• MAIN
  • Podcast
  • Features
    • Where’s My Jetpack?
    • What’s Right – What’s Wrong
    • “I” Candy
    • Real or Fake? (Cheap Shots at Suburbs and Post War Design)
  • Blog
  • Archive
Rational Urbanism
Home » Rational Urbanism » "Something's actually happening, Reg!"

"Something's actually happening, Reg!"

Hope springs eternal of course, and when it comes to my hometown I tend to be an optimist despite a very concerted effort to remain dispassionate and rational. On this beautiful Spring morning it’s hard for me to not be optimistic about the future however. I’ve taken a walk around the block, hardly deviating from the main thoroughfares which constitute the most circumscribed of paths and I was able to photograph all of these different projects in various stages of execution:

20130421-102233.jpg

20130421-102253.jpg

20130421-102312.jpg

20130421-102331.jpg

20130421-102352.jpg

20130421-102420.jpg

20130421-102441.jpg

20130421-102513.jpg

20130421-102529.jpg

20130421-102554.jpg

20130421-102609.jpg

20130421-213432.jpg

20130421-213519.jpg

I’ll leave you to sort out what’s what here, but these projects run the gamut from publicly funded to private, retail to residential, small to large, incipient to completed, speculative to specific, institutional to private.

What excites me about this is that only two of these are in response to the tornado of 2011 and none of them appear to be dependent upon the MGM project being selected by the state as the designated casino for western Massachusetts. As I have expressed before, I understand the reservations which people have about casinos in general, and I think that they are valid, but under the current circumstances there is no sense pretending that not having a casino in western Massachusetts is a possibility: A casino is coming. That MGM’s proposal is both superior to the others in terms of its design and scope I think is fairly obvious, what bodes well for its success, as that is defined in terms of casino projects, is that the neighborhood seems to be moving forward even without it.

« Gun Violence
Cherry Picking »

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 123 other subscribers

[Valid RSS]
January 2021
S M T W T F S
« May    
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31  

Archives

Recent Comments

  • Tom on Hey Friends
  • Eric on Hey Friends
  • John Sanphillippo on Hey Friends
  • Neil on Hey Friends
  • Neil on Hey Friends
© Rational Urbanism - Hammerfold Media