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PROFESSOR: Think.

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How does one understand
the passage of time?

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How do we understand the
evolution of humanity's most

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dynamic invention, the city?

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Look closely and carefully.

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Try to see how the layers
of history have accumulated.

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Cities are the
products of the actions

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of millions of people
and countless decisions,

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public and private.

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How do all the pieces, styles,
and times fit together?

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How does one
understand processes

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as trends, at once part of
the past and of the future?

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And how will the new
fit into the fabric

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when it loses that newness?

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In a place as old as Cambridge,
what's a dormitory today

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might easily have played host to
critical junctures in history.

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Without understanding
our surroundings,

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we can only inhabit the present.

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Signs may reveal that
which is all but forgotten

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and invisible.

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That which may seem
eternal like a river

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may be subject to great change.

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On our own campus, the
Great Dome's date stone

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recalls its own construction,
while the columns that support

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it allude to things far older.

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Preserving the past
is often impossible.

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All around MIT and the region
as a whole, construction sites

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testify to the constant
destruction and remaking

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of the city.

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Even when structures
stand the test of time,

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the ways of life
that they represent

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and that they once enabled
are often irrevocably lost.

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In Fort Point, fading signs for
leather and metal manufacturing

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advertise services that
have long since departed.

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Across the channel in the
city's financial district,

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economic trends such as
the need for office space

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may be too great to save
more than the facade

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of an old warehouse.

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At street level, the
walking city is preserved,

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but tall buildings now rise
above the old mansard roofs.

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Why do office towers sprout
in the center of the hub?

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Will spaces of work
always dominate downtowns?

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What processes might
disrupt the practice?

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And how will the city adapt?

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Adaptation is after
all everywhere.

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This street in Beacon
Hill, for example,

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was laid out more than a
century before the invention

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of the car.

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What could have preceded the
proliferation of parking here

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along the waterfront?

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In the Back Bay,
signs and symbols

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share space on a
single structure,

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institutions giving way to
the pervasive social process

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of shopping.

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How can you read the
past and the present

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here on Newbury Street?

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Signs of the past,
signs of the future,

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are visible in all
parts of the city.

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With old maps in
hand and a keen eye,

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one can sense the trends that
propel the city's development

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and reason out whether they'll
continue to stretch and flex

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or with the right force
applied snap completely.

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You can read the traces
of the past, a history

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of the city that is visible,
and can be communicated,

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photographed, and assembled
into a meaningful form.

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As you walk the
streets and alleys,

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it should become clear
history is not only

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to be found in books.

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