"Let's go for a walk?" I suggested a day twenty years ago to Tom, an American friend. It was a beautiful sunny day, welcomed by a pleasant breeze. Tom said: "Why?" m'è The anecdote reminded the other day, when the postman delivered me a postcard advertising "Rockville Town Square", a campaign that in a few months will give us the citizens of Rockville - Washington, DC area, Maryland - a precious commodity downtown, the city center. What will be, inform the board, "an urban environment with restaurants and cafes around the town square, but most will walkable, that is walking. In short, you can take a walk the streets and drink a coffee (opening in spring).
however, Rockville is no joke: it has 57,000 inhabitants (one hundred thousand with the surrounding clusters), is the capital of a rich county by nearly one million of souls, has several leading companies, especially in the field of biotechnology. It has a couple of metro stations of a beautiful and clean in half an hour that you download in the heart of Washington. Has the Rockville Pike, local version and the original of the Grange-Noranco but with six lanes, and with much longer many more stores. It also has a cultural gem: the tomb of the famous novelist Francis Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. But no city center. None. The vacuum.
When I landed for the first time in Rockville, two years ago, a good European, I went to seek the center. I found - in front of a cinema of thirteen screens with adjoining parking - another huge parking lot, but empty, surrounded by a row of abandoned shops, all enclosed by wire mesh. And a good number of whimsical signs that proclaimed solemnly "Town Center". who had bombed Rockville?
Simple: in the '60s and '70s was over here (as in the other eight hundred cities in America) 's urban renewal, the "urban renewal" in the name of order, cleanliness, traffic and streamline the centrality of the car had demolished the existing buildings (such as "mixed use", as they say here: cottages in the store, over the owner's house, in the Old World something normal, an oath in the New) to make way for wider roads, abundant parking and offices in profusion. And a huge mall , a hypermarket covered.
was a disaster: the largest emporio dell'ipermercato fallì dopo sei mesi, trascinando nella rovina tutti gli altri e nell’oblio l’intero centro cittadino. Nel ’93 Doug Duncan, allora sindaco di Rockville, si sfogò sul Washington Post: “quando attraverso a piedi il centro della nostra città, mi coglie un senso di disperazione.” E propose di abbattere il complesso dell'ipermercato, che venne demolito poco tempo dopo (qui si fa così: ci provi e vedi come va; se non ti garba, radi al suolo e ricominci). Risultato: un deserto urbano nel cuore della città. Ancora oggi, a Washington, la confessione d’abitare a Rockville viene accolta da un sorrisetto ironico: “Poveraccio, che jella…”
Then it was just launched the Project of the Great Revival: three hundred fifty million dollars to spread over five acres of bars and restaurants, shops and boutiques, 650 apartments and a plaza. And Roger Lewis, one of the designers of the complex and professor of architecture at the University of Maryland, has recently jumped on the Washington Post daring analogies between the building center and the heart of Rome: "Rockville Town Square has the potential to become a destination lively and animated, a bit 'as Campo dei Fiori ", which will be announcing" a special urban space, the character more European than American (okay, okay, we count, but please forget the Urbe).
And now we are waiting all spring, take us back to the village square. Yet walkable, "walking", because in the meantime, the Americans discovered the pleasure to stretch their legs. And to drink a cup of coffee the way God intended, not served him into paper cup, but in the classic ceramic cups. Starbucks, the streets will be sufficient for explicitly ordered here, which means "to drink here," so the bartender understands that should quickly find the only two true-or two cups that came with the bar.
Meanwhile, in the meantime, I continue to walk the streets of my neighborhood, nice and warm as those of the film, with houses and 4x4 parked on driveways and lawns green and colorful autumn trees. But without a shadow of a coffee.
(© VASCO DONES;
published in the weekly Swiss ACTION in 2006)
When I landed for the first time in Rockville, two years ago, a good European, I went to seek the center. I found - in front of a cinema of thirteen screens with adjoining parking - another huge parking lot, but empty, surrounded by a row of abandoned shops, all enclosed by wire mesh. And a good number of whimsical signs that proclaimed solemnly "Town Center". who had bombed Rockville?
Simple: in the '60s and '70s was over here (as in the other eight hundred cities in America) 's urban renewal, the "urban renewal" in the name of order, cleanliness, traffic and streamline the centrality of the car had demolished the existing buildings (such as "mixed use", as they say here: cottages in the store, over the owner's house, in the Old World something normal, an oath in the New) to make way for wider roads, abundant parking and offices in profusion. And a huge mall , a hypermarket covered.
was a disaster: the largest emporio dell'ipermercato fallì dopo sei mesi, trascinando nella rovina tutti gli altri e nell’oblio l’intero centro cittadino. Nel ’93 Doug Duncan, allora sindaco di Rockville, si sfogò sul Washington Post: “quando attraverso a piedi il centro della nostra città, mi coglie un senso di disperazione.” E propose di abbattere il complesso dell'ipermercato, che venne demolito poco tempo dopo (qui si fa così: ci provi e vedi come va; se non ti garba, radi al suolo e ricominci). Risultato: un deserto urbano nel cuore della città. Ancora oggi, a Washington, la confessione d’abitare a Rockville viene accolta da un sorrisetto ironico: “Poveraccio, che jella…”
Then it was just launched the Project of the Great Revival: three hundred fifty million dollars to spread over five acres of bars and restaurants, shops and boutiques, 650 apartments and a plaza. And Roger Lewis, one of the designers of the complex and professor of architecture at the University of Maryland, has recently jumped on the Washington Post daring analogies between the building center and the heart of Rome: "Rockville Town Square has the potential to become a destination lively and animated, a bit 'as Campo dei Fiori ", which will be announcing" a special urban space, the character more European than American (okay, okay, we count, but please forget the Urbe).
And now we are waiting all spring, take us back to the village square. Yet walkable, "walking", because in the meantime, the Americans discovered the pleasure to stretch their legs. And to drink a cup of coffee the way God intended, not served him into paper cup, but in the classic ceramic cups. Starbucks, the streets will be sufficient for explicitly ordered here, which means "to drink here," so the bartender understands that should quickly find the only two true-or two cups that came with the bar.
Meanwhile, in the meantime, I continue to walk the streets of my neighborhood, nice and warm as those of the film, with houses and 4x4 parked on driveways and lawns green and colorful autumn trees. But without a shadow of a coffee.
(© VASCO DONES;
published in the weekly Swiss ACTION in 2006)
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