UP, UP AND AWAY.
We build in some strange ways.
Up, for instance.
The ultimate purpose of building is so that we can escape the effects of adverse weather conditions and the minimize our chances of being exposed to such dangers. Plus more recent, new ones.
In so doing, we often add to such peril by reaching into higher, faster air currents or by needing increased structural support underneath it all to hold the massive upward thrust steady.
I would suppose the need to do so stems all the way back to the Tower of Babel in Biblical times and a need Man has felt all along - a desire to be up there with his God. Or, more precisely, that he may appear to be more godlike rather than bound to the relative flatness of Earth. I wonder if the same feeling has caused man to climb high and higher mountains in a semi-secret effort to stand side-by-side with his God.
One might think that, after the experiences of 9-11-01 some serious thought about building super-high buildings might be seriously considered. It was, for a short time, but the desire to construct a higher than ever ever building again on the site of the blasted Trade Towers in New York City proved to be the driving force behind any construction effort in spite of all the memorial edifice pretense.
When we witness the total devastation the average hurricane can spread along our coastal areas and well inland at time, one of the first things we think about is rebuilding where we should not have built so intensely to start with many years ago. A scattered, rather space population relative to the potential loss might make better sense than using fewer real-estate square inches and piling more and more on top of what is added each time around on reconstruction. It seems far easier to do that and raise flood insurance ,rent cal or purchase fees to make up for the potential difference ....fix it, in other words so "no one really loses any money". We should be more careful about building and re-building along risky coast lines, other waterways - rivers, lakes and even small streams. It is amazing how many people occupy areas of land public ally acclaimed as "Flood Plain Areas." Many business firms and commercial ventures play the same flood-insurance hide and seek...."now you see it; now you don't" magic game.
We also build and re-build ramshackle instant slums in areas which have been drained of all potential hope of success decades ago, often in “downtown” areas we also call “historic” sites which should have been erased from city maps long ago and redone as public parks or parking lots.
We have, in recent years, taken to building shopping arenas in barn-like roofed units surrounded by parking lots on all sides. Just how this craze will terminate is yet to be discovered, but it will probably have something to do with sheer shopper' s fatigue. What enterprise firm is even now developing a campaign designed to take advantage of the extended amounts of walking shoppers are now expected to do as routine?
We are constantly being admonished to build a better world, but the plans by which we are to work are not yet available. We are still ad libbing the old architectural tunes we played in ukulele times.
Where are our creative builders?
A.L.M. August 25, 2004 [c573wds]
