Great article. I love (and hate) nothing more than looking through old photos of my mid-sized city. Seeing all of the streetcars, mid-rise buildings, mixed use, and our train station. All of that is gone, replaced by freeways that rip apart the city and parking lots that are empty 80% of the time.
Yes. So many people have no idea what American towns and cities looked like before the age of the automobile. That's a whole piece of the American heritage that is forgotten. It also makes the point that urbanism is not a "European import," as some would knock it.
of course street cars were present in small towns and street car suburbs. But the fact is our 'merican roots are unfortunately very English, colonial, and set up as single homes on a homestead---that's how we started until urbanism was imported to Boston, New York, Philadelphia in the 17th century "georgian" townhomes and such. Look up colonial Williamsburg. This is a real problem for us in 'merica
I totally agree that we don't need an alternate term for urbanism in small towns. Small towns can be very urban in their own way. And the urbanism of small towns can be quite lovely as you've pointed out. It's just a different scale from a big city. In fact, I blog about it if you want to check it out at smalltownurbanims.com
Great article. I love (and hate) nothing more than looking through old photos of my mid-sized city. Seeing all of the streetcars, mid-rise buildings, mixed use, and our train station. All of that is gone, replaced by freeways that rip apart the city and parking lots that are empty 80% of the time.
Yes. So many people have no idea what American towns and cities looked like before the age of the automobile. That's a whole piece of the American heritage that is forgotten. It also makes the point that urbanism is not a "European import," as some would knock it.
of course street cars were present in small towns and street car suburbs. But the fact is our 'merican roots are unfortunately very English, colonial, and set up as single homes on a homestead---that's how we started until urbanism was imported to Boston, New York, Philadelphia in the 17th century "georgian" townhomes and such. Look up colonial Williamsburg. This is a real problem for us in 'merica
:) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Colonial_Williamsburg_Map.jpg
I totally agree that we don't need an alternate term for urbanism in small towns. Small towns can be very urban in their own way. And the urbanism of small towns can be quite lovely as you've pointed out. It's just a different scale from a big city. In fact, I blog about it if you want to check it out at smalltownurbanims.com