• Washington D.C. has a grim land use situation near the Cleveland Park Metro station, where a low-rise strip mall is designated for historic preservation.
• This strip mall is an inappropriate use of the land given present-day economics and the existence of the metro station.
• In Chicago, a plaque commemorates the place where Barack and Michelle Obama shared their first kiss after their first date.
• Cities should invest more in telling their stories, such as installing signs in parks to explain who the park is named after and why.
• Mandating that old buildings stay up rather than be replaced as economics shift is very costly.
• It can be inconvenient not to have a level entry to your house, and regulations have benefits as well as costs.
• The city of D.C. has created a series of “neighborhood heritage trail” walking tours that bring you to various informational signs about the history of the neighborhood.
• The author suggests investing in more signage to tell the story of every park and school in every neighborhood of the city.
• The author also suggests redeveloping old buildings to create more subsidized housing units.
Published February 6, 2023
Visit Slow Boring to read Matthew Yglesias’s original post Commemorate history, don’t preserve old buildings