ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 11, 1996 TAG: 9604110012
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
"We no longer build places that include people of all ages and incomes. We no longer experience the informal meetings and greetings on Main Street that earlier generations took for granted. We don't even have real towns to call home anymore. Instead, we have colorless subdivisions - like Orchard Hills or Fragrant Forests - named for the things that were destroyed when they were built.''
"In accommodating the auto, we have also let it become our only transportation option. This requires that we take our 3,500 pound cars everywhere we go. Bear in mind that while a person takes up only two square feet of space, a car hogs 70 to 100 square feet. ... Experts estimate that for every vehicle registered in Pennsylvania, we've provided six to seven parking spaces. Because no car is in more than one place at a time, the upshot is this: For every car registered in Pennsylvania - and the total approaches 7 million - there are five or six unused parking spaces.''
"Here is one of the unrecognized tragedies of sprawl. In Pennsylvania we have thousands of children who desperately need the love and affection of a responsible adult. We have thousands of elderly people whose lives would be immensely enriched if they could give love and attention to those children on a daily basis. But thanks to our car culture, children rarely enjoy an independent relationship with an elderly person, the very kind I took for granted because I could walk to my grandmother's house.''
"The places where we live and work should be built on a people scale rather than a car scale. To give us a feeling of warmth and security, we need communities with sidewalks, lots of street trees, and houses and stores drawn close to the street and to each other. We need places that give us a feeling of belonging and togetherness, not moonscape parking lots and yawning roadways that make anyone not in a car feel alien.''
"We have high schools and public libraries that look more like defensive fortifications than centers of learning. We build hospitals that look like places of punishment, not temples of healing. We warehouse our elderly in dismal high-rises. We scar open landscapes with monolithic glass towers that loom over meadows and mutilate the sky.''
"From the back door of our house to my newspaper office is a two-minute walk. My wife can walk to her elementary school in 15 minutes. By not having to commute a half-hour to work every day, we've saved ourselves more than 10,000 hours behind the wheel during the last 25 years - the equivalent of five years at work. And we've saved about $85,000 in transportation costs. We have a car - we like our car - but it's our servant, not our master.''
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Cover of "Save Our Land, Save Our Towns." color.by CNB