The Next Step, Walking Barefoot

It has now been over seven months since my left side was immobilized due to a stroke. Happily I continue to make gradual progress on the long road back to “normal.” Last week I did something I hadn’t been able to do in months – walk barefoot.

While in the third hospital in April I got fitted with an AFO – an ankle-foot orthosis. This device goes around my leg and helps hold my left foot in the proper position for walking. I’ve become used to wearing it but it does necessitate socks & shoes. For months just to say, get out of bed to go to the bathroom, has meant putting on the AFO & shoes.

But last week I tried walking without it. My ankle is still weak and thus when I step my left foot drops. Therefore I have to be cautious not to trip over it. I have almost no movement in this ankle but I hope that walking at home without the brace will help strengthen it. I’ve had a couple of AFO-free days now and despite walking slower than my usual slow pace it is wonderful.

For the most part I wear the AFO when I leave the house. However, last week friends and I went to dinner
at The Fountain on Locust (a new advertiser, welcome) and I didn’t wear it then. They were patient with me as we slowly walked to my car in the parking garage. I was wearing shorts & sandals!

What a relief it is to wear different shoes! My first memory waking up in the hospital is of one of my brothers being there showing me the new shoes he bought me. The shoes were New Balance which is ironic as I had completely lost my old balance. It was a couple of months later before I realized they were two sizes bigger than what I normally wear. The medical staff had told him to buy me larger shoes because they’d be easier to slip on (the second hospital added elastic laces) and to be able to get them on over the AFO that they knew I’d have eventually. So for many months I’ve worn long pants (to cover the AFO) and the same pair of shoes.

This also enables me to walk to my wheelchair without the AFO on. So for running to the store in the chair I may not be wearing the AFO. I hope to soon be able to take a shower while standing rather than sitting on a tub bench.

The analogy for cities is that while we may have had setbacks it is important to devise a plan to get back to where you were — it takes patience and a lot of hard work. If I applied the St Louis mentality to my personal situation I’d still be using a wheelchair daily and just accepting that I wouldn’t walk again. St Louis should not just accept major population loss and increasing auto dependence.   We need to regain our urban character — it will take focusing on the goal and making tiny steps toward getting there.

I can picture the day when I walk to the grocery store again — no brace, no cane and no wheelchair.  That may still be more than a year away but I know that I will get there.

A Fresh Look at Public Housing

“Public housing” is a charged phrase for many. Images of failed “projects” come to mind. For those who lived in such a project, residency came with a social stigma attached, that never failed.

In my law class at St Louis University (Housing & Community Development) we’ve been looking closely at contractual arrangements between the feds and local housing authorities, a plethora of enabling legislation dating back to the 1937 Housing Act, Hud regulations and court cases arising over issues related to public housing. Despite the nitty gritty of the reading I’ve gained a fresh perspective on a complex topic.

The first is to remember that despite some major issues, public housing has and continues to provide quality housing to millions. Congress has addressed issues over the decades by altering how we provide and administer public housing. Originally the idea was simple. The federal government would pay the principal & interest on bonds sold by local housing authorities to construct new units of housing. At the time it served as a “slum clearance” effort and a get out of the depression job creation program. Original tenants were intended to be working families that needed some temporary help with a decent place to live. For a variety of reasons this changed into concentrations of very low income persons – mostly minority.

Growing up in a fairly new part of Oklahoma City in the 70s I was never exposed to high rise housing projects. We had a few low-rise projects but in my sheltered suburban childhood I wasn’t exposed to those either. Upon entering Architecture school in the 80s we certainly looked at one of the most famous failed projects – St Louis’ Pruitt-Igoe. In Architecture school the focus was largely on the design of the buildings – mostly the skip-stop elevators that stopped every third floor. An entire neighborhood, mostly Polish, was wiped away for the (33) 11-story buildings but we never learned about what was there before (prior post on the neighborhood). Looking at the photos you had no visual clue what had come before.

Moving to St Louis in 1990 gave me a chance to walk the old Pruitt-Igoe site. The buildings were imploded over the course of several years in the early to mid 70s. The size of the site was amazing to me – this was prior to the Gateway School being constructed on part of the site off Jefferson. I had seen photos numerous times but they don’t communicate the way video does.

A quote from Wikipedia: “In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means ‘life of moral corruption and turmoil, life out of balance’.” Koyaanisqatsi was a film that effectively used imagery from Pruitt-Igoe to communicate this ‘life out of balance’ idea. This clip is 3 minutes:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHKhk4oZMro[/youtube]

Pruitt-Igoe had 2,870 units on 57 acres – a density of 50 units to the acre, high by suburban standards but about right for an urban neighborhood. But the numbers don’t tell the true story – not all 50 unit per acre neighborhoods are created equal.  Despite receiving architectural awards, Pruitt-Igoe was destined to fail.  It was the warehousing of thousands.  57 acres of nothing resembling a neighborhood.

Monday we begin looking at the solution, HOPE VI.  This program has enabled housing authorities to raze old high rise projects and replace them with low-rise units in more friendly arrangements with mixed income occupants to avoid concentrations of poverty.  These new developments, if managed well, have a much greater success rate.  Residents have mixed incomes, many are market rate.  Those that are subsidized are not labeled as such so the stigma is not there.  Most of the HOPE VI developments we’ve seen here still don’t have the density or nearby retail of the old “slum” neighborhoods that were cleared decades ago which is unfortunate.  Pruitt-Igoe helped give good urban density a bad rap.  The replacement developments also lack commercial centers providing retail options within walking distance and more importantly providing at least a small amount of jobs within the neighborhood.

As part of a class assignment I’m going to look at several HOPE VI developments in St Louis to see what replaced what and to look for opportunities to incorporate walkable retail within and adjacent to them.  For now I’m just thrilled at the knowledge I’m getting through the Urban Planning & Real Estate Development program at SLU.

Charter School Doesn’t Play Well With Neighbors

Charter school Ethel H. Lyle Academy is located downtown at 15th & Washington (and another at Jefferson).  That is all good and well until the dropping off and picking up of students conflicts with the others in the diverse area.  The school has solved that problem — they just put out a sign in front of their building claiming the public parking as theirs and theirs only.

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The charter school is a business – but not the only business in the immediate vicinity.  Other businesses are across the street and in the next block East just across 15th.  Residents also live in the area and guests have a reasonable expectation to park on the street if a space is free.

Be it restaurant valets or charter schools, we can’t have every business in dense urban settings thinking they have the right to take public parking to the exclusion of others.

I’m not sure how long they’ve been in this location but they had to think about this issue when they made the business decision to open here.  As adjacent storefronts, offices and residences fill up the demand for parking is only going to increase.  Furthermore, the city needs the revenue these meters generate.

Violators Will Be Towed

Determined to keep the blocks of Washington Ave East of Tucker as an unfriendly 4-lane highway, the city is threatening towing for parking on the street:

Ever since parking was allowed on the 1000 block and the Southern half of the 1100 bock the city has insisted, foolishly, on clearing the street for a morning and afternoon rush. At first it was only an hour but it didn’t take long for it to be two hours in the AM and two in the PM. So from 7am-9am and from 4pm-6pm nobody can park on the street between 10th and Tucker. The blocks East of Tucker are no parking 24/7.

For a couple of years now the city has been ticketing people parking in these spaces and presumably blocking the mad rush of people heading both East & West on Washington. People ignore the restriction and park there anyway. So recently the city taped notes on the meters to alert people not to park there during these maddening rush periods. The problem with the notes is that they are taped to the meters. Taped! We are a real city right? The notes also don’t mention the no parking times are only Monday-Friday.

Restaurants such as Kitchen K, Mosaic, Beso, The Dubliner, Mizu Sushi Bar (as well as other businesses) don’t need to have their customers chased away from 4pm-6pm. An early dinner al fresco at Kitchen K, Mosaic & Beso is ruined by having cars and buses flying by in the lane next to your table. A row of parked cars serves as a nice barrier between traffic and enjoying dinner.

Ticketing cars during this period was bad enough — now they are going to start towing? This is bad public policy! We need to extend on-street parking to the Eads Bridge to support retail along Washington Ave, not have it disappear for four hours each weekday.  Towing cars will really endure so many people to Washington Ave.

Great Pizza If You Can Get To It

One of the most urban things is the ability to grab a slice of pizza while on the go. I’ve enjoyed slices in NYC, Philly, Boston, San Francisco and elsewhere, sometimes at 3am. A single slice can also solve a pizza craving without ordering a full pizza.

In St Louis the by-the-slice choices are limited. You’ve got Racanelli’s on Delmar & on Euclid. You’ve got Feraro’s Jersey Pizza in Soulard and recently Bridge & Tunnel Pizza downtown on Washington Ave. a storefront or two East of Tucker.

I need to preface this with the fact that I like B&T Pizza. But the design of their entry does not comply with the ADA — when I’m in my wheelchair I can’t open the door to get inside. The staff there is nice and they come open the door for me. B&T Pizza are tenants in the building — my beef is with the building owner, the architect and the city.

When designing doorways that open toward you there is supposed to be 18″ of clearance to the handle side. This allows a wheelchair user to pull up and grab the door handle and get the door open without having the door hit the chair. Without this room to swing the door open it is impossible for a chair user to open the door.

Button-activated motorized openers such as the one at a potentially difficult door at City Grocers eliminates this problem. But the entry to Bridge & Tunnel is not an old historic entryway. Prior to the recent renovation of the building the space was an auto drive to an interior courtyard. The entrance is entirely new, yet it doesn’t comply!

The ramp shown above was the subject of a post in December 2007.  By sticking out the way it does I believe it poses a trip hazard to someone just passing by on the sidewalk.

I like the place, it is good, inexpensive and quick. They’ve got calzones now too. But I don’t like that I can’t get in the door on my own.

The opposite door into the apartments is a mirror of the problem.

Again these doors & doorways are all new yet I can’t get through them because of their placement. Both need to be retrofitted with electric openers to bring these into compliance. The city has got to do a better job of catching what is simple access issues.