Suburbia: Not Making the Connection
I always get a great laugh when I visit our suburban hell (aka West of I-270). Last night I was on Barrett Station Road just South of Manchester. Driving along I spotted this sidewalk along the side of the road. As you can see, it doesn’t really go anywhere.
For those that don’t know the area, this is a well traveled cut through but it remains a two-lane road. I’m sure it won’t be long before it is widened. All the subdivisions along the mile-long road have sidewalks. They don’t really go anywhere but maybe it makes them feel better?
This new subdivision of about 8 homes doesn’t have any internal sidewalks at all. If a home owner wants to walk along this busy road they have to walk in their street to get there. I know, unlikely right. Maybe they will want to talk to see someone in the next subdivision over?
Here is the best part. The new sidewalk is about 40 feet from connecting to the sidewalk from the next subdivision. The grass was visibly worn so someone is walking back and forth.
What must these people think? Most can afford 3-car garages but they can’t manage a sidewalk? Thankfully I don’t have to live in such an environment.
– Steve
I have the “pleasure” of working in Creve Couer, and I’ve been taking my (wife’s, thanks honey) iPod with me as I go for lunchtime walks around the suburbs. Talk about an extremely un-friendly environment for anything other than driving. I’ve happened upon several similar situations evidenced in your photos, where the sidewalk just ends. Many of the subdivisions have no sidewalk whatsoever, just a concrete gutter about a foot wide.
Good photos, Steve. Very funny stuff!
Now, apologies for hijacking your thread, but I can’t think of a better place to write these thoughts that just occured to me….
I just returned downtown. For some reason, today there are little kids and chaperones running around all through Kiener Plaza, the Old Court House area, and Memorial Drive in front of the Arch. There are hundreds of them. Ten or more different groups.
Then it occured to me how *small* our downtown really is, and I thought, “jeez, all the years of gnashing teeth and plans and yadayadayada, to revitalize an area that’s really is only about 20 or 30 blocks in size at its core”.
Sure, the official downtown measures larger than that. But when folks come downtown, they tend to congregate in the blocks surrounding the Old Court House. From say Busch Stadium, to the Convention Center, to the Old Post Office, to the Arch.
And yeah, we have fingers of DT stretching out Washington Ave and Market, etc, however, the “core of the core”, is really pretty small. Downtown is just a tiny fraction of the whole city.
So it amazes me that we can’t accellerate the rate of improvement. Maybe it’s really happening now: The flood of new lofts coming online. The new ballpark. The flood of hotels. Lots of new restaurants.
I know Charles Brennan has a greening/flower project in the works. And we are seeing more sidewalk vendors DT.
What would be the short list of things that could bring more street life downtown in a matter of months rather than years?
How about walk-up cocktails and nightly live music at Kiener Plaza? What about free parking after 5:00 instead of 7:00?
What about sidewalk artists selling jewelry and cool stuff at tables/booths at one of our other urban plazas?
What about narrowing some streets (widening sidewalks) or making the streets 2-way?
What about more outdoor public art? What about that park between the library and the War Memorial. There’s a prime location, that is now just another “dead zone” (how about developing it into housing?). Same dead space status goes for the green space blocks across Market from city hall. Talk about under-utilized space. It’s like these blocks are just waiting for some real urban inspiration.
What if those checkerboard blocks of greenspace and criss-crossing streets (where they hold the Strassenfest) on the west side of Tucker and north of Market (across from City Hall) were opened up into a large Europena style-plaza (closing the streets to regular traffic), with ornamental paving, sculpture, a central fountain, where large gathering were encouraged to occur.
Position the Library, the War Memorial, City Hall and other public buildings as monumental architecture studding the landscape of this downtown community space. Images of people walking through the space (especially on rainy days with umbrellas and glistening pavement) reminds me of famous French landscape paintings.
Weekend and evening events. Public forums. Etc. The balloon glow. The space would be bordered by City Hall, multiple courts buildings, the war memorial, the Library, the Kiel, etc. Dramatic nighttime lighting for our public buildigns. It would be our grand plaza.
Anyway, back to reality…when we do new projects, maybe we need to strive to have 5% of the development budget for public space amenities to make the area more pedestrian/urban friendly? More bike racks!
Given we have such a relatively small area to deal with, this shouldn’t be that hard to do.
RB
What is that at the end of the far sidewalk in the second picture? A creek? An eroded hillside? That sidewalk looks as if it would send wheelchair users plunging off the edge, as well as pedestrians on an icy day. I thought the strict suburban zoning laws and engineering requirements that dictate building these useless sidewalks were designed to afford some measure of public safety.
There’s a reason they call it SUB-urbia!