Main Street is the Best Street

I sit on the planning commission in the suburb where I live. This is a frustrating experience.

Its frustrating because this suburb, like so many others, has adopted a planning ethos flush with modernity. My suburb is made for cars, and it comes with the ample parking lots, deep setbacks, and lack of walkability common to these types of locales.

As usual, the past is instructive - but ignored.

In the past, our city streets had limited setbacks, narrow roads, and broad sidewalks. In short, they were ideal places to navigate on foot, or bike, or by streetcar. When I suggest that my city adopt this sort of approach, if only in small amounts, I am looked at quizzically by my fellow commissioners and citizens.

I wonder, though, if these people have looked around at what they have created? The main road by my house is hideously ugly -- rife with characterless buildings straddling a freeway-esque road and oriented for use only by automotive users.

Ironically, these same citizens take vacations to big cities and little beach towns made in an entirely different image. Its the image our forefathers used to build their towns for generation upon generation.You know the one -- shops and homes closely abut the sidewalk, which itself straddles a narrow road lined with trees.

We vacation to "old-fashioned" places, but fail to infuse their best features into our own. Its a shame, methinks, and I'm doing what I can to change hearts and minds on the subject. I hope you will, too. Why? Because, old fashioned joys are the wave of the future.