Recently, plans have been made between business owners and the city alike to build several new high rises around Madison, affecting the aesthetic and character of many neighborhoods surrounding campus.
Let me just say, I love the broken, smelly couches that sit on your porches. I love how they get soaked with rain and snow and beer and whatever else. I love the plaid or whatever other outdated pattern that fades with each party/snowfall/windstorm. I think it’s great. What I don’t love is when neighborhoods filled with houses perfectly suitable for porch-couches are destroyed by massive high-rise buildings, forever ruining the opportunity for your parents’ 20-year-old furniture to receive a second life.
Porch couches aside, there are other concerns that arise from the influx of high rises. The ability to find affordable housing will become increasingly more difficult. With rent and tuition forever on the up, the financial strain that is college is becoming more difficult to bear. The rent of a college apartment for an individual student does not need to exceed $1,000 per month. If the neighborhoods surrounding campus become yuppie villages, it will be hard pressed to find rent below this price point, leaving many students with very few options. While living further from campus is, of course, cheaper, it is wrong to simply deny students easy access to campus merely because they cannot afford ridiculously expensive rent.
There are ecological consequences to these buildings as well. Cooperatives are concerned with massive buildings blocking sunlight to their gardens. Historic buildings that add character and charm to our beloved college town are replaced by large rectangles that forfeit green space for living space. There are districts for this sort of building, such as the strip along University Avenue, which houses the Equinox, the Aberdeen and the Embassy. High rises are typically suited for urban neighborhoods, and in a town such as Madison, where the lines that define neighborhoods aren’t necessarily clear, urban sprawl could be detrimental to the residential areas that it demolishes in its greedy path.
I check my email like it’s my job. At least three times a week, I receive emails claiming signing bonuses, roommate matching and special offers that accompany the pleasure of living in whatever building it is they’re selling. As it is March, five months after the signing craze of November, and there are clearly units left in these buildings, there’s obviously enough room for students in the buildings that we already have. Knocking down beautiful, historic buildings, such as the church on the 100 block of Johnson Street, in order to make room for unnecessary living space is simply ridiculous.
So, dear friends, I say to you, bring your parents’ grungy furniture back to life. Celebrate the broken bike and moped laying on their respective sides in your yard. Throw a basement party, even if the ceiling is too low for most of the guys in attendance. Lay down excessive amounts of salt because you’re too lazy to shovel. Sit on your porch couches and enjoy your friendly college neighborhood. Who knows how long it’s going to be there.
Nikki is a sophomore majoring in journalism. What do you think about the changing face of Madison from neighborhoods to apartment complexes? Please send all feedback to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
