I wonder about the psychology of Urban Renewal too. More than just a dam-bursting of pent-up demand for construction and consumption, I have to think that there was a priming effect of seeing many of the Western world’s cities flattened by war that lent more credence to the proposition of flattening swaths of America’s cities.
Huh. Never seen that link made before. I've seen the crack about how the bulldozers did in America what the bombs did to Europe, but I've never thought about how that could have made the leveling of cities appear acceptable. Wow.
Just spitballing of course, but in my layman's psychological analysis it seems plausible that a world that was habituated to massive reshaping and reconstruction of cities could have been more open to urban renewal projects. Bulldozers could easily feel constructive/productive when bombers and tanks were so violently destructive.
I wrote this for the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk when I was a staff writer there. It probably appeared in 1996. It was on the front of the Commentary section I believe, with a lot of pictures. The Virginian-Pilot was a family newspaper then. A big company bought it a few years ago, whose name is not coming to mind, and it’s archives are a mess. Virtually all of the hundreds of stories I wrote for it are no longer discoverable on the Internet, including the one you cite. This is a real problem. There is this idea that the Internet is permanent. But things are in someways less permanent than in the old days, and libraries kept physical copies of newspapers and newspapers kept physical archives. There has been an urban renewal of our archives!
But I digress. I’m glad you quoted my piece as I said. I was born in Norfolk as was my father, and it really pained me to see what the city did to itself. I am the author of several books on cities, which I will not plug here.
One idea I had about Urban renewal, which was too far fetched to mention in the story, is that the United States pursued it with such a vengeance after World War II because during the war, it did so many gigantic things with such a huge cost in lives and materials. So after the war, they were ready to break a lot of eggs to make new omelettes. The country had grown accustomed to it, or at least its leaders had.
Thank you for the long answer. This is all really interesting to me (even the question of archives being difficult to access is interesting - that's part of why I do these pieces on random little buildings and see how much can be found about them). And thanks for reading!
I won't disagree with Dalrymple about the "Golden Turd" - it is dreadful - but there's an element of being an old misery that permeates that article - for example, the mix of "modern" and traditional architecture in the central area of the University of Edinburgh is no worse than any university in the northeast US, and the local enthusiasm for urinating "en plein air" is not a recent development. What I do think is interesting about Edinburgh in line with the focus of your work is their terrible housing crunch, which is the result of a lot of compounding (and frequently well-intentioned) policies about building that don't seem to actually result in new housing: inter alia you have the local council hanging their hopes on brownfield redevelopment that developers don't want to risk, and private student housing being built over regular apartments because the occupancy / sq ft and annual rent increases are a better fit for what large developers' revenue goals, while featureless houses are built further out from town because it's easier. It's not just us on this side of the Atlantic, for what it's worth.
I’m lazily inclined to think it’s more of an Anglo problem than not, I’m originally from the UK & I sometimes feel like both birth and adopted homelands are competing to see who can be the most useless at managing housing and transport infrastructure.
I wonder about the psychology of Urban Renewal too. More than just a dam-bursting of pent-up demand for construction and consumption, I have to think that there was a priming effect of seeing many of the Western world’s cities flattened by war that lent more credence to the proposition of flattening swaths of America’s cities.
Huh. Never seen that link made before. I've seen the crack about how the bulldozers did in America what the bombs did to Europe, but I've never thought about how that could have made the leveling of cities appear acceptable. Wow.
Just spitballing of course, but in my layman's psychological analysis it seems plausible that a world that was habituated to massive reshaping and reconstruction of cities could have been more open to urban renewal projects. Bulldozers could easily feel constructive/productive when bombers and tanks were so violently destructive.
Hi Addison, this is Alex Marshall, who is also a long time subscriber. I like that you quoted this long piece of mine. Here is the link again. https://substack.com/redirect/c25d8091-8cc3-48a8-a71c-f2ab5d178034?j=eyJ1IjoiYmZ3MSJ9.25ocTtX8LFgzE-cajLr2mefiA6BloTpR0oc5QYEov00
I wrote this for the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk when I was a staff writer there. It probably appeared in 1996. It was on the front of the Commentary section I believe, with a lot of pictures. The Virginian-Pilot was a family newspaper then. A big company bought it a few years ago, whose name is not coming to mind, and it’s archives are a mess. Virtually all of the hundreds of stories I wrote for it are no longer discoverable on the Internet, including the one you cite. This is a real problem. There is this idea that the Internet is permanent. But things are in someways less permanent than in the old days, and libraries kept physical copies of newspapers and newspapers kept physical archives. There has been an urban renewal of our archives!
But I digress. I’m glad you quoted my piece as I said. I was born in Norfolk as was my father, and it really pained me to see what the city did to itself. I am the author of several books on cities, which I will not plug here.
One idea I had about Urban renewal, which was too far fetched to mention in the story, is that the United States pursued it with such a vengeance after World War II because during the war, it did so many gigantic things with such a huge cost in lives and materials. So after the war, they were ready to break a lot of eggs to make new omelettes. The country had grown accustomed to it, or at least its leaders had.
Thank you for the long answer. This is all really interesting to me (even the question of archives being difficult to access is interesting - that's part of why I do these pieces on random little buildings and see how much can be found about them). And thanks for reading!
I won't disagree with Dalrymple about the "Golden Turd" - it is dreadful - but there's an element of being an old misery that permeates that article - for example, the mix of "modern" and traditional architecture in the central area of the University of Edinburgh is no worse than any university in the northeast US, and the local enthusiasm for urinating "en plein air" is not a recent development. What I do think is interesting about Edinburgh in line with the focus of your work is their terrible housing crunch, which is the result of a lot of compounding (and frequently well-intentioned) policies about building that don't seem to actually result in new housing: inter alia you have the local council hanging their hopes on brownfield redevelopment that developers don't want to risk, and private student housing being built over regular apartments because the occupancy / sq ft and annual rent increases are a better fit for what large developers' revenue goals, while featureless houses are built further out from town because it's easier. It's not just us on this side of the Atlantic, for what it's worth.
Interesting. That's still the UK though, I wonder if continental Europe has the same problems or if this is an Anglo problem? Don't really know.
I’m lazily inclined to think it’s more of an Anglo problem than not, I’m originally from the UK & I sometimes feel like both birth and adopted homelands are competing to see who can be the most useless at managing housing and transport infrastructure.
It's like that old drug commercial from the 80s.
"I learned it from watching you, dad!"