This is frustrating.
(Photo from here.)
I just discovered a rather annoying article in The Crimson. (That’s pretty much the only reason I read The Crimson, to be honest.) I don’t know how I got to it, since it’s ancient, but whatever, here goes.
What’s annoying about it? For one thing, there’s the general presumption that the abstract precepts of urban design — density is good, in this case — trump people’s legitimate concerns about where they live. Because they’re poor, they are seen as lab rats for a brand of new urbanism, just as poor neighborhoods were lab rats for catastrophic modernist redevelopment in the 1950s and 60s. I mean, really:
“Neighborhood residents without exception will speak against buildings that are denser and new developments in general,” said Brent Ryan, a professor of urban planning at the Design School. “From what I can see so far, people anywhere else would say that they are getting a pretty good deal from an urban design perspective.”
Arghhhh.
Mostly, though, the article seems ignorant of the stakes of the whole Charlesview clusterfuck. These people have seen Harvard destroy their neighborhood by buying up and driving out businesses and then letting the buildings stand vacant — see here — and it now is reneging on its promises to develop. They’re often too poor to move, and Harvard is proposing to destroy their homes and replace them with what it sees fit. I mean, really? We’re supposed to be angry because they want to make sure a big tricky bottom-line-oriented institution isn’t going to fuck them over?
