How have the places you love (or hate) changed?

[skyward]

Congress4NewUrbanism: James Howard Kunstler & William Fulton
James Howard Kunstler and William Fulton, two of the world's top urban thinkers according to Planetizen.com, take a provocative look at the future of Buffalo and the NY region.​

This was quite interesting and really made me think about the importance of an environment, be it urban or rural, and how places inevitably change.

Please comment on the video and/or tell us how have the places you love (or hate) changed as you have gone through life. If you are very young and fell nothing much has changed, well then tell us how you imagine your town, or city might look in the future.

It strikes me that from about the 1960's (or even earlier) onwards a lot of really quite ugly buildings started springing up left, right and center. I wonder was it because of the availability of cheap abundant energy? Before it took a lot of effort and time to construct large buildings and they were built to last centuries.... now building can go up in a few months, and within a few short years can start to look quite shabby.

Or was it the need to work with ever-growing populations concentrated in various urban centers?

What will our cities look like in the future? Will their populations increase, or will the trend reverse with more and more living a rural life?

 

[jw4833]

Well...I'm not sure if my response is in the direction you may hoped to be but ... In the community that I live in...its a very diverse little city by the lake and at one time...because it vast cultural appreciation...my community was known not only for that but also it large gay population. It was the "norm" to see same sex couples walking down the street displaying PDA as well as lesbian and transgender individuals being themselves with no one bothering them. However, over the last couple of years...although the community is still diverse and gay populated, unfortunately...there are areas of my little community that has not been able to be themselves anymore without being attacked by certain individuals from the other side of town who have moved into the neighborhood and still have issues accepting the LGBT community as a whole. Therefore, because of this ....there are a lot more police cars patrolling these areas for safety purposes. One thing about my little city is that the police will arrest you in a hot minute with no hesitation for causing unnecessary problems that the city is not accustomed to. Nonetheless...where I reside is away from all of that which is possibly because I am right around the corner from the police station and the mayor resides down the street from me as well. Yet...this is the change I have seen in my city over the past few years.