Friday, June 13, 2008

Hate Crimes, Loving Responses (Part 2)

The response to Hate Crimes (like some of my previous stucco diatribes) has been intensely supportive. Desperado critic and Arts & Crafts au fait Jane Powell offered her endorsement, and has penned a more extensive, similarly flavored piece for publication. Stucco Liberation Front leader Lisa Auerbach added choice comments. Hernandez Hernandez intriguingly blamed the auto industry, and its consumerist conditioning. Michelle Emard delivered flyers (pictured) utilized by the Anaheim Colony Historic District.

Many communities distribute similar hand-outs, and most tout the importance of education.
With perhaps a touch of cynicism, I argue for regulation, HPOZ's, design review boards, etc. Typically though, some lunk-head objects to the oversight, 'I don't want the Man telling me what I can and cannot do with my home,' goes the riff.
"Move to the outback then," begins my vinegar-y response, "because the Man already exercises control, with occupancy and use restrictions, zoning, permitting processes and building codes."

'Are we to saved from ourselves?' sneer the property rights zealots.
"We're mostly prisoners of our times," I might respond, undeterred by accusations of patriarchy, "sufferers of historical astigmatism, guilty of egregious environmental disregard (of both the built and natural). Who doesn't regret the destruction of Penn Station, the herding of low income African Americans into bunkerized, neo-brutalist towers, hill-topping, and the loss of architect masterworks like the Larkin Building, or Sullivan's Zion Temple?"
'So is it planners you're championing, or planners you're decrying?' question the critics.

"I'm championing preservation, simple preservation".

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