Cash poor, culturally rich?

It's an important point, and one have pondered on often enough.
Isn't this an odd case for a Christian to raise, though? - aren't all those monks bound for hell?

Actually they bulldoze them because they are falling down anyway.

Thoughtful post, Rod. In fact, the underlying issue also plays out in numerous places right here in the American West in a slightly different context. Some of my fellow environmentalists advocate saving beautiful Western locales by shifting them from resource-extractive economies (based on logging, mining, ranching) to tourism-based economies. Then guess what? The tourism-based economies aren't as benign as we had expected them to be. Often, people who once had "family wage" jobs as loggers, miners, cowboys, etc discover that jobs in the tourist industry tend to pay much less (often minimum wage). And then, tourists, retirees, second-home owners price up the real estate so much that locals can't afford to live there. Meanwhile, the tourism industry insists on dressing up the area in overdone caricatures of rural Western Americana (faux cowboy stuff, etc), thus altering the true cultural identity of the place.

The good thing is that this problem has been debated among environmentalists for several years now. The result is that many of us now recognize that "gentle use of the working landscape" can co-exist with a robust tourism industry, while being respectful of local culture. In other words, reform logging, mining and ranching (don't throw them out entirely) so as to preserve natural resources and scenic beauty, then tailor tourism to the local culture and traditions.

It's another example of a wise caveat: clueless do-gooders can wreak havoc when they don't understand the context of a local problem.

I just moved to a town with an amazing historical center after living in an area that is best described as "excessively suburban".

I now live in Frederick, MD, and the downtown is amazing, with many buildings dating from the Civil War period (when the city had both armies march through it on separate occasions). From what I've heard of the area's history, poverty had something to do with the downtown preservation (or at least, relative poverty). When the boom hit this area between the 60s to the 2000s, the area to my south was really built up (Gaithersburg Maryland is where I came from, and Montgomery County in general). Frederick was a bit too far north to get much development during the initial stage of the buildup. So while not poor, it was regionally poor - the money destroyed cohesive towns in Montgomery County, while Frederick wasn't nearly as touched. Gaithersburg and Rockville pretty much exist as sprawl - Gaithersburg has a small "Olde Towne", but that's not what locals think of when they think of Gaithersburg - they think of cul-de-sacs and small commercial plazas.

As housing prices got out of control in Montgomery County, people started looking to the outskirts of Frederick, so we have some developments too. However, there's some nice neighborhoods around here, and as I said, the downtown is gorgeous and is now protected by the Frederick Historical Council (who I've heard can be a bit overbearing, but I'd rather them be there than no one be there). Thus, the revitalization that has occurred in recent years has been built in with the downtown, instead of bulldozing it over.

Thanks for the Elder reference. I just booked it online at my local library. I just got The Geography Of Nowhere by Kunstler and The Old Way Of Seeing by Hale after reading Rod's book.

I made a pilgrimage to Fatima, Portugal, and was really appalled by the touristy stuff ("Fatiburger" and "The John Paul II Snack Bar" are on the main drag). It was awfully depressing ... but the basilica was beautiful, and the experience of Fatima was meaningful. Still, we got on the bus and went back to Lisbon when we were done staying there. The people who live there have to make their living some way.

A charming example of the Newburyport phenomenon that's close to Dallas (and also a really good family vacation destination) is Jefferson, Texas. It was the second largest town in Texas, behind Galveston, in the 1850s. Then, in the late 1860s, a natural dam broke (I think; it was something like that), and Jefferson's river was suddenly no longer navigable. The local economy, without what had been a very significant inland port, crashed overnight and stayed dormant for a century. Lots of folks came in during the 1970s and started restoring the old houses. Today, Jefferson has the largest intact 1830s - 1860s residential neighborhood in Texas. Really lovely, primarily plain-style Greek Revival architecture, with some Gothic-revival and Italianate mixed in.

But, to be fair, George really nails the trade-off. There's a lot of human suffering that went into preserving that architectural beauty.

I don't think people should feel obliged to stay poor because poverty meant they had prettier buildings. I'm supportive of people choosing voluntary poverty, but to feel you should remain poor for the sake of the architecture? That just strikes me as bizarre.

That said I'm uncomfortable with towns becoming tourist traps too. The loss of dignity often outweighs any wealth creation. Many Jamaicans live with rampant violence and poverty while fancy resorts nearby cater to pampered Americans. I'm not at all socialist, but I can see why that would tick people off.

It was the Galviston Hurricane and the Johnstown Flood.

This problem is a lot bigger than architecture.

If you help the poor just enough so that they survive at a low but decent level they may retain their picturesqueness and even the virtues we imagine them to have (I speak only of third world poor); if you help them enough to really "unpoor" them, what is to prevent them from thinking and acting like the corrupted rest of us?

Marian, I should have read your post completely before I commented.

I agree Reaganomics has unleashed the corporate beast, but the truth is that economic liberty and market mechanisms had been overly stiffled by the State to the point that nothing was working. Economic mobility is an important attribute of Liberty, and there has not yet been an Elite class whcih didn't seek to minimize that mobility, whether through Statist or Corporatist means.

And so we go back and forth between increasing corporate size, and increasing federal size, with the summation being power removed from oversight by The People.

We need larger State government (and bigger state houses), and a corresponding decrease in Federal overreach.

Yeah, Marian, I am!

New Hampshire. Among the largest Houses in the world.

Works like a charm. Come visit sometime. People are actually nice to each other.

Look at the miniscule representation

NH: there is approximately one Representative for every 3,000 residents
Illinois: 118 representatives. Population: 12,831,970 = ~ one for every 100,000 residents

Well of course it corrupt. Its too easy to buy off.

The problem with local government is rampant cronyism. (And I just realized that lobbyists in Washington are, in a sense, a sort of artificial cronyism.) My state, Georgia, was run by 'Democrats' for 100 years, but in actuality what that meant is that a bunch of guys decided who was running and those people got elected.

Then the Republican took over, and it's gotten less cronyistic and more...dumb. First not noticing we're running out of water, and then praying for rain as a solution. And, apparently, doing nothing else, except trying to steal part of Tennessee, now that we've had a tiny amount of rain. Heaven forbid we keep water restrictions, that's totally unneeded, we've got months of water now, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

Even more locally, I live in Lumpkin County, a county that had to sell off its public buildings to a newly-formed non-profit and then lease them back for a nominal fee as a scheme to keep from going into debt, which it can't do, because we, apparently, 'ran out of money' for no obvious reason except incompetence. Seriously. It wasn't some emergency or tax shortfall, they actually failed to balance the books. They failed to balance them rather spectacularly. (We've since bought our courthouse and other buildings back.)

Meanwhile, my father lives in Forsyth County, a place that was, for almost a decade, literally run by developers, who threw up as many houses as they could with no regard for infrastructure or impact fees or anything. It's a subdivision and stripmall hell, and let's just say a lot of people are look at the mortgage crisis, and all those houses, and getting really worried expressions on their faces.

Forsyth is also one of the counties that absolutely refuses to join MARTA, our mass transit system, because Forsyth County was apparently dropped on its head at birth. So Atlantans have the literally the longest commute in the country. And while other places have long commutes on train or subway, we're sitting idling our cars.

But I have to give credit, the failure of mass transit is a joint-incompetency project between the state, who refuses to recognize what's wrong with MARTA and actually fund it and even force it on the counties, and suburbs of Atlanta, who refuse to actually do anything at all that would cost the slightest bit of money, preferring instead to constantly build more roads, which is somehow free here in Georgia. (Except they won't build the Outer Perimeter, as that would get in the way of building more houses.)

So, no. Not a lot of respect for local governments from me.