The Natick Mall will pay close to $4 million to improve area roads under a draft plan discussed by the Planning Board last night," the MetroWest Daily News reports. "More than $2.4 million will go to roadwork and pedestrian access on Speen Street...."
Woo-hoo! Some thought is indeed being given to pedestrians as part of the Natick Mall expansion plan. However, I hope that "pedestrian access" will mean a LOT more than sticking in sidewalks that no one would actually want to use. P-L-E-A-S-E, let's include sidewalks that have some kind of screening between walkers and traffic, and that are pleasant to be on, instead of feeling like you're drowning in a sea of concrete and barely separate from a river of speeding cars, trucks and SUVs.
July 7, 2004
A Field Guide To Sprawl
"I was struggling for words to describe places like Tysons Corner," Yale Professor Dolores Hayden told the New York Times, referring to the Virginia suburb's sprawl. "If you don't know what to call something, you don't know how to criticize it."
That, the Times explains, helped spark work on her new book to be published next month, A Field Guide To Sprawl.
"In addition to naming names, Hayden critiques a landscape based on unrestrained growth, one, she writes, championed by federal policies since the 1920s," according to the Times. "The idea for a field guide grew out of Hayden's own frustration as a scholar and a citizen. . . .[She] wound up serving on a citizens advisory committee examining encroaching development" in Guilford, Conn.
The town is "a very typical battleground for preserving the sense of place," she told the Times. Yet the town's zoning code "was so convoluted nobody could read it. After a while I got to see that a lot of it was designed to frustrate discussion rather than enable it."
That, the Times explains, helped spark work on her new book to be published next month, A Field Guide To Sprawl.
"In addition to naming names, Hayden critiques a landscape based on unrestrained growth, one, she writes, championed by federal policies since the 1920s," according to the Times. "The idea for a field guide grew out of Hayden's own frustration as a scholar and a citizen. . . .[She] wound up serving on a citizens advisory committee examining encroaching development" in Guilford, Conn.
The town is "a very typical battleground for preserving the sense of place," she told the Times. Yet the town's zoning code "was so convoluted nobody could read it. After a while I got to see that a lot of it was designed to frustrate discussion rather than enable it."
July 5, 2004
Denver Face-Off: Smart Growth Vs. Dumb Growth
"In one of only three successful all-volunteer petition drives in the state's history, volunteers have turned in more than 52,000 valid signatures to ensure that the Regional Transportation District's FasTracks plan will be on the Nov. 2 ballot in the seven-county metro region," writes the Denver Post's Bob Ewegen. "That means this fall's election will produce the long-awaited confrontation between Smart Growth and its smog-fueled evil twin, Dumb Growth."
FasTracks would build half a dozen new rail lines into Denver. It is supported both by the local business community as well as environmentalists, as one way to deal with predicted booming growth -- 900,000 new residents and more than half a million jobs in the next 15 years.
Ewegen wisely points out that whether or not Colorado grows is not entirely in its own hands. "[W]hat we can control is whether that growth is channeled wisely or whether it overwhelms and obliterates the special qualities that attracted so many of us to Colorado in the first place. . . .
"The legacy of dumb growth will be with us until the next ice age, when the glaciers scrape off the sprawl and allow our descendants to start all over."
FasTracks would build half a dozen new rail lines into Denver. It is supported both by the local business community as well as environmentalists, as one way to deal with predicted booming growth -- 900,000 new residents and more than half a million jobs in the next 15 years.
Ewegen wisely points out that whether or not Colorado grows is not entirely in its own hands. "[W]hat we can control is whether that growth is channeled wisely or whether it overwhelms and obliterates the special qualities that attracted so many of us to Colorado in the first place. . . .
"The legacy of dumb growth will be with us until the next ice age, when the glaciers scrape off the sprawl and allow our descendants to start all over."
July 4, 2004
Who Owns The Streets?
"You either feel the pedestrian owns the street or the motorists own the street"
-- West Warwick Town Councilman Leo J. Costantino Jr, quoted in the Kent County Times after attending a Walkable Workshop.
Well said! When streets are designed only with automobiles in mind, even if sidewalks are installed as an afterthought (but with no effort to make the walking experience a pleasant one or even a safe one for people who are trying to cross the street), walking is a discouraged activity. And that means people end up taking their cars even from one strip mall to another, half a mile away or less -- distances that they wouldn't think twice about walking if they were on Commonweath Avenue or Newbury Street in Boston, Harvard Square in Cambridge and so on.
Costantino told the paper he expected to be "underwhelmed" by the event but "came away educated with a different awareness and a lot of ideas of different ways of accomplishing things."
We need better design and planning to liberate us from HAVING to use our cars to drive less than a mile!!!
-- West Warwick Town Councilman Leo J. Costantino Jr, quoted in the Kent County Times after attending a Walkable Workshop.
Well said! When streets are designed only with automobiles in mind, even if sidewalks are installed as an afterthought (but with no effort to make the walking experience a pleasant one or even a safe one for people who are trying to cross the street), walking is a discouraged activity. And that means people end up taking their cars even from one strip mall to another, half a mile away or less -- distances that they wouldn't think twice about walking if they were on Commonweath Avenue or Newbury Street in Boston, Harvard Square in Cambridge and so on.
Costantino told the paper he expected to be "underwhelmed" by the event but "came away educated with a different awareness and a lot of ideas of different ways of accomplishing things."
We need better design and planning to liberate us from HAVING to use our cars to drive less than a mile!!!
July 2, 2004
Walkable? Zoning bill is the key
Current zoning encourages sprawl, argues this editorial in the San Jose Mercury News. But there's a solution!
The editorial goes on to endorse the proposal by Assemblywoman Patricia Wiggins, AB1268. "It should be required reading for local officials all over the state," the newspaper says. "Cities that haven't been thinking about this kind of planning ought to be."
Towns, too!
People love places like downtown Willow Glen, Los Gatos and Mountain View. They stroll the streets and linger, with or without laptops, at coffee shops. People who work in stores or nearby offices rarely get in their cars at lunchtime because it's so easy to walk to Aqui or Kuleto's or The Cantankerous Fish.
It's no coincidence that these are older neighborhoods. Since the 1950s, zoning in the United States has discouraged building them. But a bill moving through the California Legislature this month would make it easier for communities to mix stores, offices and different kinds of homes in new, walkable neighborhoods that mimic popular older ones.
The editorial goes on to endorse the proposal by Assemblywoman Patricia Wiggins, AB1268. "It should be required reading for local officials all over the state," the newspaper says. "Cities that haven't been thinking about this kind of planning ought to be."
Towns, too!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)