February, 2010 - American Dirt.

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8 articles

Rethinking the Behemoth, Preserving the Banal, Part III: Mundane microbuildings have a place in contemporary urban life.

February 26, 2010 3 Comments

This post concludes a three-part series on a high-profile new development in the southern Indiana city of Evansville. The city’s Mayor and Council have approved (and now completed) the demolition of a block of century-old commercial buildings on the historic Main Street to make way from a new sports arena, after negotiations floundered for buying

Rethinking the Behemoth; Preserving the Banal, Part II: Why downtowns cannot feast on behemoths alone.

February 24, 2010 5 Comments

In the Part I of this post, I looked at a troubling example of the intersection of economic development, site selection, and historic preservation. The Mayor and City Council of Evansville, Indiana, have decided to demolish a block of century-old commercial buildings to make way from a new sports arena, after negotiations for the previous

Rethinking the Behemoth; Preserving the Banal, Part I: Understanding the reasoning behind locating new sports venues.

February 21, 2010 12 Comments

While I have made risky assertions in the past (and justifiably been raked through the coals for a few of them), this particular post may take the cake. I hoped to solicit family members to take the photos I needed of a cluster of buildings in the city of Evansville, Indiana, but at this point

Extreme makeover—small business edition.

February 17, 2010 3 Comments

If it’s built to last, the conventional middle class American home may be a far more versatile structure than we credit it. As homes age, if their interior layout falls out of fashion, or the neighborhood around them declines economically, all too often they eventually face neglect, abandonment, and, eventually, the bulldozer. What a shame,

Lifestyle main streets.

February 14, 2010 6 Comments

In this widely suburbanizing nation, it is enough that our historic urban centers must continually seek assert their viability through new methods of socioeconomic or political re-branding in order not to implode. But what about the small towns, far removed from metro areas? In many cases they imploded long ago, devoid of a raison d’être,

An ecoburb before the word existed.

February 10, 2010 6 Comments

“Nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks that wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile [sic] inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in

Storefront diagnosis? Down but not out.

February 7, 2010 6 Comments

Retail fatigue is generally easy to spot in both urban and suburban settings: it typically involves a high vacancy rate, occupancies that comprise undesirable tenants, or a combination of the two. But what are these “undesirables” exactly? They usually fall into two categories. The first one is predictable: strip clubs, adult video/novelty stores, windowless package

Retroactive land banking—urban and suburban.

February 3, 2010 4 Comments

Despite the fact that I always include images in my blog posts, more than a few have been on the wordy side. So I am going to try to include at least one post each month that is dominated by images, with just enough accompanying text to provide some background. I’ve already done this once

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