Between Ruin & Repair
City of Yes
<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!aTfH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb401e4b9-5227-47c2-809d-56a86f33a511_1456x816.png" target="_blank"><div class="image2-inset"><source type="image/webp" /><img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="816" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!aTfH!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb401e4b9-5227-47c2-809d-56a86f33a511_1456x816.png" width="1456" /><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image" tabindex="0" type="button"><svg fill="none" height="20" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" stroke-width="1.5" viewBox="0 0 20 20" width="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><title></title><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image" tabindex="0" type="button"><svg class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2" fill="none" height="20" stroke="currentColor" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" stroke-width="2" viewBox="0 0 24 24" width="20" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>For my final piece of the year—and my final “City of Yes, And…” paid subscriber bonus— I thought I would get into the backstory of last week’s alternate history essay, “<a href="https://www.ryanpuzycki.com/p/cities-for-all-mankind">Cities For All Mankind</a>.” Ironically, the seed of the piece was planted in a city that my fictional high-speed train bypassed: Providence, Rhode Island, where I attended the Strong Towns National Gathering in June. There, I was on a walking tour with local developer and housing advocate <span class="mention-wrap"></span>, who was taking us through the west side of downtown, an area that was subjected to <a href="https://www.ryanpuzycki.com/i/166600423/outtakes-urban-renewal-and-revival-in-providence">midcentury urban renewal</a>. Along the way, Seth made a <a href="https://www.ryanpuzycki.com/p/building-better-cities-from-the-bottom">comment</a> that’s been echoing in my mind ever since: “We’re living in the ruins of a former civilization, with no idea how they built it.”</p><p>That comment put into words something I’d been intuiting from my study of urbanism over the past several years: that cities are the default shape of human civilization—and that we lost something human through the various policies we inflicted upon them in the twentieth century. While doing a bit of research after my visit to Providence, I came across photos of the city as it was: neighborhoods of historic streets, vibrant communities, places that were and might still have been—all swept away as the bulldozers blundered through, carving highways and clearing so-called slums. The idea percolated throughout the year as I wrote about <a href="https://www.ryanpuzycki.com/p/the-slumless-city">urban renewal in New Haven</a>, <a href="https://www.ryanpuzycki.com/p/interstate-love-song">urban highways</a>, and the destruction of <a href="https://www.ryanpuzycki.com/p/the-banished-bottom-of-the-housing">single-room occupancy units</a>.</p><p>“Cities For All Mankind” was an effort to imagine what the world might look like today if we hadn’t aggressively, through public policy, pursued a different shape of human civilization—if we had not committed, at scale, these crimes against urbanity.</p><p class="button-wrapper"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.ryanpuzycki.com/subscribe?coupon=65538194&utm_content=183062405"><span>Get 20% off for 1 year</span></a></p>
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