The Death and Life of Ordinary American Towns: Part I

Farmers Market at Ralph Edwards Park.
http://www.torcnm.org/images.html 

Jan Jacobs begins the Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) succinctly. "This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding." She says she "shall mainly be writing about common, ordinary things: for instance, what kinds of city streets are safe and what kinds are not; why some city parks are marvelous and others are vice traps and death traps..." The attack Jacobs leveled was against 20th century urban planning practices starting from the 1940s, but especially evident after WWII. A major target was the rise of "single-use" zoning over "mutli-use" zoning. For those not in the planning field, single-use zoning this means that we carve up places and give them one solitary and single purpose, usually through legally-binding zoning laws. Jacobs believed that places where living, working, playing, enjoying cultural activities, and that included light industry or manufacturing and all kinds of other activities (hence 'multi-use') were vibrant places. The pattern of single-use zoning remains strong however, most notably in America suburbs. This is part of an urban planning legacy that sought rational, well-ordered, separate, distinct places for our modern compartmentalized lives. Jacobs pretty much condemned these practices as soul crushing, community destroying and deadening. This type of planning favored automobiles and new ideas on economic development, such as shopping malls. Hand in hand with single-use zoning was the practice of urban renewal. The legacy of urban renewal, or 'urban removal' as it is commonly known, was an overwhelmingly bleak one in America. Traditional and vibrant neighborhoods, landmarks and buildings were razed to 'make way' for the clean, well-ordered and rational modern city, most of which were utter failures. These were not just urban policies however. These ideas were everywhere.

New Mexico has two examples of how these city planning policies impacted our own city and town landscapes. There is Las Cruces to the south. In the 70s, a handful of gorgeously important historic buildings were razed. They were torn down to make way for a downtown strip mall which was to be the central component in a "downtown revitalization" plan. It was the death of downtown Las Cruces, which has been a vivid and beautiful place. The buildings included the St. Genevieve Parish, the Loretto Academy and the Rio Grande Hotel. Then there is Albuquerque to the north, and the similar destruction of the grand Alvarado Hotel. According to an editorial that ran a few days after its destruction, the hotel, which was in decline, was meant to be a a central component of downtown preservation and revitalization, but the city lacked the funds and will to save it. And so it became a parking lot. Across America built history was lost to memory.

The Loretto Academy building in Las Cruces.
http://archives.nmsu.edu/exhibits/loretto/index.html

Photo from the story Tearing out the Heart of Las Cruces by Denis Chavez
http://www.pasodelsur.com/news/chavez.html

Alvarado Hotel. Razed for parking, now the site of a vaguely creepy 'replica' that serves as a transportation center.
Photo from Duke City Fix.
http://www.dukecityfix.com/profiles/blogs/the-alvarado-has-come-back-for

Historic postcard photo of the Alvarado in the 1940s? Ebay auction site (sold).

So what does this have to do with the town of Truth or Consequences? A few very important things. The most important to this project, this place study on Truth or Consequences, is reflection. Jacobs sought to understand the "death and life of great American cities," through grounded case studies on place and a great deal of place reflection. In my own small way I too want to understand the death and life of "ordinary American towns" to some degree. I am spending a stretch of time in a place I am both immensely fond of and believe to be a fantastically illustrative case study on revitalization, preservation, economic growth and stagnation, opportunity, cohesion and conflict. In short, a lot of the things that small towns are struggling with across America. Jacobs book is a classic in urban planning. There are some great books on rural planning, but the focus on urban centers remains strong. The movement of urban dwellers to small towns, who join both the rooted, the recent transplants and those returning home, has refocused some attention on small towns. "Main Street," after all, was the foil against the lying, cheating, stealing and other evil excesses of "Wall Street." The "character" of a lot of small towns draws people. This is not the moral character generally, although it is often the characters. A great deal of the appeals, however, is the character of the built environment: the buildings, streets, landscapes and physical structures of a town. A lot of small towns escaped the 'rational' madness of planners and elected officials. They still have a core of historic buildings, traditionally built neighborhoods and business blocks. 

Some small towns were spared the destruction of urban renewal/removal by the virtue of their size. This worked in two ways. The first was the growth of cities. This was largely the result of wage labor overtaking agriculture labor and subsistence agricultural livelihoods, essentially stealing an entire generation from rural America who went in search of work and opportunity in urban centers. This was especially prevalent after WWII. The second thing that saved a lot of small towns from losing their 'hearts,' their landmarks, historic buildings and downtown business blocks, was the economic decline that accompanied the loss of the work force and traditional rural industries. The decline in small agriculture, base economic industries, such as mining and ranching, mom and pop stores shutting their doors, and the increase in urbanization, suburbanization, mechanization, big box retail and similar economic models impacted every landscape across America. But in small towns, and some lucky urban cities, there was no money to tear down vacant but lovely 19th and early 20th century buildings and put up those disco-hot models from the 1970s or make way for parking lots. Do note that buildings, like fashion, go out of style, but, if well-made, can come back as hip vintage. A good city or town fabric should be multi-era as well as multi-use. What looks dated now might be the cool boutique or bistro location in 20 years. The well-made part always applies but is not always evident. Place making is about what we do, like farmer's markets and walking trails, but it is also about what we don't do, like not tearing down a good building or not coming together to make things and places happen.  

Photo from chuckmancollectionvolume12.blogspot.com. 

There are a lot of things going on right now in rural America. Some of those vacant building are getting new life. People are rediscovering historic downtowns and the vibrancy of muli-use places. People are starting to realize that suburbs and other landscapes built for automobiles at the expense of being built for people, who do happen to own and love cars, are not sustainable or pleasant models. Handmade and local crafts and foods are experiencing a renaissance. Don't get me wrong here. These is not a blog about shiny-bright cumbaya moments where small town folk are showing that can-do rural spirit of sufficiency, calling out each other by name out on Main Street and trading baskets of peaches for legal advice. But it is a blog about some of those good things, so it may reflect a little of that singing around the campfire feeling. There is a lot of hard-work going on in Truth or Consequences. This means a lot of good-tasting, fun-loving, cultural shaping, community and collaborative place making happening. What may look like a bunch of seemingly random posts in my chapter 4 dissertation blog may in fact be a bunch of random posts. This is how it seems to me at the moment. I am sure there is some agreement among my handful of readers. The hope is at the end, and maybe even towards the middle, that patterns will emerge, a few worthy observations will be made, skills in interviewing and reflection will get better, and this will ultimately result in tidy and not-so-random record of a year in this town. 

Much of my critique of both the town and of larger place narratives, what we say about places, and place making practices, what we do in places, will happen in my dissertation. Critical assessment and critical theory, in the old-fashioned academic sense of looking carefully at ideas of power, influence, historical repression, violence, race, class and other ways that the power of place is realized and enacted, will not be entirely absent from these writing here. But at present I just don't know enough. And I don't think this is the right place for too much academic speak. But even as a glass half-full and plenty-enough-to-share kind of person, the questions about the state of the well and aquifer need to be followed up and investigated. But until then, bottoms up. 

Returning to the original focus of planning, a few buildings have come crashing down in Truth or Consequences in the last few weeks. The first was the downtown Buckhorn Salon, long-abandoned but still charming enough to warrent a lot of small town abandoned biulding 'character' shots on-line. According to the Sentinal, there was concern that the building could collapse on its own during Fiestas. As another story by Frances Luna in the Sentinal tells a more complete story:  

If the City of Truth or Consequences had a skyline comprised of its downtown buildings, it has forever been changed. The once hopping Buckhorn Bar on Main Street was demolished into a pile of rubble, hauled offand now sits as two vacant lots Once the thriving downtown pub for locals, miners, ranchers and visitors alike, the Buckhorn Bar had set motionless for nearly 30 years, being used only by vagrants, graffiti artists and the owners as a storage. Earlier this year the City of Truth or Consequences pushed on with the condemnation proceedings, after notices had been sent to either bring the building into a safe condition or have it demolished, failed. Once on the historical register, the Buckhorn’s owners, Jim and Bettie Brannon fought the city’s demolition movement to no avail. The Brannon’s cited attempting to get grants to return the building to a useable state. However, it appeared as though the years of abandonment had ruined the historical bar beyond a saving grace. The destruction order was given for the week of July 2. But the traditional trait of the owners carried on, and at the eleventh hour the Brannon’s asked the city to give them one more week in order that they could retrieve the contents from the building, including the bar, which were said to be sold. Their request was granted...

Photo from gpkmedia.com

Photo from the Luna Sential story (see above)

Photo by author 8/7/2012

The other building that came down was the 'disco-hot' addition to the lovely historic downtown building by the City Hall. I remember going to dances there in the 8th grade, and felt a little nostalgic about seeing it come down. All of that lovely lava-rock and the feeling of a school portable ultimately had to go though. There will be a charrette, I hear, on August 24th and 25th to start the conversation about what to do with this prime center-town location. A "charrette," is a french word for 'little cart,' and comes from the design practice of professors sending a little cart around for student drawings, and the mad rush to complete them before deadlines that had students flinging themselves onto said carts. What is the appeal to design professionals, architects, planners and the like, to use this obscure word to bring the public together? Because the Historic Preservation and Regionalism graduate and professional certificate program is housed in the UNM School of Architecture and Planning, I am generally the only non-design professional in the room. Like the RC & D Councils of the last post, there is inevitably a shared and secret language in any discipline. Perhaps the word is used because in the process of telling people what it is, you can also stress how important creative and collaborative planning to creating great places. Half full? 

Photo by author 8/8/2012 

A charrette, according to The Town Paper (http://www.tndtownpaper.com)  is "an intensive planning session where citizens, designers and others collaborate on a vision for development. It provides a forum for ideas and offers the unique advantage of giving immediate feedback to the designers. More importantly, it allows everyone who participates to be a mutual author of the plan." According to Wikipedia, a "charrettes take place in many disciplines, including land use planning, or urban planning.  In planning, the charrette has become a technique for consulting with all stakeholders. This type of charrette (sometimes called an enquiry by design) typically involves intense and possibly multi-day meetings, involving municipal officials, developers, and residents. A successful charrette promotes joint ownership of solutions and attempts to defuse typical confrontational attitudes between residents and developers." So basically, it is a public meeting where ideas and solutions to "what to do" with places are put forth. A good friend recently told me that the quickest way to ruin a public space is to give it to the public. 

Photo by author 8/8/2012

Collaboration is  more than just the public though, is meant to bring all parties to the table--public, private, professional, blue-collar, business, creative, young, old, rich, struggling, optimist, nay-sayer--the whole lot. Sort of like Fiesta crowds. But most people who I have talked to repeat the idea that the the same handful of folks show up all over the place. But this is the heart of the heart of Truth or Consequences, and the consequences of this decision are far-reaching. It would be nice to see the glass overflowing in this instance. 

Fiesta 2012
http://www.torcnm.org/images.html 

City panoramic looking south.
http://www.torcnm.org/images.html