Man’s Best Friend, A Uniter or a Divider?

Last evening I attended Larry Rice’s “Night with the Homeless” rally inside The New Life Evangelistic Center located exactly two blocks East of my downtown loft on Locust. In the coming days I’ll do a more complete report. With some exceptions Rice’s words were intended to paint the loft dwellers as newcomers hellbent on pushing out the homeless.

In the last month as local residents took an active roll in cleaning up deferred maintenance in Lucas Park I’ve seen so much more positive interaction between residents & resident homeless. I’ve become engaged in the struggle to the point where I’m doing what I can to understand the situation these people are in and to help in any way I can to get a few out of being homeless.

Although I knew this before I hadn’t really experienced it — much of the homeless population is just like you or me but without shelter. Last night KMOV’s Robin Smith said a very true statement – -“Most of us are one paycheck away from being homeless.” Sad but true and with our current economy things may only get worse.

To me dogs are like kids — I don’t have one but in small doses I like other people’s. Dogs can be a way to unite people. I’ve seen homeless & dog owners talking about the breeds and so on.  Granted,some of the dog owners need to learn to pick up after their dogs. Earlier this week Larry Rice was seen in Lucas Park with a photographer picking up dog doo. Photo taken and he is gone. The rest of us have spent hours in the park cleaning up green mud from under benches after spending more hours assessing the issues in the park and where we could make a difference. We’ve addressed maintenance issues long ignored by both the city & Rice.

Rice, I believe, doesn’t want residents & the homeless to have positive interaction as that will break down the wall he is trying to build between us.  I see dogs & the park as a means of increasing discussion & understanding on all sides.

blah.

St Louis’ 200th Anniversary Just a Year Away

99 years ago St Louis was celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of its incorporation.  At the time St Louis was the 4th largest U.S. city.  In 1900 the city had a population of 575,238 and by 1910 that had increased to 687,029 – nearly double our current population.

“St. Louis first became legally incorporated as a town on November 9, 1809″  (wiki).  The book, “St. Louis Day By Day” by Frances Hurd Stadler lists the week-long 100th anniversary celebration on October 3, 1909.

I’d say we’ve got some 200th anniversary planning to do – for October or November of next year.  Here is a possible slogan, “twice as old, half the population.”

Huge Van Consumes Disabled Parking Loading Zone

Last week I shared images of a vehicle parked in the loading zone next to a disabled parking space (see post). A couple of days ago I spotted another such offender, this time at Lindell & Sarah outside the strip center that contains an OfficeMax, a health center and other businesses.

As I walked out of the OfficeMax to my car parked in a disabled space across the drive I noticed this van poorly parked not in a disabled space but between two spaces.

In this case there was plenty of parking available about 10 or so cars further to the right. It was a nice day. This person felt like they could park as they liked.

Unlike last week I never saw or spoke to this driver. I did spot a police car in front of the OfficeMax I had just left. I circled around a couple of times hoping the officer would come out of the store but no such luck. I had somewhere to be so I couldn’t hang out here waiting for the owner and/or police.

One might argue the number of disabled spaces at this location far exceeds demand. That is the trick about parking mandates, they seldom have anything to do with actual demand. Even if the allocation of disabled spaces is high and most are not used you never know when someone is going to pull up and need one of the spaces. At one point all might be full and a half hour later all empty.

For those that use vans with a side ramp this extra space is a must. The space is not left just for the fun of it. I need the ability to open my driver’s door fully to get in/out of my car. For others they need the space on the passenger side to allow for transfer to a wheelchair or even using a walker.

After I took the above pictures I realized the windows were tinted — what if they had a disabled hang tag I wondered. Then I realized if they did they would have just parked legally in a space. No this person clearly felt like it was OK to park between disabled spaces but not in one. Interestingly, had this driver just parked in one of the disabled spaces it would would have left the other and the loading zone usable by someone permitted to park in disabled parking.

It is clear, most folks are respectful of disabled parking and the adjacent loading zone — a few are not.

Print Media In The Trash, Literally!

OK, not the trash, the recycling dumpster :

The above is a lot of unread papers.  The fact is more and more people don’t read the paper  — oh we stay informed just not via a daily, weekly or monthly print paper.  With the rise of the internet papers are struggling to retain readers and advertising revenue.

At SLU we can get a paper everyday for free – St Louis Post-Dispatch, USA Today & The New York Times.  Free!

No thanks.  Reading a paper takes too much room to open it up, you get ink on your hands, you have to recycle it when done and you can’t do easy searches or save PDF’s for future reference.  Many of my fellow students seem to agree.

I read stories in the Post-Dispatch & New York Times daily online along with the websites of other print media.  Of course I also read many web-only sites.  You can even get the funnies online these days.

The printed paper is making a slow exit.  The final edition will soon be the final edition.  The Post-Dispatch, our only daily paper since the Globe-Democrat ceased publication 22 years ago this month, recently laid off 20 more workers.  I’d link to their story but their links don’t last – so here is the news from the St Louis Business Journal.

It may take 20 years but in time I think many cities will not have a daily print paper.  Niche papers that are weekly or monthly will continue for some time but eventually they too will find the productions costs outweigh the advertising revenue.

The upshot may be a reduction in trash.  The sidewalks will be free of the various news stand boxes.  The downside is strangers in a cafe won’t be overheard saying, “Can you pass me the sports section when you done?”

Just as cities adopted to electric lighting instead of gas lamps & candles, they will adjust to lacking a daily print edition.  The transition will certainly be less destructive than going from horse & carriage to the private automobile.

Street Layout and Blight

For much of the 20th Century the street pattern of existing cities was under constant attack by Traffic Engineers, Architects and Urban Planners. Cities typically had one of two types of layout – a strict grid or a more random pattern such as that of the downtown in Boston or Manhattan, or a combination of both. The planners, architects and engineers of the 20th century viewed both the random layout and the compact grid as “obsolete.” With exceptions like Broadway running North & South, St Louis was a standard grid city.

The term ‘gridlock’ originated out of the idea that cars would clog intersections to the point where they’d get boxed in – thus gridlock. Since this time that term is used anywhere traffic congestion exists — ironically often where a grid is absent so all traffic is forced through a single arterial.

The textbook in my Housing & Community Development law class at SLU indicates the federal housing agency (presumably HUD) had model laws for states to adopt with respect to defining blight and a slum. The Missouri definition for blight is very similar to the one in the text:

99.805.

(1) “Blighted area”, an area which, by reason of the predominance of defective or inadequate street layout, unsanitary or unsafe conditions, deterioration of site improvements, improper subdivision or obsolete platting, or the existence of conditions which endanger life or property by fire and other causes, or any combination of such factors, retards the provision of housing accommodations or constitutes an economic or social liability or a menace to the public health, safety, morals, or welfare in its present condition and use;

Note that “predominance of defective or inadequate street layout,” is first, before unsanitary or unsafe. Of course the statute doesn’t clue us in on what is an adequate street layout. Followed close behind is “improper subdivision or obsolete platting.” Obsolete platting is as subjective as inadequate street layout. Unsanitary is probably easier to pin down as is the deterioration of improvements. But the bias against a compact street grid and narrow deep building lots with alleys is well documented. This bias led to state statutes like this that made it easier to label areas as slums or blighted.

Many areas razed during Urban Renewal had the compact & walkable grid being created today in New Urbanist projects like New Town at St Charles. Overcoming this old anti-grid bias is a challenge in new “greenfield” projects, however. Zoning codes & development standards call for too wide of streets, high parking requirements and large setbacks.

Building setbacks had a couple of early uses.  First in private residential streets the setback was used to create a lawn area and a more open feel.  The other use was to help ensure that when the city wanted to widen the roadway that they’d not have to demolish the front portion of buildings as was the case in St Louis when early planners began remaking our city for cars, not people.

A major thrust for planning in the 21st Century will end up being undoing 20th Century experiments that failed to serve people.  The definition of blight as written may help in that regard.  I can see future planners indicating  the cul-de-sac layout of much of suburbia as inadequate.  Similarly, I can see the typical wide but shallow suburban lot shape being called obsolete.  In time we’ll be razing much of the crap from the last 60+ years.  Suburban Renewal.