Placemaking advocates meet public safety advocates

This blog post is going to be shorter than I had originally planned -- still recovering from a slight cold and took my free time Wednesday to record a new podcast on this same subject. 

This week we've focused on the issue of building Strong Towns in the face of resistance from fire fighting advocates that demand wide streets.

On Monday, the key observation was that we maintain wide, unsafe and expensive streets to accommodate fire departments that we can no longer afford to staff. If we want to keep our public safety systems intact, our places need to become more productive.

On Tuesday, we suggested that, instead of changing the built environment to accommodate the wide fire truck, perhaps we can simply modify the size of the truck. We provided a lot of examples of how fire fighters have applied ingenuity to solve more difficult problems throughout the years.

On Wednesday, we introduced the idea that other parts of the world -- places that have not adopted the American development pattern -- seem to do well (sometimes better) and could provide a model for us to learn from.

Today I want to point you in the direction of some places where solutions to this problem are being discussed intelligently. At the end of this week, I don't want any of our Strong Town advocates out there to be intimidated or out-maneuvered in the trenches by old school fire chiefs.

• The Congress for the New Urbanism has a web page devoted to this effort.

• CNU has also issued a 10-page report that provides background information and a good overview of efforts to resolve conflicts on this issue.

• Blogger, planner and fire fighter Jeff Tyndall posted a link here on Monday to a piece he wrote in support of the CNU effort. This is great advocacy from someone working both sides of the discussion.

We're going to crowd source the rest of this piece. If there are resources specific to this topic, please email them to me or post a link in the comments section so that we can provide it to everyone.

If all goes well, I'll be back tomorrow with some thoughts on a Strong Towns approach.

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Comments

[Steve Mouzon]

Please continue to build this resource! This is a classic case of one discipline over-stepping its bounds. Fire marshalls are acting not only as planners, but often as architects as well. And they're not the only ones. Other disciplines do the same, often to the point that we reach a logjam where nothing good can get done.

[Nathaniel]

The previous poster (Steve Mouzon) brought up a point I wanted to elaborate. He wrote "Fire marshals are acting not only as planners, but often as architects as well."

I want to stress "architects" and add "interior designers" ...

A neighbor of my parents recently knocked down a 1950s-era home and is building on the existing lot. The neighborhood on the edge of town is a nice, collection of 8 homes on a 3/4 mile stretch of road and was recently (2006) annexed by the city and given city hook-ups. Each home was levied in the range of $20 to $30 thousand for services per home.

The Ridiculous "Fire Saftey" Problem:
The owner of the under-construction home is a wealthy man that is particularly nit-picky about certain interior design elements. He hired an architect to design an open-style wood fire place (imagine a log cabin fireplace, but larger and with expensive bricks, rock and tiles, etc.), of which was included in the plans that were initially approved by the City. The fire inspector came through about two weeks ago and said the fire place didn't hit City code and needed to be enclosed in glass and could not extend further than 2.5 feet into his side yard.

My questions:
- Why have Cities effectively banned wood-burning fireplaces? Is this really a problem? Even for city dwellers? If economic realities continue with increasing energy bills - wood fire places may become an attractive alternative.
- Why are we regulating how far a fireplace can extend into your yard (especially when the yard is on a half acre lot)? Having a fireplace extend 3 feet (instead of the 2.5 feet max. requirement offers NO public safety benefit whatsoever.

And to cover another point that is content on the Blog:

The Ridiculous "Standard" Problem:
The road I'm writing about, with the 8 houses, a lot has changed since city annexation. The original road was a private drive consisting of approximately 1.5 lanes paved with asphalt (which was perfectly acceptable for 8 houses and 14 cars that regularly traversed the road). For public safety standard reasons, there is now (I believe) a 36 feet wide road (and new sewer and drainage system) and a left turning lane at the main intersection (why a turning lane was needed for 8 homes is beyond me). The original road was strategically placed alongside an old cattle grazing pasture from the late 1800s - most of the old-growth trees, which acted as a canvas over the small, bucolic road, were removed during the road expansion.

The town is deriving no benefit (financial, environmental or otherwise) whatsoever from this standard. The residents (from again, 8 houses) may have city water and sewage, but they learned very quickly that the city standard can destroy the amenity of the area very quickly.