Reburbia- Urban Renewal Deja Vu?

There is a valiant attempt to make-over ugly strip mall architecture into livable communities. Here’s a link to the subject: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/the-suburban-makeover/ or http://www.re-burbia.com/2009/08/04/sprawl-building-types-repair-toolkit/

I hope we learn from our mistakes. Back in the 70s, urban renewal removed most of the old and beautiful architecture, and replaced it with the ugly strip malls and sprawling intersections we have today. Manchester, NH is an old mill town built from bricks- millions and millions of them. Granite Square was a neighborhood intersection much like these plans describe. It had 3-4 story brick buildings, all connected, with apartments on the upper floors and stores at the street level.
This one intersection had a hardware store, two barber shops, a diner, a men’s clothing store, pharmacy, bakery (I used to buy donuts here when I "walked" to school), fish market, liquor store, fruit and butcher shop, and small movie theater. It was all torn down in the name of “Urban Renewal” in the 70s and replaced with a sprawling ugly intersection of traffic lights, a strip mall and a high rise housing facility for the elderly. In the process, they took a beautiful, antique walkable neighborhood and turned into a commuter quick stop area, only accessible by car- with very little consideration for pedestrians.

The saddest thing about this calamity- the elderly who moved into the high rise were left with no place to go and no way to get there. They became residents of an island building without the support infrastructure that could have made it livable. I hope we learn from these mistakes. These plans offer hope.