"Shovel Ready: Razing Hopes, History, and a Sense of Place: Rethinking Schenectady's Downtown Strategies" is now available at the Schenectady Digital History Archive at: <http://www.schenectadyhistory.org/schenectady/shovelready/> A thought-provoking discussion of downtown development in Schenectady in the second half of the twentieth century, "Shovel Ready" is Christopher Spencer's master's thesis in city planning (MIT, 2001) and analyzes the reasoning behind Schenectady's development plans from the 1924 report of the City Planning Commission to the Downtown Schenectady Master Plan of 1999, which is also available at the Schenectady Digital History Archive. -- Bob Sullivan Schenectady Digital History Archive <http://www.schenectadyhistory.org/> Schenectady County (NY) Public Library