| Description |
332 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Summary |
"As Catherine Turco found herself stepping to the microphone at a public hearing in a basement to admonish the representative for Equity One, the new owner of a set of commercial buildings on Brattle Street, which planned to evict all of the existing tenants and redevelop the property, she realized she had a problem. Why was an MIT business professor and former investment banker getting emotional about the fate of a bunch of stores she never shops in? Who cares what some bank does with its property? Well, she did, and so did everyone else at the meeting, but why? Written by a longtime denizen of the Square, Harvard Square explains why people become so passionately attached to their local downtown markets and why it always seems like it used to be better before. Delving into the history of Harvard Square, which starts in the 17th century, locals generation after generation bemoan its destruction and loss of character through the influx of soulless chain stores and the greed of careless landlords. The constant of local marketplaces is economic precarity and change. They are frequently under the pressure of rent; their life cycles are often tied to an individual or family. Local business have a way of appearing and disappearing without warning, while at the same time local communities develop emotional attachments to their local business - in some cases real and in others imagined - all completely out of their control yet tied intricately to their sense of personal identity. What is interesting about Harvard Square and similar college communities, is that there is a constant presence of a population of students, alumni, and tourists with a heightened attention to the place as they found it when they first arrived. Just as Longfellow lamented the disappearance of the blacksmith, today's nostalgist misses Tower Records, and neither are ever coming back. Harvard Square: A Love Story is at once a person's attempt to understand her attachment to her local downtown and a universal explanation of why we all feel this way about our own downtowns"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Subject |
Harvard Square (Cambridge, Mass.)
|
|
Central business districts -- Massachusetts -- Cambridge.
|
|
Central business districts. (OCoLC)fst00850699
|
|
Massachusetts -- Cambridge.
(OCoLC)fst01205363
|
|
Massachusetts -- Cambridge -- Harvard Square.
(OCoLC)fst01318461
|
| ISBN |
9780231209281 (hardcover) |
|
0231209282 (hardcover) |
|
