Historical Perspective

Some new tools are online that let you see how an area used to look.

The USGS has made available 125 years of Historical Topographic Maps

So much wilderness east of town in the 1950's

Another site is WhatWasThere.com
This site lets you overlay historical photographs over Google Street view.

Here's the
Park Place Hotel.

Found some other sites that show how cities have traded density for parking lots. So I took their photographs and made animated gif's out of them (sorry, at least the animated gifs aren't from an old geocities site).

The Atlantic on how parking lots ruined Cleveland's warehouse district: Cleveland's Disappearing Warehouse District, Then and Now



Thoughts on the Urban Environment has a similar example from St. Paul: The last 47 years have not been kind to 7 Corners



These images remind me of an online tool from MIT Media Lab called Place Pulse.

What they do is present two similar images from cities and present the question "Which place looks safer, more unique, or more middle class?" You're asked to click on your choice as quickly as possible. This gets repeated hundreds of thousands of times with people from all over the world and the results are grouped into what humanity as a whole regards as safe, unique, or middle class.

You can view the results without going through the process.

What is clear is the human brain perceives urban density as safer than parking lots.

Venice Calling

The Traverse City Commission will consider the Bayfront Plan tonight and what to do about the Spirit Of Traverse City.

I will be telling them I support moving forward with redeveloping Clinch Park without the train even though I have a child who cried when told this might be the last year for the train. (She stopped crying when told there could be a splash park instead and she said that sounded more fun and wouldn't be smelly).

Nostalgia can wound a city.

Venice, Italy was once the center of an ocean-going empire and a key city-state during the Renaissance. But today it has become obsessed with nostalgia and the residents who remain do not let it change. In response the city is literally fading away. It is drowning under a rising ocean and losing population because no one there actually does anything. Or as The Guardian said in 2006: Population decline set to turn Venice into Italy's Disneyland

For comparison, in 1929 New York City tore down the historic Waldorf Astoria hotel to build the Empire State building. A new Waldorf Astoria was built and the Empire State Building became the city's iconic structure.

Let's be less like Venice and more like New York. I want Traverse City to be more than an amusement park in city form that people come to visit. I want it to be a city full of people who do things.

The new Bayfront Park will likely bring more stature to TC than the Spirit of Traverse City has. It is a design that encourages people to do things. This doesn't mean the train cannot be kept and moved elsewhere, but a train at Clinch Park is incompatible with the vision that was developed.

On a final note, please don't take this to mean that in every case we should move out with the old in with the new. Like everything else, a city needs to find a balance between what it keeps and what it replaces with something better. Like how I choose to live in a 19th Century house full of 21st Century technology.

Don't Go Sailing On Novemer 10th

The Storm seemed a lot like a November witch except in came in October.

Wunderground lists five storms that were true witches: Nov. 10th: A Day of Weather Infamy for the Great Lake States and the Upper Midwest

Kansas City's temperature dropped from a record high 76° at noon on Nov. 11th to a record low of 11° by midnight. Springfield, Missouri dropped from a record 80° at 3pm to 13° by midnight. Oklahoma City fell from a record 83° at 1pm to 17° by midnight. Chicago dropped from 74° at 1pm to 13° by midnight, and the Monthly Weather Review stated "one man was overcome by heat and two others frozen to death in the short space of 24 hours".

Separate But Equal

The Mississippi basin and Great Lakes are equally wonderful waterways, but I too would like to see them separated. Or turn Chicago back into a swamp instead of a flowing river. After all, the original name was chicagoua which was the word for the wild leeks which grew in the swampy ground there. The Chicago river barely flowed at all. How about turning the whole thing back into a wetland?

Doubtful, but this is hopeful.

See ChiBusiness: Bill calls for study delinking Lake Michigan, Chicago River to stall Asian carp

I was on a fishing charter recently and the sentiment on the boat was overwhelmingly for blocking out Asian carp no matter the cost.

Looking Backwards And Forwards

Much thanks to Traverse City and Ray Minervini for preserving and renovating the Grand Traverse Commons. It is part of what makes Traverse City so remarkable and servers as a demonstration to the rest of the country.

See NPR.org - Old asylums decay, but some eye pricey restoration
and
Kirkbride Buildings

The Timber Industry In Leelanau County

The Leelanau Enterprise has a short article on the forest products industry of Leelanau County - Timber county's first 'cash crop'