what to do with old buildings & open spaces

These two topics might seem unrelated, but I think that they actually intertwined with one another:  the opportunity and potential of a blank slate (with respect to planning a park or building homes) and people's extreme adoration or abhorrence for historic structures.

I think this connection is illustrated by the Mueller Development in Austin.  All the sudden the city had a large parcel of land close to the city center with which to do whatever they pleased.  They chose to use it for affordable housing to deal with the large lack of such housing in Austin.  They also are developing it in other ways, with retail, grocery stores, health care, and parks and public spaces (this is interesting and informational, but kind of unrelated to my point: http://www.kxan.com//dpp/news/investigations/mueller-bursts-with-major-developments )  But even as the city develops this area in many different ways, they still try to keep a connection to what was there before: an airport.  They kept the old air-traffic control tower and adorned it with colorful Christmas lights, and the new HEB planned is going to have an aviation theme.  (on Google Earth you can still see the old runway... I think they should keep that somehow, perhaps as a type of main street or promenade, but that's probably not viable)  It was just an airport, not an old historic church or anything like that, but still people feel an attachment and the need to preserve what was there before.  I think is simple and not very controversial example of this relation between the ideas of blank slates and old objects.

This relationship is more prevalent and important in scenarios like the Holly Street Power Plant and the Freemason Lodge in Mart, TX.  I think the basic program of the Holly Street project has been decided, but not the specifics.  They are going to expand the park, which I think is a great idea considering its location in East Austin along the river.  And it is my understanding that the power plant itself is destined to be completely removed, with no trace of it remaining.  In this case, the people o the community hated the building and saw it as a symbol of oppression and wanted it gone, regardless of what kind of spatial opportunities the infrastructure cold provide.  The power plant was so offensive to them that they wanted to just erase the piece of history from memory.  In Mart, the opposite is true.  The Freemason lodge is in total disrepair, but the people who use it would defend the structure at all costs.  Even though the building is basically ready to fall over, the history embedded in it is something irreplaceable to the community.  This situation presents many unique opportunities, whether they eventually decide to demolish it, somehow preserve it, or something in between.  There may not be tons of money available for the project, but the fact that the space is there and the building is so important to the people gives this project mush potential.  Personally, I think that decommissioning the building but keeping elements of the actual structure as a memorial, and making the site into a park, and perhaps eventually build a community center to keep and expand on the functionality of the lodge would be a fine way to treat this project.

There is a segment towards the end of the "Urbanized" documentary we watched in class about the redevelopment, for lack of a better word, of parts of New Orleans affected by Hurricane Katrina.  There is boom in building of new and architecturally interesting houses, and houses are nice and necessary, but they are not all the the area needs to rebuild itself, and frankly they aren't designed to match the character of the area and I doubt that the people of the community really identify with them.  The documentary profiled a public art artist who had a project of placing stickers on abandoned and derelict building throughout the affected districts.  They were made to resemble those "Hello, my name is:" stickers but they read "I wish this was:"  People passing by these buildings in their community would write in their desires for the structures.  Responses ranged from 'a park' or 'McDonalds' to 'not here' or 'owned by someone who cared.'  In the end this project was really just a piece of art, but I think that methods like this could be a great way for planners to communicate with residents of a community and learn how they feel about existing or historic structures in their neighborhood or their attitudes and ideas towards the development of public places.