As you might expect, there is a negative flip-side to allowing citizen input to the planning process - - the rise of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard). Kaid Benfield has a great two-part post that discusses low tolerance in today's isolated suburbs (excerpt and links below).
This weekend I was in my hometown, Wausau, Wisconsin, and photographed my grandparents' house. My grandfather recently died, so the small structure is empty after years of hosting family gatherings of all sorts. It was odd to be there alone and without uncles, aunts and cousins scattered about.
I know embarrassingly little about the circumstances that led to this, but my dad and his brothers (my aunt was born later) lived in the basement of this house for years because my Grandpa couldn't afford to build the actual structure right away. I've seen pictures of my dad and his siblings in toolbelts building this house as teenagers, most likely a "kit bungalow" of the sort popular after World War II and into the early 50s. A truck drops off the wood, components (sometimes including cabinetry and plumbing) and plans, and you supply the manpower.
Amateur construction sometimes means eccentric angles and "features"; my grandparents' house had a staircase with steps that started normal and then finished about 5 inches deep at the bottom. You just learned to turn your foot sideways when starting up the stairs. There was also a door on the second floor that led to open air; a balcony had never been built (one was finally added in the 80s).
Down the hill from my grandparents' home were softball and baseball fields, the lighted football stadium used by all three local high schools and the drum and bugle corps, as well as a public pool - - all still there. After a long afternoon steeping in chlorine, my friends and I could trek up a steep trail (since grown over) to stop in my Grandma's kitchen for peanut butter cookies, Tang, and a few dozen hands of Fight. Down the street in the other direction was a small grocery store and a hamburger place called Buddies.
Now that I think about it, my Grandma must have really enjoyed those afternoons, having her grandkids so close and able to stop by all Summer long. She played a ruthless game of Fight, though. Never cut me a break.
ABOVE: The trail, now overgrown - - no longer used?
The fact that my grandparents' corner had no sidewalks was quite a novelty to us, yet we could travel with impunity between the various amenities in the neighborhood - - thanks in part to the trail cut into a hillside by the traffic of countless kids. When I wanted to go to the pool or the park (with a side trip to Grandma and Grandpa's), I simply got on my Huffy and I was off, master of my own destiny.
It was - - and is - - a nice neighborhood, and the homes just to the east of my grandparents' corner were and are pretty high-end; my dad pointed out what was, during his boyhood, "the doctor's house," and 'the lawyer's house," all yards away from their little bungalow.
I expect that someone will quickly buy my grandparents' lot, bulldoze the little house, and put a snout house on that corner. It's a good spot with access to everything a kid could possibly need.
But, as Benfield touched upon in his posts, could a neighborhood like that be built today? A factory worker living within a stones' throw of a doctor? A "noisy" sports facility in earshot of expensive houses? A public pool that could create kid traffic? All signs point to "no"; we are a society more interested in stocking our backyards with toys than equipping our communities with amenities and diversity of income levels.
I’ve had this post milling around in my head for a long time. What finally prompted me to write is a ferocious battle in my neighborhood challenging a Baptist church’s proposed addition to its building. The addition would house a non-profit child care center, a language school for kids, and the Washington Conservatory of Music, which the church hosts.
Sounds fine to me. But some neighbors say that wouldn’t be the end of it. They say the church has also hosted all sorts of other nefarious activities, such as meetings of Overeaters Anonymous, summer camps, a girls’ chorus, the City Choir of Washington, and even a program for “troubled youth,” according to a quote in the neighborhood newspaper. What next, the neighbors must wonder. Pot-luck suppers? Musical classes for the homeless? The traffic and people are already unbearable, goes the argument.
Maybe it’s just me, but these sound like the sorts of things that churches have always done, and our communities are better because of it. I can’t imagine this kind of ruckus being raised in my youth. (And I’m glad, since my band used to rehearse in our church’s social hall and host musical performances there.) If it meant a little more traffic or whatever, that was OK, because our community was actually proud of this stuff. And by the way, I walk, ride my bike, and drive by the Baptist church in my neighborhood all the time, at all hours of the day. I have yet to see anything remotely approaching the “constant stream of traffic” cited by the complainants. In fact, there is hardly ever any significant traffic, by city standards.
The same neighborhood paper (they call themselves "a crusader of information" and love citizens-up-in-arms stories) also has an article about a different but nearby neighborhood’s recent victory, keeping a movie theater (below left) from following through on its plans to host Sunday morning services for an evangelical church.
“Some residents worried about the traffic and parking problems” (wouldn't the theater's usual movies present the same issues?) and others, well, just didn’t like the kind of church it was. They fought the plan on zoning grounds and eventually the theater withdrew its proposal.
Read the rest of part one at Switchboard, from NRDC › Kaid Benfield's Blog › Community ain’t what it used to be: neighborhood challenges to churches and schools (part 1)
Part two is here.
Comments