a little slice of me part II: the more things change, the less they stay the same

Every little kid is vaguely cognisant of his or her surroundings growing up, but I have come to realize that I took true delight in seeing other cities and what made them different from where I lived even as a kid-o. And being keenly aware of this intangible "sense of space" I was deeply affected by the changes that were made in my city, be they for good or bad, even when I no longer lived there.

When I was in the third grade I went on my first trip (that I could remember) to a big city. I remember being enamoured with the city that is Minneapolis and being in awe of their skywalks, an ingenious invention in a city that is colder than it has any right to be in winter.

My passion for cities grew when I visited New York City for the first time as a high schooler when we moved out to CT. I had always wanted to visit New York and to be swept up into the hustle and bustle of the pre-holidays season was fantastic. But I loved it that much more when I visited in college on my own, for a job interview, and was able to navigate it based on its simple, and frankly intuitive, grid plan. This is coming from someone who can get lost in her own town with just two missed turns and no idea how to "just retrace her steps."

My interest in downtown revitalization, another key focus of mine, was sparked when my dad took me to the Historic Third Ward in Milwaukee. I've mentioned this before ("Gentrification," Tuesday, August 12, 2008)and Milwaukee is definitely the sweet, but dowdy cousin of chic, sophisticated Chicago, but that didn't stop them from creating a Historic Third Ward, which has created its own little flair in a charming city.

Another turn of events that affected my understanding of cities was when the city of Wausau, home of the majority of my childhood, location of the the beloved Franklin Street, and the "eh" library tore out a huge section of the downtown to make a downtown park (see John Michlig's blog, "Sprawled Out: the Search for Community in the American Suburb) for a picture of what it looks like now). I won't be back there until Christmas and when I do it'll be covered in snow, so, please enjoy his pictures (and hard work).

My dad, I think, is a latent, amateur architecture buff too and certainly a lover of beautiful things and we would go "downtown" on Saturdays and have coffee and donuts and look at the old pre-war buildings that have stood the test of time- and frankly had been immune to the need for historic preservation as rarely did anyone ever want to demo a building. And if so it'd be like wanting to send grandma out into the cold world with nothing but the clothes on her back- you just don't do it 'cause why would you?!

Even for the people of Wausau who have no idea what urban planning is, this was a change and a shock. We had moved away by the time this restructuring of the downtown occurred, but upon coming back it was a sliver of what it must be like to come home to one's house having burned to the ground or waking up after a car accident and seeing that you have lost a limb. I, in no way wish to diminish the unspeakable tragedy that such circumstances are to those who have experienced them personally. But I will say that seeing the downtown looking everything and nothing like how it used to is like losing a part of yourself. It did drive home the point that every place has a "sense of place" and if you change one thing, you change everything, no matter how subtlely.

I won't even go into detail about how my beloved high school was turned into apartments/condos. It was an ingenious move on the city developers' part, but it literally meant that one can't go home, or back to school, again. I'd be less affected if I'd attended Wausau West, an ugly relic of 1970's architecture- grey masonry globbed together in a vaguely circular form with little to no windows. But I attended a beautiful pre-war building that even served as a city bomb shelter owing to the fact that the walls were three feet thick! I haven't seen the new apartment complex so I have no aesthetic judgment regarding the renovation. Suffice to say I hope that the people who live there now enjoy living in a part of history.

I attended college in Savannah, GA, which constantly harps on its "Jewel Plan" to anyone within shouting distance. And while it was aurally fatiguing to hear, it is a beautiful city that I highly recommend to anyone. Each square is unique and beautiful, ugh, like a jewel. But it was previous events, experienced much earlier, that really made me aware of a city and its impact on a person, no matter how small the change, or the person that is affected by it.