ABSTRACT
City officials were enthusiastically knocking down the worst neighborhoods: helping them to empty out through relocation programs, clearing out the old houses, and reorganizing the street system into superblocks for housing projects. Almost every community has at least one well-maintained historic district lived in by people who are enthusiasts for the architecture and vigilant about what is happening to their neighborhood. New development consisted mostly of subdivisions of singe-family houses on large lots priced to attract people living in cramped, dark urban apartments, or small, equally dark, urban houses. In some neighborhoods the original house became a canvas for each owner's creativity. Roofs were raised to add bedrooms, garages were enclosed to make a family room, wings were added on. By the 1960s when Jane Jacobs wrote about street life in Greenwich Village and Herbert Gans described urban villagers in Boston, such close-knit neighborhoods had become unusual.
