{"id":246556118,"date":"2012-10-24T15:48:38","date_gmt":"2012-10-24T15:48:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=246556118"},"modified":"2012-10-24T15:48:38","modified_gmt":"2012-10-24T15:48:38","slug":"remembering-when-our-streets-belonged-to-everyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=246556118","title":{"rendered":"Remembering When Our Streets Belonged to Everyone"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Angie Schmitt, Streets Blog<\/a><\/p>\n

Just a few generations ago, streets were places of commerce and play, places to socialize, places where public life happened. The author of the Chicago-based Get Around Blog<\/a> just finished reading Peter Norton\u2019s book, Fighting Traffic<\/a>, which outlines in fascinating-yet-depressing detail how the rise of the automobile rudely interrupted this whole way of life.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Children playing in the streets in New York City circa 1900. Image: Apostasies<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

We\u2019re not going to delve too deeply into history except to offer this quote from a judge, shortly after cars came on the scene: \u201cIt won\u2019t be long before children won\u2019t have any rights at all in the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Get Around Blog takes the opportunity to show just how far we\u2019ve traveled from the notion of the streets as a public space:<\/p>\n

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In the century since the automobile first muscled its way to the top of society\u2019s transportation food chain, we have legislated other modes of transportation into a thin sliver of grudgingly reserved leftover space: pedestrians may cross the street at the occasional crosswalk; bicyclists, while technically allowed to operate in the same space and under the same restrictions and protections as cars, are mostly just in the way (and liable to be harassed) if they don\u2019t yield space; and transit users in all but a handful of North American cities suffer poor service and shabby facilities. To add insult to injury, we often turn a blind eye even when cars overstep their formal bounds.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

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This is to say nothing of on-street parking \u2013 the notion that one has the unquestioned right to store their private property in the public way. A few years ago, I interned for a non-profit downtown civic organization in the small town where I grew up. The city was mulling a proposal to remove median parking from the road that separates the downtown from the the Snake River in order to improve access to the popular parkland along the banks. Item #1 on every person\u2019s list of complaints: where am I going to park my car when I go to work? That\u2019s not to say I don\u2019t understand their concern, but this illustrates how far we\u2019ve gone down this uncharted path: where once we railed against the car\u2019s invasion of our public space, we now rebuff nearly all attempts to re-allocate even a modicum of roadway to truly public use.\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nhttps:\/\/streetsblog.net\/2012\/10\/24\/remembering-when-our-streets-belonged-to-everyone\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Angie Schmitt, Streets Blog Just a few generations ago, streets were places of commerce and play, places to socialize, places where public life happened. The author of the Chicago-based Get Around Blog just finished reading Peter Norton\u2019s book, Fighting Traffic, which outlines in fascinating-yet-depressing detail how the rise of the automobile rudely interrupted this whole … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Remembering When Our Streets Belonged to Everyone”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246556118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking-elsewhere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246556118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=246556118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246556118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=246556118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=246556118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=246556118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}