Un-Baking the Cake

Special thanks to Alisa Costa, Jared Cowing, Kamaar Taliaferro, Ricardo Morales and Wylie Goodman for their time and energy in helping edit this essay.

One expression that has left a big impression on me is that “you can’t un-bake a cake.” I often use this phrase to point to the idea that some things seem too “baked-in” to our daily lives and systems to undo. Once the eggs, milk, flour, water, and sugar are blended together, they can’t be separated back out into their component parts. We have to live with what we have. One of these cakes that often seems impossible to un-bake is our city. Many of us alive today unfortunately were not in the kitchen when the first Pittsfield Cake was being baked. What can we do about it in 2023, as time continues to march forward?

A town grew up around woolen mills founded upon rivers that were re-discovered by our European immigrant ancestors. Lands that were traditionally cared for by First Nations over centuries were cleared, mills were built, rivers were dammed. Hillsides of old-growth forest were clear-cut for sheep pastures to support the mills. A town center and street grid was being surveyed by early Berkshire County settlers. The settlers decided a magnificent elm tree on a hilltop was too stately to be chopped down, and the new central crossroads of the town would be bent around it to eventually form Park Square.

The cake was being baked. 

Buildings of wood were replaced with buildings of stone. Water lines were laid, sewers were dug, streetcar tracks were laid and later buried. Courthouses, libraries, schools, meetinghouses, churches, and a town hall were placed around “the public square” with the elm tree. Those buildings are still watching over us today.

The cake was being baked.

The Boston and Albany Railroad surveyed a route for the first rail line to climb the Berkshire Hills and connect the Massachusetts Bay to the Hudson Valley. The surveyors found the best route that snakes through the river valley and over the hills of Becket, Washington, and Hinsdale and down into Dalton, Pittsfield, Richmond and West Stockbridge. William Stanley founded an electric research and manufacturing company on prime property that was adjacent to these rail lines. The General Electric company would come to use these railroads and the property around them to build electric transformers that powered the world. The city grew rapidly. New neighborhoods were sold off by land developers who bought old farms, estates, and undeveloped land around the city. They laid out streets and named them after historic figures, types of trees, or family members. They poured concrete sidewalks and planted street trees.

The cake was being baked.

Main roads were widened, streetcar tracks were torn up, traffic lights were installed and upgraded. A Turnpike was built. Parking regulations were written. Zoning ordinances were written. Plans for a bypass were drawn by a planner in thick, red marker lines on a map for future city development. Train depots were left unused and torn down. Parking garages were built. Neighborhoods were evaluated for worthiness of investment by the federal government. They were given color codings. Some were colored red. They were not deemed worthy of investment. So they were Renewed, and those in power at the time decided there were better uses for that land - bypasses, warehousing, public housing projects, parkland, or parking lots. The neighborhoods that were there before, and the forests and wetlands that were there before them, were forgotten.

The cake was being baked.

One day, the city stopped growing in population. As the world became more interconnected, and it became viable to manufacture the things our modern society needs from anywhere in the world, what was really so special about our city to a corporation who could go anywhere or do anything? So they left. Gigantic, empty, metal boxes now loomed over the neighborhoods that housed people who once made a living inside them. The soil and rivers were polluted. Neighborhoods, streets, grocery stores, gas stations, theaters, schools, playgrounds, offices, and institutions that served the city, that were developed incrementally over generations, were, of course, still there. But no more streets were being built or named. No new neighborhoods were being laid out, no new schools were being built. Few homes were being modified or expanded, or seeing family businesses be run from the ground floor. Not that the zoning code would allow for that anymore, anyway. Those who could follow their jobs to other places did so. Others retired. Those who couldn’t do either had to figure out what to do next.

The cake was baked.

As the population of our city has declined over the past forty years, the cake can’t be un-baked. Streets can’t be erased off the map, homes can’t be un-built, Urban Renewal can’t be undone, our mental map can’t be re-written. The decisions made by our parents and grandparents are now baked into the land we live on. Maybe the cake is getting stale. Maybe our forebears already ate the cake they baked. If we had been in their shoes two or three generations ago, would we have told our current selves to “let them eat cake”? Back then, times were good (for some), and there was no indication that it would change anytime soon. Back then, we thought we knew what was best.

Those of us growing up in a 21st century America know that the only thing constant is change. Nothing can be taken for granted. And we have to work hard to break the status quo that has been baked in by those that came before us. We were not in the kitchen when this cake was being baked. Those who were in the kitchen at the time have an understandable motivation to keep enjoying the cake that they baked. And can we damn them for acting in their own self-interests? For however parochial the attitudes at the time may have been, we as humans can only look at what’s happening in front of our own two eyes. We are notoriously bad at predicting the future, and we can only work with what we have at the time. Luckily, time is on our side in the gift of hindsight. Those before us did the best they could, and we, as today’s stewards of our city, have the responsibility to do better now that we know better. 

As the world changes around us, many things in this cake stay constant. The streets named by forgotten land developers a century ago are read out to us by our GPS services to find our way around. Buildings that were home to offices still stand, and are now home to residents and families in apartments. The industrial property that was founded on prime land next to the railroad a century ago is still there, and is being pitched in hopes that other corporations find something special in Pittsfield, as William Stanley did. Roads that were originally paved with cobblestone for horses, with rails for streetcars, and then asphalt for automobiles, haven’t gone away, and are being adapted to serve additional modes of transportation, as well as the people who live on those roads.

But we no longer see news about new tracts of homes being built, new industries looking for masses of unskilled labor, new institutions being founded, or a new street being named. We don't have those opportunities today. The people living in Renewed neighborhoods, people who have moved here with fresh eyes, and the generations who were born here with no knowledge of the England Brothers — the people who were not in the kitchen — are looking for opportunity. We’ve frosted over the current cake too many times, and it’s starting to get stale. We cannot enjoy it in the way that those who came before us could.

I was going to conclude by saying that it’s time for us to bake a new cake. But I think a new cake, which future generations would also not be able to un-bake, probably shouldn’t be made at all. A city does not have to be something that is prepared and consumed like a cake. Many things that were baked-in, that now dominate our status quo, can be changed without baking a new cake. We can re-imagine our streets as living parts of our neighborhoods, rather than just conduits to move vehicles. We can give that flexibility to our future generations. They can have choices and freedom to get around however they want. We can grow our own food and make our own livelihoods in our neighborhoods. We don't need to be a company town. We can elect leaders who were historically not in the kitchen when the first cake was being baked, who have different understandings of what a neighborhood or city could look like. We can encourage innovation and flexibility by taking a hard look at the codes and rules that were baked-in to our city when it was growing 50 years ago. I'm not about to assume that I know what's best for people 5, 10, or 50 years from now. But I do think that they would not want to be left with a cake they can't un-bake.

To those who were in the kitchen before us, and got to have their cake and eat it too - I still invite you to this process. It’s your city, too. But it’s time to hand over the oven mitts. We want to build a city that those born three generations from now can also enjoy, and will not have to grapple with how to un-bake. Instead of a cake, let's work to give our next generation a cookbook that they can write themselves.