Awfulization

My brother coined this word before others began using it. He identified it as a trap he falls into—he imagines the worst that can happen, and if he didn’t fight the feeling, his fears would immobilize him.

I bet you’re familiar with awfulization. It’s usually associated with change, it carries exaggerated predictions of calamity, and can have the same deleterious effect on a community that it does on a person. On the other hand, it elicits permanent skepticism in people who once heard that Chicken Little claimed the sky was falling.

Let’s take as an example the casinos destined for Massachusetts. The immorality! The crime! The addiction! The loss of business for small merchants and restaurateurs! Doomsday!

Now I have to come clean. I come from a gambling family. My brother’s wife has a bookie. My father liked cards. I buy a lottery ticket a couple of times a year when the payout is high—which is, of course, the silliest time to buy a ticket since such games attract more competition. But most damning, our great-great grandfather was run out of London in the 1850s when the betting house he ran didn’t pay out after a horse race known as the Cesarewitch. He fled to frontier Illinois, where his friends, possibly not having heard of Methodists’ anti-gambling views, had immigrated. With such a heritage, I take care not to fall into hypocrisy.

Still, I predict most of us will barely see a change due to casinos. A few jobs will be created, but it won’t be a tsunami of work. A few small businesses might fold, but they might possibly have gone under anyway. Some people will have fun closer to home, but others will never see the inside of any of these facilities. I’m just hoping gamblers can get there by public transportation.

We awfulize tall buildings too. They’ll destroy life as we know it, according to their detractors. State representatives Marty Walz and Byron Rushing are pushing an anti-shadow bill that is a perfect example of awfulization. These people are two of my favorite reps, but they can be just as hysterical as anyone else.

Their bill would restrict building heights to prevent certain shadows falling on certain green spaces. The real estate community opposes the bill, but it too is probably awfulizing the financing problems it would cause. One example of the exaggerated “problem” predicted by Walz and Rushing is a Boylston Street building recently approved by the BRA. It will cast a moving shadow for an hour and a half on a small slice of Commonwealth Avenue on December 21. Spring, summer and fall? No shadows. That doesn’t seem like much of a problem to those of us who embrace December’s darkness.

Moreover, Commonwealth Avenue’s rowhouses contribute far more shadow—or shade, as we say when we want relief from the sun—than high rises near the Mass Pike. Most problematically, this bill conflicts with the laudable goal of rejoining Boston over the gash in the ground, since height pays for the extra-strength foundations buildings need over the roadway. But awfulization whips up passions, so it gets used, and the conflicts with other goals get ignored.

Think of all the changes we’ve awfulized that never came to pass. The Bunker Hill Zakim Bridge, for example. Twenty years ago people were horrified—10 lanes would create an ugly monstrosity. Now these lanes are admired, even loved, by their users.

I’m particularly fond of the awfulization of liquor licenses. Full disclosure—I once served on the board of the Beacon Hill Civic Association. But the BHCA awfulized wine and beer for many years. When they finally admitted that restaurants had better chances of succeeding if they offered such beverages, they turned their sights on mixed drinks, fighting full liquor licenses for decades. Mayhem, bedlam, brouhahas and general bad behavior were predicted, causing Charles Street to tumble into chaos, property values to plummet and residents to flee. Recently, however, restaurants that have wanted full liquor licenses have gotten them. The outcome? Nothing.

Awfulization is going on right now in Charlestown, where some people predict Armageddon-like traffic snarls within the neighborhood if Rutherford Avenue, a particularly unpleasant street, is realigned and prettied up the way some neighbors and Boston’s traffic planners want.

But experience has shown snarls rarely occur when people predict them. For example, when the Craigie Drawbridge was repaired a couple of years ago, the anticipated traffic disasters did not occur. The same for the Longfellow Bridge. One inbound lane was closed for about a year four years ago, and nothing happened.

Y2K, the swine flu—we remember the dire predictions about events like these. Such awfulizations not only impede our ability to make desirable changes, but paradoxically, they have great entertainment value. I have begun to wonder how bad the problems really are with Greece since someone revealed that the Greek economy is about the size of Connecticut’s.

The next time you hear someone predicting doom, get a grip. There is doom if you live in a war zone or famine-ravaged Somalia. But if you’re living in downtown Boston, things are not likely to descend into awfulness.

 

 

One thought on “Awfulization

  1. protestfolk

    Minimization of what both the short-term and the long-term effects of a massive, “Big-Dig-like” skyscraper construction project of 1 to 3 years and the Manhattanization/overdevelopment of the Back Bay can have on the quality of life of Back Bay residents seems to be a greater danger than “awfulization. Besides increasing the shadow over Copley Square by 20 percent between November and March during the late morning and early afternoon, the 47-story skyscraper construction project is likely to affect Back Bay daily life, for example, in the way that Karl Sabbah indicated what happens when a skyscraper is constructed in his book “Skyscraper:” “The effects of the project will inevitably spread far beyond the boundaries of the site. The constant stream of trucks to and from the site, some bringing concrete, others carrying away rubble to dumps…disrupt…the already busy traffic…Buses sometimes have to mount the pavement to skirt around the trucks…The history of construction is littered with disasters caused by a failure to appreciate the impact of loads and forces on steel connections and supports…The windows of the John Hancock Building in Boston provide one example of the unpleasant surprises lying in wait for the best of architects and construction managers…It took four years of falling glass for the architects and construction company to decide what to do…”

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