|
For a time, I was on Portland's Pedestrian Advisory Committee--something that most communities don't even have. Our job was to comment on all new building and urban infrastructure projects in terms of pedestrian and wheelchair friendliness. It was an eye-opener to see how many architects and designers' first thought was parking and automobile access, with the required pedestrian access squeezed in as an afterthought, often in a really inconvenient way.
When we suggested that they reverse the process, design for pedestrian access first and then put the cars in as an afterthought, they looked at us as if we were crazy.
At least Portland has thought about the matter. One of the most discouraging things about the Twin Cities is not only the ugly commercial strips in the suburbs, but the fact that it allowed suburban-style developments (strip malls with huge, windswept parking lots) in the middle of both St. Paul and Minneapolis--but ONLY in poor areas.
The traditional cities of Europe, Asia, and Latin America, and even the old parts of American cities, are aesthetically pleasing because they were built to a human scale in the pre-automotive era. Think of Boston's Beacon Hill and North End, the old parts of Charleston, Savannah, St. Augustine, and New Orleans, San Francisco, Monterey, and isolated neighborhoods in other cities. They appear on calendars and in coffee table books. They are in fact not the result of building codes, but the natural result of assuming that most people would walk everywhere. Even old rural towns are walkable, but the descendants of the founders prefer to allow long, narrow strip malls on the highways leading into town.
If you assume that most people are going to drive everywhere, no building blends in with any other building, and there's no non-automotive access between properties. If the employees of the Acme Corporation Office Park want to go the fast food place next door for lunch, they have to drive, or else try to scale a chain link fence. If they prefer the fast food place on the other side of the highway, there's no pedestrian crossing or pedestrian bridge.
When I was living in Portland and coming back to visit my suburban relatives, this type of thing used to make me cranky. I'd be out Christmas shopping, and the next store on my list would be visible only about 300 feet away, but I'd have to get into the car and drive to it.
I moved back here on the condition that I could find a place to live in the city within walking distance of essential services and on a good bus line. I found the right neighborhood, and I'm on what passes for a good bus line here.
However, the auto-centric strip mall+isolated housing tract model of development has prevailed for over 60 years, which means that two complete generations have grown up that way. They don't notice the ugliness (especially if they don't travel anywhere but Las Vegas) any more than a fish notices water. TV teaches them to be afraid of the city, so if they move, they move to another strip mall suburb, just like the one they left, only possibly with different kinds of trees, if they move far enough.
|