Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 6, 1994 TAG: 9410110097
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Initially, according to a report in Governing magazine, the land-use plan called for new houses to have front porches, or something similar where their occupants could partake of a pleasant evening.
The theory: Having front porches encourages folks to sit on them, rather than stay inside or on the deck out back - and when that happens, a sense of community is fostered with all the good things, including crime reduction, that go with it.
Opponents, who succeeded in getting the porch proposal reduced from a requirement to a "suggestion," claimed it was social engineering.
About that, the opponents were right. But "social engineering" is nothing new to public policies, including some that the opponents might well favor, ranging from lot-size minimums and sidewalk requirements in suburban subdivisions to development of the web of streets and highways that has made possible America's dependence on the private automobile. The difference: The latter, unlike front porches, encourages the breakdown of a sense of community and an increase in attendant ills.
Many a porch-blessed Virginian can attest to the community-building value of a front stoop, and can only pity the porch-challenged who don't know what they're missing. Whether that implies the desirability of a general porchlessness ban in new residential construction is another question - one that would be presumptuous to suggest an answer to for a city a continent away.
In a more general way, though, "neighborhood interaction" is surely a legitimate goal of land-use planning, as San Luis Obispo's final land-use plan continues to insist. For the arrangement of the physical environment profoundly influences our psychological environment - and just as surely, a sense of neighborly community is preferable to a sense of fearful isolation.
by CNB