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I'm the guy who scanned the pages. The HistoricWashington Yahoo users group Digest No. 2245 published both the full chapter on Housing and Redevelopment from the 1950 Comprehensive Plan Summary and the large full color map showing the three obscene highways that were to slice through the city, the worst running up Third, along New Jersey, across T, down Florida and dump into Massachusetts. Have a look.

My complaint is with the social planners who want to either tear down or obliterate the old and build either a sterile new or a faux old. An East German guest scholar I met before The Wall came down here in DC said without irony that both Southwest and the Kennedy Center "looked like something we would build." SW reminds me of the brilliant Jacques Tati ("Mon Oncle') every time I drive through it.

I've lived in my wonderfully obsolete home in the Shaw Historic Slum now for 26 years and find the heavy hand of the uninvited Historic Preservation people oppressive. Areas outside of DeeCee's historic districts fare better architecturally (a few outrageous eyesores notwithstanding) and in terms of social development. I don't want to live in a faux "olde tyme" neighborhood of ersatz buildings made over into vacuum-sealed luxury chicken coops inhabited by drab technozombies hunched over in Fritz Lang Metropolis marches too and from work communicating solely by means of glowing hand-held slabs. I've lost all of my front stoop neighbors and the familiar nod and a wave of "hello" from people on the block whom I used to all know by name and look you in the eye.

by Ray Milefsky on Jul 10, 2012 9:20 pm • link • report