Tangentially Pynchon. see today's Google Doodle

[Monte Davis]

I don't take anything said as personal attack or criticism. I'm simply
telling you that in my own experience, and in what I know of that the
almost 70 years that ST/PCV has existed, there has been

NO deterioration or trashing of "indefensible" public spaces (neither
halls, elevators and lobbies nor lawns, walkways and playgrounds between
buildings)... and a consistently very low crime rate. In 1960, when I was
turning 11, I and younger children were going unescorted between apartments
and playgrounds, roller skating and scootering on the (mostly vehicle-free)
interior drives -- as children were in Sept. 2015, the last time I was
there.

NO shortage of multiple, varied forms of social solidarity and engagement.
There are no restaurants, bars, churches, or athletic fields within ST/PCV.
But its population strengthens (in many cases is the primary support of)
scores of them in the adjacent blocks. Within the apartments were more
rather than fewer poker nights, book clubs, crafts groups, small potluck
suppers etc, per capita than the small-town and suburban communities I've
lived in.

Possibilities (none exclusive):

(1) ST/PCV is a freakish anomaly

(2) demography/socioeconomics and property management entirely compensate
for the destructive effects of modernist design

(3) those destructive effects are much exaggerated. Maybe architects and
community planners of *all* persuasions -- Jacobites and New Urbanists as
well as their Modernist predecessors -- ascribe much too much influence to
their own work.




On Sun, May 8, 2016 at 12:16 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Monte,
> I'm not sure I understand your response either. I certainly didn't intend
> my comments to be taken as a personal attack or criticism.
>
> Www.innergroovemusic.com <http://www.innergroovemusic.com>
>
> On May 7, 2016, at 11:53 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What?
>
> Have you been drinking? Or what?
>
> David Morris
>
> On Sat, May 7, 2016 at 5:33 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I assure you I will give due weight to these insights, and due weight to
>> 25 years of my family's (and 25,000 neighbors') experience.
>>
>> On Sat, May 7, 2016 at 2:45 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Also I forgot to mention another very important aspect of old-urbanism's
>>> semi-public spaces where "owners" of the street could be its defenders:
>>>  Those stoops, porches and fire escapes naturally resulted in residents
>>> interacting with their neighbors, forming community bonds, knowing who on
>>> the street lived in their neighborhood, and who didn't.  Streets thus had
>>> many "mayors" wise to normal street patterns, and they defended their
>>> neighbors as well as their streets.
>>>
>>> David Morris
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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