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The Good Plan

May 12
0

Embracing the Noise

By | The Good Plan | One Comment

At noon on Saturday I sat in a white rocking chair on a front porch. A springer spaniel sat at my feet, a strawberry beer in my hand. I heard birds. I was confused.

“So wait, this is considered the City? We’re within the city limits?”

A fellow planner and I were in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I was trying to wrap my head around a place with front yards, back yards, and heavy tree canopy. It didn’t seem right to equate that landscape with the term “city.” I had landed the night before and promptly dozed off in a taxicab. it took me several minutes to figure out what was different about where I was, as we zipped through the wide roads under the night sky. It wasn’t the warmth I’d been seeking for months, and at first I figured it was the absence of sirens and police helicopters I’ve sadly become so attuned to living in Baltimore City. Halfway through the taxi ride, I realized the difference was an overall silence. I was surrounded by skyscrapers in the central business district at 9pm on a Friday night, and there weren’t any people anywhere.

I had too many things to write about this week — dangerous playgrounds, airports, my newly formed place-making theory which I’m dying to put in front of an intelligent audience. But as I drove along the empty streets of a 2.96 million person metropolitan area, I realized I needed to write about people — the ones I love to hate, the ones in my way, who talk too loud and hang out too late. When I step back, I realize these people are part of the Baltimore urban fabric.

My first conscious encounter with the urban tradeoff happened on the island of O’ahu, Hawaii, where the Aloha spirit became a bit too much to bear. The rainbows which constantly littered the paradisaical sky became commonplace, and after months of living on the island I found I hardly noticed colors amongst the clouds. I missed thunder and lightening, and realized if I lived in Hawaii, I would be sacrificing those beautiful summer storms for good. Would the tradeoff be worth it? Could I trade in thunderstorms for rainbows? A similar thought came to me during that Carolina cab ride: would I give up the noise of the city for a place that goes to sleep at sundown?

There are people I know, and who you might know too — the more infamous loiterers of Baltimore who I’ve found myself apologizing for. The woman who ran across Boston Street on a whim with her shopping cart, screaming obscenities as you tried to screech your 40mph traveling car to a halt. The kids who hang out in the alleyway behind my house and talk too loud and too late, my neighbors who sit on their stoops and the kids who climb Clinton Street trees and the late-night Patterson Park walkers. Would my life be emptier without these people? If they disappeared from the streets for good would I be satisfied with the silence?

Instead of front porches, Baltimore has stoops. A little piece of earth we can safely call our own. These stoops aren’t just decorative, they foster neighborhood involvement and the built-in abilities for us to know our neighbors and keep an eye on our street. For those few hours of rest, we can survey our surroundings from a street level, rather than separated from everyone else on a back porch. Stoops have become engrained in our culture, from specialty-marketed cleaning products for stoop cleaning  and inspiration for storytelling.

If you drive through the city at 9pm on a Friday night, you’ll see people out and about — and those who aren’t necessarily going anywhere, but who have simply found a great spot to sit, and look at everyone else. This is the beauty of more and more people living downtown — the fact that as much as I miss nature, if I’m going to live in a city, I want it to be vibrant.

There’s something wonderful about being able to sit at the street level. We fight for parks and public spaces, as well we should, but let’s not forget our own opportunities to populate the little bit of marble and outdoor real estate we call home.

IMAGE CREDIT. Apartment Therapy.
Apr 28
0

From Sprawl to City

By | The Good Plan | One Comment

These places we call ‘cities’ are evolutions. Before bicycle lanes and green roofs, cities were a collection of cars and soot and dense, dense housing. It really wasn’t that long ago we decided to clean up this density and reform it into a desirable place to be. After reading Joel Kotkins’ opinion that urban sprawl defines the next future city, I can’t help but agree — for the most part.

The cities of the 1980’s were realms where infrastructure existed and where people lived and worked around inconvenience. These dense, dirty cities were our city 1.0. They were conglomerates of action before organization. We left the 1.0 when we started to care about polar bears and recycling. We took this existing mess of people and started to turn it into a functional pattern of streetscapes and movement, ultimately moving from City 1.0 to City 2.0 — where integrated public spaces and programmed parks and living walls made us happy. The City 2.0 is an intentional city — the spaces purposefully designed in a way that satisfies the resident.

Before our obsession with walkability and functional public transit, the white picket fence and the backyard were indicative of the American Dream. Those who could afford to, fled the 1.0 and set up their own hubs of cookie cutter homes and strip malls. These suburbs were rich in infrastructure and relocated businesses — anxious to take advantage of affordable rent and spatial flexibility. The suburbs were hubs for people who had money and owned cars, and while urban planners may hate the big box store and the Pleasantville housing developments, these places were primed for the next evolution in space creation. The people are there, so at some point — they’ll demand that same purposeful planning, or so I imagine.

Houston, Charlotte and Phoenix — the three cities identified by Kotkins as our ‘future cities’ — are really just cities in transition, or in the calm before the storm. They’ve acquired the mass of people and have turned into destinations, but I would imagine there will be a continued push by city residents for the same amenities and qualities of convenience that exist in Boston, Chicago or San Francisco. The elements of a good city — including transit, local food, high air quality, and walkable access to amenities are attractive to the younger generation, who are the source of employment and new investment dollars. At some point, I would presume the masses of these sprawled cities will not want to drive everywhere they need to go.

We don’t often get the opportunity to watch a new city being built, but we do have an example from which we can work. Tony Hsieh is rebuilding Las Vegas idea by idea, to a 2.0. Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos, and in the spirit of desired collaboration and enhanced communication, he relocated his business to Nevada. In addition, he committed millions of dollars into city planning — placemaking both physically and culturally. By creating spaces for chance meetings, keeping people on street level, and encouraging residents to sell their cars, Hsieh is said to be creating the city as a start-up and encouraging a work-live-play urban area.

Hsieh is bringing the people, now its just creating a place for all of them to be happy. He is, in essence, compounding the sprawl into a sustainable urban living experience. Most recently Fast Company produced an article on Project 100 — Hsieh’s latest attempt to create the ideal. In Project 100, members pay $400 per month in exchange for a car service, access to one of 100 car shares, 1 of 100 bikes, and use of 100 shuttle buses with 100 stops around he city. As we watch Las Vegas go through the necessary transformations to make it one of the more evolved urban areas, we can watch sprawl dissipate into consolidated prosperity. As they exist today, the suburbs are not going to be acceptable as the new city, but they most certainly act as a template primed for investment.

Waiting for Change

IMAGE CREDIT. Prekons
Apr 19
0

Lindsey Fisks LIVABILITY

By | The Good Plan | No Comments

ChangeEngine’s irrepressible blogger on all things urban, Lindsey Davis of The Good Plan, got a shout-out today from the good people over at Livability — an online hub for cities that punch above their weight — in their weekly round-up of all ideas spiky and intriguing. When alerted to this fact, Lindsey went into what might be described as paroxysms of enthusiastic analysis, producing a set of pithy, punchy, point-by-point responses that bears an uncanny resemblance to Fisking. (“Ooo new word!” says Lindsey.)

So, as a kind of capper of our own on the week, we present Lindsey’s rapid-fire reactions to Livability’s weekly round-up, with a focus on demographer Joel Kotkin’s provocative suggestion that the suburbs, not San Francisco, might be the template for the future of the American city:

“Could urban sprawl be the best indicator or future city growth? Many urban planning theorists prescribe the idea of high density and central cores as the best way for cities to grow…”

-High density and central cores are the “Best way for cities to grow”? No! Smart development of high density and central cores are the best way for cities to grow.

“…but then there’s Joel Kotkin, a demographer who says data shows legacy cities are a model of the past and that the cities of the future will resemble those experiencing more outward growth.”

-Legacy cities are a model of the past and the future will resemble outward growth. Shocker. So alternately, legacy cities would be forgotten, we’d start ALL over in some field somewhere, build brand new infrastructure? Well, yes. Legacy cities are a model of the past YET A FOUNDATION FOR OUR FUTURE DEVELOPMENT BECAUSE HALF THE WORK IS ALREADY DONE. And yes, we’ll have to move out. We certainly can’t keep going up. Unless you live in Hawaii that is.

“Are Sprawling Urban Regions The Next Great Cities?”

-Are sprawled regions the next great cities? I mean, what’s the alternative here. Something has to be ‘new’ and ‘next.’ If we’re making ‘new’ cities I would think we’d place them in an area where economic activity exists. Also, how are we defining a city? Is the word ‘city’ becoming clichéd? Just like “innovation”… (cue dramatic sigh).

“Kotkin says low-density, car-dominated, heavily suburbanized areas with small central cores are likely the next wave of great American cities.”

-I absolutely agree with Kotkin in that low density, car-dominated areas are next. The infrastructure exists, moveable people exist, we’d be more likely to start corralling businesses there than go to a field and build a utopian city with bicycle lanes adjacent to tractors.

“He cautions ‘urbanistas’ to wake up and recognize that the future is going to look more like Houston, Charlotte and Phoenix and less like Boston, Chicago or San Francisco.”

-Well, I don’t think the future will look like Charlotte or Houston. The next cities might, but think of it in stages – we have to enter stage one car domination before evolving to city 2.0 with bikes and trams and transit. Its easier to take people who live somewhere and make them dense and miserable and then make their lives easier via light rail, than to build a light rail in middle of nowhere Nebraska and then expect people to move there.

“The best practice for fixing a city’s problems might be staying away from the best practices. Things that make one city livable may not work in another city. That’s the point Lindsey Davis, a city planner and blogger, makes in a recent post about best practices for cities.”

-OMG! THAT’S MY NAME! OMG!! AH! I’m KVELLING! AH!

Stay tuned for the next installment of The Good Plan, where Lindsey will take on Kotkin’s thesis in more detail, though with perhaps a touch less kvelling.

IMAGE CREDIT. Livability.
Apr 14
0

Promising the Best

By | The Good Plan | No Comments

Three weeks into my study abroad program, I was required to choose a research topic to study over five months and across three continents. I was angrily throwing a rubber ball against the wall of a hostel in Bangalore, attempting to come up with a solution. What if the topic I chose was obsolete in month three or city number five? What if whatever I decided to study didn’t exist halfway around the world? Could I really identify a best practice applicable to communities ranging from globally-renowned cities to third-world villages?  Spoiler alert: No.

There is no such thing as a best practice, and to those who believe in one magic planning solution that applies to every neighborhood in every country on every continent, I not only believe you are wrong, I also believe you are lazy.

In fields relying solely on quantitative data, there may be a simple solution:

Best practice for avoiding lung cancer? Don’t smoke.

Best practice to avoid contracting an STD? Remain abstinent.

Best practice for acing your exam? Choose the right answers.

Best practice for engaging the community? …

Professor Charles Daye at the UNC School of Law was the first person to introduce me to the concept of ‘promising practice’ as a rival to the word ‘best.’ Professor Daye advocated that nothing could be best for everyone. Things could be indicative of success, and can work in certain places, thereby increasing the possibility they will work in other places, but actions aren’t 100 percent transferable – they need specificity and tailoring to the people, places, and things to which they are applied.

Imagine you’re from Burlington Vermont, and you’re listening to a lecture given by a top planner from Arizona. They’re telling you how swimming pools and bilingual street signs led to eyes on the street and increased resident health. It worked in Arizona, so clearly this is a best practice and should be imitated elsewhere. Do you buy the argument? Would swimming pools in a climate with an average March temperature of 31 degrees work just as they would in a city averaging 62 degrees in the same month? Would bilingual street signs have the same effect in a city that is 30 percent Hispanic as it would in a city that’s 1.6 percent Hispanic?

In 2012, the American Planning Association awarded the National Planning Excellence Award for Best Practice to Cool Planning: A Handbook on Local Strategies to Slow Climate Change. The book offers practical guidelines to reduce public footprints and is, essentially, a plan to integrate more transit options and public awareness as the key for reduced climate change. Let’s attempt to transport this best practice into Australia — to cities suffering droughts, uneven rainfall, sweltering temperatures, and snow inconsistencies due to climate change. If we follow the advice of this best practice, and put everyone in the Pacific on a bus and a bicycle, would that fix the problem? Not likely. “In Australia, most of the greenhouse gases causing climate change are from the burning of coal for the production of electricity.” Not transit. Public transportation may be a promising practice, but it is certainly not the best.

I find myself similarly frustrated when reading reports by Projects for Public Spaces (PPS). The international place-making non-profit lacks, in my opinion, the ability to stray from its standard template, which preaches parks and trees and farmers markets. Despite the fact the organization works all over the world in cities with immense differences in their conditions and demographics, I find their proposed solutions lack variation. While their guiding principles may be spot on, their reports are all the same. A precedent doesn’t matter unless it has local applicability. I struggle to make it through their 2010 Open Space Plan for Baltimore when there is lack of insight into the diverse city demographics, different neighborhoods, and traditional dividing lines. How can you create an open space plan for Baltimore without even a reference to Patterson Park or a local example of success and why it was successful?

It takes more than a cut-and-paste solution to fix big problems like climate change or food deserts. When working on a project in Norfolk, Virginia recently, our team spent days on the ground. We drank beers with residents, heard the history of the neighborhoods, planted trees, painted porches, visited churches, and made an intense study of demographics and local trends so we could propose a solution with the greatest chance of actually working.

You can’t change something without an understanding and respect for where it is today. It takes more work, more time, more energy and effort, but it also assures that you won’t transpose a potential solution to a new location without the insight of how to tweak it for sticking power and success.

IMAGE CREDIT. Wikimedia Comons.
Apr 01
0

Beyond the Band Aid

By | The Good Plan | No Comments

Become Obsolete. In the fall of 2011 I heard Jay Parkinson of Hello Health speak at TedXMidAtlantic on the integration of technology and healthcare access. The entire talk was engaging, but those two words struck me: “become obsolete.”

That’s it. Engage in a way so that you aren’t needed anymore. Heal the source of the problem instead of sticking a band-aid on the wound. The difficult part is that our society often caters to the band aid approach. For if we’re no longer needed, how will we pay the rent? It’s a challenge we need the courage to tackle.

The key to becoming obsolete is identifying the problem, and then identifying its root. In the field of community development, problem identification often revolves around need, which in turn breaks down to perceived versus actual need. The difference between these needs is crucial to placemaking and community development.

Perhaps as an outsider, you’re frustrated by the lack of street signs and navigation in an area. You perceive the need as signage, to facilitate clear routes and to make the place easier for outsiders to visit. The residents, however, do not drive. They don’t need street signs — they know where they’re going and how to get from point A to B on foot or via public transit. What they need, in fact, are streetscapes that make walking safer and sheltered bus stops. The actual need is to make their pedestrian and public transit-heavy way of life safer and more convenient. This actual need is the solution to a sustainable and strong neighborhood, rather than a quick fix to attract the occasional passer-by.

I think of perceived and actual need in direct relation to the latest spike in Baltimore’s crime statistics. Every morning I check my twitter feed and my heart breaks a little bit. Today it was the recap of three overnight shootings. The morning updates of death and violence continue to pop up, and can be explained as simply as, something, somewhere, is broken. From what I understand, police are all over the western district right now, as their presence is expected to deter crime from taking place. While I have only headlines and crime maps to inform me of these trends in violence, my assumption is that their presence isn’t working. If it were, my Twitter feed would be silent. Their presence would, in fact, become obsolete. Maybe the perceived need for a police presence isn’t meeting the actual need, which may be something else entirley.

In graduate school I learned of the concept of infinite regress — the idea that we can always blame one more person for a perceived fault. For example, perhaps it’s not you fault there’s a hole in your shirt, it’s probably the fault of the manufacturer for using low grade fabric. Or maybe it’s the fault of the workers who produce the shirt for the manufacturer. Or it’s the fault of the boss who directs the workers who… you catch my drift. We have an innate need to point a figure and direct blame — primarily, I would assume, because we feel a need to fix the broken piece. In all of our professions, our job is to identify the problem so we can fix it. We exist, I would hope, to make things better.

This past week at Ignite Baltimore, a city employee stood up and expressed the desire to be innovative, but the inability to do so. Again, I was crushed. The constraints institutions put on employees to maintain the status quo doesn’t foster the development of new ideas or the ability to solve old problems. One of my favorite stories came out of Victoria, British Columbia two years ago, when officers began to carry lollipops in order to placate rowdy bar-goers or loiterers. Not only is it difficult to yell with a lollipop in your mouth, but fewer words led to fewer altercations, the sugar was calming, and the ‘pacifier effect’ seemed to steady those who may have been riled up.

We need the infrastructure to try new things and the courage to not be needed anymore. Doing more of the same, like increasing police presence, won’t ever be a long-term solution to crime. If you always do what you always do, you’ll always get what you’ve always got, and what we’ve currently got is far from optimal.

IMAGE CREDIT. Hasdai Westbrook
Mar 18
0

Temporary Event, Lasting Impression

By | Design, The Good Plan | No Comments

With the increasing popularity of urban athletic events, pop-up dinners, and creative ways to use existing space, cities are volunteering to temporarily host unprecedented amounts of people. Comparable to the Olympics, but at a smaller scale, this temporary use of space doesn’t often require the building of venues, but does demand solid infrastructure. Whether relying on transit systems, parking, plumbing, or electricity, the performance of aging systems become strained; think of the system as a sorority house where everyone plugs in their hair dryers at the same time. This sudden demand of energy, more often than not, causes infrastructure shut-down – too much is not always a good thing.

After the DC Rock N Roll marathon on Saturday, the line for the Metro was a half block long and growing. Thirty thousand runners sparked fifty-two street closures around the city. As I boarded my train with a New York City rush hour caliber crowd, I silently hoped my train was powerful enough to carry all of us to our destinations safely. It was, and we made it home without issue – but it did make me wonder when it is worth overriding the built urban system at the cost of hosting an event.

I had a contrasting experience in Philadelphia last year when I attended a Diner En Blanc. This pop-up dinner event where over a thousand people converge, dine, and dance in a public space, was executed beautifully. As we gathered into different parts around the city and made our way to Logan Circle, I was sure we would get disciplined at some point for being too loud, needing to leave, or swimming and dancing in the fountain after dinner – there was none of it. Philadelphia simply let us enjoy ourselves, and I came away with wholehearted thanks to the local government and the police department for allowing us to use the urban space in a way it had never been used before.

Participants of temporary events are left with an impression created not only from how the infrastructure performs, but the location in which the event is held. When holding an event in a city, organizers would presumably want to portray the place in the most favorable light. In the same way you clean your house before having guests over, you want to impress people with the setting and the surroundings – so how do you choose what to show off?

This introduces the element of access and marketability. While some areas may be in greater need than others for temporary visitors, publicity, and community building, they may also not be the areas to which you want to attract outsiders. Philadelphia may have given many of us a different impression had we not been dancing under the moonlight in a public fountain outside an art museum. How would my experience have been different if I were in an overgrown field, surrounded by the same 1,300 people but with a backdrop of vacant town homes or public housing? What if I were in a community garden surrounded by barbed wire? Perhaps my impression of the event would not have changed – but I’m willing to bet it would have.

City planners speak about the importance of access to public spaces and greening, but parks are just the tip of that iceberg. Each community needs space to play and be and go, but we also need to think about what we can see from the park. Looking at homes with cluttered yards gives us the impression we’re in a different place than it would should we look out from a park and see well-maintained residences and freshly painted porches. Attracting outsiders for temporary events provides an opportunity for a city to leave a lasting impression through a snapshot of an experience. Critical thoughts of what our city decides to show the public and what it decides to hide is worthy of analysis, because quite simply a city that decides to host an event directly reflects on the event organizers, as well as the city itself.

Image courtesy of Philly Loves Fun
Mar 04
0

When the Music was Missing

By | The Good Plan | One Comment

During the opening forum at the recent innovation “un-conference” Create Baltimore, we ran through the usual suspects of interest for potential sessions: transportation, urban farming, and education. There was a quick minute where we entertained the idea of ‘music.’ Unfortunately, there were no strong advocates for this topic. Where were the representatives from the music industry?

“They’re still sleeping,” a participant yelled over the crowd, and there was a murmur of amusement.

But where were they? Where were the innovators of music, and why weren’t they there?

I sought help from Jordan Goodman of BeatWell Baltimore and Patrick Lundberg, an editor at Vibe To This  to discern why there wasn’t a stronger music industry representation when it came to cross-collaboration. It seems almost all of us – technologists, designers, artists, educators – are expanding our professional practice in order to facilitate change and community betterment. But where are the industry changemakers for music, and why aren’t they part of the discussion? Music is one of the few arenas that’s accessible to everyone — an international industry crossing all colors and cultures and boundaries. Did musicians feel they were beyond the need to evolve?

Both Pat and Jordan spoke about the evolution of the music business. While many musicians have changed their approaches to profitability, a greater number refuse to accept the demands of the new industry. Pat spoke of how tight-knit the local music community is, and explained that since so much of the industry has moved onto the internet, playing to 15-20 people in a boutique venue is more important than a bunch of people buying music on iTunes and never leaving the house to listen to it with others. Both Jordan and Pat used the word ‘insular’ more than once.

The term community came up quite a bit, and Pat reinforced the importance of organizations like WTMD – the Towson University radio station which promotes, supports, and encourages Baltimore bands and reaches out to the community through competitions, air time, and “First Thursday” free concerts.

Jordan spoke from the experience of his days on stage and explained, “In an era of Facebook and Twitter and self-promotion, people want to dance and be the stars with their friends instead of going to see stars on stage.” Immersion sells more tickets, and is therefore more desirable for venue owners. “We used to play for people who listened and didn’t just take pictures on their cell phones… People used to pay to see Kurt Cobain — a mythical person on a pedestal. Now people pay to see Skrillex.”

We talked about local venues like The Recher and Sonar — former Baltimore concert establishments turned into clubs. Jordan helped outline that music has become a business of the establishments. Owners focus on how to sell the most tickets, and the music business becomes an issue of preserving community, or selling out — without much chance for the middle ground.

I struggled to understand how musicians were expected to balance their craft with the demand for immersion and the reality of online sales. It turns out there are cross-pollinating business models. Jordan uses music to facilitate education, therapy, stress reduction, and team-building through BeatWell. BandHappy provides online music lessons, with ‘your favorite performer,’ allowing registered musicians to make extra money without compromising musical style or business values. GameChanger World, set to launch this spring, is a video gaming platform created by John D of the Skate & Surf Festival. This video game will push music through virtual incentives and awards. Think of playing your favorite videogame and redeeming points for discounted concert tickets or merchandise. The Baltimore Rock Opera Society (BROS) partners music with theater, producing performance and art you can’t simply download from the internet. These approaches continue to create tiers of affordability, letting musicians play and audiences choose how much, and to what financial level, they can participate.

As some musicians have become more creative and partnered with less traditionally defined fields, they have made their music more accessible. New methods of service delivery attract a greater audience. BROS, for example, sells out productions to those interested in music, theater, rock, and drama. Perhaps GameChanger World will receive downloads from people who aren’t interested in music, but really like video games.

As I learned more about the changing of service provision, I couldn’t help but equate the lot of musicians to a kind of gentrification; A group of artists once steady  and predictable in the way they went about service delivery was now challenged and pushed aside by new methods of attraction and retention. To aid in the survival of the corner bar band and the late night Cat’s Eye Pub talent, musicians must continue to build an emotional attachment to the customer. In a world run by technology and convenience, a partnership is an inescapable approach to strengthening your fan base — your music community — and is achievable without compromising the sound you create on stage.

 

IMAGE CREDIT. Wikimedia Commons.
Feb 04
0

On the Edge of Difference

By | Social Enterprise, The Good Plan | 2 Comments

I would bet many of us have heard the remark, “you’re from Baltimore? Have you seen The Wire?” and I can guarantee you, nothing aggravates me more. The widespread media portrayal of our city implants a preconceived notion we as residents must balance with the greater picture. I have seen The Wire. And while there is lots of truth to the visual disgrace and social injustice captured by HBO, there’s more to Baltimore than Bunk and Bubbles. In our city, poverty is constantly around the corner from stability.

In 2010 I heard community revitalization guru Storm Cunningham speak at TEDxMidAtlantic. Inspired by his approach, I insisted on showing him around when he came to Baltimore in 2011. We looped around the inner harbor and down The Block. With the Pussycat Club providing the appropriate backdrop, he made a remark to the tune of “this is right here? And the harbor is right there? I would have had no idea. They’re just two blocks apart.” We certainly aren’t all crabcakes and waterfront, but we aren’t all Lake Trout and vacants either.

There is often the “out of sight, out of mind” excuse for inaction, yet in the City of Baltimore this is impossible. The social equity discrepancies of the city are perhaps especially jarring because of the proximate adjacencies. It’s hard to find the bad without driving through the good, and vice versa. But I advocate that seeing the other side of the coin can dispel ignorance and foster comprehensive planning.

People proximate to us in place are more likely to have opinions we consider to be valid, though there are only so many recommendations for the familiar. The beauty of distinct neighborhoods is the ability to find the best of something different. Walking outside my census tract I’m opened up to new food, markets, services. The ability to exchange information and break out of sameness is an action any of us can take to transcend the cross-neighborhood divide and enhance and diversify our own community.

Perhaps planning in Baltimore is slow or, dare I say, one-note when it comes to alleviating the impoverished, but by going one street further we can get new references for a world that is not our own, integrating something new, and perhaps eventually, define our neighborhood as one block larger than it used to be.

Jan 21
0

Shoelaces and Car Keys

By | The Good Plan | No Comments

As much as I value the convenience of a parking spot, I resist development efforts that aim to provide more parking. Parking-focused design prevents us from fully embracing a walkable lifestyle and all its benefits to our health, economy and environment. While it is ultimately our responsibility to put on our shoes rather than fill up the gas tank, it is also the responsibility of our cities to make walkability viable – encouraging healthy living and local economic prosperity.

The Atlantic recently published an article on the walking disaster that is America – a disaster brought on by the all-too-prominent mentality that places walking at the lower end of the priority spectrum. Those misplaced priorities are evident in our own neighborhoods. Last week I returned home to East Canton. It took me a minute before realizing our two-way street with parallel parking on either side had disappeared. In its place remained a one-way street with back-in parking on one side and parallel parking on the other.

It seems like each day a formerly two-way street surprises me with a ‘do not enter’ sign, and a sea of cars backed onto the sidewalk. While I understand one-way streets and back-in parking provide for traffic calming and more parking spaces, it looks unappealing, and providing more spaces does nothing to discourage people from driving. I compare this approach to road widening – if you build more lanes, you’re just encouraging more traffic.

Living in downtown Baltimore, many of us at least have the option of walking to and from the grocery store, the bar, public transit, restaurants, and drugstores. We worry less about not being able to get milk in a snowstorm or not having our car plowed out the next day because we can walk to get things while those in the suburbs cannot. And yet even in those more walkable areas, the car mentality holds us hostage. I have friends in North Canton and Federal Hill who would rather drive when they could walk, but often won’t venture out for fear of losing their parking spot.

Until those creating policy and directing construction crews start rethinking urban access to help us rethink the use of our car keys, our walkable road to social change will remain very, very rocky.