Where to sit?

     I consider my Green Communities class to be the most openminded and progressive of my classes. I know we can talk about just about anything in there and come away feeling at least somewhat enlightened and without any hurt feelings. This is why I was surprised and yet at the same time unsurprised at the results of physically splitting the class by gender for a portion of our time last thursday. As people sat on one side of the room or the other spending on how they identified, male or female, a kind of tension arose that many of my peers pointed out was strange and unsettling. None of us really seemed to expect one thing or another from the division, but I believe that we were all taken by surprise at how much of a change we felt.

     It is apparent that we still segregate men and women in many ways in our society whether it be by the types of clothing we can shop for or the bathrooms we use or in the judgement of how much a person’s time and work is worth, and although the term segregate is avoided at all costs at present, I believe it is the right one to use now. In high school there was often a voluntarily followed non spoken rule that boys and girls would form their own clusters and stick to them in class, extracurriculars, PE, the lunch room … wherever really. This is completely outside the equally apparent trend for these same kids to separate themselves into any number of other subgroups such as race, age, and others. There seemed to be a certain comfort that came with sitting among people of the same gender, even if they weren’t necessarily friends. I can’t explain it, but it’s a problem! Not because it is wrong to find comfort in sharing space with people of the same gender, but because these early decisions of self segregation only reinforce gender inequality all the way down the road. 

     In our class I have never felt like I was a lesser of two genders. There has never been a time when I felt like them men held more power in the room. The women in our class are just as outspoken and confident, if not more so than the men. And Yet. Once we divided ourselves and set about having a chat about how it made us feel, there was a point made that I feel is a completely valid one: In academics, women feel pressure to try harder to keep the same standing as what men inherently have (again something unspoken that I feel to be true, even though no one demands it). Maybe this is true in our class as well. This outspokenness  that I have seen, the confidence as well, is maybe a sign of the pressures put on women to become “as good as” men. Then this need for confidence can be a good thing, but if it comes from a lack of equality, even one that is unspoken and/or unintentional, then it can quickly become a burden that discourages women from pursuing academics. When we divided ourselves in class this inequality that may never have been have been felt or discussed otherwise was actually recognized. Somehow the tension made us more able to speak about this issue and ones like it, but at the end of the day it was nice to go back to sitting wherever, genders be damned. 

Singapore: Biophilic city

     The video Singapore: Biophilic City gives me a feeling akin to culture shock. To see a city that has embraced this feeling of biophilia wholeheartedly is to see what I want my home to be. The urban integrated natural spaces seems as normal as breathing in Singapore. I know that it probably wasn’t all peaches transforming Singapore into what it is today, but it now seems as though the city could never be any other way. When Kelvin Kan, green wall designer in Singapore, spoke about his first implemented green wall, and how the idea for his design came into place I felt inspired by the amount of passion that you can hear in his voice talking about his work. The results of his project are so obviously successful; it is crazy to me that his style of green walls aren’t implemented all over the world. His goal of creating a lively green space was completely recognized, and I loved his description of the place as “the cathedral of green."

     Liak Teng Lit, Ceo of Singapore hospital, speaks about the garden space implemented in the hospital he works in, there were a few things that he said that I was surprised, pleasantly so, to hear.  While I can really appreciate that green space is great to incorporate into healing spaces, what I really enjoyed hearing was Lit speak about was how this green space incorporated into the hospital is a space that should be shared and open to the public and animals, not just kept for patients. As Lit says, "We should maximize the utility of this whole space… We want the birds here.. If you do this the birds will come, if you do that the butterflies will come.” I absolutely love how everyone in the film puts a large emphasis on the importance of bringing birds and insects and other wildlife into the shared green spaces of Singapore: “We, on purpose, plant trees that will attract birds, hopefully to attract hundreds of species of birds, and the fish” —Rosalind Tan.

  

     All of the people spoken to in this film are not only passionate about biophilia and biodiversity, but are so knowledgeable about these biophilic areas that they work within. It seems so obvious to them the benefits of the transformations taking place in Singapore and the need for this kind of work to take place. If we could transplant that passion and that attitude here in the US I can just imagine what we could do. Mohan Krishnamoorthy, primary school teacher in Singapore, has an attitude that I wish all planners could understand. Sometimes all you need to do to get something beautiful and functional created is to.. just do it:  “it wasn’t planned.. you’ve got a blank canvas, just start drawing … it’s not rocket science… It is nothing to design, plants grow if you give them what they need.” Let’s just do it!

SLC a Good Community?

     Freiburg, Germany is one of the many places around the world that has responded with strength, vitality, and ingenuity to catastrophe and destruction. After WWII, Freiburg had to rebuild not only its physical structures but its spirit and image as well. What they have made of themselves as an environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable city is a pretty damn impressive example of good planning. Places like Freiburg thrive because their citizens decide what is going to happen with their open space, their streets, their energy, and much more. I think that one positive side that comes from the sad situation of having to restart a community after a disaster, is that the whole community gets to be involved with each new detail that happens, and with the infrastructure that is put in place. Here in SLC we work from old infrastructure and add on bits and pieces without any real community movement behind any one decision. 

     Community involvement is an aspect that makes Freiburg stand out to me and I believe that it is something that my community in Salt Lake City could learn from. I live directly downtown at about 2nd West 2nd South, looking the Salt Palace (our convention center) dead in the eyes. It always feels to me like the decisions made in this city that largely effect the people who live and work in the area are made by, well, not us… and are made for, well, not us. This is a critical part of what makes Salt Lake City what it is, for while we are really good at hosting people to our city, we often do not consider what it would take to make this area (which will soon be home to many many more people) an engaging enjoyable place to live long term. We do function as hosts to tens of thousands of people with each of the larger conventions that comes to our city, not to mention other social (spiritual etc.) events that come to our city every year. 

     My neighbors and neighborhood business owners are all affected by this and more often than not are putting their efforts into making sure the little part of the city they are responsible for is ready and able to host people from out of state. Why wouldn’t they be? The community makes a lot of money! But this way of thinking does not always promote good decision making for the community. Prices for food, goods, housing, and parking all go up for everyone during these times when we have an influx of visitors. I often feel shunted aside as a local when I visit my favorite shops during convention time because servers and store owners know (or at least think they know) that convention attendees spend lots and tip large. My community is doing pretty great economically, but socially? environmentally? Well, it seems like there is hardly a thought in those directions unless it is for our “guests."

Biophilic City

    Growing up, I always felt connected to nature in one way or another. When I lived in San Diego as a little girl I developed a strong connection to the ocean and the many benefits of sharing space with it. Now, as a Utahn, I cannot imagine life without all the natural spaces the mountains provide. One thing that I think Utahns can pride themselves on is this connection to nature, and even though Salt Lake City is not biophilic by some standards, you can bet for sure that everyone around has a love for nature (in one way or another) in their hearts. I find that Utahns are also always looking for ways to incorporate the natural Utah environment into their daily lives, whether through their gardens or through the architectural design of their buildings. As we learn more about being efficient and environmentally friendly here in Salt Lake City, more and more people recognize the potential for beauty and life in the natural desert climate without imposing what we think our needs are on it.

     In his film,The Nature of Cities, Timothy Beatley shows green urbanism at its very best, presenting communities that are successfully incorporating the natural environment into their towns and neighborhoods and even their very homes. The greatest takeaway from this movie for me is the impact that these practices seem to have on the people who get to enjoy them. It almost seems like incorporating nature into the daily lives of the people brings them back a hundred years to a time when we gave ourselves more freedom to explore, and not just go from designated place to designated place. Often I find myself going from home to school to gym to home and nowhere else living in our city. I forget that there are other places that are open to me like parks and trails, although perhaps not as many accessible public outdoor spaces as there should be. I feel like most space that I see in my daily life is private and/or unwelcoming. In these biophilic places that Beatley presents in his movie, people aren’t scared to walk around, run around, bike around because they have natural public spaces that belong to the community, whether it is right in the middle of the neighborhood, or weaving between city buildings. Parking in front of buildings? Nah, walkways and gardens instead.  

     We as human being yearn to connect with other living systems. That is what the Biophilia Hypothesis by Edward O. Wilson says. Perhaps the tenseness and isolation found in so many urban spaces today is caused by our lack of connection with other living systems and can be relieved by the reintroduction of plant and animal habitat into our spaces. I think that opening the spaces we have claimed for ourselves up for nature to come back and take a place in our lives could do nothing but good. It is a selfish idea to think that the spaces where we live should only support human life, and it is also an unfortunate one, for it disconnects us from the earth.

Bicycle Mobility in Salt Lake City

     

     It seems like everyone that I spend time with is comfortable biking in Salt Lake City. My partner is a bicycle courier, my mother does Triathlons and trains in the city, and my dad uses his bike to get from place to place. This is CRAZY to me. I enjoy riding, but I don’t think I’ve been on a bike in Salt Lake City since I turned 12. Even on slower traffic days, I don’t feel safe even as a pedestrian, let alone as someone who has to constantly compete for road space with cars and buses (buses are great, but they can be terrifying to be around.. bus drivers just go). I think that my lack of confidence in my safety continues to get worse every year as I continue to not bike. Do I have the stability to signal with one hand off the handlebars? I don’t really think so. 

     Wouldn’t it be great if I could have a wide protected bike path or even a separate bikeway where I could learn to be comfortable on a bike again, and hardly ever have to worry about cars? I think so. I feel shamed whenever my partner asks me to go on a bike ride with him downtown and I say no. I don’t know if I should feel comfortable biking on our city roads. I don’t and that makes me feel like I am missing out on something that I shouldn’t be. I mentioned that my mom is an avid biker. She’s been in bike/car collisions many times as a biker, but just recently I asked her about a small dent in her car door, only to find out that she and a biker collided because of a lack of bike lane and a misunderstanding about a right hand turn. If you know my mother, then you know that this would NEVER have happened except for the complete lack of infrastructure around biker safety. Bikers feel like they have no space for themselves on the roads and sometimes make risky decisions because that is the only way to get where they need to go. 

Copenhagen Rocks. Look at that happy baby.

     I really feel that if we made safe space for cyclists (for ourselves as cyclists) on our streets that downtown would be a better place. This is where I spend most of my time, and I think that the more bikers we have feeling comfortable on our roads, the less car traffic there would be. The less car traffic, the healthier people would be, and the easier it would be to get around on foot. I would definitely ride everywhere that I currently take public transit to if I felt safe doing so. If bicycle riding was an accessible transportation option for people, I think that mental health quality would be greatly increased in Salt Lake City A) because you mentally realize that you are becoming more fit when you’re physically exerting yourself, B) because increased blood flow is good for you in general, C) because being able to see people as individuals as they go from one place to another is much better than seeing a mass of cars, and D) because, as my partner says, “bikes just make people happy."

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.