While Jane Jacobs was fighting and winning some battles against Urban Renewal in our cities, many, many more were victims to this hubristic program. My city, Mankato MN, was one of the hardest hit.
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This story is not unique: a mid-sized Minnesota town is preparing to adopt a 50-year-old neighborhood. As the neighborhood struggles to pay for long-term maintenance on its roads and pipes, it seems like neither annexation nor autonomy will really solve the problem.
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Local leaders in Mankato seem committed to trying every failed strategy of the past regardless of what it costs them.
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A vast majority of our infrastructure is predicated on treating non-automobiles as second-class citizens. This is the status quo. One doesn't need to look far to find examples.
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Let’s stop and reevaluate. Let’s assess what’s really important in our community. Building an over-sized school on over-sized road on an over-sized parcel strikes me as irresponsible. We need to return to a neighborhood model. We need to find the locations that don’t need a Safe Routes to School grants and build there. The places we are collectively building are places that our children hate. They’re inhuman, disregard our existing neighborhoods, cost us more money and unnecessarily burden parents.
Let’s make a change.
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What makes a street safe?
I think there are a lot of elements. The design is the first thing that comes to mind, and it’s followed by speed and traffic volume. I was curious to know how the stroad held up against other alternatives. To do this, I turned to my usual test lab: my hometown of Mankato. I examined Minnesota Department of Transportation crash data & AADT (average daily traffic volume) data in an admittedly non-scientific study.
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