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Posted by EDS on March 21, 2008, 6:16 pm
>
>>
>>
>>
>
> [edited for bandwidth]
>
>>>
>>> I do not beleive in utopia, but I also don't beleive in dystopia -
>>> there *is* a large middle ground, and I think it's to the benefit of
>>> humans to actively seek out that middle ground, seek ideas that will
>>> be as beneficial as possible. And I'm not absolutley convinced that
>>> isolated households are *universally* the best idea. Of course it
>>> works for a lot fo people, myself being one of them, but it doesn't
>>> work for everyone and it also doesn't strike me as being the most
>>> energy-conserving option. More and more, people are thinking about
>>> arcologies and alternatives both to isolated suburban households, and
>>> to haphazard or dehumanizing forms of urban ugliness.
>>>
>>> Of course, questions remain reagarding what to do with
>>> things-as-they- are, and how to find practical solutions for
>>> practical and current problems. But the "central greenhouse" idea is
>>> also a bit of interesting futuristic speculation ;)
>>
>>
>> Kris,
>> The block we lived on in Boston was a street, built in 1859, divided
>> with a 10' park in the middle. Each drivable side was 16' wide and
>> sidewalks were 6', with brick 4 story rowhouses set back another 12'
>> and a flight of stairs to the main doors, but a secondary stair to the
>> lower level under the stoop. This made for a 600' X 80' foot visual
>> stadium with bleachers (the stoops) all around. The cars parked in the
>> street, forcing traffic to move slowly through the block. The central
>> area had a grand cast iron fountain, and 12 full grown trees
>> surrounded by a wrought iron fence, with several gates.
>
> I've seen a few similar older neighborhoods during my "adventures in
> moving". One of the nicest was an old neighborhood in the town of
> Monrovia, CA - one of my personal all-time favorite places I've lived.
> It only started to go downhill when Yuppies came in and started
> "snootifying" it, which is about when we moved.
>
> ((Tangentially, what I call "snootifying" is when you get people coming
> in who aren't interested in being in and/or part of the neighborhhod and
> trying to make the neighborhhod better, but ratehr, move in becasu ethey
> see nothing more than an "investment opportunity", and do things which
> turn the houses "inward" so to speak, and end up ruining whatever it is
> that make s a neighborhood a neighborhood, as opposed to a collection of
> overpriced houses. THere is probably a more correct term for the
> process, but I don't know what it is...))
>
> ANyway, it often has seemed to me that the bigger (or at least mroe
> expensive) the houses are in an area, th eless likely you are to ever see
> people *outside*. As misanthropic, interoverted, and ns around peopel as
> I am, I neverthelsee find it disturbing and depressing to be in an area
> where the only people you ever seem to see outside are "hired help" (usu.
> the people mowing the lawn).
>
> It's bizarre to me, the extent to which people have "gone inside and shut
> the doors". And, considering that I tend to be very bnervous around
> poeple and am an introvert and often somewhat misanthropic, for me to say
> it's bizarre, it has to be *exceedingly* bizarre.
>
> I don't know whetehr it's just car-centrism, or computer-ficus, or what;
> it just has seemed so weird to be in areas where you never say anyone
> outside, even when the weather was great - no adults, no kids, nobody.
> Gives me the creeps, to be honest.
>
>> We planted
>> flowers, had rib cook-outs, watermelon eating contests, Halloween
>> parties in the street around the fountain. The rowhouses were built
>> with 12" masonry separating walls, so acoustical privacy was very
>> good.
>
> That's one of the things that has been lost - soudn insulation. The
> better it is, the better people can tolerate high-density living, for
> obvious reasons.
>
> One of the big problem with shoddy cluster-housing is that it does in
> fact ddrive epole into detatched housing (as detatched as they can
> afford), because that cuts down on the noise from the neighbors. But
> doesn't necessarily eliminate it, if the detatched housing is shoddy.
>
> IMO, what makes people crazy isn't so much high-denisity living, but the
> noise, lacking a refuge.
>
> THe problem is that North American builders/developers don't give a shit
> about that because they only want to wring out as much profit as they
> can.
>
>
>> That block and a similar one next street over did many things
>> together, with a total of about 150 units we were a village within the
>> City. There were alleys between the main streets, but only for trash
>> access. We could remain private and separated when we wanted, yet had
>> easy casual access to all our neighbors.
>
> Yup, the secret of tolerable high density living is the existence of
> choice. I include noise reduction in taht, because in a sense, if you
> are constanyl subjected to noise, it's a form of forced interaction.
>
>
>> On those two blocks my girls
>> grew up with about 100 other kids of the same age range, but of all
>> ethnic and financial backgrounds, and with whom they remained
>> friendly. WE could walk or bicycle to Back Bay in a few minutes, I was
>> at work in 10 minutes. Although We now live in a close-in suburb, and
>> have good public access and ferry service to the City, it is not as
>> close and pleasant. Why did we move? The Yuppies moved in and wanted
>> everyone to be like them, boring, and that spoiled the fun.
>> I've always felt that was an ideal urban area.
>> EDS
>
> Oh, don't get me started on Yuppification. It's odd, because
> *technically*, I was a "yuppie" in a sense, but I had/have very different
> attitudes about most things. One of which is that I have a disliek of
> monoculture. In agriculture, monocultures are always susceptable to
> disease aqnd tend to be very high-maintenance, i.e. require a lot of
> active work/input (of chemicals and so on) to maintain them, and any
> "stray" plant is seen as a weed, i.e. as a threat to the entire field,
> precisely becasue monocultures are less robust. From what I've seen,
> sociological monoculture isn't all that different.
>
>
>
>
We still go back to the old neighborhood (our doctors and wife's hairdresser
are there and it's only 15 minutes from us). None of our old neighbors
remain.
Our old house, 3200 sf on 4 stories, with 11' ceilings on the main floor,
that we bought for 11G in 1965 with every thing old, but working, is now
assessed for over $850,000.
Now the local Yuppies are trying to keep mothers with kids and strollers out
of the coffee shops because they "get in the way". Who are these spoiled
snots? Even my wife's very gay hairdresser is upset. These people with their
fixed ideas about how a neighborhood should look and run are destroying all
that was right in neighborhoods so they can make a buck.
EDS
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