We should change the zoning laws that now neatly divide the city into commercial and residential areas to allow mixed use in the downtown section and to bring life to the streets at n:ght. Resoration of those Main Street shops with their specialities and varieties as a seductive alternative to the suburban shopping‐center chain store. How much finer these buildings are than the ever more cheaply built colonial copies still going up in the suburbs. Modest beginnings would include the following:ĩExploitation, as one of Bridgeport's strengths, of ethnic residential neighborhoods by encouraging in the people a sense of their historical roots and pride in the buildings they inhabit. What I am suggesting must begin with a change of attitude, a realization that the very things that make Bridgeport “old‐fashioned” are its strength, for they reflect the richness and diversity that is fast being lost elsewhere. I think there is another future for Bridgeport, not of spectacular corporate growth but one that exploits the existing environment. Corporate headquarters are locating in the suburbs, far from urban problems, and recruiting their office personnel in their new homes. Whole office buildings are going unrented in Manhattan, while new communications techniques reduce the need for businesses to concentrate in urban centers. This “urban redevelopment” paved the way for shiny new high‐rise blocks that often were never to appear.īut will the big money really come to Bridreport? The decisions that led to such development elsewhere were made years ago in a different economic climate. This, after all, was the way it was done in the ‘60s, when Federal money was available to demolish those rows of small business storefronts that made up the intricate, small‐scale network of human contacts so crucial to a safe and functioning urban fabric. The answer given by the Mayor's office, the Chamber of Commerce, and many businessmen is obvious: Bridgeport is just a bit behind the times. A shrinking tax base and the increased burdens of poor black and Puerto Rican populations have further depleted the economic resources. Industry, except for the particularly sophisticated machine tool industry, in which Bridgeport still excels, has fled to the South, where labor, energy and land are cheaper. Federal aid, meant for the cities but flowing to suburbs that don't need it, is drying up. They are all still here, having somehow escaped the wholesale destruction occasioned elsewhere by the urban policies of the 1960's.īut now? Bridgeport is sinking. A classical Main Street bank facade streets, indeed whole neighborhoods, of dignified Victorian row housing lovely squares and parks. Contact the library to request an appointment at or (203) 576-4747. Public access to some scans of University yearbooks and student newspapers can be found in our institutional repository UB ScholarWorks. All about this town there is evidence of its place in the forefront of the industrial flowering of the 19thcentury Northeast. Access to these materials is by permission only. BRIDGEPORT isn't just “anywhere.” It is the first city one encounters traveling east from New ‘ York whose character and atmosphere put it somewhere-in New England.
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