Friday Funny: The Amazing Disappearing House

25 January 2008 - 2:00pm

A woman in Russia returned home form vacation recently to an empty plot of land. Her home was mistakenly demolished as developers readied a site for new construction.

"'There was nothing left, not even a log,' Lyudmila Martemyanova said, bundled against the cold and standing on a snow-covered lot in the center of the Volga River city of Nizhny Novgorod."

"A local prosecutor, Nikolai Govorkov, said a construction company tore down the wrong building — Martemyanova's, instead of one nearby that was marked for demolition."

"Martemyanova's case is extreme, however, and she has taken it to court. She refused the builder's offer of money, saying it wasn't enough even to get a room on the outskirts of the city, and has sued."

Source: Associated Press, January 24, 2008
Bookmark and Share
But what can planners do to support the kind of connections between people I just described? One idea is promoting mixed-use places where there are simply more opportunities for people to run into each other and connect.