An Intervention

We were required to read another chapter written by Jaime Lerner, called "Reviving Cities," and it spoke about how to help a city survive and flourish. There are three things you need to address, mobility, sustiainability, and identity. I thought the article made some very great points, and I am now thinking about a small pinprick that I could make around my house to make it more livable. Honestly, I think we could clean up my backyard a little bit. I live in a duplex, and share the yard with my neighbors. If we were to create a better seating arrangement, maybe by replacing the cushions on some old chairs, we could all sit outside and mingle. We would probably get to know one another better within this space as well. Now, I am imagining a slightly larger scale intervention for my neighborhood. I think that the wider streets allow cars to speed at dangerous levels. If there were more crosswalks, or maybe speed monitors that allowed people to see how fast they are moving, the streets would be safer to use by pedestrians or bikers. Pedestrians are fairly safe at this point because there are a TON of sidewalks, but I can definitely see the potential danger to bicycle riders.

Next, an intervention on campus. The one that comes SCREAMING to my mind is... CONTINUING THE DAMN SIDEWALKS. I swear, I go and walk on upper campus for one of my classes and all of a sudden the sidewalk will literally just STOP. It is extremely annoying. There are some parts of this area that have beautiful wide sidewalks for everyone to walk on, then some that will, quite literally, just stop. I am a person who feels impolite walking on pristine grass. Therefore it causes me extreme frustration and discomfort when a sidewalk ends and I have to walk all over the grass. The final intervention that I would like to address in this post is one for the city at large. This is posing some difficulty for me. I would love to know EXACTLY how to fix the valley, but I can't seem to pinpoint a specific problem, which I think can be attributed to my lack of complete exploration of our city. One thing I have seen though, is there are not a lot of places where people can feel safe riding a bike on the street. I am excited whenever I see a new bike lane being put into place. I struggle with riding around the city with my dog. I DO NOT feel comfortable riding on the street with him, but people are often angered by my trying to ride on narrow sidewalks in order to keep him safe. I would love to have a safer bike route that ran directly to main areas within the city, I'm just not sure if it will ever happen!