Comments on: Complete Streets Could Help America Lose Weight, Says CDC

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:43:00 +0000

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By: Jim Mearkle

Jim Mearkle — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:52:10 +0000

Too bad the complete street bills in the NYS Lege are unfunded mandates. They would be more effective, and more warmly received by municipal officials, if say, 1% of NYSDOT’s budget was made available for complete street projects.

By: oscarfrye

oscarfrye — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:25:56 +0000

agreed…have a friend in jersey who live in an area with no sidewalks and front lawns act as driveways…so by no means are all neighborhoods the same

but i do think there should be focus on the better ones (like the one you & I described) – relatively slight changes (both physical and mental) can make those communities very viable alternatives to moving closer to the city core, thereby reducing the further load on the city’s already overburdened infrastructure.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:17:57 +0000

Oscar, there are a number of different suburbias out there. Places like the Massachusetts commuter-rail suburb that my ex-wife’s family lived in were similar to what you describe, with plenty of trees and quiet through streets, pleasant for afterlunch holiday walks. Their house was built in the nineteen fifties.

My friend Joe, however, lives in a newly constructed subdivision. His townhouse’s front door is on a communal lawn, and there is a garage under his house that accesses through an alley on the rear. He can walk around his subdivision, and to a stripmall through a hole in the fence, but otherwise his neighborhood is surrounded by busy arterials and limited-access highways. There’s nowhere to walk to.

By: oscarfrye

oscarfrye — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:01:58 +0000

what i realize when i visit relatives in suburbia, is that their streets are a lot more bike friendly (much less congestion, pleasant roads), and a lot more pedestrian friendly (well maintained sidewalks, less crowded, gardens and lawns – a really nice place to walk around) and yet i feel weird being one of the few who would do such a thing. an while major shopping centers do require a car, plenty of places can be walked to as well. and depending on where you live (they happen to be well positioned) you can walk to a bus stop or even a commuter rail station.

ironically their neighborhood is a lot simpler to transform into “livable streets” than many within our city

By: C-T

C-T — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:28:07 +0000

Noah, that’s what I thought as well. I initially thought “complete streets” refers to that concept that a street should have a number of zones for shops and things, so people have a place to go. That’s what I thought the term refers to, but it looks like right now it mainly refers to safety structures, which are very important, but the crucial thing is also to be able to use the streets as a pedestrian to run errands and actually get around. Perhaps that’s an individual city planning issue though and not a general guideline. Not sure.

By: Noah

Noah — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:14:45 +0000

This is a great concept, but I think the biggest hurdle will be that for most of America people live in sprawl, so even if you make the streets usable, people won’t use them unless they have a place to go, in NYC recreation users of streets and sidewalks are really but a small proportion of residents who utilize the streets and sidewalks.