The old church on this site, and the pretty fabulous building at K and Connecticut, are now gone - to be repalced with empty lots for the forseeable future. That is a crime. What’s also a crime is that the church that was demolished has no permanent home for the time being, and the soup kitchen in its basement that served the local (and now growing) homeless population has been lost.

Developers should have to prove that they have construction financing nailed down before they should be granted a demolishion permit. Now, who knows what will actually get built on those sites? Parking lots for now, I’d bet.

Although I would argue that most planners this generation, myself included idolize Jane Jacobs more than Robert Moses. Death and Life of American Cities was the book that made me want to be planner. Kind of ironic, since technically Moses was the planner and Jacobs the activist.

So yes, in 1950 it was all about putting highways through cities. Times change…now its all about putting bike lanes through them

Dear urban planner. give us architects some credit. Just like Urban planners there are good and bad. Architects weren’t the ones who built huge freeways cutting through our cities in the middle of the century, were they? ; )

You can’t dismiss that the lower part is a church and that churches are not necessarily block killers. They can also engage the public realm. Not everything needs to be a starbucks or La tasca to reach the public.

I hope.

Architects, repeat after me:

“I must not build ARTitecture.
ARTitecture is the block-killer…”