29 7 / 2009
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…preservationists had to fight for decades before cities caught on to the value of historic structures. According to Yeates “city after city after city” have reversed course on demolition. But not Detroit.
“We don’t understand this pattern in Detroit. Most cities learned their lesson,” Yeates said. “They learned to quit tearing everything down around them.”
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This is a great article (quick & easy read! go read it!) about Detroit and the feelings of confusion and despair it engenders in outsiders and preservationists. (I’m sure insiders have a totally different set of feelings, and I often wish I knew them more intimately.)
But the quote I picked is interesting because it highlights this perception that cities have mostly “learned their lessons” about tearing down historic fabric. This ideology was in play at home in San Francisco last fall with the passage of Prop J; we “finally” created a real Historic Preservation Commission with (small, dull) teeth, years behind “real” cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. In reality, cities have to re-learn this lesson constantly; for every individual building saved or commission created, there are blocks and lots and rows of townhouses and industrial buildings and bungalows and mansions and piers and bridges in cities all over America torn down every week that are perfectly reusable, better-constructed and more beautiful than the average contemporary piece of crap, but couldn’t be seen as useful, nonrenewable resources because of our cultural (maybe biological?) tendency to make decisions without regard for the long-term implications. If it’s perceived as easier (not even really cheaper, though that’s a common misperception) alternative right now to demolish and reconstruct with low-quality (and not to mention mostly environmentally unconscionable) materials, the forces of capital will continue to do that.
I’m not convinced that considering the consequences of our actions before we leap will ever be a lesson learned, by any sector of humanity?
