Saturday, January 10, 2009

restore the food shed on a walking perimeter

Peak everything around us. We have problem. So city leaders convene green committees. Green committees look around and think bikes and walking a no brainer since you don't have to be a doctor to know that you should take your heart for a walk.

But now the bigger problem. City leaders have spent the last 70 years chaining us to Al Queda and Saudi Arabia. As they have expanded roads and raised the speed limit to get to the development permitted in the outer reaches of their jurisdictions they have made walking impossible and bicycling dangerous. Self sufficiency is dangerous and illegal in places with no walking closures at some intersections. So dangerous that leaders like Sue Lempert and Coralin Fierebach now say that they will not attempt to bike on these road they labored decades to proudly build. They want separate bike paths- ceding the public space to Bush and Al Queda they want to go build a another network to get around slowly without pollution and in peace.

But how to grade separate this new facility? And connect community scattered to the outer reaches of the jurisdiction? It will be too expensive so we have to live with what we got. There is nothing to be done. One way is to move services into the neighborhoods on an 1/8 mile walking radius and then connect these centers via bicycles boulevards. Ideally if we have Transfer of Development Rights we restore the food shed on a walking perimeter and have a complete neighborhood.

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