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| (Cheeky graphics by Telegram staff but town green clearly visible.) |
Here's the article as it appeared in the Maine Sunday Telegram:
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Copyright
2008 Michael Belleau
Get in the minivan and drive to school
to drop off kids. Drive to work. Drive back to school to pick kids
up. Drive to soccer field for kids practice. Drive to grocery store.
Drive to music lesson. Drive to everything.
Until now, we have located all our
daily activities on the basis of driving to them. All of our
decisions were based on how much driving time it took. When building
a soccer field location was determined by how many minutes drive it
was for the most people. When locating schools we looked at how long
a trip it was for buses. When purchasing a home we looked at how long
a drive it was to school and work. All the talk of building village
communities with open surrounding land and the, ‘New Urbanism’,
movement did nothing to impact potential homeowners from purchasing
the best house and lot for the money they had regardless of whether
it was in town or not. Even the sustainability movement could not
change the power of best-lot-for-money and drive time equation.
Now things are changing.
We are trapped. We buy hybrid cars. We
still drive them in frantic pick up and drop off routines and time
consuming stressful daily circuits of pavement. Much of our time is
spent chatting on cell phones while driving, hoping to get some joy
from conversation while stuck in a discorporate (out of body) space.
Fat, stressed and isolated we feel happy to be a part of the culture
but strangely out of sorts. Something doesn’t seem right.
Now is probably the time to bring the
sustainability movement, the new urbanism, the cost of oil, and our
own unease together to return to a pedestrian way of life.
Imagine waving from your front door as
you children leave to walk to school. Imagine if the soccer practice
was a 10-minute walk from home. Imagine walking by the grocery store
on your way home from the field. Imagine during that walk you were
accompanied by another parent also walking home! Our whole automobile
centered living paradigm must change.
We can start by creating neighborhood
zones using the 10-minute walk as our maxim. Luxembourgian architect
Leon Krier who had studied the work of the Austrian Camillo Sitte
forcefully propagated this urban design concept. By locating
elementary school, library branch, post office, sports field, grocery
store, YMCA, etc. in each neighborhood, our lives are made simple and
sustainable.
Schools are most easily taken on as the
state could mandate this. By taking a facilities-centric approach we
can create flexible places for the community. If you have a
neighborhood gym then children can use it during the day and other
community events at other times. As number of children changes the
rooms used for classes can be used for other things if facility is
considered part of the neighborhood’s available space. Middle and
high schools can be located within a longer walk- slightly longer for
middle (15 minutes?) and substantially for high school (20 minutes?).
Similarly with the library, we can
discard the old precedent of having one large municipal library where
all printed matter is stored as if we are still using it as the only
source of information. Branch libraries can be small and staffed by
few with a small children’s books section and one-day delivery of
interlibrary books and videos for others as well as internet
terminals and an expert on information retrieval on hand. Audio and
video books could be distributed with mp3 devices loaned out. These
places can have the latest technology for those who have older
technology. If this is part of a neighborhood building then meeting
space can be shared and the elementary school can use the same
library.
Post offices should be just a stall
staffed by one in a neighborhood building with people in a hurry
going to the central city one.
Grocery stores are market driven but
can be encouraged through town incentives. If people are creating
pedestrian traffic, the market will respond and partner with town
planners.
Sports fields are multi-use and best
located in each neighborhood. This may require eminent domain but at
fair market price they are well worth having in each neighborhood for
obvious reasons. Fields can be used as parks, sport fields, town
squares, and community activity hubs. Retired people can sit and
watch games and wildlife. Saturday vegetable outdoor markets can be
there. This is the single most important space from an American
culture point of view and we need to have large spaces for this in
each neighborhood.
Now, whether a YMCA runs the community
exercise facility or the municipality does, this type of gym, pool,
exercise space can be in a community building along with other
facilities so that space is shared and not locked into single program
ownership; a facilities-centric approach. By leasing these spaces to
the Y for community programs we can avoid complicated bureaucracy if
that becomes an issue (just as mail is best left to the federal post
office).
Now no one can make people move into
neighborhood centers and leave the open suburban lots behind but if
we work together as a state we can get the infrastructure in place
for healthy sustainable lifestyles. This old bumper sticker of mine I
found the other day says, “If the people lead, eventually the
leaders will follow.”
If the state leads, eventually the
people will follow.
Michael Belleau is principal of Michael
Belleau Architect in Portland Maine. He has written articles on urban
design in Maine for this paper previously and can be reached at
www.michaelbelleau.com
Next I'll discuss the break with traditional icon oriented, or object oriented city/town facilities thinking.
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