OK, I’d previously outlined the doom which has befallen my hometown; its utter and complete ruination and devastation by its rich inhabitants who never really were here and who are moving again just the same.
But I have a solution. Something the locals COULD fairly easily pull off. If they got together. It’s called having a plan.
There’s one way to save Minimall Land. Well, maybe…it’s probably hopeless, but I might as well put the solution before them.
OK, minimalls in total saturation are ALMOST like old fashioned street front facades, almost create a town themselves. Except they’re unconnected, separated by parking lots and in’n’outs. You have your MM then 50 yds of trash, then another MM and so on on every city street. It’s the new paradigm for the world, not just Okemos, not just here. So better learn quick how to turn it into a sustainable milieu!
For starters, the MM’s have to all be connected. The zoning method needs to be altered. Build the new MM’s between the old and run sidewalks down them all. That way it would be just like an old town except 10-20 yards off the freeway-like local street. Let shopkeeps, delivery and emergency access the MM’s from the ends of the blocks, instead of having each MM have 4 sides of access. That’s overkill, unneeded.
Next, take a lesson from Euros and old towns and build little sitting places every so often along these connected storefronts. Or maybe just add parkbenches in front. Nothing fancy. Pure function. For folks to hang out without being in a shop. If they want to meet without spending. As people do. Once they get a taste of civilization. (Unless riffraff are allowed to hassle them.)
Next, think of whatever actual, true and honest natural, historic and civic features your town possesses and develop them. Don’t preserve them in amber, make them into a park: showcase it. Centralize it. Business isn’t bad if done right. Ask any real city in the world in history. It only sucks when we say `Life over here in this park set in amber. Business over here where anything goes.’ No, business has to always be held to the standard of life. Or it must be denied.
We in Okemos have an Oldtown Four Corners and historic district a block away from a river. The river is our only feature. It’s now a park on both sides of a freeway-like surface street. That’s a deathtrap. Who wants a noisy park? Focus on the river rather than marginalize it. Build condos and terraced shops and walks on both sides of it right new Oldtown. Oldtown itself is presently a ghetto. Because any new building there wouldn’t conform to the new code. Change the code for oldtown. Give it a metro code. Don’t apply suburban code to an oldtimey street facade. They want to force any builder to put 20 acres of parking in front of his place. So none of the tiny, pricey lots get built on. Screw that.
Rebuild Oldtown thru the historic district down to the river. Then you’d have a town. Some psychic roots for the people. A place for things to happen, music fests and such. It might not be much. But we’re starting from Ground Zero, remember. Total devastation by the rich. An entrenched poison. Any progress will be clung to and well-used.
Expand on all possible civic space in the most VISIBLE way. If people are to be civilized they have to see what that is. Is it exploitation? Does it equal depravity? Pavlovian reaction? Every town must decide.
Right now Okemos still has a Farmer’s Market. In a parking lot out back of the copshop. Hidden away. Braindead shoppers can’t even know it’s there. But the brand new multimillion dollar copshop has a HUGE front lawn, as does the bunkerlike abandoned civic center next to it. Put the Farmer’s Market right out front. Let folks park out back.
If truck farmers don’t want to deal with out front, they can still stay out back. But put booths out front, card tables, tents. Don’t charge a cent for space! Get the kids out there selling their honey.
Our last civic feature is, not coincedently, agriculturally based. (Notice how anything real is connective, integrative, involves coincedents which aren’t.) The fact is that our area is a swamp. We can only live here due to an old system of drainage ditches. The Chandler Drains. (And some other guy, too.) It’s historic of course. We’re like the Dutch. Exactly. If the drains weren’t kept nicely, we’d flood out. The drains are kept nicely. They’re an important feature. That no one knows about basically. I notice that a couple intersect in a park behind city hall. Develop these. Widen them in that area by a few feet. Have a fleet of little canoes. Install explanatory plaques. Develop these features all the way to where they cross the major roads. Install designed rails over (possibly improved) bridges. Put paths along the ditches. Just like the canals of Europe and the classic canals of America. Possibly use the ditch rightofways to install further paths connecting outlying parts of town. Keep the ditches clean as well as tidy. Add some nice erosion-preventing, air- and water-cleaning plantings.
Now, creating civilization like this will make the driving cattle feel sick to their stomach. Realizing how close they came to taking it all down with them. They’ll realize that their freeway-like fumes are obviously poisoning the kids selling honey on the city hall front lawn. They’ll feel guilty for being jammed so together in their tin boxes. They’ll need some psychic space. They might even need an alternative.
A new way to travel, if only in their mind. It’s like Greenspace. If folks know it’s there, if they know it’s part of their city design, not just a marginalized park, they feel better, behave better, vote more. Stay longer.
So build real bike paths, people paths—not just for bikers, but promenades. Which are better placed and better routed than the streets! Just a few are all that’s needed. Just a N-S and an E-W can lift a whole town. Take advantage again of your local features. We have the river. And guess what? The local capital city has an extensive Riverwalk system. The adjoining campus has river sidewalks. And Okemos is right next to that. And my little farmtown Williamston is just a couple more miles down the river. Along the totally neglected riverway. (Well, there are some yards along maybe 1% of the way, but where there’s a will there’s a way.) Then we also have an old abandoned light rail corridor from the big town to our only local lake. It goes thru some of the only remaining fields and woodlots. Build paths connecting and highlighting each of our two features and you’ll have your psychic space. Not coincedently you’ll also provide easy, car-free access to nearly all shopping and recreation sites in a wide area.
As the area is more built-up with trash, and we get evermore total saturation of cars, bikes simply won’t be able to cheerfully coexist with them anymore. They’ll need their own routes. Why not trump the cars? In most communities this wouldn’t be too hard. Allow peds and cyclists to have BETTER and far more BEAUTIFUL access than motorists. Release the pressure valve of feeling like you have no option and balance the equation. Drivers will feel better knowing they aren’t FORCING everyone into the ditch along with their own poisoned consciences. Folks can have a nice way to get around in fact. The town can start to build a soul from both sides.
Lastly, most of the destruction and devastation around here isn’t being focussed on where it came from. Towns need to keep trash in its place. Need to max out those areas which are foregone conclusions. For Okemos we are in the absurd predicament where the freeway exits which have brought the life-snuffing traffic to our minimalls have no development around them themselves. (Well, one is just starting to.) We instead built the Big Mall right in our city center. Lord knows why. We gutted ourselves. The rich deserve whatever heat or karma comes their way for that decision. So there’s total saturation of freeway like traffic thru our old burg lanes. Clever. But it threatens to worsen of course. The city basically now has to be destroyed to get enough pavement to service it. Clever. Unless we fully depressurize the situation. Build new Big Malls at each exit. This might panic the city center burghers whose growth rate might flatten. But screw them. We’re talking about how to make a Town in the midst of poisonous trash. And this last of four steps is the only way to do it.
Do as I say and you’ll win. Don’t and die. Ta-dah!
