Walkable Communities in KINGSBURG!
Submitted by thereminman on Fri, 05/11/2007 - 08:24.
Wow. I coulda listened/watched this presentation for hours!
Dan Burden (ran into FF user "ValleyisforLovers", she said this
guy is famous in the city planning/rejuvination world)spoke to
about 60 of us Kingsburg residents in a school cafeteria.
He showed slides, talked, and inspired!
I wish there were hundreds of us there.
Kingsburg is small enough that you don't have to wade through decades of problems and sloppy graft-ons to get to the healthy and most interesting
heart of the tree[wierd metaphor?]. But, the temptation and instant-gratification of Thoughtless Sprawl looms daily and has made some powerful inroads.
If you're interested in experiencing a bit of this(the learning and inspiration, not the sprawl), there are two more get together's in this series (apparently paid for by a grant?). There's a walk-around tour of the downtown from 9-Noon tomorrow(Saturday the 12th) --starting at the cafeteria at Washington School (come to town, ask, someone will point, you'll find it). And a final meeting Tuesday evening in the same place.
The hope is to put together a plan that has community involvement.
Will the city DO anything with this plan? I hope so---don't want my lil' heart to break after getting its expectations up so high.
Three cheers for walkable communities!
It did not take much convincing from Blake to get me to go to the planning charette in Kingsburg this morning (being that it is my current place of residence, and also being that this organization is my dream employer...) and can I just say it was such a delightful experience! I came home quite elated at the collaborative effort with so many people of so many different ages and interests coming together and bonding over roundabouts and such. The Local Government Commission (who puts these things on) really does such a great job with these charettes because there is so much focus on education and then collaboratation with everyone's ideas into motion, so that it really becomes our own idea, rather than something imposed by a bunch of urban designers from Sacramento (not that I don't think they would do a fantastic job redesigning downtown Kingsburg, but some people have their qualms, and it is nice to have the local feedback on what works and doesn't work at some intersections, or who owns what parcel and how could they develop it, etc...)
Anyhow. Great experience. If anyone is interested in seeing how they put our ideas from today into a conceptual plan, they are unveiling that on Tuesday night at 6pm, again I believe at Washington School. And their websites are fantastic and full of great literature, if anyone is interested:
www.localgovernmentcommission.org
www.walkablecommunities.com
Dani
(On the previous comment about garages: I couldn't agree more. It irks me to see that even the most upscale new subdivisions in Fresno are completely garage dominated. And that alleys are continually being vacated. You really lose that 'eyes on the street' mentality when 75% of the front elevation of a house is the garage.)
Walkable communities
Whether a community is more walkable can be enfluenced by where the car is garaged; Whether it's in front of the house or in back. In our FCC neighborhood, built in 1931, most of the garages are accessed from the back, through the alley. That creates a more pleasant walking environment on the street in front of our house.
walkable communities
Their webpage is:
http://www.walkable.org
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