second history

The term "Second History" leads me to feel several different things, especially since my move to buffalo almost 5 years ago.  The first thing i think is the inherent inability of the term to encompass the true feeling that one receives upon looking at the years of cultural facade upon the streets of the city and its neighboring suburbs. Truly these places have undergone a change in history that far outreaches a second, third, or even fourth history. Obviously a feeling like this would be much more predominant in the European countryside, where it seems things don't change for centuries, but the feeling is somehow much more eerie in the context of the American Landscape. I am constantly reminded that the objects, buildings, centers of commerce of America were once wholly and completely different. The change that occurs can happen in matters of decades, sometimes even only one. The other thing that strikes me is that although everywhere we look we can see a vast kaleidoscopic mixture of old and new edifices one often forgets that inside each of these buildings a different story is to be told, either by those that built it, lived there, or even those that still bear witness as to what it was like in the 'good ol days". Having been confined to the internet for the last week or so, vs. actually being able to go into the real world, i came across numerous images and stories of the way that Buffalo and its surviving neighborhoods used to be. The stories tell a rather sad and depressing tale, one which is not distinctly Buffalonian in context but seems these days to be a part of an American tale. The once burgeoning storefronts with bright glittering marquees and the glitz and glamor of hope seem to have left Buffalo and most major cities of the Rust Belt behind. If one thinks it disheartening to think back upon the changes of say, a 20 year period, then one can only imagine being able to look back 50 years or more. One story that was attached to some images I found was that of a haberdasher in East Buffalo who started his business 20 years ago in what was a promising neighborhood. Recently he was woken up to the cops telling him they had arrested a man with an uzi on his front steps. I wonder if the man was simply admiring the brick facade or investigating the post war building structure. Probably not. For more information on this see http://buffalostoryproject.com/2010/04/17/rise-and-ruin/. However I digress, I guess the real questions that I have are ones that concern American existence and the structures we build. Is our declining Urban structure a symptom of a throwaway society, a "screw it, we'll just build and new one" mentality? In contrast to Europe where castles and cities are centuries old, are we incapable of creating things that last more than a 75 year time-span, or even more so are we able to preserve them as links to the past?