christopherboffoli
Somehow after reading this post, and clicking through to read the cited links, the issue of the trees seems to be a bit of a red herring.
I suppose how one reacts to this post depends on whether one values the romantic notion of a plot of land occupied by some trees and an old log cabin (which I admit, does have its own charming appeal) over increased density, improved use of available space in a large city which will be growing considerably in the coming decades, and housing units for new people in our community who will (based on the likelihood of the kind of people inclined to purchase skinny aluminum boxes) potentially be well-educated/creative/productive/innovative/positive additions to our community, our economy and our tax base.
I’m generally against those developers who game the system for their own financial gain without considering the community and surroundings in which they build. I also abhor a lot of the tasteless, bland, cookie cutter construction that lacks creativity and architectural integrity. And I favor architects and developers who are sensitive to topography and environment, not to mention those who are adept at finding design solutions to the issues of bridging the gap between the scale of new structures and the older neighborhoods around them.
But where you lose me in these types of conversations is when it starts to get bogged down with a lot of unstated fear (fear of change, of new people, fear that we’re not going to have space to drive our large cars everywhere and park them for free within six feet of our desired destination, fear that we’re moving away from some kind of 1950’s Levittown dream of detached single-family houses surrounded by the requisite chemically dependent and water thirsty lawn. And how whatever gets built in 2010 somehow has to adhere to some kind of context to a neighborhood of prosaic ramblers or watered-down Craftsman style houses because someone made an arbitrary decision back in the 1920’s or 1950’s so that now we have no latitude to use a different design language because a modern building simply would “stick out.”