Foot Homes public housing is touted as one of the poorest communities in the Mid-South region.
The crime level has been
tremendously high and the local public school system has given up their charter
while some of the nearby schools have been shut down and/or they have been on
the states failure list for several years.
And, the powers-that-be
are still squabbling over whose plan for the Foote Homes is better; and regardless
of who wins this battle, they are still waiting for the grant funding to help
cover the cost of either improving or removing the community.
And so far, the designs
presented to the residents do not come close to rising above the high standards
of a car-free
friendly design.
And how sad this is for
the Foote Homes residents, especially since few of them own a
vehicle.
Few of them have the
financial means to acquire vehicles.
Few of them maintains a
vehicle long-term, even if they do get a job and a pay-as-you-go car, which
usually gets towed away the second a weekly payment is missed.
Perhaps all this is due to
the ongoing plight of low wage temporary jobs that provide few benefits and/or
lay the residents off every few days, weeks, or months and fires them on the
spot because a public transit bus got them to work 20 minutes late.
And then, these residents
are right back on foods stamps and knowing that the man is not likely going to
ever let them leave these housing projects.
Housing projects are
housing projects, even if they are designed to be nice and elegant.
On the other hand, a
car-free community design would provide The Foot Homes residents with a real
means of meeting all of their essential needs within ten minutes of their
home.
More important, a car free
community will allow for them to work from their homes or other nearby
neighborhoods.
A car-free community will
remove this community from the grid because the community will be run
off of solar and wind power.
That means not dipping
into the taxpayer’s pockets nearly as deep as they ever did before.
The Vance Avenue
Collaborative (VAC) organization is attempting to rescue the
Foote Homes community through their Improve Do Not Remove agenda.
Although it may be one of
the superior design plans presented to the residents thus far, the VAC does not
propose to resolve or reverse all of the major issues that car-free citizens
suffer from the most, such as jaywalking.
To illustrate, hardly
anyone here in Memphis can cross our city streets safely at the corners because
the cross-walk lights change over to don't walk as soon as pedestrians step off
of the curbs; then some car drivers believe it is their right to nearly run
pedestrians over if they do not get out of the way fast enough.
In The Invention
of Jaywalking written by Sarah Goodyear for the Commute section
of The Atlantic Cities web site, Goodyear points out that jaywalking is a
term well researched by one of her sources, Peter Norton, an assistant
professor at the University of Virginia and the author of Fighting
Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City:
- Our view of streets was systematically and deliberately shifted by the automobile industry, as was the law itself.
- AAA and other auto clubs turned first to the younger generation, financing safety education programs in the public schools that were designed to teach children that streets are for cars, not for kids. They funded safety patrols that taught kids they had to stop for traffic, not the other way around.
- The [auto] industry lobbied to change the law, promoting the adoption of traffic statutes to supplant common law. The statutes were designed to restrict pedestrian use of the street and give primacy to cars. The idea of "jaywalking” – a concept that had not really existed prior to 1920 – was enshrined in law.
In light of Goodyear’s
assessment, perhaps the VAC might reconsider adopting, marketing, and
promoting a community plan that is also highly inclusive of a car-free agenda,
such as using hand carts and utility bicycles to move some local freight around
instead of massive trucks and selling some goods and services out on the open
streets instead of in brick and mortar store fronts.
At least the VAC plan does
provide for a park like setting with greenway paths and some unique shopping
strips for buying a loved one that special gift, but these pathways are more
for recreation and tourism than for utilitarian purposes.
Let's compare at least two
car-free friendly models, so that you can fully understand what is meant by a
car-free friendly design.
For example, in one of my
other blog post, Living Car Free
In Memphis Tennessee, Vauban, Germany, serves as a
perfectly good example of a community that is both utilitarian and
recreational.
Vauban
started their walk-bike planning process during the early 1990s.
Vauban's 5,000
residents have no driveways or car garages. All paths lead to essential shopping
destinations and parks alike. Getting to all destinations is easy because the
community is a highly condensed urban center.
In Vauban,
car-free citizens come from various economic backgrounds. It is a secure
community economically, with mixed-use facilities and systems laid out for all
citizens to enjoy.
More
recently, Alex Davies presented his article, China Is
Building A Huge Eco-City Where No One Will Need To Drive.
Davies states the following:
- Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture notes that "Chinese planning officials [are] beginning to see the effects of automobile-dependent design and are open to better alternatives to urban sprawl.
- Great City [will] provides residents with affordable housing, education, and medical care, all clustered in the city center to encourage a thriving civic life.
In truth, however, cars
are going to be allowed, but are absolutely unnecessary according to the
planners.
The city will house 80,000
people and should be completed within the next eight years.
Our own city planners here
in Memphis could learn much from the examples set here by Germany and China
whose car-free cities will not likely have any jaywalking laws; and therefore,
no jaywalking problems.
In fact, Bobby Allyn’s
article, Sprawling
Memphis Aims to Be a Friendlier Place for Cyclists, helps to back up
several points in the blog post, Living Car-Free in Memphis, Tennessee:
- Bike-friendly behavior has never come naturally to Memphis, which has long been among the country’s most perilous places for cyclists.
- Bicycling magazine named Memphis one of the worst cities in America for cyclists.
- Wanda Rushing, a professor at the University of Memphis and an expert on urban change in the South, said bike improvements were of a piece with a development model sweeping the region: bolstering transportation infrastructure and population density in the inner city. “Memphis is not alone in acknowledging that sprawl is not sustainable,” Dr. Rushing said. “Economic necessity is a pretty good melding substance.”
Despite some car-free
friendly reservations concerning the VAC plan, at least the VAC is working with
Memphis Area Transit Authority to improve the community.
For instance, two MATA buses
are being retrofitted to become mobile fresh fruit and vegetable vehicles that
make pit stops in the food deserts of various poor communities.
As if that is not enough,
MATA is also implementing a Bus Rapid
Transit GPS system on Poplar Avenue, which allows for their buses to
signal the stoplights for priority green signals.
This allows for MATA to
shave 15 to 20 percent off of the time they are taking to pick up passengers in
a timely fashion.
As extra funding comes
online, MATA can expand this system.
So why not add icing to
this cake?
For example, MATA should
also provide their passengers with a real-time passenger information system,
like Next Bus,
so that the passengers can arrive at the bus stop within the same minute the
bus does.
In this way, prior to
boarding the public bus, a passenger can choose to wait inside of their homes,
or somewhere else that is nice and cozy with no pressures about hanging out in
the open air at an unshielded bus stop for up to 20 minutes at a time.
The icing is much cheaper
than the cake!
Of course, MATA will still need a few super sized bus shelters
at major venues like the Wolf Chase Mall, The Bass Pro downtown and at every
single grocery store along all main streets like Poplar Avenue and Union Avenue.
Yes - Memphis could become
a car-free friendly city.
It is never too late for
that!
In closing, here is a
video that provides shinning example of a car-free friendly city.
Enjoy!
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| A hand delivered post card from the University of Catania, Sicily, Italy, to my apartment by the beautiful Laura Saija, and some of her students; and under her direction, they have all come here to Memphis,Tennessee, to work with the Vance Avenue Collaborative, among other related things. |
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| The back side of post card by Laura Saija, Friday, April 26, 2013. |
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| The beautiful Laura Saija, pictured to the right in the green jacket. |
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| Not all of the students are pictured here that came to my apratment with Laura, but I did list a few of the student names in the labels section. |
