the Human Size of Historic Charleston

So I was in downtown Charleston, South Carolina over the weekend. It dates back further than any city I have been in before, as I can recall. The streets are narrow to a modern eye. The buildings are right against the sidewalks, which are right against the streets, so everything is close. The houses tend to present a narrow edge to the street, then a long high gallery to meet the sea breeze. A great deal is very close together, easily walked--an open air market, the oceanfront, restaurants, parks, the works. Horse-drawn vehicles and trollies ferry people about. Plenty of trees provide shade where the close buildings don't do the job.

If I didn't know better I would have thought it was a Modernist experiment in environmentally sound, revolutionary urban design. (What the heck was all that awkward, badly-adapted-Corbu-flavored "International Style" crap attempting to produce? I may be getting my design lingo confused here I admit.)

Heehee. Forward into the past. But let's avoid as much of the icky stuff of the past as possible. Sure, chattel slavery is outlawed all over the country, but a permanent underclass is being created. Will it end up serving much of the same functions as chattel slaves did?

I suppose I'm back at the old question of how does design influence the lives lead amid it, and how does the technology available affect it all? I've long been intrigued by what connection may exist between domestic violence and domestic architecture. Looking at Charleston had me wondering again about what the unforseen fallout can be of the spaces we build; what is one generation reacting to from the previous one, only to have that hated feature picked up and valorized by a latre generation who saw how the reaction played out...