Express Your Liberty!

i can get pretty worked up about national politics. i won't get into all of that right now. it can seem a bit overwhelming to try to change things on a national level. but when i see something in my hometown that i feel is going the wrong direction perhaps, just maybe, there is a chance to change the tide that is flowing in the worst direction imaginable, with a little civic involvement.

when I moved to this town I found an intact charming main street that was thriving with commerce and a center for sociability due to its scale. it was this real, unaltered, genuine small town scale of our city that was a huge lure. this is the scale of towns that have been repeatedly obliterated by planners and city officials with their lust for grandiocity. this is the town, that if you and i don't stop it, will turn into the Walnut Creek (CA) of the northwest: homogenious construction materials, scale of streets way out of touch with real need, vacuous of inherent beauty, overdesigned to where it could be seen in anywhere USA. i don't want anywhere USA in my charming town.

walking the streets of Rome, Paris, + New York...i know what an urban street scale feels like and the proposal for our small town main street far exceeds the scale of streets in these huge cities. cities like Boston and Nantucket town, where settlement has occurred over hundreds of years and where thousands upon thousands of tourists flock every year don't have sidewalks the width that are being proposed here. Nine feet is HUGE! the designer told me today that he wanted it wider than nine feet. he said that he wants strollers to be able to pass each other on the sidewalk. well, today at the greatest gathering of the year on this island i saw two strollers pass each other on our EXISTING five foot sidewalk. there will be no room for delivery trucks to service their intended target as they do now. when you make operating a business more difficult, through design flaws, merchants will not be pleased, and there is risk for business failure. there is just so much that is wrong with this new plan for our main street.

i love trees. i am a dendrophile! but adding the quantity of trees proposed in the plan will substantially diminish sunlight to enter our main street. i love walking in the sun when it is out. in the northwest we don't need to allocate the sort of tree cover to streets that los angeles or pullman might require. adding more trees, as proposed in the plan, will take away much needed parking.

the travel lanes are proposed at eleven feet wide. that is dangerously narrow. if i am going to travel past a hummer (and there are a bunch here) in an eleven foot lane i will be squished into the the parked cars. the plan proposes back-in parking. in neighborhoods in seattle where this occurs drivers can pull up behind you where it is impossible to back into the space where you intended to park. how long will it take to park in this way as opposed to simply pulling into a space head on?

the designers don't want curbs for the sidewalk. do you want to have to worry about your children on the sidewalk when a car is pulling into a space and the driver is not going to stop where they should?

the whole plan is way overdesigned without regard to the real needs of this town. the designer said that they want to make it more people friendly. as is our main street is people friendly. does it really need such a huge overhaul? yes the sidewalks need some help in places but the plan as it was shown today at the street fair does not reflect the real need of our city and will destroy the small town feel.

working in urban design firms throughout the west coast I have seen the destruction of perfect little jewels of towns by city engineers, city council members and paid consultants that believed they had good intentions, but in reality had no training in the design of livable thriving cities, and yet were making decisions that effectively ruined their downtown core. it took millions of dollars in construction budgets and design fees to bring these towns back, through restoration design work, from their botched ill-fated redesigns.

rise up fellow islanders and make your voice heard that you don't want to live in a vision crafted more suitably for California, but you want to shop in a village that is appropriate in scale. there will be a public meeting august 1st. please don't let our sweet town be overwhelmed by this poorly composed main street plan.


as a disclaimer: it is true that i am a licensed landscape architect in three states. it is true that i have worked in urban design/architecture firms in san francisco for projects across the usa and internationally. it is true that i am very fond of the small scale streetscapes of european cities and of old cities in this country. and it is true that i long for the main street of the town that i grew up in before it was destroyed by planners as reconfigured to a scale, again, out of touch with real needs.
happy fourth of july! use your liberty to express yourself.