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.