A pedestrian perspective.
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BBOM, BOOM, BOOMER
The Next Big Infrastructure Crisis? Age-Proofing Our Streets
As Richard Florida reminded us last week, 10,000 baby boomers will turn 65 every day between now and 2031. … Cities everywhere need to begin recalibrating for this moment now (a better crosswalk speed, for instance, would be closer to 3 feet per second).
But this generational age bomb is also arriving at precisely the worst moment to pay for those changes that will actually cost money. And then there is the problem of imagination: How do you get urban planners, transportation engineers, and anyone running around a city in their prime to picture the places where we live through the shaded eyes of an octogenarian?
The biggest challenge … will come from suburban communities where there are often no sidewalks at all, let alone places to go at the other end of them. “That’s where I think still a lot of us are scratching our heads,” says Margaret Neal, the director of the Institute on Aging at Portland State’s School of Community Health. “Like ‘what are we going to do here with these big houses a lot of baby boomers moved into?’ ” …
More than half of the discretionary income in the United States belongs to people who are older than 50. And so the same spending might that helped create suburbia will soon be clamoring to reinvent it, to create town centers that actually have stores and doctor’s offices, to turn residential neighborhoods into something more diverse, to expand transit access.
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THE HIGH LINE FOR COMMUTERS
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… the best-kept secret of the High Line’s least romantic visitors: With no traffic lights, no cars or bikes and few tourists during the morning rush, the raised stretch has come to attract commuters — not because it is picturesque, but because it is faster. …
And yet even in the early morning hours, when runners far outnumber out-of-town photographers, the commuters can upset tranquillity. Briefcases brush against the sunbathing benches. Commuters swat at the vegetation drooping into the walkway. There is music, occasionally, but it is muffled by headphones, clotting into a single garbled note as its owner whirs past.
For the most efficient travelers, a certain code seems to have developed: If possible, keep a safe distance from anyone holding a camera or a map. Plants are to be admired only in passing; the return trip, in the evening rush, is for smelling. The High Line is too crowded for proper speed-walking at those hours, anyway.
And yet even in the early morning hours, when runners far outnumber out-of-town photographers, the commuters can upset tranquillity. Briefcases brush against the sunbathing benches. Commuters swat at the vegetation drooping into the walkway. There is music, occasionally, but it is muffled by headphones, clotting into a single garbled note as its owner whirs past.For the most efficient travelers, a certain code seems to have developed: If possible, keep a safe distance from anyone holding a camera or a map. Plants are to be admired only in passing; the return trip, in the evening rush, is for smelling. The High Line is too crowded for proper speed-walking at those hours, anyway.
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A NEW ORANGE IN NEW JERSEY
Newark, NJ, has just built “an 800-foot-long, $9.3 million orange boardwalk, designed by the veteran landscape architect Lee Weintraub, in collaboration with the city’s planning office.”
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Why orange?
1. Since the boardwalk is made of recycled plastic, it didn’t need to be wood-colored.
2. It’s the color of Weequahic High School.
3. Like a giant safety edge for the city.
4. Some of Newark’s nearest neighbors are East, West, South, and just plain Orange.
5. Like the orange things you see on a construction site, Newark’s riverfront remains a work in progress.
More reasons and pictures here.
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