Archive for June, 2009
We should, in spite of current economic turmoil continue to link our network of urban communities downtown. Increased interaction between pedestrians, promoting healthier lifestyles and encouraging economic activity by using sidewalks, riding CAT buses and pedaling our bikes, we can connect and commute in our urban communities.
We need to accommodate those who use our public buses with additional shelters in our downtown neighborhoods. We need to clearly paint our Master Bike Plan lanes and safety boxes. We need to provide more sidewalks to our citizens and promote trails that connect our downtown, such as the Museum Art and Heritage Trail, that links River Market to MacArthur Park. Our trolley system needs to be more linear, linking the central business district to the nearby historic neighborhoods. Linking civic, cultural and historic institutions provides added opportunities for showcasing downtown Little Rock. A neighborhood trolley would help rehabilitate existing homes and promote urban infill. Trolleys in existing neighborhoods, especially with historic and tourist locations give visitors enhanced images of our community. A more linked trolley can promote and educate all of us about public art.
Economic development, strengthened communities, preventing urban sprawl, creating an urban workforce around mixed housing, using linked transit in our existing downtown neighborhoods is necessary. We are the critical component to promote this lifestyle.
The seduction of Dwell magazine, modern, hip, design oriented is appealing, but not always affordable. Re creating historic modernism can be expensive, How can we thoughtfully engineer and design affordable homes? It is a problem that confounds me.
We have been conditioned to think, and in turn buy homes based on quantity (sq.ft.), not quality. Strangely, we possess this thinking with food too. A home should be a shelter, a place to raise a family, to be connected to our neighbors.
Demographics are rapidly changing, note our recent election, families are smaller, desire for modest-quality built homes will grow, 60 million new homes are projected to be built in the next 30 years. Simplicity and moderation are appropriate now. We can and should be able to accommodate good design and affordability.
Local CDC’s are building well built green affordable homes. Rehabilitating existing homes is certainly a green, cost-effective approach to affordable housing.
We must think smaller, while remaining creative and sustainable. If you build inexpensively look for others who share your passion. The challenge is before us.
Page Wilson, LEED AP PaulPageDwellings.com
Hot, Flat, and Crowded, no, not the book, but our future Little Rock urban core. Collaboration and civility, with a good dose of ideas, innovation and leadership can move our central core toward 2030. The same old answers to today’s housing and developments, only produce the same old results. As they say in Texas: “If all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you ever got.”
There should be reform or updates of our land use guidelines. Preservationists, City Planners, Developers, Investors, Urban Eclectics and Greens will all lose together by continuing to coast along, the same old approach is no longer viable. It is almost 2010, we need to think and plan for 2030+.
I personally like to juxtapose the old against the Green Modern materials available today. Both old structures and modern techniques and materials are sustainable models. Competing visions keep us Hot and Flat, what we all desire is a Crowded Urban Core.
Our urban core has a impact on our whole city, our schools, our businesses, our civic and cultural institutions, our community. It is time for compromise, reconciliation, and progress! Our President-elect emphasizes, “ every second, every minute, every hour, every day counts.” We do not have the luxury to waste time.
We buy food based on how many calories we can purchase with a dollar. Maybe that is why most of us are on and off diets so often, quantity does not relate to contentment. We buy homes based on the notion that the more square feet we get for the dollar, the better we are financially, and socially within our peer group. Our convulsion to Quality enters our decisions about food, housing, water, even crime, where we think Quantity ( more jails) is the answer, not Quality, (prevention).
Walking around old Downtown Little Rock recently, with a local architect, we both noticed there are still plenty of Quality buildings available, the ingredients missing seem to be parking, affordable housing and people on the street,(Quantity). A redirect , with urgency to improve the interior of the city would greatly improve the lives of everyone. Maybe it is time to try to MATURE Little Rock, instead of continually expanding city services and infrastructure.
In 1890, around City Park, (MacArthur Park) and Downtown there was a architectural boom, maybe after 120 years we should try, with urgency to produce Quality in old downtown Little Rock again.
Walking to the post office,the grocery store, a school, to work, or a restaurant makes a walkable neighborhood. This idea of walkability, whether in a traditional neighborhood or a urban area, is a cornerstone of today’s Green communities. Walkability is what makes Hillcrest, River Market and my neighborhood, SoMa (SouthMain Street) desirable.
In SoMa, I live on a public bus route, bike trail,and the Little Rock Marathon route is a half- block away We have 2 hardware stores, 2 pharmacies,5 restaurants, 5 Schools, 3 Parks, 1 library,a post office,2 cultural institutions and we are only 10 minutes from the River Market Pavillion.
Walkable neighborhoods promote economic activity, increase safety, community spirit, healthy lifestyles and decrease automobile use. Walkable neighborhoods have public centers, density, mixed-use,mixed income,parks,public space, pedestrian areas, nearby-schools, worplaces and streets for everyone. If you are interested in your neighborhood’s walkability, go to www.WalkScore.com, it is not perfect, but certainly interesting.