Word: decays
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...this day and age wind up embalmed as the heroine of a Jean Kerr comedy, or a case history for Women's Lib (Anatomy is not Destiny, etc.). In life, Doris Lessing notes, Kate's future would be a slow, desperate struggle against the signs of decay-"tinting her hair, keeping her weight down, following the fashions carefully so that she would be smart but not mutton dressed as lamb...
...Decay. All in character, of course. Archer is as much loser as winner. In his wash-and-wear slacks and sports jacket he shoulders resentfully among the heedless rich and the heedless young who are the villains of Macdonald's recurrent daydream, and ours. Roughly at first, then with a rough man's compassion, he rubs their noses in mortality, the loser's truth. See the proud millionaire grovel, as Archer spades up the moldering past! See the sneering teenager whine, as Archer lays bare the certain decay that lies ahead...
...death will become just as controversial. The traditional termination of spontaneous heartbeat and breathing simply is not satisfactory. Emergency techniques have brought back many such clinically "dead." At the other extreme is the guideline of a cautious Dr. Maze, who wrote in 1890 that the first signs of decay should precede burial. For transplant purposes, this caution is a little restrictive...
Newman argues that urban design does not merely suffer from the decay of the social structure, but has contributed to it. The three-year study of major American cities focuses on Urban Renewal's post-World War II "solution" to the problem of lower-income housing, not upon older urban slums. Newman calls that solution "possibly the most cogent ally the criminal has in his victimization of society." Uncoordinated government decisions, combined with the whims of architects bound by little more than limited funds, have produced a motley assortment of often "inadequate and irrational" buildings...
...decay of the city as a whole remains. The scope of Newman's solution is clearly limited. Ironically, one of the drawbacks of "defensible space," which Newman recognizes, is its tendency to displace crime to other areas. "Defensible space" is a solution to a solution -- the problem remains...