The best laid master plans

We have some really amazing municipal plans in this region. So why do we have such crappy municipal planning?

As part of my job I've been reading the master plans for several of the region's townships and cities (I have the coolest job), and I had to do some double takes when I first ran into talk of sustainability and New Urbanism and multimodal transportation. Was this the same metro Detroit that I live in, where I take my life into my hands every time I ride a bike and have to drive forty minutes to and from work every day? Exurb after exurb after exurb, master plans expressed desires to preserve open space and protect natural features, to work collaboratively with regional governments, and to invest in nonmotorized transportation infrastructure - even occasionally in public transit. A couple weeks of this led me to the original question: if the plans are cool, why does reality still stink?

I'm open to answers. Here's what I've thought of so far:

Pedestrian safety / Roving Reads

Fall break - time to take a breath and write some things. I realized lately that I'm a kind of grumpy blogger and kind of get on a soapbox about things. Although I'm really a quite happy person, I find it hard to write cheery slice-of-life stuff when madness is always going on in this region. So, today I'm going to write about one thing that gets my goat and one super cool idea that I read about.


Walkable Ann Arbor?

 

The pedestrian and the car

Two weeks ago Ann Arbor saw two vehicle-pedestrian accidents, one of which was fatal and incredibly tragic. In the second, the Ann Arbor police chief exculpated the car involved because the runners in question were not using the crosswalk. This was at Beakes and Fifth, where I've run many a time, and anybody who's been a ped knows that whole area is a death trap, with cars whizzing over the bridge and taking sudden turns. The week before, a fellow urban planning student was clipped on her bicycle - and luckily not harmed - by a reckless right-turner at Glen and Fuller/Depot. In August, someone was hospitalized crossing W. Stadium. And of course, last year saw another tragedy of University of Michigan student killed at a crosswalk on Plymouth Rd.

The reordering rules of snow

Winner: best use of vegetables and protective headgear

I'm not very accustomed to driving in the snow, because all my winters for the past seven years I've spent in Ann Arbor, blissfully avoiding contact with the automobile type and shuffling frozenly from one point to the next. This year, though, I own a car, and over Christmas break I had the need to use it. The lack of traction unnerves me, the same pit of stomach slipperiness that comes with ice skating. I make a turn onto the main road, the monster I supposedly control does not respond to me, its back and then its front swerve into snowy ruts on the curb. I am a person who likes having control over things, and this gas-fueled beast knows it can now get the best of me.

Do planners need social media?

Oh, Facebook.  After six years of being part of the beast, I sometimes get tired of looking at all the faces and consider getting rid of the whole kit and caboodle. But, aside from the fact that I like seeing the designs everyone has carved into their pumpkins, I have a little devil that appears on my shoulder and whispers Carolyn, think about your career!

 Wait! you say. Urban planners don't putz around on social media. They, you know, draw maps and plan things and...do other stuff.

PLAN PLAN PLAN

But this funny thing happens in jobs I have, where I become a communications lady-planner hybrid. I manage facebook pages, and when I do I like it. Also, people like me! Over and over again. Creating pithy transit-related sound bites isn't the worst job in the world, and when your followers count sours into the several-hundreds, you feel kind of warm and fuzzy inside. It's a strange thing, really.

Normal curves and networking nerves

It's been a while, friends, and that's because I've embarked on a mission to become a real planner, getting a piece of paper that declares to the world that I KNOW ABOUT CITY STUFF. It'll be good to have in the end, and I am unbearably happy about all these other cool kids in my cohort I get to hang out with, but the day-to-day deal can be a drag. I have to learn about statistics, for instance.


I know it's important, for, um, something, but my kind of planning is convincing folks they want to pay tax money for a bus system, and normal people don't respond as well as you would think to normal curves.

From this picture, calculate the likelihood that the libertarian neighbors will raise their pitchforks against a randomly selected bus.

All that jazz. I learn these relevant, useful things, but for each one I learn something I'll probably never use again in my career, except when I'm fancy enough to go to cocktail parties. No, what costs several thousand dollars' tuition is that signalling device, that all-important bat signal sent out to future employers - and of course, the people I meet in the process.