B
building babel
Guest
The progressive public mood in the early '70's was with Sewell and the Save-Union Station-From-Metro Centre reformists. I don't think that what we now might characterize as NIMBY-ism would have seemed as wrong-headed to many progressive people in those days.
Wouldn't being pro Metro Centre in 1971 have been seen as akin to being pro-urban renewal? In the aftermath of, say, the battle against the Trefann Court urban renewal housing project, tearing down whole residential neighbourhoods for urban renewal and building Metro Centre high rise towers on vacant railway lands would have been seen as part of the same discredited urban renewal movement. Pro-development politicians were swept from power in the pro-reform election of 1972.
I think if this forum had been around in 1971 our opinions might have mirrored the mood of those times, with social issues rather than architectural ( "modernism" ) concerns taking the lead.
Wouldn't being pro Metro Centre in 1971 have been seen as akin to being pro-urban renewal? In the aftermath of, say, the battle against the Trefann Court urban renewal housing project, tearing down whole residential neighbourhoods for urban renewal and building Metro Centre high rise towers on vacant railway lands would have been seen as part of the same discredited urban renewal movement. Pro-development politicians were swept from power in the pro-reform election of 1972.
I think if this forum had been around in 1971 our opinions might have mirrored the mood of those times, with social issues rather than architectural ( "modernism" ) concerns taking the lead.