The broken windows theory, which basically says that if you take care of the little stuff the big stuff doesn't happen, is generally regarded as accurate and as a very effective strategy to improve urban quality of life.
The downside, of course, is that when you enforce the little stuff, poorly informed morons will call you out as petty.
on a building that's otherwise well maintained - i.e. no boarded up windows, graffiti, overgrown weeds - implies that the neighborhood is (or will turn into) a high crime area.
Sad that we as a society take petty complaints based solely on aesthetic objections (which are purely subjective in nature) so seriously.
"For Rent signs" only appear in low income neighborhoods.It might attract some illegals, I'm guessing that Thurston Howell the 3rd is demanding the owner to remove sign, or else Mr Howell will address it at the next Community meeting.
I mean, the basis of the citizen's complaint is that it's in a residential area. Can't have signs about residences being available in a residential area, can we? That sort of thing just encourages new residents.
Calm down, anon (not verified) on Fri, 08/01/2014 - 7:28am, you're foaming at the mouth.
So what if one Beacon Hill resident complains about a For Rent sign. One Beacon Hill resident put it up. But, you decide that ALL Beacon Hill residents are snotty yuppies.
Any other stereotypes you'd like to announce? Do you have something nasty to say about ALL residents of Mattapan because Adam posts something disparaging about one resident? How about Roslindale? Do you even know where Roslindale is? I thought not.
I think CLW is a private way, thus the Architectural Commission's rules are not applicable. Unless it can be seen from a public way, in which case: 50 lashes!
I do find this sign ghastly. I don't mind for rent signs where I live, but I haven't seen a sign that ugly in a while. The for rent sign I see are blue and white, or red and white, not NO TRESPASSING orange and black. I wouldn't have sent it to Citizen's Connect though. But I would like the neighborhood rep to contemplate talking to the landlord, just out of humor.
Wouldn't it be hilarious if the landlord is anti terra-cotta or yellow ramps? Also, I think a call or note to the landlord might be taken well. After all, quite a few renters may find that sign a turn-off as well, it may well cost the landlord $100 worth of rent a month, due to mere perception. Or maybe the interior color scheme is just as hideous!
The law prohibits posting advertising on the exterior of buildings in the historic district. If you don't like the law, work to change it, but quit bitching at the people who's merely asking for it to be enforced.
It's a trifling, minor offense and a minor case of helping yourself to something you're not legally entitled to take. -- I'd rate it as morally equivalent to habitually parking overtime in a metered space on main street while you commute to work elsewhere, thereby depriving main street merchants of a bit of their customer flow... And posting it to Citizens' Connect and asking for enforcement seems the entirely appropriate response in both cases.
Unless you link to the relevant statute, your assertion of what the law says remains an assertion. As someone noted, signage laws often have real-estate exemptions. We won't know whether the law you're referring to has such an exemption unless somebody links to it. Since you're the one making the claim, the somebody is properly you.
1. In addition to design review, all signs shall conform with the requirements of the Boston Sign Code (as
amended). The term “sign” shall include flat board signs, applied letters, projecting signs and display
boxes.
That sign code is your second link. It says:
SECTION 11-1. Signs in Residential Districts.In any residential district
there shall not be any sign except as follows:
. . .
(c) One "For Sale" or "For Rent" sign, not exceeding eight
square feet in area, advertising the property on which such
sign is located.
Your third link appears to be a PDF image of the document in the first link.
Show me where it says you can't put a For Rent sign on a door.
@tricky crayon- As I said before, I wouldn't call Citizens Connect over this "problem". I doubt it would even motivate me to write that note or call, though I bet a nicer sign would increase the landlord's chances of getting a renter.
I can just say, even though I favor a libertarian view here, I understand where the original citizen complainer is coming from, due to the aesthetics of it. I do some design work, so I can't be completely oblivious. Obviously, I can't be that disapproving of TOO much stuff, though. I do live in Dorchester, after all.
It is hard to find an apartment without expensive fees. This landlord isn't even paying for an ad, so the new tenant can save on the finder's fee. Of course the landlord needs to spend money on background checks to avoid dead beats.
Funny thing, a friend of mine was just posting pictures from Montreal, with "A Vendre!" signs in the possibly older historic district windows, same color and font.
We have more of a hysterical district as these various little chickens seek some roost while decrying the falling sky of hardware store sign preciousness encroachment.
If any of you reactionaries have actually been down CLW and seen the sign, you'd know that it's not about renting the apartment, it's advertising for storage units elseware. It's advertising.
Once the thing does its job, it goes away. I have a feeling that's the reason it is secured by string.
A more determined effort to bruise delicate Hill fifi's would involve thumb tacks or, even worse, cheap plastic map tacks.. the horror.
It's like someone tossed some paranoid schizophrenia into an OCD cocktail to make this koolaid they drink there.
They so live in fear that the artificial status property valuations that prop their esteem up will go poof.. in a flash ..if these micro encroachments are allowed to go unchecked.
They so live in fear that the artificial status property valuations that prop their esteem up will go poof.. in a flash ..if these micro encroachments are allowed to go unchecked
That's how it happens - it's not like a bunch of gangbangers move in by the 100's and the neighborhood goes to hell in an instant and it actually has nothing to do (at least day by day) with property values. People who live in these neighborhoods value the historic nature and appeal of the neighborhood. Sure it's a "little thing", but that's why the historic neighborhoods have nice things. We sweat the little stuff (and often pay to fix it ourselves).
Some things we can't do - unlike in other parts of the city - like deface the property of others - so we have to lodge an official complaint and have the "authorities" handle it. Nobody's going to argue this is a massive priority - but this is the kind of vigilance that keeps the historic areas looking nice. Property values are just a derivative of sweating the details.
Instead of mocking, maybe others should imitate a formula that works very well.
Was the "Broken Windows" theory ever validated or just repeated enough that people take it as gospel.
Well, two questions - what the hell does a "for rent" sign have to do with declining values anyway? Would they rather people quietly rent it to drug dealers on the internet than go to their neighbors, first?
BH doesn't allow solicitation. It's the same sort of thing as up in Stowe, VT where McDonalds can't have the arches and must conform to a paint colour standard.
It's very small and squat thanks to the restrictions on how tall buildings can be there and it has a very short sign. The building is green and white. It's easy to miss.
it must be so small that even McDonalds corporate doesn't notice it, because it's not on their site, nor can I find it on google maps.
Also, several of the buildings on Main St. in Stowe are several stories tall - are you sure that you're not thinking of some other Vermont town? Essex? Barre?
I think there are those that have seen the theory validated and others say it doesn't work. I think the conclusion is, it depends on what you are talking about - plus, as someone who's familiar with this stuff - there's no perfect control. It seems to depend on the experiment/data set of observations.
The point is that all these little things add up. Maybe it's a sign now. Tomorrow people are putting up storm windows. Then you get chain link fences enclosing the rare parking space and it ends up with the "trailer additions" on the to floor (if you don't know what I'm talking about - walk down Comm Ave and look at the top floors of some of the buildings that were added before zoning/permitting prohibited this kind of expansion).
This is perhaps so small an issue to be absurd, I'll agree. Beacon Hill, Back Bay, South End Bay Village etc. didn't get that way by accident. It takes thousands and thousands of little things like this (and some compromises along the way to accommodate modern life) to get it to work.
"Broken Windows" has lost much of its original credibility, now that we have 25+ years of experience with it:
--When J. Q. Wilson first published his hypothesis in 1982-- and that's what it was, not a theory-- by his own admittance, he did not have enough evidence to back the idea that by addressing the small things, overall crime might be diminished. However, it was quickly glommed on to by many folks including Koch and Bratton as if it were fact. Eventually, Wilson himself, dazzled by being hailed as a genius, forgot that even he cautioned that correlation is not causation and further research was needed.
--The original 1982 proposition only addressed the idea that reducing property crime and street crime would reduce more dangerous crime. While it's reasonable to assume that property values improve if street crime is reduced, Wilson did not posit that "broken windows" will increase or stabilize values. He was looking at ways of ending white flight and making the majority law-abiding citizens of crime-ridden neighborhoods safe, not protecting property values per se.
To put it another way, you could do all the "Broken Windows" policing you want in the middle of Detroit but it still won't bring back the factory jobs that caused the unemployment and depressed property values.
-- The obvious problem is that the type of crime targeted ends up criminalizing a class of people. White collar crime is not diminished in "broken windows" target zones. Domestic crimes are not lower. The crimes targeted are crimes mostly committed by the poor or homeless. "Broken Windows" doesn't end poverty; it treats a symptom of it by imprisoning people for minor crimes.
Right now, a large scale study of "Broken Windows" is being done at UT (I think; definitely a Texas university). This will be the first controlled review, ever, of BW.
Wilson's last revision of his theory, whence last I graced a criminology course, was called 'Disordered Communities'. He completely agreed w/ @bibliotequetress's report about criminalizing poverty. He now has this new name for his theory because you can create orderly communities without oppressive police presence.
I recall in his NYT piece I read for school, from before that even (so god knows how old it was), that he was suggesting architectural and design methods to create order. Instead of tackling and summonsing every fare hopper, why not just use the full height gate design that we use at JFK's back exits to just prevent it? Use graffiti-resistant materials and design for instance. And increasing community involvement so that crime can be prevented, through effective community-police partnerships like neighborhood watch.
Not George Zimmerman's kind, but the kind in Chinatown now, where elders wear vests and walk around talking to people, and the detail cop for the watch is always in eye site. Thus showing the community's 'organization' and effectiveness at repelling crime. I'm curious what more studies will continue to say.
But Wilson's ideas through revision have not been bad. Everyone wants to live in a nice place, where the rules make sense and are sensibly enforced and law-abiding is encouraged by design, and not by what appears to be a police-occupying power: like the old, flood the streets w/ rookies after graduation that NYPD did until Bratton came back. Now he puts desk cops out while the rookies learn their traditional roles in the station and with senior partners.
Not Brockton, but take Nantucket compared with say New Bedford. Yes, there some differences so I'm oversimplifying but basically you have two seaside towns, rundown whaling ports (you laugh, but Nantucket was in very grim straits for years after the collapse of the whaling industry--that's why there are very few Victorian buildings on the island and there was very little building in general and the pre-1850 buildings were preserved). In the 1960s, one guy bought up a huge part of the downtown waterfront and really kicked up the whole historic preservation thing. Rules and regulations up the wazoo and it helped turn the island, for better or worse, into a kind of museum and a huge tourist attraction and money magnet. Like beacon Hill, there are hundreds of properties for sale but you're not allowed to have a For Sale sign on your lawn. You're not allowed to have a magenta door or vinyl siding or a thousand other things. New Bedford...whole different story.
Anywho, "ignorance and misinformation". I think the message is pretty clear to most regarding both. And as this is a public forum for debate and discussion, I also think I will respectively decline your offer of cease and desist.
Listen - nobody's having heart palpitations over a cardboard "For Rent" sign. But when you buy (or rent) a place in a historic neighborhood, it comes with rules. If you don't like the rules, go live somewhere else (or get on the appropriate boards to change them).
I agree - it's a very petty thing. But so was making me spend $400 extra to buy a certain kind of window for my bedroom that overlooks the alley. It's not the one petty thing. It's the hundreds or thousands that quickly add up when you don't pay attention to the details.
I used to think a lot of this was stupid too. Then I met a lot of people who had thought about this a lot more than I had and came to appreciate why things are done a certain way. Criticize if you like, but it works. Beacon Hill has some nice things because it has money. It has a lot of other nice things because the residents work hard at having nice things that don't even cost any money. Maybe that's whey they have money in the first place?
What a terribly uninformed and sweeping generalization. Nice all those section 8 housing residents in Beacon Hill had "the right parents."
Also great to know that financial success in life means absolutely nothing to an individual's goals and hard work, it's all about your mom and dad. The ignorant jealousy is astounding.
Maybe you too could live in BH if your mom and dad weren't drunks who beat you resulting in you becoming a drug addict with massive credit card debt. See how that works?
How about I came from a decent family but didn't need handouts to make my way. I don't need some retarded ass progressive blog to state that I'm so bloody privileged and only got success because mommy and daddy and have no fucking free will of my own. Some people have, sure, but your dumbass blanket statements mean nothing about a huge assortment of people. They are extremely insulting if anything.
My sister went to art school (without family support, because my parents earned their way and so did she and I)and struggled her first few years out doing deviantart comissions for pennies before she saved enough to go back to school for journalism. She worked her way up, wrote for the Phoenix, then the Globe and lived in Beacon Hill. She earned her own way through struggle.
How did our parents support her? By letting her pursue her dreams her own way.
I served in the military in the reserves while in school full time and earned my own way. It just so happens I majored in something that pays well and I was committed to it.
Do you have any idea how insulting it is to say to a man in his 30s that his entire working life is only built on being handheld by his parents decisions and that everything he did after 18 is only the result of shadow parents behind the scenes that paved the way?
I would bet you that very few of the people who live on Beacon Hill made much of their money from a trust fund/inheritance. That's true nationally, probably for Beacon Hill as well.
The estimates I've seen are that 80% of millionaires are first generation wealthy in their families and according to at least one professor - they do work harder:
By and large, the wealthy have worked hard for their money. NYU sociologist Dalton Conley says that “higher-income folks work more hours than lower-wage earners do.”
My experience with the wealthy is that they are often the grandchildren of immigrants and the children of college educated middle to upper middle class parents.
Kinda like it takes 3 licks to get to the center of a tootsie pop, it takes 3 generations to make it in America.
In the reverse, I've also seen stats that show it takes about 3 generations to destroy a fortune as well.
As in first generation millionaires, but their parents had a quite comfortable living and were always able to help them through school, with rent on their first apartment in the big city, etc.?
So are you trying to argue that no one is in control of their own destiny, people not born "special" can't ever make it in life, parents with money never push their children to be independent or children of those who have money are stupid spoiled automatons?
All and all it sounds like a message to the youth of today to not bother trying and just to hate those with more wealth than them.
Mind you this is the same argument people use against successful minorities. They only got where they are because of "affirmative action."
Can you please let our governor and president in on that?
Or how about our friend Swirly who seems to have done OK by her own frequent admission without the rich parents. How about the Fresh Air kid we hosted when I was little. Now she lives in my hometown in a house my parents couldn't dream to live in.
There are lots of roads to prosperity in this country. We all have some inherent advantages. we just need to figure out what they are.
The vast majority of successful people are successful because of something THEY did - not their parents. Isn't part of the point to work hard so your kids can go on to bigger and better things - and maybe have an easier life? Again - the stats are pretty clear - most of the "successful" people in the world are that way because they worked hard and long to get there, not because somebody gave them a boatload of money.
Really subscribing hard to the American Dream hooey, huh? Just work hard/smart/something I did to get where I am, by golly, and you'll get good things!
To be precise, we're talking about the 80% of 1st generation millionaires? Which make up some proportion of the top 10% of income earners? Any sociology statisticians want to chime in here? I'm just curious if anyone knows where all the numbers lie.
Also, there's an issue of income vs. wealth. That is money vs. capital. Working sclhubs who have made it to 1mil by sheer effort and smarts, vs those that invested capital again and again. I won't make any judgments, just thought I'd mention it.
the stats are that 80% of millionaires are the first in their family to be millionaires.
Top 10%? I think you need to make somewhere just a bit south of $1 million in income to be a 1%-er on the income scale. The most recent stats on wealth- I think from 2012 - put the 1% cutoff at about $10 million (I think that includes primary residence).
Nobody's arguing that it's easier to get there when you start a couple rungs up the ladder. But most of those who make it to the top rungs don't start anywhere near there. And once you get there, your family doesn't usually stay there for more than a few generations.
More and more wealthy families are even setting it up so that their children don't even get much from Mommy and Daddy Bigbucks - they want their kids to make it on their own. They'll get lots of help - but not lots of money - at least by their standards.
I think those billboards are grandfathered from before the historic designation. The Hill would love to be rid of them - but until they fall down - I don't think there's much they can do - and even then maybe they have the right to rebuild. No expansions and no new ones though.
Stevil, did you mean to say that in other parts of the city, people can deface the property of others? It reads like that but I'm guessing that's not what you intended.
It looks like there's an awful lot of writing in the box where one would expect just a phone number. And there's something else on the doorknob. Maybe it's not the "For Rent" sign itself that's the problem....maybe it's the stuff that isn't legible (at least by me) in the photo?
Those commenting here who are overly outraged with the irrelevant goings on of Beacon Hill neighbors are exhibiting a nasty case of reverse clutching pearls.
Comments
Oh My!
If you clutch pearls hard enough, will they turn to diamonds?
No, they'll just turn into a
No, they'll just turn into a stick shoved up their rear end
Broken windows theory
The broken windows theory, which basically says that if you take care of the little stuff the big stuff doesn't happen, is generally regarded as accurate and as a very effective strategy to improve urban quality of life.
The downside, of course, is that when you enforce the little stuff, poorly informed morons will call you out as petty.
See "validation of broken windows theory" ...
... below: http://www.universalhub.com/2014/citizen-complaint-day-simply-ghastly-si...
Right. Because a "FOR RENT" sign
on a building that's otherwise well maintained - i.e. no boarded up windows, graffiti, overgrown weeds - implies that the neighborhood is (or will turn into) a high crime area.
Sad that we as a society take petty complaints based solely on aesthetic objections (which are purely subjective in nature) so seriously.
"For Rent signs" only appear
"For Rent signs" only appear in low income neighborhoods.It might attract some illegals, I'm guessing that Thurston Howell the 3rd is demanding the owner to remove sign, or else Mr Howell will address it at the next Community meeting.
Inappropriate signage
Gasp! It's not HISTORIC! I might swoon. Pass the smelling salts!
Please please please ...
... tell me that BPL has an old photo with a for sale sign showing in it.
Stop with the pearls, willya?
I mean, the basis of the citizen's complaint is that it's in a residential area. Can't have signs about residences being available in a residential area, can we? That sort of thing just encourages new residents.
Call 911
Oh my God!!! Someone call 911!!
Should have been historical
Should have been historical accurate "F'r Rent - Irish need not apply"
Yuppies
Are just horrible, move home!
Sorry, but Beacon Hill is
Sorry, but Beacon Hill is these people's spiritual and historic homeland. They're already home.
Calm down, anon (not verified
Calm down, anon (not verified) on Fri, 08/01/2014 - 7:28am, you're foaming at the mouth.
So what if one Beacon Hill resident complains about a For Rent sign. One Beacon Hill resident put it up. But, you decide that ALL Beacon Hill residents are snotty yuppies.
Any other stereotypes you'd like to announce? Do you have something nasty to say about ALL residents of Mattapan because Adam posts something disparaging about one resident? How about Roslindale? Do you even know where Roslindale is? I thought not.
I suppose..
it would have passed muster if they hung an iPad on the door with "For Rent" in some sort of colonial era font.
Or if it was a grey granite
Or if it was a grey granite sign with grey lettering.
I think CLW is a private way,
I think CLW is a private way, thus the Architectural Commission's rules are not applicable. Unless it can be seen from a public way, in which case: 50 lashes!
Does it include...
Does the rent include handicap-friendly sidewalks in the neighborhood?
That entrance
needs a concrete ramp.
What's it supposed to say?
Ye olde apartment for rent? Should it be a wooden sign, swinging from a chain?
There goes the neighborhood!
There goes the neighborhood!
Citizen's Complaint: Ahistorical Street Parking on Beacon Hill
Simply ghastly.
Why can't we just banish
Why can't we just banish these people to Rhodes Island?
Didn't we just go through
..a round of strenuous denials twisted in knots about how they aren't petty idiots while being petty idiots in the course of strenuous denials?
I do find this sign ghastly.
I do find this sign ghastly. I don't mind for rent signs where I live, but I haven't seen a sign that ugly in a while. The for rent sign I see are blue and white, or red and white, not NO TRESPASSING orange and black. I wouldn't have sent it to Citizen's Connect though. But I would like the neighborhood rep to contemplate talking to the landlord, just out of humor.
Wouldn't it be hilarious if the landlord is anti terra-cotta or yellow ramps? Also, I think a call or note to the landlord might be taken well. After all, quite a few renters may find that sign a turn-off as well, it may well cost the landlord $100 worth of rent a month, due to mere perception. Or maybe the interior color scheme is just as hideous!
Is it a right
to live without occasionally seeing a thing you disike? Good lord.
Either follow the law or change it.
The law prohibits posting advertising on the exterior of buildings in the historic district. If you don't like the law, work to change it, but quit bitching at the people who's merely asking for it to be enforced.
It's a trifling, minor offense and a minor case of helping yourself to something you're not legally entitled to take. -- I'd rate it as morally equivalent to habitually parking overtime in a metered space on main street while you commute to work elsewhere, thereby depriving main street merchants of a bit of their customer flow... And posting it to Citizens' Connect and asking for enforcement seems the entirely appropriate response in both cases.
Citation, please
Unless you link to the relevant statute, your assertion of what the law says remains an assertion. As someone noted, signage laws often have real-estate exemptions. We won't know whether the law you're referring to has such an exemption unless somebody links to it. Since you're the one making the claim, the somebody is properly you.
Citation, you're welcome
https://www.cityofboston.gov/environment/pdfs/beaconhill_guidelines.pdf
http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/35a0f8ed-9b20-...
https://www.cityofboston.gov/images_documents/BHAC%20Enabling%20Legislat...
Here we go
Your first link says
That sign code is your second link. It says:
Your third link appears to be a PDF image of the document in the first link.
Show me where it says you can't put a For Rent sign on a door.
right in the first link.
Sorry about the 3rd link it was meant to be the text of the enabling legislation.
Look at your first quote again.
The first 5 words.
As I said before, I wouldn't
@tricky crayon- As I said before, I wouldn't call Citizens Connect over this "problem". I doubt it would even motivate me to write that note or call, though I bet a nicer sign would increase the landlord's chances of getting a renter.
I can just say, even though I favor a libertarian view here, I understand where the original citizen complainer is coming from, due to the aesthetics of it. I do some design work, so I can't be completely oblivious. Obviously, I can't be that disapproving of TOO much stuff, though. I do live in Dorchester, after all.
For Rent sign seen as chance to avoid fee
It is hard to find an apartment without expensive fees. This landlord isn't even paying for an ad, so the new tenant can save on the finder's fee. Of course the landlord needs to spend money on background checks to avoid dead beats.
An historically accurate "For Rent" sign, at that location,
...would be a red light.
We have a winner!
We have a winner!
+ eleventy!
+ eleventy!
Funny thing, a friend of mine was just posting pictures from Montreal, with "A Vendre!" signs in the possibly older historic district windows, same color and font.
Montreal takes a touch of modernism
..like a hardware store sign in stride.
We have more of a hysterical district as these various little chickens seek some roost while decrying the falling sky of hardware store sign preciousness encroachment.
If any of you reactionaries
If any of you reactionaries have actually been down CLW and seen the sign, you'd know that it's not about renting the apartment, it's advertising for storage units elseware. It's advertising.
....Oh.
Never mind.
Well in that case we better
Well in that case we better call out the National Guard!
It's just your generic hardware store sign.
I've heard they are known to be transient.
Once the thing does its job, it goes away. I have a feeling that's the reason it is secured by string.
A more determined effort to bruise delicate Hill fifi's would involve thumb tacks or, even worse, cheap plastic map tacks.. the horror.
It's like someone tossed some paranoid schizophrenia into an OCD cocktail to make this koolaid they drink there.
They so live in fear that the artificial status property valuations that prop their esteem up will go poof.. in a flash ..if these micro encroachments are allowed to go unchecked.
Broken Windows
That's how it happens - it's not like a bunch of gangbangers move in by the 100's and the neighborhood goes to hell in an instant and it actually has nothing to do (at least day by day) with property values. People who live in these neighborhoods value the historic nature and appeal of the neighborhood. Sure it's a "little thing", but that's why the historic neighborhoods have nice things. We sweat the little stuff (and often pay to fix it ourselves).
Some things we can't do - unlike in other parts of the city - like deface the property of others - so we have to lodge an official complaint and have the "authorities" handle it. Nobody's going to argue this is a massive priority - but this is the kind of vigilance that keeps the historic areas looking nice. Property values are just a derivative of sweating the details.
Instead of mocking, maybe others should imitate a formula that works very well.
One question
Was the "Broken Windows" theory ever validated or just repeated enough that people take it as gospel.
Well, two questions - what the hell does a "for rent" sign have to do with declining values anyway? Would they rather people quietly rent it to drug dealers on the internet than go to their neighbors, first?
It.is.advertising.
It.is.advertising.
BH doesn't allow solicitation. It's the same sort of thing as up in Stowe, VT where McDonalds can't have the arches and must conform to a paint colour standard.
Signage ordinances always
Signage ordinances always have exceptions for real-estate signs. But who knows maybe Beacon Hill's the exception to the exceptions.
Ugh, again the sign isn't
Ugh, again the sign isn't advertising real estate, but for storage unit rentals in East Cambridge if I remember.
It's transient.
And tiny.
It's like a note on the door saying "Joey I had to go to the packy... back in 20 minutes."
Where exactly do the minuscule minutiae of micromanaged boundaries settle?
The best part is obliviousness to how stupid it all sounds.
It's like you high value area boosters have shit on your shoes that you can't smell while the rest of us hold our noses.
Wait a minute! There's a McDonalds in Stowe?
Where? Are you sure? I think there's one in Morristown, but Stowe? Say it ain't so!
It's very small and squat
It's very small and squat thanks to the restrictions on how tall buildings can be there and it has a very short sign. The building is green and white. It's easy to miss.
Not to be too flip, but...
it must be so small that even McDonalds corporate doesn't notice it, because it's not on their site, nor can I find it on google maps.
Also, several of the buildings on Main St. in Stowe are several stories tall - are you sure that you're not thinking of some other Vermont town? Essex? Barre?
It's been a while, could be
It's been a while, could be another town I suppose. Maybe it closed. The last time I remember seeing it it must have been, oh, 2003?
It's not actually a McDonalds
It's a Chinese knockoff called McDuckalds.
Try the Big Yak.
Both
I think there are those that have seen the theory validated and others say it doesn't work. I think the conclusion is, it depends on what you are talking about - plus, as someone who's familiar with this stuff - there's no perfect control. It seems to depend on the experiment/data set of observations.
The point is that all these little things add up. Maybe it's a sign now. Tomorrow people are putting up storm windows. Then you get chain link fences enclosing the rare parking space and it ends up with the "trailer additions" on the to floor (if you don't know what I'm talking about - walk down Comm Ave and look at the top floors of some of the buildings that were added before zoning/permitting prohibited this kind of expansion).
This is perhaps so small an issue to be absurd, I'll agree. Beacon Hill, Back Bay, South End Bay Village etc. didn't get that way by accident. It takes thousands and thousands of little things like this (and some compromises along the way to accommodate modern life) to get it to work.
"Broken Windows" has lost
"Broken Windows" has lost much of its original credibility, now that we have 25+ years of experience with it:
--When J. Q. Wilson first published his hypothesis in 1982-- and that's what it was, not a theory-- by his own admittance, he did not have enough evidence to back the idea that by addressing the small things, overall crime might be diminished. However, it was quickly glommed on to by many folks including Koch and Bratton as if it were fact. Eventually, Wilson himself, dazzled by being hailed as a genius, forgot that even he cautioned that correlation is not causation and further research was needed.
--The original 1982 proposition only addressed the idea that reducing property crime and street crime would reduce more dangerous crime. While it's reasonable to assume that property values improve if street crime is reduced, Wilson did not posit that "broken windows" will increase or stabilize values. He was looking at ways of ending white flight and making the majority law-abiding citizens of crime-ridden neighborhoods safe, not protecting property values per se.
To put it another way, you could do all the "Broken Windows" policing you want in the middle of Detroit but it still won't bring back the factory jobs that caused the unemployment and depressed property values.
-- The obvious problem is that the type of crime targeted ends up criminalizing a class of people. White collar crime is not diminished in "broken windows" target zones. Domestic crimes are not lower. The crimes targeted are crimes mostly committed by the poor or homeless. "Broken Windows" doesn't end poverty; it treats a symptom of it by imprisoning people for minor crimes.
Right now, a large scale study of "Broken Windows" is being done at UT (I think; definitely a Texas university). This will be the first controlled review, ever, of BW.
Wilson's last revision of his
Wilson's last revision of his theory, whence last I graced a criminology course, was called 'Disordered Communities'. He completely agreed w/ @bibliotequetress's report about criminalizing poverty. He now has this new name for his theory because you can create orderly communities without oppressive police presence.
I recall in his NYT piece I read for school, from before that even (so god knows how old it was), that he was suggesting architectural and design methods to create order. Instead of tackling and summonsing every fare hopper, why not just use the full height gate design that we use at JFK's back exits to just prevent it? Use graffiti-resistant materials and design for instance. And increasing community involvement so that crime can be prevented, through effective community-police partnerships like neighborhood watch.
Not George Zimmerman's kind, but the kind in Chinatown now, where elders wear vests and walk around talking to people, and the detail cop for the watch is always in eye site. Thus showing the community's 'organization' and effectiveness at repelling crime. I'm curious what more studies will continue to say.
But Wilson's ideas through revision have not been bad. Everyone wants to live in a nice place, where the rules make sense and are sensibly enforced and law-abiding is encouraged by design, and not by what appears to be a police-occupying power: like the old, flood the streets w/ rookies after graduation that NYPD did until Bratton came back. Now he puts desk cops out while the rookies learn their traditional roles in the station and with senior partners.
Yes. it's all that is really needed
..to transform Brockton. The little things.
Those who are unlikely to benefit from this neurotic charade lack skin in the game along with a reason to have any.But mocking it is a ball.
Real estate value is speculative and cyclical.
If it were some rock solid thing, the worry over a transient hardware store sign on a string wouldn't rise.
And then you have the usual outsized neurotic fear that comic mockery in a popular metro blog will bring the whole card house down.. that's a bit OCD.
Ornette Coleman once told me..
"People will always try to make their nightmares your nightmares and those graveyards have endless room... You'll never fill em up."
Have mercy on those of us who struggle with these importance assertions and be glad no one is throwing rotten produce at you.
Well actually...
Not Brockton, but take Nantucket compared with say New Bedford. Yes, there some differences so I'm oversimplifying but basically you have two seaside towns, rundown whaling ports (you laugh, but Nantucket was in very grim straits for years after the collapse of the whaling industry--that's why there are very few Victorian buildings on the island and there was very little building in general and the pre-1850 buildings were preserved). In the 1960s, one guy bought up a huge part of the downtown waterfront and really kicked up the whole historic preservation thing. Rules and regulations up the wazoo and it helped turn the island, for better or worse, into a kind of museum and a huge tourist attraction and money magnet. Like beacon Hill, there are hundreds of properties for sale but you're not allowed to have a For Sale sign on your lawn. You're not allowed to have a magenta door or vinyl siding or a thousand other things. New Bedford...whole different story.
New Bedford's starting down the same path
Much of the downtown has been declared a Historic District, and it's starting to look pretty nice again.
Does "nice things"
include handicap access ramps?
Can we please stop
Can we please stop contributing to the ignorance and misinformation regarding the handicap ramps in BH?
Who? What? Where?
Hey, are you a friend of Bob Leponge?
Anywho, "ignorance and misinformation". I think the message is pretty clear to most regarding both. And as this is a public forum for debate and discussion, I also think I will respectively decline your offer of cease and desist.
Happy Friday!
Yes. Gray. Granite
Listen - nobody's having heart palpitations over a cardboard "For Rent" sign. But when you buy (or rent) a place in a historic neighborhood, it comes with rules. If you don't like the rules, go live somewhere else (or get on the appropriate boards to change them).
I agree - it's a very petty thing. But so was making me spend $400 extra to buy a certain kind of window for my bedroom that overlooks the alley. It's not the one petty thing. It's the hundreds or thousands that quickly add up when you don't pay attention to the details.
I used to think a lot of this was stupid too. Then I met a lot of people who had thought about this a lot more than I had and came to appreciate why things are done a certain way. Criticize if you like, but it works. Beacon Hill has some nice things because it has money. It has a lot of other nice things because the residents work hard at having nice things that don't even cost any money. Maybe that's whey they have money in the first place?
Ah, yes, the hill residents have
money and "nice things" because, gosh darn it, that work so much harder than the rest of us poor slobs.
Happy Friday!
Smarter
Not harder.
Right
They were smart enough to choose the right parents to be born to.
Now that's initiative!
What a terribly uninformed
What a terribly uninformed and sweeping generalization. Nice all those section 8 housing residents in Beacon Hill had "the right parents."
Also great to know that financial success in life means absolutely nothing to an individual's goals and hard work, it's all about your mom and dad. The ignorant jealousy is astounding.
Maybe you too could live in BH if your mom and dad weren't drunks who beat you resulting in you becoming a drug addict with massive credit card debt. See how that works?
Just borrow $20K from your parents!
Doesn't everyone?
Just troll when you can't
Just troll when you can't refute your comment. Good one.
Evidence
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/07/22/2338241/its-not-just-the-roy...
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/51292/1/__Libfile_repository_Content_Karagianna...
http://prospect.org/article/wealthy-kids-are-all-right
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CEkQ...
I could go on ... and on ... and on ...
How about I came from a
How about I came from a decent family but didn't need handouts to make my way. I don't need some retarded ass progressive blog to state that I'm so bloody privileged and only got success because mommy and daddy and have no fucking free will of my own. Some people have, sure, but your dumbass blanket statements mean nothing about a huge assortment of people. They are extremely insulting if anything.
My sister went to art school (without family support, because my parents earned their way and so did she and I)and struggled her first few years out doing deviantart comissions for pennies before she saved enough to go back to school for journalism. She worked her way up, wrote for the Phoenix, then the Globe and lived in Beacon Hill. She earned her own way through struggle.
How did our parents support her? By letting her pursue her dreams her own way.
I served in the military in the reserves while in school full time and earned my own way. It just so happens I majored in something that pays well and I was committed to it.
Do you have any idea how insulting it is to say to a man in his 30s that his entire working life is only built on being handheld by his parents decisions and that everything he did after 18 is only the result of shadow parents behind the scenes that paved the way?
In MLA format please
In MLA format please
Goals & hard work
are contributors, but it sure does help to have a leg up in the first place. That's the real point here.
Citation
I would bet you that very few of the people who live on Beacon Hill made much of their money from a trust fund/inheritance. That's true nationally, probably for Beacon Hill as well.
The estimates I've seen are that 80% of millionaires are first generation wealthy in their families and according to at least one professor - they do work harder:
My experience with the wealthy is that they are often the grandchildren of immigrants and the children of college educated middle to upper middle class parents.
Kinda like it takes 3 licks to get to the center of a tootsie pop, it takes 3 generations to make it in America.
In the reverse, I've also seen stats that show it takes about 3 generations to destroy a fortune as well.
"first generation wealthy", huh?
As in first generation millionaires, but their parents had a quite comfortable living and were always able to help them through school, with rent on their first apartment in the big city, etc.?
So are you trying to argue
So are you trying to argue that no one is in control of their own destiny, people not born "special" can't ever make it in life, parents with money never push their children to be independent or children of those who have money are stupid spoiled automatons?
All and all it sounds like a message to the youth of today to not bother trying and just to hate those with more wealth than them.
Mind you this is the same argument people use against successful minorities. They only got where they are because of "affirmative action."
Nope!
Just arguing that it's easier to succeed if you have wealthy parents.
Which it isn't if you're a minority, so please don't try the "this dumb liberal is using arguments that anti-AA people use!" tactic.
All it takes are rich parents
Can you please let our governor and president in on that?
Or how about our friend Swirly who seems to have done OK by her own frequent admission without the rich parents. How about the Fresh Air kid we hosted when I was little. Now she lives in my hometown in a house my parents couldn't dream to live in.
There are lots of roads to prosperity in this country. We all have some inherent advantages. we just need to figure out what they are.
Yup...lots of advantages!
Money just happens to be a really, really big one.
But far from the only one
The vast majority of successful people are successful because of something THEY did - not their parents. Isn't part of the point to work hard so your kids can go on to bigger and better things - and maybe have an easier life? Again - the stats are pretty clear - most of the "successful" people in the world are that way because they worked hard and long to get there, not because somebody gave them a boatload of money.
Oh for heaven's sake
Really subscribing hard to the American Dream hooey, huh? Just work hard/smart/something I did to get where I am, by golly, and you'll get good things!
That is flat out delusional.
Tell that to the 80%
Noted above.
To be precise, we're talking
To be precise, we're talking about the 80% of 1st generation millionaires? Which make up some proportion of the top 10% of income earners? Any sociology statisticians want to chime in here? I'm just curious if anyone knows where all the numbers lie.
Also, there's an issue of income vs. wealth. That is money vs. capital. Working sclhubs who have made it to 1mil by sheer effort and smarts, vs those that invested capital again and again. I won't make any judgments, just thought I'd mention it.
No
the stats are that 80% of millionaires are the first in their family to be millionaires.
Top 10%? I think you need to make somewhere just a bit south of $1 million in income to be a 1%-er on the income scale. The most recent stats on wealth- I think from 2012 - put the 1% cutoff at about $10 million (I think that includes primary residence).
Nobody's arguing that it's easier to get there when you start a couple rungs up the ladder. But most of those who make it to the top rungs don't start anywhere near there. And once you get there, your family doesn't usually stay there for more than a few generations.
More and more wealthy families are even setting it up so that their children don't even get much from Mommy and Daddy Bigbucks - they want their kids to make it on their own. They'll get lots of help - but not lots of money - at least by their standards.
Billboards on Cambridge St
How did the billboards on Cambridge St pass muster? I don't mean this as snark, I'm sincerely curious.
Outside the historic district boundary, probably
There were gas stations there too (not sure if any remain open today)
Not certain
I think those billboards are grandfathered from before the historic designation. The Hill would love to be rid of them - but until they fall down - I don't think there's much they can do - and even then maybe they have the right to rebuild. No expansions and no new ones though.
Stevil, did you mean to say
Stevil, did you mean to say that in other parts of the city, people can deface the property of others? It reads like that but I'm guessing that's not what you intended.
that's exactly what I intended
You read about that regularly out here - especially in the winter.
Citizen's passive aggressive Complaint
Seriously?
Just take it down and throw it through the mail slot a few days in a row. They'll get the picture after they get tired of rehanging it every day.
Man, people are so lazy today they can't even bother to be actively passively aggressive these days.
This is why we
removed Governor Bowdoin in the first place.
The "BUT IT'S HISTORIAL" arguers...
...are sounding an awful lot like all those gentrification fetishizers.
mabye there's more
It looks like there's an awful lot of writing in the box where one would expect just a phone number. And there's something else on the doorknob. Maybe it's not the "For Rent" sign itself that's the problem....maybe it's the stuff that isn't legible (at least by me) in the photo?
Those commenting here who are
Those commenting here who are overly outraged with the irrelevant goings on of Beacon Hill neighbors are exhibiting a nasty case of reverse clutching pearls.