That's sort of my point. We'd have to get ourselves into the mentality where we'd find aged precast charming before this kind of transformation could occur. I think it could happen, but only among a future generation reacting against something they find even more revolting. These people will think so radically different from us that we will sound like suburbanites who wander Fort Point puzzled over why someone would want to live somewhere without copious private parking or verdant lawns.
CZ, AMF, et al -- if the SPID neighborhood develops -- the people will adopt the quirks and make it a home. Ultimately, that's the key -- it really matters little what the construction is, or even the quality of the materials. What matters is that people want to live in a place and have some resources and some recourses to provide "curb appeal" and street-life.
Today, people are transforming the horible Commie Blocks in the former Warsaw Pact countries -- they are living in them and painting, planting flowers, blowing holes in the walls and creating room for small shops, etc. Of course there is a lot of very fancy new construction -- but the majority of the dynamic neighborhoods are founded on the old and less old buildings.
When I first arrived at MIT in 1970 the South End was a derelict slum with old shells of buildings available for about $5,000 (plumbing and probably most of the wiring had been stripped). Therefore, if you were starting to renovate in place, it was almost urban camping. Same could be said of the inner Harbor waterfront, many parts of Cambridge, Sommerville, Medford, Chelsea, Everett, Revere, East Boston, etc., etc. Even some parts of Back Bay were just frat house row.
But times changed, people with more money moved in -- in many cases the buildings didn't change except superficially on the outside. Today, we have active, functional, dynamic neighborhoods where there are Million $ brownstones, brick townhomes, wooden tripple deckers, old factory building condos as well as stately Victorians and new construction.
Given that the core of Boston which rose out of a slumbering state in the 1970's though 1990's, as it once again became a boom place where people and companies wanted to domicile, continues to be popular place (with the inevitable short-tem cycles) -- the process will go forth transforming one derelict area after another.
However, eventually it will stop --- and there will be some places which today are good and will become the new derelict districts. In the meantime, I think the SPID has a few decades to run until all of the land and derelict buildings are used-up.
