Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Architecture Looking at a Growing City Looking at a Growing City In her lecture, Ms. Gretchen Schneider gave an in depth study of the changing uses of space in the development of the city of Boston. Her study involved a look at the history and land of the city and how they informed the decisions made regarding development and change in the city. In Jack Ahern’s lecture, he discussed landscape scenarios, which included a look at the different spatial concepts of landscape planning. Both lectures included information that could be extracted and applied when analyzing the development of any city. In this paper, I will be applying the ideas they presented in my own brief analysis of the development of my hometown, Nashua, NH. Nashua, New Hampshire is a small city of 175,000 people that lies on the border of Massachusetts. It began as an Indian fishing village along the Nashua River and with time and the construction of the Daniel Webster (Main) street, it grew to be a small factory town. Around the civil war times, Main Street became the main retail district as it was close to the textile factories that ran along the river. Small neighborhoods developed at either end of Main Street along with a railroad station west of the center of town. At this stage of Nashua’s development, it most closely resembled a contained interdigitation. The community and buildings were located in the central part of town, with a few neighborhoods that ran outside the boundaries. By about 1900, the city had begun to expand in all four directions, still fairly contained by the wilderness and the outskirts still resembled the interdigitation. BY the 1940, main other main roads were built, stemming from Main Street, and there was a great expansion, and the fingers of the interdigitation grew long, stretching into more of the wild land. Owners of the farms near town sold their land and moved to these areas on the western part of town, cleared the woods and built them selves huge farms and orchards. The neighborhoods north and south of the town got larger and expanded to east some. The growth of the city was becoming fast and town officials decided to begin claiming public grounds and building parks. It was at this time that Greeley Park was built that contained about a square quarter mile of land and Holman stadium was built at the northern part of town. Miles of land west of the river and south of the factories that ran along the Nashua Canal were set aside as Mines Falls Park, Nashua’s largest park, with nature trails and clearings for fishing. As the town continued to grow, Main Street continued to remain the center, the heart of the town, until in the sixties, a proposal was made to extend the Everett Turnpike into New Hampshire and through Nashua. The Town Officials had a hard time deciding whether to allow it, as part of Mines Falls and a lot of the farm lands would have to be used for the development of the road, on the other hand, the road would give way to more expansion and allow for neighborhoods to stretch out and relieve the overcrowding of the downtown. In the end, the officials agreed, with provisions to build paths that would extend under the highway to connect the two halves of mines falls that would result, and construction that would last almost a decade went underway. During the 1970’s a major cleanup action took place in Nashua. After the factories along the river shut down, the river was disgracefully polluted, the heart of the town and its most valuable resource was nearly black with the variable dyes and chemicals that had been dumped from the factories throughout the century. The cleanup took years, but in the end, the heart and symbol of the city was restored. At this time the turnpike was finished and a steady expansion that has lasted to this date began. The fingers of the development began to creep and consume land at a terrific rate, and the town laid down more public parks to compensate for the lost of the beautiful woods that had once existed. Since the eighties, the city has expanded such that the interdigitational spatial concept has disappeared and a laissez faire approach to development has taken over in one fell swoop of suburban sprawling. Developers fight over the remaining land left in the town limits and have gone into the quaint neighboring towns of Hollis, Hudson, Merrimack and Derry and stirred up heavy development there as well. Today, as the high-tech companies have begun to move east to Boston and eastern Massachusetts, the demand for homes in Nashua and neighboring towns is high, and the minority population has increased greatly. To solve the problems of overcrowding, there has been a large switchover from suburban home development to condominium and apartments with a suburban theme, including parks and pools, but with landscaping themes that separate them from the government housing of downtown Nashua. Also, the abandoned factories have been converted into luxury penthouse apartments and business offices, which have helped relieve the strain on finding places to develop. Nashua has become a buzzing, populated city that still holds the charm of suburban town with its expansive neighborhoods. It is a city that is still growing and encountering problems with planning: how to deal with traffic, crime in the inner part of the city, and the use of public and protected lands. As it progresses into this century, many more problems and issues will need to be resolved and two sides will need to decide how to modernize the city farther, yet retain the beauty and history of the small factory town it once was, contained along the banks of the Nashua river. Bibliography: Word Count: 973
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