From James Kunstler’s “Eyesore of the Month“:
Family Fun Walk on a nine-laner, anyone? Welcome to the Enviro Nirvana of Cape Coral, Fla. Costs $42 million, by the way.
Here’s the visual context:
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Here’s some of the backstory about Cape Coral – ground zero of 1950s real-estate speculation and the 2000’s foreclosure crisis – and what you end up with.
Looks like an incredibly boring place to live visually. Bleak, nothingness where all properties look the same.
http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=Del+Prado+Boulevard,+Cape+Coral,+FL,+United+States&hl=en&ll=26.706912,-81.958806&spn=0.007658,0.009645&sll=26.607407,-81.881618&sspn=0.123246,0.154324&oq=Del+Cape+Coral,+FL,+United+States&hnear=Del+Prado+Blvd,+Cape+Coral,+Lee,+Florida,+United+States&t=h&z=17&layer=c&cbll=26.706912,-81.958806&panoid=_0KvYApRyU8YkzwPcR9nCg&cbp=12,358.28,,1,0.8
I am very familiar with Cape Coral, and like Port Charlotte, Punta Gorda and other Floridian canal towns the waterways serve as the informal connection between neighbors and neighborhoods. Of course you had to have a boat to make sense of the connectivity!
Gordon’s reference to this example directly illustrates that walkability, scale, visual interest and pedestrianism cannot be engineered in the same way as roads, and require a finer grain of inquiry and input by….yes…the people that would be the users.
I expect the users would prefer connection to community centers, schools, commercial areas and each other, with pathways bisecting their streets. This proposal is quite lacking, reinforcing Gordon’s Motordom as the dominant landscape default!