[PREV - THE_NEXT_THIRD]    [TOP]

STATIONED

                                                         April 9, 2014

There's an obvious pattern to the SF Peninsula towns:
The ones that seem closest to being Real Places grew around
the stops of the old Southern Pacific railroad line.            MONOPOLY

   The patterns these "main drag" strips follow
   depend on other geographical details-- places
   like Palo Alto's "University Avenue" or Mountain
   View's "Castro Street" are big, bustling
   neighborhoods occupying several parallel streets
   and the connecting side-streets.

   This is pretty clearly because the roads they
   center on are through connections needed by
   car traffic moving between highway 101
   and the old thoroughfare "El Camino Real".

   As a side-effect, they're not just larger,
   they're also a little unpleasant in some respects
   because of the incessant car traffic.
   Crossing streets can be a little difficult,
   and riding a bike is often tricky.

   There are other places such as Palo
   Alto's "California Avenue" or Sunnyvale's
   "Murphy Street" that are much quieter,
   easily navigated little streets, but
   they're also a little small, and perhaps          They're not at all as bad
   in need of a little more economic action          off as the places that
   to really thrive.                                 aren't associated with a
                                                     train station.  Many
                                                     business districts that
      Sunnyvale's "Murphy Street" is                 rely solely on car traffic
      a favorite grim example of this                for access seem to be
      dynamic: a tree-lined, cobblestone             perpetually struggling:
      street that allows cars but isn't
      inundated with them, home to a                 Palo Alto's "Midtown"
      number of cafes and restaurants,               (a stretch of Middlefield
      and some old quaint businesses                 Road), or the entire
      like a tobacconist and-- get this--            length of El Camino Real.
      an *independent bookstore*.

      People love this place--- but it's
      only a block long, because at
      one point in history they truncated
      it to install a parking lot for a
      new, adjacent Mall.

      They could pull this bonehead move
      because Murphy doesn't cross the
      train tracks (there's a "Sunnyvale
      Road" a few blocks over that does).      And if there's a moral to all
                                               this, it might be that cities
      The downtown strips with main            thrive on diversity, listening
      drags that *do* cross the tracks         too closely to any one voice,
      proved more resilient to the             including anti-car "New Urban"
      ravages of urban planning.               fanatics like myself, is
                                               typically a mistake.







--------
[NEXT - NILES]