Remember, check back here for updates on the successes and reactions to Park(ing) Day as well as photos of our time "parking" it!
Thursday, September 17, 2009
See you tomorrow!
Folks, tomorrow is International Park(ing) Day an event we have all been waiting for and preparing for. A group of us will be taking a few trucks out to De Wilde's Nursery and grab our 1000 sqft. of sod (much prettier than asphalt, uh?). We plan to be setting up our parks around 11:30ish. If you have some extra time, want to get your hand on some sod and just have a great time, come one down to the corner of Holly St. and Cornwall. We could use your help to make this process efficient and a success!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This is a good idea! We devote entirely too much space to cars and not enough to people. But I wonder if it isn't a bit ironic that this is something that is happening in our historic downtown core, where the land use pattern is one based on pedestrians, rail and streetcars? This and Fairhaven are the only commerical areas where one can run errands on foot or enjoyably shop by bike. Meanwhile the rest of our city's commercial and retail areas are horrendous examples of cartopia. On-street parking is a great thing, it separates sidwalks from traffic, stalls are used many times a day, and most importantly, on-street parking lessens the need for surface parking lots. It's the latter that destroy cities and make them unwalkable. And our city - which prides itself on it greeness - continues to require mimum parking requirements for businesses. I urge the organizers of this event and the city to turn this on its head - why don't say to Wthe big box stores "you can have a bigger store, but our city policy is that every store gets 10 parking spaces, if you want more you will have to buy them." The money raised would pay for public transit, bike lanes, stormwater, etc. Hopefully this would turn Cordata into a more pedestrian-friendly place, or at the very least the pavement would pay for its costs. But meanwhile, I guess I'll settle for a decent message that our downtown area could use a little more public space and a little less devoted to the car. But it's important that we not kill our downtown, we should promote it and aspire to make the rest of our city as walkable.
ReplyDeleteBilly-
ReplyDeleteI am so happy that you enjoyed the message of our event. I think your examples of Cordata are excellent and they, most certainly, should be addressed. The expanse of parking on Cordata and The Guide is horrendous. There are multiple ways to deal with this, most notably permeable ground cover and your example of taxing the development of this space.
While I agree with you in part I think we trying to solve some of the same issues using different tactics. While you argue that close parking benefits businesses and downtowns I feel that Cornwall is a perfect example of an area that does NOT benefit from this - the fact that our event took place in front of 4 businesses that have failed bears witness to that fact.
You seem to be arguing that what we are attempting to do will, in fact, negatively impact businesses. First, I don't see how it could get any worse on Cornwall. Secondly, it has been proven that the development of livable streets (the Castro District in San Francisco is an excellent example) boosts the bottom line of businesses. In Castro businesses who at first were reticent to allow the experiment to happen have now clamored to keep it from leaving. How are we "killing downtown" by doing this?
Perhaps, your impression is that we are looking to completely overgrow the entire downtown in "green" ;-) I hope we didn't give you that impression. In the development of livable streets the object is to create a corridor that shares the way with many forms of transportation. There are many tactics that can be used to create this.
I am glad that we agree, in principle, to much of what we are discussing and I hope to see you continue to be an active member in our community!
Best,
Scott Pelton
Scott,
ReplyDeleteSorry if I made it seem like I was saying that more green space would kill our downtown. What I'm saying is that parking is necessary for commerce, and we have a situation where parking is free in most of our city (the parts of the city I abhor), but it is relatively scarce and costs a bit in another (the part I love). I'm saying we should try to fix what's broken (sprawl) and promote what we love (dtn). We do not want businesses to have yet one more reason to move into suburbia. In fact, we want them to be falling all over each other to come back downtown. Right now our city's parking officers chase shoppers out of downtown while our policy makers mandate that most every other part of the city has an oversupply of free parking and salmon killing pavement. It's nuts.
Overall, I believe that more green space will make downtown even better and more desirable. But we need to be careful to ensure dtn is a place that accomodates commerce.