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I’ve got this ongoing joke with my wife.
Whenever we drive around a few blocks in Midtown looking for parking or when we get detoured onto a different route because a road has closed down thanks to a redevelopment project (like 28th Street at present or the congestion around 10th and J), I like to pretend to gripe and get really mad about “the lack of adequate parking and all this freakin’ development” but really it makes me all happy inside.
Inside, I’m saying “Bring it On!”
I love the visible signs of re-development and a healthy urban core and certain inconveniences are some of the most poignant of signs. Parking problems are welcome (they remind me to walk and ride); detours are welcome (heck, I do that all the time on my bike, its a more interesting ride and it sure beats being pushed miles down a strip mall boulevard by unending medians and “No U-Turn” signs); narrower streets are welcome (they remind me to drive more carefully).
So today, I read in the online version of the Sacramento Business Journal about the forthcoming closure of the Towers Bridge and had a jolly time thinking of more jokes with my wife every time we’re re-routed to the I Street Bridge.
As a developer in the Washington Area bordered on the South side by West Capitol and the Towers Bridge, this particular inconvenience is one I’ve been anticipating for a couple of years now… every time I’ll be re-routed, it will reinforce the hope we have for re-envisioning this neighborhood as a walkable/bike-able urban village. Last month the Bee made the connection:
It may not seem evident now, but someday — soon, West Sacramento officials hope — the west riverbank will become a teeming urban center of condos, offices, stores and restaurants.
A walkable bridge, they say, means people will not have to get into cars to go from home to work on the opposite bank of the river.
I even have this (highly idealistic) idea that maybe, just maybe even some of the folks re-routed up Third and 5th Streets will stop at our “Sit Here and Dream Big” sites and get a little inspired…
But I imagine there will be a fair share of genuine grumbling about this forthcoming “granddaddy” of bridge closure inconvenience when people are late to work or meetings or movies or when it takes 3 minutes longer to get home from the office because they had to take a different path– we don’t tend to be a very patient culture, addicted as we are to instant gratification and on-demand everything.
So, before any of that starts, and for the record, I say “Bring it ON!” Inconvenience me.
And, when the two cities decide to take the next big leap and redesign the I-5 (the “great grand-daddy” of inconvenience) to connect downtown with the riverfront, I’ll be the first to say “yes! do that! inconvenience me! please!”
Jason
5 responses so far ↓
1 wburg // Sep 13, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Jason,
How’s the parking around your house?
2 Jason // Sep 13, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Just moved to Curtis Park but when I lived in Midtown, I rarely had problems finding parking right in front of the house. Worst part was the tree droppings from the palm trees. Of course, there was always the game of moving the car for garbage days…
Then again, our car sometimes stayed in the same spot for several days…thanks to living in a walkable neighborhood.
How is it where you live?
3 Steve // Sep 13, 2007 at 6:40 pm
OOH - I love talking about parking spaces. We don’t have a driveway or garage or anything at our house, so we park in front. We are 5 doors from the commercial area of Folsom Blvd near coffee works so people fill in the street once every couple months or so and we have to park at a neighbors. But mostly we just leave our car there in it’s spot and take our bikes so no one can steal our spot - sorry street sweeper!
I’ve realized the last couple weeks that most of my neighbors with garages have stuff filling them up and park their cars on the street or in their driveway.
4 Levi // Sep 14, 2007 at 2:18 am
No doubt that parking close to home is nice. But so is more time with your family right?
I got an email from Owen a few days ago where he urged us to talk more about the value of urban life to a family. As in,
Less travel time = more time at home.
Less yard to mow = more time to enjoy life.
More culture close to home = more life to soak up.
I could not agree more. For my wife and our three kids there is no life like the urban life.
5 wburg // Sep 14, 2007 at 4:18 pm
During the day it’s generally no problem, I can pretty much park in front of my house two days out of three. At night the whole neighborhood gets pretty much parked up–if I take my car somewhere in the evening I end up parking a block or so away when I get back.
I don’t have a driveway but we do technically have a garage–it was originally intended for something the size of a Model T, but I can kinda skootch my wagon in. I have recently started a practice of walking and taking light rail to work when I don’t have to drive, and the plan is to leave the car in there so I don’t have to mess with it for several days at a time. I don’t fill my garage with junk/projects…that’s what my basement is for.
A few blocks away, the Sutter projects and bar traffic have the area around 26th/28th and Capitol so parked up that a friend of mine is moving to Southside Park because she literally can’t park within three blocks of her house, and she has no off-street parking.
When I saw Mark Friedman’s presentation on the Ice Blocks, he mentioned the difference between parking to get to a business and parking to get home, and how while people have tolerance for a certain walking distance to get to a destination, that tolerance is much, much less when walking between car and home. That kind of struck me as important.
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