"Troy, NY was so ignored by the 20th Century's progress that there's still actually a city there."
- Paraphrased from Jim Howard Kunstler.
Who's heard of Jim Kunstler? He famously wrote
The Geography of Nowhere in the early 1990s, giving language to why so many people at the time felt suburbia was unsatisfying. He's, well, a bit of a crank. Pretty much hates anything new. But his book was justifiably influential, and he went on to a long (and still going) career criticising 20th Century ideas about city-building.
Somewhere along the line, I have no idea where or when, he said this about Troy, and it stuck in my mind for years and years.
It's not *entirely* true. The town's not stuck in amber and does have some shitty car-brained scars. But there *is* a lot of truth to the statement. In SSP parlance we'd say Troy
has great bones.
How's the 21st Century treating it? I'd say "slowly," just like the 20th. Troy's urbanism mostly outlasted that century's retreat to the suburbs. And sure, it's probably doing better economically today than it was in 1993. But it's not a superstar city. The reclamation of cities by the affluent is clearly proceeding here, but at a slow pace, with a lot of room still to go.
So here you are, Troy, NY. I took these photos last summer, on a hot, drizzly Monday.
I, uh, may have overcorrected them a bit in Photoshop. Sorry they're a bit... beige. Ah well.
The 19th Century city is pretty unmistakable here.
But despite Kunstler's quote, the 20th Century did happen here, and the 21st hasn't fully caught up.
There's still a fair amount of neglect.
And some really, really awful urban design interventions.
This here building and parking lot is one of the worst city planning middle fingers I've ever seen. It is truly awful.
See the stairs in the background? Those are the Memorial Approach Steps. They connect Broadway (one of downtown's most important shopping streets) up a steep hill to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a large and prominent university, and for many years the engine that kept the city alive.
They're also probably Troy's most prominent landmark.
Legit.
Here's the view from the top. It's gorgeous.
That's Broadway, running straight down the center.
Except look closely at the bottom of that last photo. A building blocks the close end of the street.
Let's shift our angle down a bit.
AYFKM? They blocked the base of the steps with a shitty suburban building, surrounded by a shitty surface parking lot?
You betcha they did. Assholes.
And if you actually want to take these steps between downtown and the university, the bottom half are as ignoble as you can imagine.
Narrow brutalist concrete, ending in a drainage hole in a parking lot.
Just amazing work, all around. The highlight would be keying someone's SUV as you trespass through the parking lot.
Fuck you very much too, whatever parking-pilled planning commission OKed this.
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