Then to Now: How to Destroy a City
The Nokohaha Blog occasionally runs a feature called “Then and Now". It takes a photograph of a building in the Twin Cities from sometime in the past 100 years, and compares it to how it looks today. The most noticeable feature of the “Now” is how we’ve so aggressively degraded our urban environment to accommodate the automobile.
The most recent “Then and Now” is the intersection of Franklin and Lyndale Avenues:
This is 1920.
This is 2011.
This is an example of how the streetscapes of Minneapolis have devolved. But, let’s use this historic photograph as a quick learning tool and analyze what exactly went wrong here.
For starters, the building is the most noticeably uglier. A majority of the large windows facing the street have been covered; and sometime in the last 90 years, someone thought it was a good idea to put some wood paneling over the original brick facade. This building no longer accommodates the street. Instead, it tries to pretend it isn’t there.
To accommodate the automobile, the sidewalks were downgraded from pleasant to unsightly. The road got wider and the sidewalks got smaller. The green buffer of grass and trees that once lined street were replaced with pavement that serves on-street parking. And, as the road widened to accommodate the need for more traffic, the once-bricked street got covered in blacktop and the streetcar tracks were removed.
One might think that car-oriented urban transformations, like Franklin and Lyndale Avenues, would halt most pedestrian activity. This hasn’t been the case. In fact, this might be one of the busiest intersections in all of Minneapolis – and that is why it’s so hard to believe this corner looks like this.
The surrounding neighborhood is dense and walkable (walk score: 82) and countless small businesses, such as cafes, pubs and retail shops, line the streets. So, it’s surprising more care hasn’t gone into transforming this intersection into something other than a means of moving automobiles as quickly and conveniently as possible.
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Special thanks to the Nokohaha blog and Twin Cities Streets for People. You can also visit me online at Thoughts on the Urban Environment.
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Comments
really nice example.
really nice example.
I don't see a lot of merit to
I don't see a lot of merit to this comparison. Like...cars themselves somehow causes the building to now have less windows? I can't even say that's a stretch, that just seems rediculous.
RE: Windows
There are probably a handful of reasons the building boarded up the Windows. My guess is that they were sick of seeing andd hearing the constant roar of cars, of which their speed and flow were increased due to the widening of the road. Of course, I could be.wrong.
That's not the point I wanted to make though. I meant to articulate that when a building puts up blank walls (instead of windows), it makes walking less attractive, and sometimes even scary. And it helps create an environment in the City where cars rule.
I've never heard of anyone
I've never heard of anyone taking out windows because of traffic, but I have heard them taking out windows because of cost - it looks like they converted the building into a warehouse, and it more energy efficient (so costs less) to heat a building with no windows than it is a building with huge windows.