Did the Rules of Etiquette Provide a Greater Sense of Safety For Women?

The area I grew up always had a tourist faction, since it was settled. However, at one time it also had a strong agricultural industry, a manufacturing base in two nearby cities, and a military base in another nearby city. All of these were in commuting distance (about an hour to an hour and a half). The manufacturing base left before I was born, the military base left when I was a teen, and the agricultural base was leaving throughout my childhood.... with vast tracks of land completely abandoned.

That leaves tourism.

When it was a substantial part of the economy, it was ok. It always had been, and there was enough other industry to wade through the cyclical nature of summer, fall, and winter tourism, with summer being the big season. Instead everything became forward facing, to grab the tourists attention. Now you're either in the tourist industry or a survivalist or a bit of both.

It's inauthentic to the extreme.

It's scary to think of large tracts of abandoned landed but it is a large country.

BlueTrain said:

It's scary to think of large tracts of abandoned landed but it is a large country.

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As a regular rider of Amtrak's Northeast corridor (less recently, but up to five years ago I was on it all the time), a parallel to the large tracts of abandoned land are the incredible number of gigantic pre-WWII brick factories that I see that are abandoned right along the train tracks up and down the Northeast.

Eventually they'll all be rehabbed into top-dollar condos and "art lofts."

Conversation in Indianapolis:
"I hear there's a hydroponic farm in the old battery factory."
"No, the new high school is going in the old battery factory."
"I thought that was going in the coke plant."
"They're putting a convention center there."
"You're thinking of the Coca-cola bottling plant. The old coke plant is being torn down for the new city jail."
"Wasn't that supposed to be located at the old stamping factory?"
"That's being redeveloped into housing and retail."
"Why don't they do that at the old RCA factory?"
"It's an EPA cleanup site. It would take 20 years for that much decontamination."

LizzieMaine said:

Eventually they'll all be rehabbed into top-dollar condos and "art lofts."

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I think the only reason it hasn't happened so far is that these are right next to the main Washington to NY to Boston four track corridor that is incredibly busy with passenger and freight trains day and night. I've been in working businesses right next to this line (like these abandoned factories are) and your back molars rattle when an Acela rips by at 100+mph.

Also, some of these old factories are enormous in size, you rumble by just one of them for awhile at seventy miles an hour which means they'd require quite an investment to get them to "art loft" quality.

And, I wonder if there aren't some real hazardous / industrial waste issues that might also make some of them too expensive to undertake.

Lastly, most of these that I'm referring to aren't in a town like Boston or NYC or near water or "quaint" towns or villages - hence, they don't have that natural pull and "charm."

All that said, given enough time - and as the "better" ones and locations get rehabbed up - these will come into "re-porpousers'" focus.

Away from all of that - I love them as they are: abandoned, broken windows, odd pieces of rusted machinery laying about outside, etc. They are a neat look into our past when factories like these were built along train lines for obvious reasons, the windows were huge for light (and mainly casement with some now open - looking like flippers - and seemingly having stayed that way when they were abandoned decades ago) and with gigantic brick smokestacks coming out of, many times, several parts of the building. Passing by on a train, on a grey day, you get a bit of a time travel feel.

I highly doubt that they'll put condos in the old factories in my last rust belt city. Most of the old factory owners (I would put money on) are hoping an arsonist lights them before the city comes and makes them pay to take them down... along with the abandoned schools and churches.

It's strange how many of these old factories once the city puts them on their "structural integrity review" list magically burn to a total loss in the middle of the night.

There's a section of about 10 consecutive abandoned acres in the middle of my former city from burnt down factories.

We had that happen back about thirty years ago to an abandoned factory that processed fish guts into fertilizer. It was so soaked with ninety years of fish oil that it burned like a torch, visible six miles away. Turned out that a local psychotic had set it on fire, but it was widely believed that someone had hired him to do it.

⇧ (past two posts). Something will have to happen as the land has value and there is a lot of it. Some - in the better spots - have already been "lofted" up, etc., but there are so many of them and many of them are humongous and not in great locations - that it would be quite an undertaking, but something will give eventually.

If they have to change, I'd rather see them repurposed than torn down (or "accidentally" burnt down), but I've seen enough "luxury" condos in old factories or "mixed use" this or that to know that while the outside might keep some of its look and feel, inside they lose their soul to whatever "style" is in vogue at the time.

I'm not so sure an abandoned factory building has a soul. It may never have. But I have a story about resurrection.

For about 20 years I worked in photofinishing, an industry that has all but evaporated. For almost 15 of those years (seemed longer), I worked in the same place. The place was built only in 1959/1960, so wasn't all that old and it wasn't very large either, rather smaller than a typical big box store. Between 125 and 150 people worked there, maybe more (and most were women). After the plant shut down, it was sold a few years later to a music venue that had previously been located in another building on the same block. It's the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, which mostly hosts country & western performers.

Fading Fast said:

And, I wonder if there aren't some real hazardous / industrial waste issues that might also make some of them too expensive to undertake.

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This is a big issue. The old RCA factory in Indianapolis (actually the grounds, since the factory was torn down this year) would literally take 20 years of environmental cleanup (where they inject chemicals into the ground) to make it suitable for residential use. Fortunately, there's clear responsibility in this case--General Electric has always (I think) been the owner. In other cases, factories changed hands, owners went out of business, and there's no clear responsibility for who pays for the cleanup.

If the windows were left open (probably by squatters), there's probably mold, too.

That's the plant where they used to manufacture cathode-ray tubes -- which use all sorts of rare earths and heavy metals in the preparation of the phosphor coatings. RCA made tubes at that plant for about forty years, and the chemicals that got dumped there must've been horrific.

Old-timers say it smelled bad, too.

Then there's the area nearby around the old American Lead smelter, where the EPA dug out and replaced dirt two feet deep around the nearby houses. As houses have been torn down, recontamination has occurred; the EPA is digging up more yards to replace the soil. The city seems to have written off the area as a total loss, as far as rehabbing and redevelopment go. My house is some four or five miles away, but even my soil has some contamination. The levels are low enough to grow vegetables in most of my yard except for the dripline of the house. Indiana/Purdue University recommends washing the vegetables before eating them, since dust with lead can collect on them. They said lead contamination in the dripline can be from lead paint from the house.

And only in the past several years did the city create a large retention pond nearby for storm runoff, taking a lot of houses out of the flood plain. The city is still fixing the sewer system, since raw sewage gets into streams and rivers during bad rain storms. (I don't go fishing around here.)

Along with environmental cleanup, there's dealing with abandoned houses, crime, taxation, the state's policies that make it business-friendly or not, and infrastructure. Redevelopment can even come down to a few engaged citizens and police informants. The city was going to turn the old RCA plant into the new city jail. A few of us raised enough fear, uncertainty and doubt among our neighbors to block it by one vote. This is in a neighborhood with homes, a school and a women's shelter literally across the street.

Redevelopment is complicated and difficult and a lot of conditions have to be right for it to be done well--or at all.

My former city poisoned it's lake. In the 1970s it was the dirtiest body of water in the US. You still can't swim there, or fish there (they don't even allow catch and release), or live within 100 feet. They've "remediated" the land around it, with the local mall getting major tax breaks to do so on one end (where most of the industry was). Most of the area around it is now county park... with no boat launch because that would be too dangerous (if you fell in the water).

People within 5 miles downstream are recommended to not have gardens.

They did some work on the lake a few years ago, thanks to pur tax dollars but also a company that bought the last polluter still standing. They fought with the state and did a partial clay cap of the lake... which is like fixing half your cavity. They originally took the dedgred soil and piled it next to the lake after processing to make it "clean." It wouldn't grow grass. They kept reprocessing it, tried to add 2 feet of top soil, grass died. Finally they dug a hole and buried it with 5 feet of top soil. The trees they planted died after 4 years or so, but it does grow grass.

I call that side of the park "the side we don't go on."