SCS, Affordable Housing and Memory
In The Geography of Nowhere, Kunstler argues that apartments over stores provided affordable housing in America's historic small towns. Affordable housing also lends itself to socioeconomic diversity, a diversity that is inevitably absent if all housing is the same--as is often the case in newer suburbs. The historic Michigan town of Monroe still has the type of housing Kunstler idealizes. When I was getting a sandwich in a downtown Monroe restaurant, I actually overheard a man telling the shopkeeper that his son lived in an apartment above one of the stores downtown.
 |
|
Although housing on SCS's lakefront are quite expensive, some of the homes reflect the city's history as a summer resort town as it was established particularly in the 1920s. Many of these modest homes are being torn down and big mansions are being built in their stead. Some might find these often run down cottages eyesores. But they also preserve memories of the city's past and suggest that even the homely and humble might enjoy a mighty fate. Big mansions on the lake further showcase a problem in the community--almost all of its lakefront is privately owned and the common citizen without a boat cannot easily access it.
|
 |
||
| This street leads to the lake, Poplar Beach. It's one of my favorite streets in the city; it reminds me of Northern Michigan and, I believe, gives a taste of what SCS might have been like in the 1920s when it was a cottage community. |
 |
|
||
| Jefferson Avenue in the 1920s--cottages dotted the lake front, particularly after the interurban railroad tales were taken up (Muskrat Tales 13:1 (2000). |
This mansion on the left is being built near some of the smaller homes on the lake pictured above.
|
