Apr 2, 2022·edited Apr 2, 2022Liked by Addison Del Mastro
Is there an appropriate time horizon for urban development? Most of my reading these days is 19th century, the protean days of conflagrations and epidemics. A question I have for historians: how much old architecture did we lose just from fires? The first hotel in Houston, constructed during the first few months in 1837, simply collapsed about two decades later. It was a shabby "Bretterkasten," as some Germans referred to it. Should we worry that we are not building for the ages? People needed lodging, and the Ben Fort Smith Hotel (aka City Hotel) was built with available supplies and labor. American cities are undeveloped, and it is most important to build housing, especially if it supports mixed use.
With old architecture, we often have availability bias. We imagine that the old buildings were better quality because we only see the best-made buildings. How many old buildings just fell apart, and were torn down and replaced because they were low quality and not worth preserving? Surviving buildings are almost always among the best of their era. It's ok to build things for current needs.
I agree. The bigger issue, I guess, is what happens to people living in those buildings, and how far decayed they get before they're torn down. (As I understand it condos are facing this problem particularly, more so than apartments, but I also assume many modern condos are this type of structure.) It's true that when you look at the history of any city or town, what's standing now is almost never the first thing built on that lot.
In addition to Houston's first hotel collapsing (though it is possible that the hotel grew into a complex of buildings), two other hotels across the street were incinerated not long after, in a fire which consumed all but one building on the 250x250 foot block. There was another fire in 1860 which consumed all but one building on the block west of the site of the first fire. That block contained two hotels and a boarding house. Imagine the short-term housing crunch. Yet, the census was taken in Sept, the next month after this fire, and the owner of one of the burnt hotels was listed as head of house and as a hotelkeeper in the same ward for the census enumeration. Was it that much easier to repurpose existing building for housing? The buildings were probably not well built, but they were probably very adaptable. We have superior buildings, but they are not easily adapted. There are so many interesting questions, and the possibilities are overwhelming.
>"I kind of like buying precut, prepackaged foods that don’t make me contemplate death as a precondition of having a meal. I think the vast majority of people do, as well."
So I struggle with this concept in general a bit. I think Wendell Berry has a line about never eating meat that you wouldn't be willing to butcher yourself, etc. And while I think that specific admonition is hyperbolic, I'm not entirely sure it's completely off the wall?
Like there's clearly a point where we ought to be presented with the implications of our actions. I've been pondering car design and the implications of making the driver have an enhanced (sometimes artificial!) sense of personal safety and how that seems to induce increased danger and damage to others. I think we'd probably all be better off if our driving helped make us more consciously aware of the reality of our position as maneuvering a massive and dangerous machine.
Is it just because that's impacting other *people*? I don't know. Or to the question of meat, like does the desire for a bit of buffer like you describe also justify not worrying about any sort of process and whether or not the creatures are raised humanely? There are practical reasons to be concerned about Factory Farming for sure, but I also kinda think the aesthetic ones stand on their own, too.
Anyway, I don't know, but I guess to bring the pondering full circle I'm forced to reckon with Arendt's Banality of Evil: if one of the core sources of deeply inhumane behavior is the willingness and ability to abstract away the implications of a given process, it definitely seems like we ought ot be very careful what abstractions we casually tolerate in day to day life.
It's funny, I'm all for keeping in mind how serious a matter driving is. It can be fun but getting behind the wheel is a grave responsibility, like handling a firearm. It's not a joke. I don't like factory farming and I'd personally be okay if the price of meat went up in order to make conditions more humane. I suppose I find it impossible to care about everything, and I'm reacting to the sense that every lobby is jockeying for your sympathy and attention. Yeah, kind of like how some people react to what I write about cars!
It's weird, like I think in a more localized context (buying from a butcher I know who gets stock from a farmer I know) I'd be much more willing to just kinda trust them/let it be on their heads and go with the flow, but when I'm buying from the supermarket and I know it's sourced from a faceless corporate conglomerate that even giving them more charity than they deserve operates at a scale that precludes truly humane treatment of animals *or people* suddenly that feels more like my problem? Like because no one else is responsible, suddenly I personally am?
I dunno, like I definitely get where you're coming from, it's just something I've wrestled with because it feels like especially within the tech space so many of our problems come because we've managed to create a world where *everyone* is incentivized and empowered to look the other way because the only alternative is to Walk Away From Omelas...
Is there an appropriate time horizon for urban development? Most of my reading these days is 19th century, the protean days of conflagrations and epidemics. A question I have for historians: how much old architecture did we lose just from fires? The first hotel in Houston, constructed during the first few months in 1837, simply collapsed about two decades later. It was a shabby "Bretterkasten," as some Germans referred to it. Should we worry that we are not building for the ages? People needed lodging, and the Ben Fort Smith Hotel (aka City Hotel) was built with available supplies and labor. American cities are undeveloped, and it is most important to build housing, especially if it supports mixed use.
With old architecture, we often have availability bias. We imagine that the old buildings were better quality because we only see the best-made buildings. How many old buildings just fell apart, and were torn down and replaced because they were low quality and not worth preserving? Surviving buildings are almost always among the best of their era. It's ok to build things for current needs.
I agree. The bigger issue, I guess, is what happens to people living in those buildings, and how far decayed they get before they're torn down. (As I understand it condos are facing this problem particularly, more so than apartments, but I also assume many modern condos are this type of structure.) It's true that when you look at the history of any city or town, what's standing now is almost never the first thing built on that lot.
In addition to Houston's first hotel collapsing (though it is possible that the hotel grew into a complex of buildings), two other hotels across the street were incinerated not long after, in a fire which consumed all but one building on the 250x250 foot block. There was another fire in 1860 which consumed all but one building on the block west of the site of the first fire. That block contained two hotels and a boarding house. Imagine the short-term housing crunch. Yet, the census was taken in Sept, the next month after this fire, and the owner of one of the burnt hotels was listed as head of house and as a hotelkeeper in the same ward for the census enumeration. Was it that much easier to repurpose existing building for housing? The buildings were probably not well built, but they were probably very adaptable. We have superior buildings, but they are not easily adapted. There are so many interesting questions, and the possibilities are overwhelming.
>"I kind of like buying precut, prepackaged foods that don’t make me contemplate death as a precondition of having a meal. I think the vast majority of people do, as well."
So I struggle with this concept in general a bit. I think Wendell Berry has a line about never eating meat that you wouldn't be willing to butcher yourself, etc. And while I think that specific admonition is hyperbolic, I'm not entirely sure it's completely off the wall?
Like there's clearly a point where we ought to be presented with the implications of our actions. I've been pondering car design and the implications of making the driver have an enhanced (sometimes artificial!) sense of personal safety and how that seems to induce increased danger and damage to others. I think we'd probably all be better off if our driving helped make us more consciously aware of the reality of our position as maneuvering a massive and dangerous machine.
Is it just because that's impacting other *people*? I don't know. Or to the question of meat, like does the desire for a bit of buffer like you describe also justify not worrying about any sort of process and whether or not the creatures are raised humanely? There are practical reasons to be concerned about Factory Farming for sure, but I also kinda think the aesthetic ones stand on their own, too.
Anyway, I don't know, but I guess to bring the pondering full circle I'm forced to reckon with Arendt's Banality of Evil: if one of the core sources of deeply inhumane behavior is the willingness and ability to abstract away the implications of a given process, it definitely seems like we ought ot be very careful what abstractions we casually tolerate in day to day life.
It's funny, I'm all for keeping in mind how serious a matter driving is. It can be fun but getting behind the wheel is a grave responsibility, like handling a firearm. It's not a joke. I don't like factory farming and I'd personally be okay if the price of meat went up in order to make conditions more humane. I suppose I find it impossible to care about everything, and I'm reacting to the sense that every lobby is jockeying for your sympathy and attention. Yeah, kind of like how some people react to what I write about cars!
It's weird, like I think in a more localized context (buying from a butcher I know who gets stock from a farmer I know) I'd be much more willing to just kinda trust them/let it be on their heads and go with the flow, but when I'm buying from the supermarket and I know it's sourced from a faceless corporate conglomerate that even giving them more charity than they deserve operates at a scale that precludes truly humane treatment of animals *or people* suddenly that feels more like my problem? Like because no one else is responsible, suddenly I personally am?
I dunno, like I definitely get where you're coming from, it's just something I've wrestled with because it feels like especially within the tech space so many of our problems come because we've managed to create a world where *everyone* is incentivized and empowered to look the other way because the only alternative is to Walk Away From Omelas...