ABOVE: Somebody else's business.
So, I was out on my run yesterday -- beautiful weather -- and once again saw my old friend the discarded diaper.
Way back on October 27th we were buffeted by windstorms. It just so happened that these days-long winds occurred during trash collection day on a certain street in Franklin, and a garbage can disgorged a tightly wrapped disposable diaper. I saw it on the curb as I ran my route a day or two after the storms.
And then I saw it again a few days after that.
Three days later -- still there.
A week later; hadn't budged. (Evidently a hefty, er, load.)
I took the pictures above and below today, November 8th; that's 12 days after the windstorm. At least two trash collection days have come and gone, meaning the homeowners on either side of this discarded diaper looked right at it as they placed their garbage cans by the curb -- and did nothing.
They backed out of their driveways and looked at it -- and did nothing.
What if a neighborhood kid grabs it and gets curious? Didn't seem to occur to anyone living there.
ABOVE: Becoming a local landmark.
Every time I passed it I considered how I might discard it myself. However, carrying a weeks-old soiled diaper a mile-and-a-quarter back to my house never seemed like a good plan.
But surely, I thought, someone on this street full of carefully manicured lawns will take the time to come out with a plastic bag and take this refuse off the street.
Never happened.
I'd see people out for a walk with their dog and doggie-doo bags; people who pick up raw excrement as a matter of routine. They'd walk right past it.
Today on my way to Moondance for lunch I stopped with an old Target bag and picked up the discarded diaper after I took these pictures. I could feel eyes on me from the surrounding houses. Probably a bit suspicious -- though, on the other hand, their long diaper nightmare had been successfully dealt with. Call me a socialist, if you must.
The "curbside diaper" is an unfortunate visual metaphor for how insular we've become. Though there are surely subdivisions in Franklin and other suburbs that are cared for beyond each homeowner's property edge, there are far too many like this street, which you would be hard-pressed to characterize as a neighborhood. It's just a fast road with houses on either side. I see "perma-refuse" in these kinds of non-places on a regular basis.
Perhaps they are waiting for the city to deal with these sorts of things. The same city which is cutting back municipal services because the cry has gone up that property taxes are too darn high.
But they still want a discarded diaper to magically disappear.
I feel old, because it used to be different. My dad and I used to go for long walks, and he'd pick up whatever refuse he saw -- and tell me to do the same -- and we'd deposit it with the next neighbor we saw out on the porch or out washing their car. There would be "howdys" and the unquestioning acceptance of whatever my dad and I had picked up; into the garage garbage can it would go. You didn't even have to ask -- this was our neighborhood, after all.
But, in my city, this diaper could not be budged from its position.
So, the question is this: When did we start believing that our "community" -- our responsibility -- ends at our individual driveways?
Fantastic set of aerial photos from Google Images (by way of Boston.com’s Big Picture), showing Florida’s developmental disaster.
The images of half finished (and barely started) developments are strangely beautiful, with a geometric symmetry that belies the state of human misery these developments represent: Lost deposits, bankruptcy, misallocated capital.
Read the rest at: Aerial Footage: Portrait of a Housing Bust | The Big Picture
Even in roughed-out form, one can appreciate the improvement occurring along Franklin's 51st Street between Drexel and Puetz. Engineers have preserved many of the trees fronting homes along the street, and soon residents will be treated to a wonderful and useful walkway as well as increased curb appeal for their property.This is going to be a much, much more inviting space than the cracked asphalt should that it replaces.
And that's not to mention that, for the first time since it was built decades ago, Franklin High School students will have access to a sidewalk in front of their school.
Soon, the walkway will continue north of Drexel for approximately 1/3 mile, built with a Community Development Block Grant. It'll provide a way for the senior residents at Clair Meadows to stroll outside their current "boundaries," and eventually will connect to the retail area on Rawson. Eventually 51st Street -- the only north-south connection for a mile in either direction -- will at long last stop acting as a speedway and instead function as an attractive conveyance for cars and pedestrians.
A space like the one above looks so inviting because, unlike most of the suburban built environment, it's designed to human scale and creates a sense of spacial enclosure in a suburban context.
Human scale and spacial enclosure is why, for instance, we feel comfortable on foot in a city setting like the one below:
...And why we feel anything but comfortable attempting to set foot outside our vehicles in a space like the one below:
Hard as it may be to believe, many refer to the area pictured above as my city's "downtown." Yet there are simple streetscape solutions that work in a suburban context that would transform this bleak area. It can be as simple as putting the parking in back of the buildings (see below):
Tonight I'll be attending the Franklin Common Council meeting to speak during citizen's comment period is support of the 51st Street sidewalk.
Why do I have to hire a babysitter and attend this meeting? Because, believe it or not, there is a gentleman -- a landlord who owns an apartment complex on the corner of Drexel and 51st (but does not LIVE there, of course) -- who is against providing safe mobility for those in our community who do not have access to a vehicle. And he took the time to get signatures from the homeowners living on 51st Street.
You can imagine how those little "sign my petition" encounters went. "Do you know what the city is trying to do to your property...?"
I doubt he brought up the fact that walkable communities experience experience increased property values, and that walkways actually slow down speeding traffic on overdesigned arterials like 51st Street. He probably didn't talk about new freedom of movement that will be afforded to elderly residents of the Clair Meadows senior apartments. I'm certain he didn't broach the subject of the sidewalk as safe conveyance for students and parents at Pleasant View Elementary and Franklin High School.
And, most importantly, I'm sure this landlord didn't mention that there are members of the Franklin Common Council who want nothing better than to put a lane of additional traffic in their front yard by widening 51st Street.
Doubt it? Read the ready-to-go plan here: Download 51st street widening.
Because, you see, no one walks and we need more room for cars -- and those cars gotta move fast.
The landlord's beef, evidently, is he'll be damned if he'll be responsible for shoveling snow for "other people" (hard not to imagine this guy twirling a waxed handlebar mustache, ala a silent movie villain).
Please consider attending tonight at 6:30, City Hall, to voice your support for a small but very important step toward making our community safer for young and old, more attractive to new residents and property tax-lowering commercial investment, and, above all, something better than a drive-thru suburb.
When you can't walk or bike to a community's Little League Complex because the roads leading to it and bordering the complex are typical suburban speedways with no provision for walkers or bikers, what do you get?
Repeated pandemonium and rising frustration. 125 players on six diamonds means 125 cars, minimum. Now add the incoming cars for subsequent games, and you get pandemonium squared.
Parking lot culture replaces what used to be a valuable community gathering point.
City engineering by "gut": "Let's live on the edge and BUILD THE FOUR-LANER!"
This post is a comment in response to an item at a Franklin blog, Fred Keller's BATTLE JOINED -- please excuse a bit of localese as well as cut-and-paste linkage, as this was done quickly:
Fred: Your "Let's widen College Avenue" argument doesn't make a lot of sense, frankly, unless you are merely looking for a cudgel with which to hammer the mayor. And, any cudgel will do, right?
You ask: Why would the mayor and city officials argue for Contest Sensitive Design when a road is being built through our community?
Really?
The idea that road congestion will increase at a steady rate is just FALSE, reinforced by a road-building industry anxious to lay more asphalt. (A mile of freeway costs three to four times the annual operating expense to the state of a rail line connecting us to Madison and Chicago -- has that not occurred to you?)
"But we need to build capacity," you might say. (Actually, what you said was: "Let's live on the edge and BUILD THE FOUR-LANER!")
But - what's that? Traffic can DECREASE? Guess what - the engineers don't account for that in their forecasts. They are all about BUILDING IT UP. If traffic rates go up +.05 in a year, they tend to keep adding the same increase every year.
Let's apply engineer-style traffic analysis: My daughter grew 1.5 inches in the past year. At this rate, she'll be over 9 feet tall by the time she's my age.
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tvtw/08dectvt/index.cfm (2008)
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tvtw/09dectvt/ (2009)
Your stance sees to be "gut instinct" against years of traffic studies NOT DONE BY ROAD BUILDERS that show widening roads actually INCREASES traffic and congestion (it's called "induced traffic"); and that creating alternative travel options (bike and ped) DECREASES traffic and congestion.
The Federal Highway Administration found in a study in Milwaukee that induced traffic accounted for 11-22 percent of the area's increased traffic from 1963 to 1991. ("Widening roads to ease traffic congestion is ineffective and expensive at the same time," said Roy Kienitz, Executive Director of the Surface Transportation Policy Project. "It's like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt.")
I have no time to get fancy (a pillar of your argument: "waste time digging up stats for me!"), so I'm quoting here directly from another web site: A road diet on San Francisco’s Valencia Street reduced automobile through lanes from four to two, adding a center turn lane and two bike lanes. Following this change, collisions involving pedestrians declined 36%, accompanied by an increase in pedestrian traffic and a whopping 140% increase in bicycle riders – all without significantly altering automobile traffic capacity. (http://www.completestreets.org/complete-streets-fundamentals/factsheets/ease-congestion/)
Also: "When travel demand requires three moving lanes in each direction and/or double left turn and right turn lanes, the roadway impact on the adjacent community can become severe. From on urban planning standpoint, volumes of these magnitudes usually indicate too few arterial streets serving that particular corridor or a lack of freeway capacity for the longer trips that should not be on the arterial street system to begin with. Although it is recognized that geographic and urban development constraints may require these six-lane arterials in some situations, these conditions should be dealt with early in the planning process for new or developing suburbs, and some compromises and special design measures may be needed in existing corridors where other alternatives exist." (http://www.urbanstreet.info/3rd_symp_proceedings/Retrofitting%20Urban%20Arterials%20into%20Complete%20Streets.pdf)
"The phenomenon of induced traffic works in reverse as well. When New York's West Side Highway collapsed in 1973, an NYDOT study showed that 93 percent of the car trips lost did not reappear elsewhere; people simply stopped driving. A similar result accompanied the destruction of San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway in the 1989 earthquake. Citizens voted to remove the freeway entirely despite the apocalyptic warnings of traffic engineers. Surprisingly, a recent British study found that downtown road removals tend to boost local economies, while new roads lead to higher urban unemployment. So much for road-building as a way to spur the economy." (From the book SUBURBAN NATION)
You also proceed from a FORTUNATE standpoint: You and your kids perhaps can (or will) drive. How about a bit of empathy for those of us who want to create an environment of moderate independent travel for the elderly of differently-abled? I can tell you for CERTAIN that I will not live in a community where my son cannot walk a few blocks to get on a bus or visit a friend.
Interesting statistic: Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for 15- to 20- year-olds. Franklin's 16-to-20 year-olds have NO OPTION but to drive.
Do you know that a pedestrian or bikers chance of death jumps from 45% to 85% when the speed limit jumps from a sane, residential 30 MPH to the Franklin-standard (and enforced by engineering) 40 MPH?
A 27th street public transit hub (i.e. better than the spotty bus service currently available) is a logical next step. The average American who lives in an area that's walkable and has transit spends only 9% of their income on transportation, while a person living in an area that requires driving spends more than 25%. College Ave. can feed bikes and pedestrians to a public transit hub IF ACCOMMODATIONS ARE MADE FOR THEM NOW.
Of pedestrians killed in 2007 and 2008, more than 50% died on arterial roadways, typically designed to be wide and fast (ala College Ave). Roads like these are built to move cars and too often do not have meet the needs of pedestrian or bicyclist safety.
You can dismiss safety, induced congestion, and mobility for the differently-abled and elderly. But how about ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT?
http://www.ceosforcities.org/files/WalkingTheWalk_CEOsforCities1.pdf (WALKING THE WALK: How Walkability Raises Home Values in U.S. Cities, by CEOs for Cities)
http://www.walk21.com/papers/Litman(1).pdf (Economic Value of Walkability)
Want to rely on something more reality-based than your "gut instinct"? Dig into these studies:
http://www.hsisinfo.org//pdf/10-053.pdf (Evaluation of Lane Reduction “Road Diet” Measures on Crashes)
http://www.completestreets.org/webdocs/resources/lanewidth-safety.pdf (Relationship of Lane Width to Safety for Urban and Suburban Arterials)
http://www.vtpi.org/cong_relief.pdf (Smart Congestion Reductions: Reevaluating The Role Of Highway Expansion For Improving Urban Transportation)
http://www.urbanstreet.info/3rd_symp_proceedings/Retrofitting%20Urban%20Arterials%20into%20Complete%20Streets.pdf (RETROFITTING URBAN ARTERIALS INTO COMPLETE STREETS)
Posted at 10:45 AM in Absurdity, Bad Planning, Bicycling and Walking, Close to Home, Commentary, Current Affairs, Economic Development Commission, Politics, Problems, Safe Routes to School, Traffic/Transportation, Transit | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
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