Dumb Design for Mobility (Public space and Bus transit)

     One of the major mobility issues I see in the city is the immense amount of space solely devoted to the automobile, to the detriment of every other mode of transport. This means that people walking or riding their bikes have very little designated space. This is frustrating to me because as a person who likes to walk downtown a lot it can be annoying to have to skirt the edges of traffic and go out of your way to find paths and safe areas to be. The quality of sidewalks makes this even worse; while roads will be repaved or repaired almost every year most sidewalks in the city will be left in horrible conditions for years at a time, to the point where they are nearly completely unusable, especially for people with physical disabilities. It also feels like construction disproportionately affects pedestrians. There are several areas downtown on Main and State Street where sidewalks have been taken over by construction crews and replaced with narrow, shoddy wooden walkways or pushed out onto the street. More and more space in the city is being designated for roads and parking, and spaces where people could once spend time are now only available for automobiles which take up an immense amount of space even when they’re only transporting one person.

     To address this issue we need to focus on ways of getting people out of their cars and onto their feet. I like incentives for walking and I also support the idea of returning downtown to the people. There are already several ways cities try to cut down on driving: higher gas taxes, congestion tolls on busy days, tolls for driving on days that already have bad air. You can also make walking, biking, and public transit more attractive by offering tax incentives, discounts, and events that encourage sustainable behavior (maybe a “Don’t Bring Your Car to Work” day). Another way to incentivize other modes of transport is to simply make these options more viable and more on par with the ease of car travel. This means putting out more buses; having shorter waits in between each bus or train; and having safer, more enjoyable, and more beautiful sidewalks and bike paths.

     You can also boot out cars entirely and start designating downtown pathways solely for the use and enjoyment of pedestrians and cyclists. This would decrease the amount of space for cars instead of giving cars more space. As we focus more on putting emphasis on public transportation and biking and walking we can focus less on creating more spaces for cars to be in the city and the university so that we can use that space for more important things. Less public space will be set aside for the automobile. So many of the roads downtown are already nearly worthless for car travel (traveling north on Main Street by car can easily take longer than TRAX or even walking depending on the day, but people still do it) that reclaiming them and turning them into pedestrian only spaces would be a quick and easy process that would make the city immensely better for the people that live here.
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A simple solution here would be to have this stop labeled with the bus routes that can stop here

Why isn't it?

I take the bus every day to school and so this is the main form of transit that I am exposed to. Our bus systems in Salt Lake City are run by UTA, and they provide a website where you are supposed to be a be to access information and plan out your trip in order to get from one destination to another. The first issue that I see with the bus systems is this website. The trip planner does not recognize many addresses that exist in SLC and even areas that are right along specific bus routes will not be recognized. Another reason that the website is not helpful for people planning their trips is the lack of information about routes. Each route has a schedule provided, but each schedule only has a handful of the stop listed. This is ridiculous because it means you have to roughly estimate when your bus will get to a stop you are not sure even exists (often the time gap between labeled stops is 20 minutes!), and even if the stop does exist, you will not know for sure if the bus even stops there. This is extremely irritating because the majority of the bus stops downtown are not even labeled with all the buses that may stop there! Agh. How is a person from out of town supposed to get around?
First solution: put bus route numbers on all bus signs
Second solution: put bus times on bus signs, park city has a simple system that labels bus signs with minutes after the hour that a bus will be at the stop. It's great!
Third solution: have every bus stop applicable to a specific bus route labeled on schedules provided on time. 

Dumb Design

     Dumb design is design that doesn't fulfill its purpose. It is design that doesn't work for the people have to use it, and often just doesn't function at all. When I think of dumb design I think about the documentary The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, and what William Whyte and his team discovered about what is necessary for a successful gathering space. His observations really emphasize how most city plaza lack any functional design and are really only created to look good, take up space, and lead up to a building. These kinds of dysfunctional spaces are easy to see all over the place. There are so many office buildings in downtown Salt Lake City that appear to have attempted to create sitting areas for their employees that are never used, or areas that are so-called parks that certainly look more like an area that nobody is welcome in. The Salt Palace, for instance, on the south-east corner of the block has a wide open paved area with a few trees which is approximately .235 acres or 10,000 feet. This space is edged with sidewalk on both sides, and considering its location, proximity to many restaurants and office buildings, and amount of time it spends unused, it would be a great place to have some tables and chairs and shaders so that people could use it as a place to sit and eat and absorb some sunlight. I for one live very close by and wouldn't mind having a place to meet people, or snack, or do homework. This location would also be a great place for food trucks to congregate because it does get a lot of foot traffic and, as I said before, it is so close to many offices. Currently there is one food truck that will stop in this location occasionally but the more the better. I don't know if food trucks need to get permission from Salt Palace management to be on premisses, and I don't know if parking on the street by the curb is even considered being on premisses.

    Another place where I see dumb design is with some of the choices made regarding TRAX stop design and TRAX line placement. Obviously, all TRAX stops should have mid-block crossing available. Any implemented urban design that causes people to feel the need to put themselves in danger in order to get where they are going is dysfunctional and needs to be reworked. There are many TRAX stops that have walls and fences up in order to keep people from getting to them instead of making them safely accessible via midblock crosswalks. This seems completely counterintuitive and illogical to me.   I have missed so many trains just because I had to walk all the way up a block to cross then only to have to walk all the way back down the stop  to a location I could have reached so much faster if I could have just crossed to it. I have seen people almost get run over by cars and trains just to get to the stop before the train. This is obviously a problem. Another issue I see is the lack of covering and human friendly seating over the majority of TRAX stations. While there are coverings, the space they cover is small and mostly taken up with the supports it takes to hold it up. The seating under these is usually taken by 1 or 2 people and after that people chose to stand out in the elements rather than sit close to others. This can be seen as a design problem as well as just a people problem (come on people lets not avoid human contact so desperately. Hah.). The last problem I have with TRAX is the positioning of the Red line as it goes through campus. The positioning is an issue because for some reason the line skirts the edge, and only on one side, of this ridiculously sprawling campus. This mean that if you need to get anywhere in the center or on the other side of campus, TRAX is really unhelpful for you. This is not just a transportation issue, but a social justice issue as well. TRAX could be a great option for people with physical disabilities as far as getting around campus if only it got people anywhere near where they need to go. As it is, it is just not accessible enough. If we had a line that went directly through the middle of campus as well as to the dorms this would alleviate much of the dysfunction.

Green Organic City

   

     I think that in a green organic city people would be mindful of how any expansion affects the  surrounding environment. It is important in a green city that new buildings are built to a certain standard. Green buildings are built to be environmentally responsible and energy efficient. This means not only once it’s up and running but also while it is being planned and built. The demolition of buildings needs to be sustainably done as well. As many materials as possible should be recycled and reused, waste should be minimized. There are many materials that can be recycled from demolished buildings like piping, furniture, bricks, and wood.  When new buildings are constructed there are certain steps that can be taken in order to ensure a sustainable and durable building is created. It is important to take these steps when retrofitting an old building as well, which is almost always preferable to just replacing it with a new one. Become LEED certified is one way to ensure that buildings are environmentally friendly as well as productive in society. Another step that can be taken is having a Life Cycle Assessment done to understand the impacts that a building is going to have. It is important not to focus on building according to best practices but on instead the actual measured outcomes of certain strategies.

     Living in a green city would also mean having a large focus on urban agriculture. Urban agriculture offers access to healthy food for the entire community. Many communities have a serious social justice issue involving who has access to healthy food and who does not. Often in poorer areas of a city there are many less grocery stores that provide good meal options and many more quick stop stores like Seven Eleven which provide less nutritious and plentiful options for meals. another major issue in many communities is the price of healthy food. Organically grown food, while become somewhat more plentiful, is still out of reach for many individuals. Urban agriculture provides healthier food for the entire community as well as offering the infrastructure for people to have a place and what support they may need in order to grow their own food. This way food security can go way up in a community. This would go a long way to fixing certain inequalities that existing communities have. Other benefits of urban farming and agriculture include reducing blight in crops, building the local economy, job creation, and physical well being.

     I believe that green cities should inevitably become more enjoyable for its occupants as the community strives to be sustainable and considerate of the environment. Green cities should have high walkability and accessible eco-friendly transit. They should offer enjoyable and productive living space that is also beautiful (an easy way to achieve beautiful living spaces is to incorporate plants that are likely to thrive in the area without outcompeting others). Architecture in a green cite should be designed and implemented with the health and happiness of citizens in mind, as well as sustainability. Incorporation of natural elements such as natural light into new buildings is a great way increase sustainability as well as health and beauty in a certain building. green cities would also keep in mind that waste is never waste and always has a place to be productive in the community. Businesses and citizens should work together to make the most of what they have. 

Solastalgia and Solaphilia

  

Kennecott Copper Mines   

Sometimes I feel really sad on the days where the mountains are mostly just a blurry grey purple place on the horizon. Sometimes I look at the Kennecott Copper Mines and wonder what the mountains must have looked like before. Sometimes I am just darned upset because I cannot see the stars. These feelings that I have can be explained by solastalgia. Solastalgia can be taken to mean a lot of different things. It can be the distress caused by environmental change and specifically by ecosystem distress. It can also just be the feeling of homesickness or the feeling of loss at being taken away from one’s own land. 

     As Glenn Albrecht, a professor of sustainability and philosopher, says “the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault… a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at ‘home.’” Solaphilia it is not just caused by destruction caused by humans. Places like Haiti that endure natural disasters like a 7.0 magnitude earthquake are places that have endured major ecosystem distress. As people attempt to find their feeling of place that they once had within these areas, there is the realization that their home is no longer home. 

     Solaphilia is love of place. This is what you feel when you are experiencing the place you call home or a place that you care about. I feel solaphilia about Antelope Island on the Great Salt Lake and The Avenues and Main Street in Utah. Sometimes this love of place stems from the natural ecosystems that exist, and sometimes is stems from what human interaction has created within these areas. Even Glenn Albrecht speaks about the places people feel solastalgia and solaphilia for and describes alfalfa fields and dairy farms; places that would not exist without human intervention. This is interesting because if you can feel solaphilia around ecosystems untouched by humans and ecosystems that are predominantly influenced by human beings, then you have to wonder what specifically causes solastalgia for people if its not human interaction and alteration of ecosystems directly. Some places that are beautiful and cause people to feel solaphilia are places that were created through the destruction of ecosystems.

Mid Block Cross-Walks in SLC

West Temple and 150 South

This is a mid block crosswalk that I use on average about twice a day. This crosswalk is the best way to cross if you need to get over from the Salt Palace to City Creek Center or vice versa (thinking as a convention attendee. Well, they all use the light but they should cross here). I guess it is probably (kind of) safer to cross at the light up the block but this is always faster and much less confusing for pedestrians and drivers, although this assumes that you have the attention of the driver as the pedestrian. I like this crosswalk BUT you have to be willing to walk defensively. And sometime offensively. You’ve got to know how to stare down drivers in a friendly but dominant manner that lets them know you ain’t messin’ around. If you act like you don’t know what you are doing and you are trying to get across the street say, around lunch time, you’re going to be sore out of luck and a lot safer at a crosswalk with a light. 

Anyway, this crosswalk has no flags, but it does have a crossing light signal. The yellow flashing kind that doesn’t do much during the day. It especially doesn’t do much when you cannot activate it from one side of the street and only one side flashes, which happens to be the case with this particular crossing. It is better than nothing though. I have almost gotten hit  2 or 3 times at this crosswalk. Honestly I probably would have at least once if I hadn’t been paying better attention. Besides the people who are talking on their phones, or chatting with like all ten of the other people they have in their car, or who have some sort of strange rage at pedestrians who are crossing legally, I kind of get it. Mid-block crosswalks are easy to miss unless you have a red light and a crossing countdown to abide. Vehicles who do see you as a pedestrian and decide to stop before you step out on to the street are more likely to wait till you have walked far enough for them to legally start driving in my experience. Most of the time it is the cars that didn’t really notice you and stopped just short of the crosswalk and then only because you are menacingly staring them down^ that start driving again as soon as they think they can probably get by without killing you. 

Flags help! For some reason, people see flags more than they see people without flags. It is probably the bright colors and reflectivity and science reasons, but I like to believe there is something special about people who pick up flags when they cross the street. A lot of people who are willing to pick up flags, and that is not an overwhelming percentage of individuals, like to dance around and be very apparent in lots of other sassy awesome ways. It is usually that, or they have kids. Or they are kids. (I don’t mean you can’t be awesome with or as kids, just that people with kids are more concerned about crossing safely. Kids just like flags). 

Back to pedestrian assertiveness. Or Road Dominance. You know, whatever works. People who are in crowds are much more likely to be comfortable and assertive about crossing the street. That makes sense because the more people there are the less likely you are to be the one getting hit. Just kidding. More people means higher visibility and depending on the crowd size, cars literally can’t get through. Also people who are from the area and know what to expect around certain crosswalks are going to be more confident, and arguably safer as well. If you don;t know if you are going be able to get across a street using a certain crosswalk and you exude that mentality, cars are just going to go for it. Also, people that continue to drive at a pedestrian in a crosswalk, or who think scaring pedestrians with their car by edging forward is funny, or who get angry a pedestrians and drive really close past them, do not seem to understand that they are taking a deadly weapon and jokingly or angrily saying to this pedestrians: "my time and happiness is more important than your life.”

The Precautionary Principle

Okay.

According to the 1998 Wingspread Conference

The Precautionary Principle:

"When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically."

This seems like a good idea. Like... I ate a really cool looking and colourful forest mushroom and soon after lost feeling in my legs for like... a whole hour. Even though I am NOT 100% SURE that the mushroom is what caused that really interesting loss in feeling, I should probably not eat it again.

Translating an academic article on the health effects of highway air pollutants on the people who live near them

What I have learned after reading the article:

Near-highway pollutants in motor vehicle exhaust: A review of epidemiologic evidence of cardiac and pulmonary health risks

is that the jargon and terminology used in this review is great for making its insights inaccessible and bewildering to anyone that may be concerned about how these study results may affect them, or to anyone else for that matter.

Sentences like these are ridiculous:

"Several lines of evidence now suggest that steep gradients of certain pollutants exist next to heavily traveled highways and that living within these elevated pollution zones can have detrimental effects on human health."

• All this means is: There are a lot of pollutants found in higher densities near highways that will probably cause you health issues if you spend too long around them. 

"In contrast, studies that relied on central monitors [27,28] or interpolations from central monitors to highways are prone to exposure misclassification because individuals living close to highways will have a higher exposure than the general area. A possible concern with this interpretation is that social gradients may also situate poorer neighborhoods with potentially more susceptible populations closer to highways."
.....

• Which basically says: Air quality monitors that are placed in central areas in cities don't accurately show just how bad air is closer to highways. -- and then I'm completely lost with the second sentence. 

Anyway, the idea to come away with after reading this article is that while there still needs to be some more conclusive research done about the subject, it is a pretty good bet that living within 300 meters of a highway is going to be unhealthy. And also that there is not a whole lot being done to change regulations regarding this problem and the health of the populations who do live near highways (this article came out in 2007 so that may no longer be the case).

Observations on Nature Hostility

This is a picture of the Tesoro Refinery just north of central Salt Lake City

(photo from deseretnews.com)

There are a few different ways to interpret the meaning of nature hostility. Consider the above image. The kind of nature hostility seen here is just obvious harm being done to the environment. These refineries, which we keep so close to home that I could drive to this one in less than 15 minutes, are like an infected scar on the land. This to me is one way nature hostility can be understood. 

Another meaning of nature hostility makes itself apparent in commercials like this one:

This ad is interesting because although it is advertising a diesel (and supposedly more environmentally friendly) vehicle it is actually doing a really good job of making fun of people who take actions to be more environmentally friendly. In the ad you see a group called the "green police" overzealously and comedically persecuting people for doing un-green things like using the wrong lightbulb, or asking for plastic bags at the grocery store. This shames people who are actually taking small steps like composting leftover food and using reusable traveling coffee mugs, and says something along the line of: "Hey, instead of doing all those meaningless little things that probably don't do any good anyway, why don't you just buy this here new shiny car? You can drive lots and not feel too guilty about it; plus you'll look cool." This is another form of nature hostility, although perhaps not so blatant as the jeep ads where cars are driven through rivers destroying natural habitats.

My Excess

Images from my life that represent what I consider to be excess

It may be difficult to see excess in just one of these images individually but when I look at all these things grouped together, I definitely see where I could cut back on my consumption of unnecessary things. When I see my Jeep I think about driving less. When I see all these different times I have bought a coffee and a snack just for something to do I then think about how these things unnecessarily increase my carbon footprint. Eating out at restaurants is something that should be a treat and can be wasteful in many ways that cooking at home with local goods is not. I also see the gadgets I have, like my camera or computer and others, that I don't necessarily need to live my life. They may have been made in a different country by people who may not be paid enough, just to be shipped back here, maybe across seas, and purchased by me.