Today was rough. I have spoken with my professors and classmates about problems that could come up because of my choosing a capstone site in an area close to my heart, the place i spent my high school years. Before today I was being careful not to assume my audience had any knowledge about the area or its issues, and I thought that would be the major issue with my personal connection to the site.
Well, I was wrong.
I went down a HUGE rabbit hole of aerial and historic images today. It started out all well and good, looking for images from the early 20th century in my site. It ended up being a really depressing trip though hundreds of images showcasing Cleveland's golden age and all the beautiful buildings (and full streets!) that existed from the 1900's to the 1950's. The planning that appears to have NEVER taken place after a certain point in history is infuriating. Now I am by no means an expert on all of Cleveland's history, but I just do not understand the thought process behind taking many of the cities main roads from what they were in 1948 to what they are now. All beautiful stone buildings, large residential houses and boulevard styling to bare parking lots and abandoned buildings.
My question is were those parking lots ever full? Where there ever years where the city needed the built environment it created?
UNFORTUNATELY, that is NOT my capstone question. UNFORTUNATELY X2, there only exist minimal aerial images and 2, TWO, images of areas of my site in the historic records I combed.
So back to the problems of loving the CLE, there was the issue of time; i spent 7 hours doing this with little real capstone project forward movement, and the issue of feelings; it was actually really rough and really really sad looking through all this stuff, I just want Cleveland to thrive. Is that too much to ask? (yes, Kammeron, it is, you have 5 months and you are one measly grad student)