"There Goes the Neighborhood: After the Berkeley Fire, an
Architectural Disaster" by David L. Kirp. Harper's Magazine, March
1997, pp. 45-53.
The October 1991 fire in the Berkeley and Oakland hills destroyed
3,354 homes and 456 apartments. City planners saw this as an
opportunity to rebuild an ideal community, for after all, the residents
were "an educated crowd" with "taste as well as money". They
envisioned a similar result as when after a1926 fire, architects
Maybeck and Morgan had produced a pleasant neighborhood in the Arts
and Crafts style. However, large insurance settlements far in excess of
the nominal values of the original houses undermined the vision by
giving the residents the financial ability to build "Architectural
Record" type houses.
Hundreds of architects and contractors, lacking a shared esthetic
produced a contemporary muddle: "Gropius married to Colonial,
Palladian windows affixed to medieval turrets. ...many residents
equated 'better' with bigger and fancier, and their new homes feature
four and five bathrooms, three and four car garages, double front
doors that belong in an expense account restaurant. The people who
built smaller houses, respectful of the historic scale of the
neighborhood, found themselves with what appear to be the cabanas of
the monster houses that literally overshadow them."
The article then goes on to talk about how the rebuilding undermined
the cohesiveness of the neighborhood, and showed that to the
residents "the idea of the public interest was meaningless and
civic virtue beyond their lines of sight."
Four families are suing a contractor for building an $850,000 spec
house that blocks their views. "This is more than a legal issue",
one resident on his way to the courthouse told a Phoenix Journal
reporter. "It's a community issue".
"We're living in America," the contractor responded. "I can build
what I want".
The author sympathizes with those who went through the trauma of
losing their material possessions but states that the attitude "I'm
entitled to get everything that's coming to me" easily segues into:
"Neighbors, planners, government officials: don't get in my way
while I'm getting what's mine".
The magazine is available on the news stand or at your local library.
"Reflections from the Road: the Search for Main Street USA" by
Richard Francaviglia. The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 21,
1997, p. B8.
Francaviglia was capitivated by Disneyland's "Main Street" on a visit
in 1957. As a geographer and chronicler of popular culture, he
attempted to answer the question: "Was there a real prototype for
this incredible Main Street USA, or had Disney just 'imagineered' it
into existence?"
In 40 years and 250,000 miles of travels, including to Disney's home
town of Marceline, MO, he made observations on town design and the
relationship between commerce and civic virtue:
"In my travels and studies, I came to realize that main streets--both
the Disney version and the real ones--encompass two fundamentally
different designs that reveal much about America's obsession with
commerce on one hand and its citizen's longing for community on the
other...
...My search for Main Street also led me into American Literature,
which revealed that a linear main street often signified to writers
the crass, commercial, or petty side of our national character...
...Conversely, a main street developed around a public
square...seemed to reaffirm our search for enclosure, community, and
tradition. As the Texas writer Joyce Gibson Roach has said: 'You
smply cannot trust any town that is not built on a square. A square
speaks of antiquity, of stability, and the shape of a town's
personality.'"
Francaviglia has written a book about his search: "Main Street
Revisited: Time, Space, and Image Building in Small Town America
(University of Iowa Press, 1996)--U of I Library, HT 167 F73 1996.
Ron Force rforce@belle.lib.uidaho.edu
Dean of Library Services (208)885-6534
University Of Idaho fax: (208) 885-6817
Moscow, ID 83844-2371
"As for the future, your task is not to forsee but to enable"
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery