A Capital Column

By now, we’ve all witnessed the horrific images that emerged in the wake of Haiti’s devastating earthquake. The bodies of the dead, the suffering of the injured and the grief of those who lost everything have been almost too much to comprehend. Already, the outpouring of international aid has been tremendous, but it is still unclear whether the majority of residents are getting the help they so desperately need to survive. As was the case after 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, the response to the immediate crisis has also given way to numerous considerations about how to rebuild.

When you look at the crumpled buildings in Haiti’s capital city of Port-au-Prince, it is painfully obvious how structurally unsound most of them were. Many buildings there are made of simple poured concrete, with very little steel reinforcement. According to a New York Times report, massive deforestation in the region has led to a widespread shortage of lumber, and contractors often “stretched” their concrete mixes by adding sand, which weakens the final product. We’ll never know how many lives could have been saved if Haiti’s building codes were up to standard and if the impoverished nation had had the resources to erect more buildings that could withstand that kind of seismic impact.

Like other Americans, after the earthquake I considered modest ways in which I could contribute to the relief effort – text-messaging “Haiti” to 90999 (a massively successful fundraising drive that automatically donates $10 to the Red Cross) and giving away my son’s baby clothes as part of a neighborhood collection. Then I read about the wonderful work of Architecture for Humanity, a San Francisco-based nonprofit consortium of architects, builders and engineers that provides planning and design services in response to humanitarian crises of all kinds. Clients include community organizations, housing charities and global nongovernmental organizations in such disparate locales as the United States, Kenya, India and, now, Haiti.

In Biloxi, MS, for example, Architecture for Humanity’s designers have produced a series of “model homes” that are designed to withstand the elements in hurricane-prone areas, while providing high-quality housing for displaced families. In addition to being functional and sustainable, the homes reflect the local vernacular, ensuring that the Gulf Coast’s building tradition is renewed along with its economy and vitality.

Now the organization is hoping for similar results in Haiti. Immediately after the earthquake, Architecture for Humanity began coordinating a plan for rebuilding. The organization issued a statement acknowledging that its goals had a far longer timeline than most: “[Now is] not the time for architects to show up thinking they can rebuild. People [who] are trying to find their loved ones [do] not think about what their lives will look like in five, 10 or 15 years. …For those of us who are part of the reconstruction effort, we need to think about immediate needs for shelter, while planning for the next three to five years of rebuilding.”

The organization has formulated a long-term, seven-point plan for Haiti that includes building “community resource centers;” translating and distributing a “Rebuilding 101 Manual” that it developed after Katrina, as well as an “Earthquake-Resistant Housing Manual;” and designing and rebuilding critical community buildings like schools and medical centers.

All of this will take considerable time and money, which is why I chose to make a donation to Architecture for Humanity for its Haiti reconstruction effort. I like the idea that this organization will be hard at work there, long after we return to our normal lives, to define a new normal for the people of Haiti that is far better and more secure than it ever was before.

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Over the holidays, I finally had an opportunity to watch Man on Wire, the Oscar-winning 2008 documentary about Philippe Petit’s thrilling tightrope walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. The film got me thinking about the nature of skyscrapers, and why we are compelled to make them ever taller and out of reach.

In the early 1970s, Petit had already gained notoriety for doing his high-wire act in such divergent places as the Notre Dame cathedral and the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Yet those feats paled against the challenge posed by the Twin Towers, which Petit had first read about in a dentist’s office in 1968. From the moment he saw an illustration of the as-yet-unbuilt structures, he knew he wanted to string a wire between them and risk death to cross it.

On an overcast morning in August 1974, after years of planning and subterfuge, Petit did just that. As “Man on Wire” documents, Petit crossed between the towers eight times, spending 45 minutes on a relatively thin wire a quarter-mile off the ground, as an awed crowd gathered below. When they were built, the towers were the tallest buildings in the world. New York City officials were so impressed by Petit’s accomplishment that they dropped all formal charges against him.

When asked why he did it, Petit replied that there was no explanation. “When I see three oranges, I juggle,” he said. “When I see two towers, I walk.” This is the modern equivalent of George Mallory’s famous response about why he wished to climb Mount Everest: “Because it’s there.” It is human nature to conquer those things that seem unfamiliar and unreachable. It’s also human nature to see just how high we can go.

Petit’s exploit can be seen, in a way, as an answer to all the critics who called the towers featureless eyesores with little respect for human scale, traditional design and neighborhood values (the critic Lewis Mumford even called the buildings “glass-and-steel filing cabinets”).

By putting his life on the line, literally, Petit showed the world that tall, modern buildings are not just inanimate objects but can become vitally connected to the pulse of humanity — not by their inherent design, perhaps, but by the way people interact with them. His feat is a powerful repudiation of the traditional thinking that buildings need to be ornamented or built on a human scale for us to find a way to relate to them and appreciate them.

Petit was on my mind when I read about the recent opening of the world’s now-tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which tops out at 2,717 feet. Some critics have already panned the tower for its sheer excess and lack of sustainability, although its spiraling, three-lobed design, which reportedly has precedents in Islamic architecture, has been praised as well. My first reaction is that the building is far too tall for us to grasp on a visceral human level. It is, most likely, out of reach for even the most intrepid daredevil artist as well.
Yet time will tell.

Sometimes, to be appreciated, all these buildings need is the passage of time and the grafting of a thousand human stories — or just one thrilling one — onto their facades. Some people criticized the streamlined, “modern” look of the world’s first “skyscraper,” Chicago’s 1893 Monadnock Building, and it’s now revered as our one of our most historic and architecturally significant buildings.

Sadly, we all know why the Twin Towers will never get the chance to be accorded that same appreciation.

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One of my favorite computer pastimes is to surf around on Google Earth, the geographic information program that uses aerial imagery to let you zoom to any global location, often with highly articulated three-dimensional results. On Google Earth, I’ve located both my current house and the one I grew up in; Hawaii’s Na Pali Coast (where I honeymooned) and Howland Island, the destination of Amelia Earhart’s ill-fated plane. Now I’ve learned that Google Earth can even let you track the progress of demolition, construction and suburban sprawl.

Using Google Earth’s relatively new (and addictive) “historical imagery” feature, you can go back in time and view how a place has changed over the years. Depending on the data available for any particular location, you can examine images from the past couple years, or you can go back decades. It was simultaneously sad and fascinating, for instance, to use Google Earth to view the World Trade Center site as it was before the 9/11 attacks, followed by a devastating shot of the still smoldering site from Sept. 12, 2001, and then the long cleanup and construction that have ensued. Since I live very close to the Pentagon, I did a similar exercise with that building, and it was interesting to note that the most recent image shows only a dirt patch where the Pentagon’s moving 9/11 memorial now exists. (New imagery is constantly being added.)

Living as I do in a heavily developed area, I also decided to see if the historical imagery feature would allow me to track the spread of suburban sprawl. The results of my initial searching were powerful. I chose to zoom in on the town of Ashburn, VA, located northwest of Washington, DC, in Loudoun County. In recent years, Loudoun has often been called the fastest growing county in the nation. What was once a bucolic province of fields and farms is now increasingly pockmarked with sprawling suburban development, as commuters seek homes and land farther out from the dense (and often expensive) areas closer to the capital.

According to an aerial image from 1988 shown here, Ashburn had some development 20 years ago, but the area was still largely characterized by open fields and lush stands of woods. By 2002, much of this land had been taken over by typical suburban residential development, with cul-de-sacs and winding roads sprouting like viruses under a microscope. Although large tracts were still undeveloped at that time, it’s clear that land was being cleared to make way for yet more residences. By 2006, just four short years later, most of the undeveloped areas had already been filled with houses. Altogether, the area saw shockingly rapid change in only two decades.

So what’s the value of an exercise like this? In a nutshell, suburban sprawl thrives wherever there is a lack of planning and vision. Developers and local leaders consider each new shopping mall and residential development on a case-by-case basis, without determining the cumulative and long-term impacts on a region. This short-sighted approach results in miles and miles of development that all looks the same, isn’t integrated in the slightest and ultimately robs a region of its character.

Google Earth’s historical imagery feature offers an easy way to look back and see just how quickly and haphazardly we have allowed our suburbs and rural areas to be developed. And I can’t help but think that, if more people tapped into that kind of hindsight, it would ultimately help us to have better foresight.

Download the software at earth.google.com.

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I have a confession. One of my favorite movies is The Day After Tomorrow, Roland Emmerich’s global-warming disaster flick. This is very out of character for me. I generally lean toward Nora Ephron romantic comedies or feel-good films with a renovation bent like Life as a House or Under the Tuscan Sun. (I’m also obsessed with the original Star Wars trilogy, but that’s another blog.)

This fascination with The Day After Tomorrow takes even me by surprise – especially since the film wreaks havoc on historic landmarks such as the Empire State Building in New York and the Capitol Records tower in Los Angeles.

I can tell myself that my interest in the film stems from its environmental message, or the fact that its stars such attractive actors as Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal. But if I’m being honest, the main reason for the film’s appeal is that it is morbidly, horribly fascinating to watch what might happen to the icons of our society if we allowed them to be destroyed. I loved the comeuppance awaiting those characters who don’t take the threats to our urban fabric, whether natural or man-made, very seriously.

Disaster-mongers like Emmerich know that the more historic or symbolic the building is, the more shocking it is to see it obliterated. He famously allowed aliens to blast the White House in his earlier movie Independence Day, and I’ll never forget how the audience I watched the movie with laughed during that scene, maybe a little nervously. How funny, they seemed to say, except that it wasn’t. Really, it just ticked you off and made you want to take down the aliens yourself.

Emmerich’s latest apocalyptic feature, 2012, opened this month to packed theaters. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but the trailer is both laughably unbelievable and chilling. The outlandish premise has something to do with solar flares heating up the earth’s core, causing massive global devastation. Apparently, the White House, the entire city of Los Angeles, Yellowstone National Park, the Sistine Chapel and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro are all decimated in the face of tsunamis, earthquakes and the like. (Interestingly, Emmerich told The New York Times that he avoided targeting Islamic icons, fearing a fatwa. He rightfully praised the democratic society that allows him to destroy Western landmarks in his work, even if it risks offending those for whom the images of 9/11 remain more vivid than any film.)

As I watched the 2012 trailer and contemplated whether it was worth an $11 ticket (I’ve decided to wait for video), I thought about how even a ridiculously over-the-top disaster movie can underscore the value of our most historic landmarks. “Do we think so little of the world we’ve made,” wrote Associated Press critic Jake Coyle in a review, “that we can’t resist the impulse to wreck it?”

In Hollywood, as in life, we often destroy what we’ve made. Countless natural and historic sites have been lost, not to tsunamis and earthquakes perhaps, but to the more insidious forces of neglect and short-sightedness. Roland Emmerich is no philosopher or preservationist – I think the guy just likes to blow things up – but he does send an undeniable message in his movies: Value your landmarks because once they’re gone, they’re gone forever.

Now pass the popcorn.

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Since my child is only three, Halloween in our household is still of the princesses-and-cowboys variety, with smiling jack-o-lanterns and buckets of factory-sealed and parent-approved candy. My son is still far too young to indulge in the more ghoulish aspects of the holiday, thank goodness. But those days will surely come, when he’ll be fascinated by ghosts and goblins and, of course, haunted houses.

As I ironed my son’s superhero costume the other day, I thought about famous haunted houses from popular culture, and how they are always some Gothic or otherwise traditionally designed manse, high on a hill surrounded by barren trees. Just looking at them, one can hear the creaking floorboards and squeaky doors, the wind whipping through flapping shutters, the strange footsteps overhead. (It is difficult to imagine, by contrast, how Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House or Philip Johnson’s Glass House could ever be haunted or damned, although I’m sure there are several strict traditionalists who might call them horrors in themselves.)

Haunted houses are, by definition, those places that are inhabited by the ghost or ghosts of people who befell some fate there–usually something dark or evil like murder or suicide. I personally am dubious about ghosts, but I know a few people whose opinions I respect, especially among my preservationist friends, who believe. To them, the best old buildings are almost alive in themselves, and it’s no great leap to consider that spirits might still dwell there.

Although ghosts could ostensibly haunt any type of house, most archetypal haunted houses are Victorian, which some say goes back to the Panic of 1893. That year, a long period of railroad speculation and overbuilding had led to widespread bank failures and an economic depression. Many people, especially in the industrial areas of the East Coast, moved west to start over and rebuild their lost fortunes, leaving their then-new Victorian homes abandoned (and presumably ripe for the haunting).

Literature and film have obviously produced some memorable haunted houses as well. Edgar Allan Poe virtually defined the convention with his tale, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” in whose crumbling castle a woman is entombed. The Stanley Hotel, a 1907 Georgian structure in Estes Park, CO, was the real-life inspiration for the Overlook Hotel in Stephen King’s The Shining. And who can forget Psycho’s Bates mansion, a broken-down Second-Empire house overlooking the infamous Bates Motel, where Janet Leigh’s character met her fateful end in the shower? Just writing that paragraph makes me want to keep the lights on tonight.

What is it about these traditionally designed buildings that makes them so well suited to the haunted-house genre? Obviously, the closed floor plans, the long corridors and the small rooms all allow for secrets and shadows that a modern, open-floor plan could not. Like any relic from the past, old buildings also have an aura of mystery, an “otherness” apart from our current lives (and, sadly, our increasingly tract-house society) that is fascinating.

We visit great old estates to get a glimpse of how others might have lived. But haunted houses allow us to imagine how people might have lived and died – and whether they lurk among us still.

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Last year, I had a wonderful opportunity to interview the Emmy-winning documentarian Ken Burns. At the time, he was promoting his World War II documentary, The War, while looking back on his groundbreaking Civil War series. Now, Burns is promoting his newest release, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (premiering on PBS on September 27). With this highly anticipated documentary, I am reminded of how the national parks – and their buildings — have inspired so many Americans, myself included. This weekend, we all have an opportunity to give something back to these special places.

In addition to immense natural beauty and cultural significance, the national park system includes some of the nation’s most important buildings — Independence Hall in Philadelphia, St. Paul’s Church in New York, and Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC , among others. Although I admire all those places, my favorite buildings in the parks are the lodges, camps, shelters and bridges designed in the rugged, naturalistic style that came to be known as National Park Service Rustic.

An early proponent of this style was Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, an early 20th-century architect at a time when women were rare in the profession. A few years ago, I wrote an article about Colter and one of her most famous works, La Posada, for Traditional Building, and she has captivated me ever since. Colter designed lodges and hotels for the legendary Fred Harvey Company (whose “Harvey girls” were dramatized in a 1946 musical starring Judy Garland). Among other buildings, Colter designed the striking Desert View Watchtower, Phantom Ranch and Bright Angel Lodge at the Grand Canyon, all in a Southwestern vernacular style that fits seamlessly with their surroundings.

For decades, Colter’s style was indicative of the Park Service’s system-wide approach to building, which really came to fruition in the 1930s with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). One of the New Deal’s most successful “make work” programs, the CCC was responsible for countless structures and improvements throughout the park system. At Shenandoah National Park here in Virginia, more than 340 structures — including both architect-designed lodges and modest CCC buildings — are included on the National Register of Historic Places. (Ironically, at Shenandoah, the CCC was also responsible for demolition; workers were tasked with removing the homesteads of mountain families who were forced off the land when the park was created, all in the name of reclaiming nature. In the national parks, as elsewhere, we are reminded of the sometimes difficult relationship between buildings and the land.)

This weekend, in recognition of National Public Lands Day and the release of the Burns film, national parks across the country are inviting Americans to take part in volunteer projects. In addition to litter clean-ups, trail clearing and other conservation work at numerous sites, folks interested in historic preservation can help with repainting, repairing and cleaning historic buildings and structures in such parks as Mount Rainier, Delaware Water Gap, Fort Donelson, Harpers Ferry and the Lincoln Boyhood Home, among others. (To find projects near you, visit www.publiclandsday.org or www.nps.gov/september26.)

The title of the new Burns film comes from a quote by one of my favorite authors, Wallace Stegner, who called the parks America’s best idea. “Absolutely American, absolutely democratic,” he continued, “they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.” By participating in National Public Lands Day and other preservation opportunities year-round, we can live up to that reflection.

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A decade ago, I worked for a magazine that was published in Washington’s historic Chinatown neighborhood, where the most famous landmark is a glorious seven-roofed Chinese gate at the intersection of H and 7th Streets, N.W., Chinese immigrants established the neighborhood in the 1930s, which covered about 12 square blocks at its peak in the mid-20th century. At one time, it was a thriving ethnic enclave that could rival better known Chinatowns in New York and San Francisco.

By the late 1990s, however, DC’s Chinatown was a shadow of its former self, with just a block and a half of mom-and-pop Asian restaurants, as well as an equal measure of boarded-up buildings and crime. I will never forget standing in line at a CVS drug store next to the Chinese gate, when two thugs suddenly threatened the cashier, leaped over the counter to grab some cash from the open register and ran out. Leaving work late often meant holding tightly to your purse on empty, dark streets and making a sprint for the Metro station.

On the plus side, though, a good friend of mine and I would meet regularly in one of the local establishments for hot tea and the most delicious chicken with black bean sauce I’ve ever had. Co-workers also discovered a fantastic Burmese restaurant tucked away on the second floor of the world’s most nondescript building. One night leaving work, I had to stop in my tracks while a Chinese merchant unloaded a large shipment of gutted pigs. The Chinatown I knew had its pros and cons, but it was undeniably urban and authentic.

Ten years have passed, and Chinatown has been completely transformed, having undergone a recent $200 million renovation. Old buildings have been rehabilitated and painted, new buildings have been constructed and the streets pulse with life day and night. Big-name chain restaurants and stores have come in – including Legal Sea Foods, Fuddruckers, Hooters, McDonald’s, Bed, Bath & Beyond and others.

To preserve local character, some of the establishments boast artwork inspired by Chinese precedents, and area merchants are required by city ordinance to have their names also printed in Chinese.

The area benefits from other attractions as well. In addition to a major sports and entertainment arena (now known as the Verizon Center) that opened in 1997, a new movie theater complex and the recent reopening of the nearby Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery have attracted even more visitors.

So what’s the problem? Despite all these renovations, despite the fact that this once moribund neighborhood is clearly thriving, and even despite the fact that both the chicken-and-black-bean-sauce place and the Burmese restaurant are still in business, there is a Disney-like phoniness to Chinatown now that I find somewhat disheartening. Does it really preserve local character to have the name “Bed Bath & Beyond” also written in Chinese? Or is it really just a mockery? Part of me wishes that city planners had let what was left of Chinatown be Chinatown and allowed all the new stuff to be what it is – new stuff – without the cheesy, Chinese-y window dressing. Then, at least, it would all be authentic, and authenticity is what gives a place its character.

At the same time, though, I have to acknowledge that without those Chinese writings, this neighborhood would resemble any shopping and restaurant district in any city or suburb in America. My real beef, I have to admit, is not so much with the phony quality of the signs but with the fact that yet another distinct, vibrant neighborhood has been swallowed up by bland, sanitized commercial development.

So do me a favor. The next time you’re in DC’s Chinatown, instead of getting burgers or tapas or wings, I encourage you to turn the corner and choose one of the authentic Chinese restaurants. Our Chinatown may cover only a block, but it’s real and it’s good.

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Although I live in Virginia, I look at the Brooklyn Bridge every single day. Well, not the actual bridge, but I love my copy of engineer John Roebling’s 1867 drawing of the bridge (immortalized in a popular print from the Whitney Museum of American Art). With the possible exception of the flame-colored span over the Golden Gate, no bridge in America compares with the Brooklyn Bridge when it comes to grace, beauty, engineering prowess and historic significance.

So I was absolutely stunned to learn that New York City officials – who have the privilege of looking at the actual bridge on a regular basis – have approved a controversial project that could destroy views of the span forever.

Led by developers David and Jed Walentas, the Dock Street Dumbo project is a 17-story, 325-unit building that opponents say would block the iconic Brooklyn vista of the bridge’s Gothic revival towers and graceful suspension cables, leading to lower Manhattan. Named for the Brooklyn neighborhood where the bridge terminates (Dumbo stands for “Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass,” which also happens to be where Traditional Building is headquartered), the project will supposedly include a middle school and below-market-rate rentals, as well as sustainable design features. That all sounds great, except for the fact it could destroy the context of a national historic landmark.

In June, the New York City Council approved the proposal in an overwhelming 40-9 vote. In doing so, the council broke common precedent by overriding the opposition of the local representative, in this case Councilman David Yassky (D-Brooklyn Heights), who has vociferously opposed the construction. Yassky has been joined in his disapproval by many high-profile organizations and individuals, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation; the Municipal Art Society of New York; actors Gabriel Byrne, Helen Hunt and Gary Sinise; documentarian Ken Burns and historian David McCullough.

In a recent Newsweek editorial, McCullough called the construction of the bridge “the moon shot of its time, a brave, surpassing technical triumph.” The Dock Street project, he continued, would be a “shameful, inexcusable mistake.”

In their defense, the Walentas family, the building’s designers Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners and other supporters have disputed claims that the project would mar views of the bridge, asserting that the building will be comparable to others nearby. “The design is contextual and appropriate for this important site,” wrote architect John Beyer, FAIA, in response to the McCullough piece, “and it is similar in height and massing to the nearby historic industrial buildings located in the Dumbo neighborhood.”

That may be true, but the key difference is that new building will be located right next to the downward slope of the bridge, much closer than many other existing buildings referenced in various testimonies. The building is also sited on an unprotected parcel sandwiched between two existing local historic districts – which I assume means that it will not be subject to as rigorous a design review as a historic district usually requires.

As often happens, however, legal action has slowed the process. In mid-October, the DUMBO Neighborhood Foundation filed a lawsuit in Brooklyn Supreme Court alleging improprieties in the city zoning process that allowed the project to be approved; the suit would prohibit any new construction until the case is settled.

It took 14 years to build the Brooklyn Bridge, an eminent work of art, craftsmanship and perseverance. It would take far less time to destroy it – or, at least, our historic view of it. As the Dock Street Dumbo project continues to move forward, I strongly urge the developers and city officials to place protection of this iconic and beloved bridge above all else. It would be unforgivably sad if the best view of the bridge turns out to be the two-dimensional print hanging on my wall.

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Unless Virginia county officials come to their senses, it appears likely that the Wal-Mart company will soon be allowed to build one of its big-box stores across from the Wilderness Civil War battlefield. Although I haven’t seen the design for the particular store in question, I know from experience that Wal-Mart is likely to build a massive, dull, rectangular eyesore surrounded by a sea of parking. Do we really need another building like this on the edge of a historically significant battlefield? Do we need another building like this anywhere?

At the end of this month, the five-member board of supervisors for Orange County, VA, will vote on whether Wal-Mart should be allowed to build a 138,000-sq.-ft. store in a relatively undeveloped area near Fredericksburg. Barring a last-minute change of heart, three of the five supervisors have already stated that they will vote to approve the construction. Wal-Mart officials have touted the potential tax revenue and job creation that the store would bring to the area, surefire buzzwords in a down economy.

Yet such benefits are by no means assured nor are they likely to offset the potential downsides of the construction. A coalition of local, state and national organizations such as the Civil War Preservation Trust and the National Trust for Historic Preservation have long fought the proposal, arguing that the Wal-Mart will negatively affect the viewshed for the battlefield and lead to additional incompatible development. Even Virginia Governor Tim Kaine (D) and Virginia House of Delegates Speaker William Howell (R) have sent a bipartisan letter to county officials urging them to consider an alternative location farther away from the battlefield.

An alternative location is the minimum that should be required of Wal-Mart in this instance, but the ideal would be to also insist that the company design its store in such a way that fits the historic character of the region, is environmentally sustainable and fosters other community benefits such as walkable neighborhoods and mixed-use development. In the past, such goals have been generally ignored by the Wal-Mart company and others of its ilk. And we all know that, as Wal-Mart goes, so go other retailers. You start with a big-box store, which begets a big-box strip mall, which begets a swiftly denuded landscape and fast-food restaurants, brightly canopied gas stations and other establishments that reflect nothing of a region’s distinct character.

The only thing worse than a sprawling big-box store, furthermore, is a vacant sprawling big-box store. In the current economy, numerous big-box stores nationwide have closed down, leaving a special kind of blight that some have called the “ghostbox” effect. A company called Excess Space Retail says that more than 2,000 locations owned by about 50 retailers, representing tens of millions of square footage, have been vacated over the last year. According to an article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Wal-Mart company has 147 empty, abandoned stores that it’s trying to lease or sell, even as it plans to open 157 new ones. I’m no economist, but that business model just doesn’t compute.

To its credit, Wal-Mart is taking some steps away from the broken big-box model. After Hurricane Katrina, Wal-Mart officials worked with Gulf Coast planners to come up with alternatives to their classic big-box design that reflected New Urbanist objectives such as community connectivity and walkability. New Wal-Marts have increasingly incorporated design details such as colonnades and stone facades, as well as sustainable elements such as solar panels. But when times are tough, I’m concerned that the company is naturally going to take the path of least resistance and build the easiest, cheapest stores they can.

In my mind, the Orange County Board of Supervisors owes it to the public to do two things: First, it must insist that Wal-Mart find a new location that does not detract from or destroy the Wilderness battlefield, and, second, it must predicate its approval on a store design that is beautiful, environmentally and economically sustainable and compatible with the region’s historic character. If that happened, maybe Wal-Mart would find itself facing far fewer store vacancies and less opposition in the future.

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A barrier island is rarely still. The sand is always shifting, the winds are blowing and every so often, a hurricane bulldozes through. People and buildings come and go. Such is the case with the Outer Banks, a thin strip of barrier islands on the coast of North Carolina. I’ve been vacationing on the Banks off and on for 30 years – ever since I was a little girl – and was there again just last week with my family. Despite the growing popularity of the area, it retains its natural beauty and a strong sense of place, owing to the fact that much of the islands are protected as Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Still, on this trip I saw evidence of a strange sort of “suburbanization” of the Banks that I found troubling.

When I was a girl, I loved going to the Outer Banks not only for the sand and surf, but because the islands were a world apart from the suburban Maryland town where I grew up. All the stores and restaurants were locally owned, and the full-time residents spoke with a Southern brogue that sounded positively foreign to my ears. The small towns that dotted Hatteras Island (where my family has always preferred to stay) were full of weathered, modest wooden beach houses, up on stilts to protect them from sea surges. The Banks also had ample history – and mystery – that captivated me: the “lost colony” of Roanoke Island, the first flight of the Wright Brothers, the exploits of the pirate Blackbeard. I was carried away by the romance of the place, and I still am.

On this trip, however, it struck me that too much of the Outer Banks resembles your typical suburban commercial strip. Nags Head (the largest and best-known town on the Banks) now boasts such chain restaurants as Applebee’s, Outback Steakhouse and Western Sizzlin. And every few feet, it seems, one finds a large Wings store, a big-box-style beach supply chain. When I was a kid, by contrast, we bought towels and suntan lotion at a store called the Blue Whale, in the tiny hamlet of Salvo, whose proprietors remembered us from season to season.

Worst of all, in my opinion, is that these small shorefront towns are being positively overrun by large multi-family houses – beach McMansions, if you will – that are dominating the dune line. Demolition of the more modest, affordable beach houses is occurring at a rate that would sound alarm bells if it were happening in a middle-class neighborhood anywhere else. On a barrier island, where houses aren’t necessarily built to last for centuries, change is expected. And developers have clearly taken advantage of this fact – and the inherently transient nature of the vacation population – to build massive new houses that most people can’t afford unless they take 20 people on vacation with them.

As for the design of these new mansions, there has been some effort to echo the traditional carpenter Gothic and Shingle-style buildings that characterized turn-of-the-20th-century architecture on the Banks. It’s become something of a cliché for new houses to have a Victorian-era cross-beam at the roof gable, for instance. Unfortunately, however, these are beach cottages on steroids.

I do understand the appeal of staying in a lavish oceanfront house and having access to modern conveniences; people work hard and they deserve to relax. And ample vestiges of the old Banks remain – from the famed Cape Hatteras Lighthouse with its barber-pole spiral, to mom-and-pop shops like the Blue Whale. But I am concerned that future generations of families will have a harder time being carried away by the magic of the Outer Banks, simply because it will look so much like the sprawling suburbs back home.

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