all taken John Michael Greer’s advice, if involuntarily, to crash now and avoid the rush. Chris was very polite, demurred, and went back to his end of the table to eat. He had made a calculation; this was not the time or place to dissuade me from living in an urban center. We’ve all done it: quietly listened to a poor, misguided soul explain why they believe something that we find utterly ridiculous.

I know that I have no idea how the Long Emergency will play out. I believe it will play out, but I don’t think I could say with any precision where, when, or even why it will reach its most critical junctures. Could I be wrong altogether in even thinking the progress of human civilization could stop? Yes, although I can’t conceive of how.

Where Chris and I differ is, I suppose, in just where and how the first throes of obvious dysfunction will occur and in our individual abilities to respond to them. My money, figuratively, is on the center holding for a relatively extended period of time due to societal inertia. I harbor no illusions that I can scratch an independent life from the soil, nor would I want to. The infrastructure of America is weak at its periphery, but, in the words of Nassim Taleb, things which have been around for a long time are likely to be around for a long time, and this place has been a functioning community for 400 years, a city by anyone’s reckoning for 200. 

I stand a better chance of living a life I’d want to live; provided with water, power, and sanitation, right here, where I have planted myself. 

If the near future turns into the apocalypse Chris foresees in terms of all urban places becoming Wild, Wild, West worlds of festering violence and lawlessness then, yes, I’m screwed; but at this point in life I’d be just as screwed trying to eek out a living on a homestead in the hinterlands under the same societal conditions. 

As always I’m balancing the here and now with my prepping for the future. Some people have the problem of not placing enough value in the future; as Chuck Marohn says, that’s why we smoke, or eat ice cream instead of exercising at the end of a hard day. It’s possible to do the opposite, however, and live too much for tomorrow, especially since, in fact, it is always today and none of us will ever exist in any tomorrow, even if we’re lucky enough to successfully divine what that tomorrow will be like.

Fittingly, that’s just what the Nights of Grief and Mystery performance left us with; an understanding that we will all soon cease to be whatever the state of the world, and our task is to create meaning in and from whatever remains.

Not Unsafe

Posted on by

As I read the story of the Wisconsin Girl Scouts murdered by a pickup truck careening off the road and into a ditch where the girls were picking up trash I was startled by this quote:

Not an unsafe area.

Hard to imagine anywhere less safe if you are a human not clothed in an automobile. Because of tragedies we’ve experienced in this area I’ve looked up data on things like people hit by motor vehicles while getting the mail on a suburban or rural street, or on children run over by cars while playing in a driveway; anyplace cars move is a dangerous place.

One Walk, Two Walk, Straight Walk, Gay Walk

Posted on by

In Springfield you can play a game called “count the sidewalks”, and the number you get from 0-2 tells you when that street was developed. Two sidewalks narrows it down to a nearly 300 year window from 1636 to the early 1900’s* one sidewalk is from that time into the early post war period, and you can guess the rest. I didn’t notice that until I was pretty far along in my amateur urbanist ways, but even back when my “aesthetic” regarding everything else; food, friends, sports teams, hygiene, television, movies, clothing, music was pretty terrible I could see that in Springfield, with few exceptions, the poor people lived in the nicest houses, and the relatively wealthy (and the whitest) lived in the homeliest homes.

*(Obviously NO sidewalks were built contemporaneously for most of that first 300 years)

There is a weird algorithm, I’m sure, that could explain how one or two beautiful and classic neighborhoods retained their middle class and how the rest became ghettos for African Americans and, as the decades wore on, metamorphosing ethnic groups of the “not yet White”. Proximity to park land was clearly a factor, distance from heavy industry another, but what other factors were at play, apart from the perceived encroachment of the “non-White” in commercial or public interactions, I can’t say. What I can say is that it means that even a relatively geographically small city like Springfield, which covers only 30 square miles, contains its own inner and outer ring of suburbs at least as you travel from west to east. 

I live on the property originally deeded to Rowland Stebbins in 1636, on what would have then been toward the extreme end of the tillable land** the Agawam were willing to allow the English settlers to farm on the eastern side of the Connecticut River:

Looking out my back windows to the north and west I can see the elongated undular grid which William Pynchon drew following the contours of the river itself. What exists for a few miles to the southwest and west is a series of streets radiating outward which were later connected by what the contours of the terrain would allow as closely as possible approximating a grid. 

That pattern is only deviated from after around 1950 when the cul de sac appears in all its glory in just a handful of locations:

Springfield had surprisingly robust mid century development. It outpaced that of neighboring cities until school integration meant that “your kids had to go to school with their kids”…but only if your kids lived in the same town as their kids! Up until then homes in the city had higher value than others because the city provided better services (and still does) from water and sewer to trash collection, libraries, easier commutes, walkable neighborhood schools, more and better parks and libraries…you get the idea. Somehow the specter of melanin infested classrooms made a bi-weekly trip to the dump and a septic tank less onerous options.

In any case, all of this divides Springfield in very different areas where very different people live. My wife, having grown up in and around Westchester County was surprised at how diverse this community was; our non-family social life consists mostly of interactions with gay couples and artists, most of our neighbors are Black and Hispanic, the neighborhood restaurants are owned by Mexican, Pakistani, Puerto Rican, and old world Italian entrepreneurs. 

In the last few years LuLu’s Drama Studio involvement has introduced us to different elements in the region: home schoolers, suburbanites, and families from Springfield’s no sidewalk suburbs. For the first time in decades I’ve found myself among fellow Classical High School graduates and we’ve interacted with people who, put frankly, are more similar to the families in which we were raised than the ones by which we are surrounded.

 In one particularly memorable interaction my wife mentioned how most of the people we socialize with regularly are gay; and our new friends were shocked. They had no idea that Springfield had such a significant gay community. As I contemplated their response I realized that our new friends were from “no sidewalk” Springfield and nearly all of our gay friends were from “two sidewalk” Springfield with one of the few outliers being a couple living in the “one sidewalk” zone. They’ve taken a traditional Levittown house and turned it into this:

As the Long Emergency plays out in the region I wonder if the current, sometimes typologically ambiguous, town borders will have any meaning given how different the populations can be within each community or if typologically similar places, like the more urban portions of the somewhat contiguous areas of Springfield, West Springfield, Chicopee, Holyoke, Westfield, and even Northampton and South Hadley, will form confederations, as the “no sidewalk” spaces will identify similar interests and concerns. 

As always, my interests sit comfortably within the most urbanized areas in the region and I’m reminded that two lines of a fairly simple t shaped transit system could connect Westfield-West Springfield-Springfield from west to east, and Springfield-Chicopee-Holyoke-Northampton from south to north. Even in an energy starved post peak fossil fuel future I could envision a region where people could experience a high level of mobility at a reasonable price. People living outside those centers might find that their world has greatly diminished in size as far as the variety of places they are able to experience on a daily basis are concerned. The good news is that homes in most of those centers and along most of the lines of connection are among the most reasonable in a reasonably priced region; any takers?

** I arrived at the conclusion that my property was, perhaps, at the far edge of the fields from some books I had previously read but this map makes clear that the current 80 Maple Street is located in what was the wood lot. I had thought that the “wet meadow” was on the flat plain above my home and the wood lot was on the promentory above the 30′ shelf of land on which my house now sits.

Ix-nay on the Acism-ray

Posted on by


When the Amazing World of Dr Seuss Museum opened last year to great fanfare and large crowds it immediately became mired in controversy as a local artist charged with the task of selecting illustrations from Ted Geisel’s works to replicate on the walls of the converted Connecticut Valley Historical Museum chose to paint this:

Three authors refused to attend a symposium on children’s literature because of the depiction of the “Chinese man with sticks”. People called it insensitive, a mean spirited stereotype, and inappropriate for children. Others countered that Ted Geisel’s views on race were complex and of their time, that children should be given an accurate view of how race was depicted in the past and, even more convincingly, “What?” and “You’re kidding, right?”.

The museum agreed that the hauntingly evil stereotype should be removed and replaced with a more appropriate illustration from the works of Dr Seuss.

Keep that story in mind.

As experts and locals alike have agreed, Springfield has all of the ingredients for a successful and vibrant city from great museums to beautiful parks, from impressive classical architecture to classic residential neighborhoods, and from institutions of higher learning to hospitals; the problem is they’re not well situated to create critical mass. One “great place” is often cut off from another “great place” by an elevated highway, a stroad, some empty lots, some parking lots, some areas of entrenched poverty, or a neighborhood or people that make visitors uncomfortable. The Springfield Museums are a great example of this.

The Quadrangle, as the area where the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, The George Walter Vincent Smith Museum, The Springfield Science Museum, The Museum of Springfield History, The Amazing World of Dr Seuss Museum and the Springfield Central Library is known, is cut off from it surroundings on all four sides for one reason or another. To the south there is the stroad known as State Street. Despite being perhaps one of the most beautiful, oldest, and undeniably the most historic of all such roads in the United States, it tragically makes crossing from one side to the other unpleasant.

To the east there is no access to the Quadrangle except through a parking lot and maintenance storage facility via a hidden service road. To the west the city is working on redesigning and reconstructing Pynchon Plaza to make the 40′ cliff on which Chestnut Street sits less intimidating to pedestrians. To the southwest the soup kitchen at Christ Church Cathedral can make passing through Merrick Park uncomfortable for visitors as many homeless people and assorted hangers on lounge about the lawn or sit on the plinth of Springfield’s most significant piece of public art:

To the north the primary obstacle has also been more demographic and programatic in nature. 

At the crest of the aforementioned hill rising from Main Street to the Quadrangle there is a small one story retail building which has housed a liquor store and a convenience store for as long as I can remember. Despite its location between the relatively affluent Mattoon Street and the museums both the package store and the bodega are decidedly low brow and tend to attract a large crowd of loiterers and panhandlers and, given Springfield’s demographics, most of those loiterers and panhandlers are minorities.

From my time working with the Armoury-Quadrangle Civic Association some 25 years ago I can recall that those individuals most active in the neighborhood have wanted changes at that location for quite a while so I was not surprised to see a number of familiar faces in the crowd when the announcement was made that the Museums, with a large donation from Dr Seuss’ stepdaughter, had purchased the building and was putting together a study group to identify what programming to locate within it; the liquor store and convenience store WILL be out. Follow this link to the story as it appeared in the local media. Click on the “photos and videos” window. Look at the photographs of the building as is and note the demographic make-up of the people standing in front.Look at the pictures of the press conference announcing the purchase and take note of the people. See the artist’s rendering of the new “who knows what we’re going to put in here” and tell me what they look like; not Chinese men with sticks, but perhaps some hipsters with bad haircuts.

I agree with the strategy. I’ve said for decades that it would be wonderful, for example, if visitors to the city judged us favorably for providing free food for the destitute in such a lovely area as the historic Quadrangle. But they don’t. Visitors with the wherewithal to visit can choose which places to revisit and which to not. Seeing a cast of characters apparently taken from the cantina scene in Star Wars, hearing people scream and yell vulgarities, and being asked for money seems to have the effect of discouraging visitors. Panhandlers loitering in front of a liquor store have a similar impact. Make those panhandlers Black and Hispanic in a region where most of the people with the time and money to take a little vacation are White and the effect is multiplied.

Would that it were not so.  Tis so. And providing a pleasant experience to visitors and potential residents of the city is important if this struggling city, sitting within a prosperous region, is to ever get off its knees.

All that said, I’m amused at the differing responses to the two circumstances involving the same institution. In the first an archaic stereotype of a national sub group not particularly significant in numbers in the city becomes the center of a national controversy where well known authors and experts in the analysis of the depiction of minorities in children’s literature are called upon to explain that a young child of Chinese descent might see that cartoon on the wall of a museum and feel diminished and alienated. (Holy crap, imagine if a little Spanish kid ever saw the story of Ferdinand the Bull!!!) 

In the second the institution purchases a building to remove an obstacle that is, let’s be honest, poor people hanging out right smack dab in the middle of the region’s economic and financial center and its most highly regarded cultural center and…crickets. Some of that will stem from an attitude I’ve heard referred to as a plantation mentality where, you know, “those people” can’t handle liquor or junk food (or casinos!) in their backyard so it’s better if we place them where those things are less convenient for “them” but mostly, of course, this isn’t just consequence-less virtue signaling; it’s complicated. 

Race and class are a huge part of this decision. These businesses have been at this location long enough to make clear that they are viable in this location and provide goods which are in demand. The museums acknowledge that their purchase of the property is to transform it into something “the city can be proud of”, but have no real idea what that is apart from it NOT being what is there now; but having a place for the poor to buy booze is clearly not something to be proud of. I guarantee you that if the liquor store were a high end wine and cheese shop and the convenience store an organic produce locovore specialty retailer the museums would not have seen any need to purchase the building and close them and, apart from the “poor optics” it might well end up filling that space with just those things! 

So where are the voices fighting against racism and for the oppressed? Don’t poor city folk have a right to buy crappy food and cheap beer? Must they do it out of sight? It would be amusing to see all the crunchy people from the upper valley fighting openly for nips bottles and Slim Jims…for the people!

It Makes me Sick

Posted on by

I understand that the folks at CityLab don’t know that I exist and have never heard of RationalUrbanism, but it still feels as though they really are just trying to get my goat having published yet another tribute to an American modernist whose best works appear to, on their best day and in just the right light, amount to a flaming pile of shit.

This on the same week that, more close to home, the former Hampden County Hall of Justice:


Is having testing done to see if its killing the people who work there. Meanwhile the many decades older Richardson courthouse right next door keeps doing what it was built to do without any issues of the kind.

Modernist buildings don’t “building” so well. Andrés Duany says they’re trying to be sculptures; they don’t always do that well either, though I admit a weakness for this one.

I’ll give them this, the weaknesses of modernism help us to appreciate just how great our forefathers were at designing buildings that only killed us if they fell on top of us.