Could the Weight of the Nation be fixed with a Road Diet?

Apparently, 70% of Americans are overweight or obese. The steadily increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes is staggering. That is more than an inconvenience. That is early death, limb amputation, blindness - sounds like a recitation of the ten plagues.


It sounds like a lot of people really need to go on a diet. 


What if we took some of the burden off our legions of weary dieters? We should put roads on diets, too. Rather than eating cabbage soup for weeks and paying Jenny Craig, our nation needs to take lanes out of roads (the diet) to create streets with transportation opportunities for people on bikes and people who are walking. 


I spent a year in the Netherlands. I was struck by how their transportation system requires regular short bursts of light to moderate biking and walking. Since then, I've had a hunch that a great way to regulate the metabolism is frequent mild exercise. It always struck me as silly to sit or lie twenty three hours a day and then drive to the gym to totally obliterate your poor body on a machine. Who the hell really wants to do that instead of taking pleasant strolls and bike rides? Why should you have emulate an athlete to enjoy your G-d-given right to move your body? 


Our country spent the last half century building a transportation system that engineered walking out of daily life. In our time pressed world, we ask Americans to also add exercise into their lives. After their nine hours spent in the office and hour and thirty minutes a day in the car  getting to and fro, not to mention driving to errands, we are told to add an extra sixty minutes a day of exercise wearing weird clothes punishing ourselves on some sort of apparatus or we'll end up with the limb amputations. What if we just had zoning and codes that encouraged infill and density? Why does moving a single human body around town have to involve moving a three ton machine?


I was very interested to see reports about a new fangeled exercise craze that involves self locomtion. In the First Twenty Minutes, we learn that  "While 20 minutes a day of walking or using the stairs at work will not make you truly fit, it will meaningfully lower your risk of premature death from the most common chronic diseases: diabetes, heart disease, cancer." That's great! That's less early death and punishing healthcare costs. I suggest that we pay as much attention to the physical environment as we do the food environment.  Put the roads on a diet.

I've been hearing a lot lately about HBO's new four-part documentary "The Weight of the Nation." Actually, I've heard three things about it. I listened to a Diane Rehm episode, listened to a Fresh Air episode, and I read an article which contained this nice little synopsis: "The films try to reorient conversations about obesity away solely from personal responsibility and toward a combination of environmental circumstances to explain why 70 percent of Americans are, according to federal statistics, either overweight or obese. While personal responsibility is an important piece, “you cannot say that all these people have lost all their willpower,” Mr. Hoffman said. “There’s clearly something more powerful going on.” Factors cited by the films include federal farm subsidies, marketing strategies, changes in the work force, the content of high-caloric foods and the genetic makeup of individuals." 

Hello? Built environment? Sidewalks? Preferably ones with destinations?

Both the Diane Rehm and Fresh Air shows touched very lightly on the fact our car dependent situation. The deck is most certainly stacked against us when it comes to pervasive marketing of health-destroying "food", but I'd argue that it can be even harder to free one's self from a car-oriented built environment than the grip of a twinkie (actually, I have a horrible time freeing myself from the grip of twinkies, so I'll say they are equal).  

Of course, I'm happy to hear anyone beat a drum about the deleterious effects of feeding a nation nothing but reconstituted cheese doodles and Brawndo. I need to actually watch the Weight of the Nation to see if they go into more detail about the built environment, but I was struck that there weren't any urban planners on their panel of experts. We should all watch it anyway.

Another program I really want to see is Designing Healthy Communities. From their website,  
" Almost everything in our built environment is the way it is because someone designed it that way. The project’s goal is to offer best practice models to improve our nation’s public health by re-designing and restoring our built environment." 


That is music to my ears. Hopefully I can give you a complete review of both programs soon. 

Buildings with Vestigial Fronts

Pop Quiz:  What drives me totally bonkers?

A. Loud gum chewing
B. Licking of fingers to extract maximum Dorito dust
C. Nice old buildings that have lost their orientation in their surroundings so that they could be more comfortable places for cars to hang out.
D. All of the above

If you answered D, congratulations! You are correct. You win a virtual tour of Durham Public School's Central Services Building, a once lovely school building that has totally lost its orientation and ended up with a vestigial front.

 Is it worth giving up the civic pride that beautiful buildings engender for the comfortable accommodation of our cars? 

Here is a video tour:

View of 511 Cleveland St. Durham from Mangum looking NE. Is this the front?

Standing on sidewalk N Mangum looking NE. My, what a large parking lot you have!

The former front of the building, before everything on earth became a parking lot.

Front door detail. Note the curved columns and light fixtures. Most of the embellishments on buildings I see these days are on Taco Bell. 

Front door detail.

I love this narrow arched window. 

View from the former front steps. Something terrible must have happened when the downtown loop went in. Otherwise, why would the front of this building be looking at the back of the fire station? Anybody know these details?

Comfy cars. 

Current front of building. Yes, this sign is needed!

More space for cars to frolic and play.

Even more parking. 

A mall ripe for a retrofit

The baby and I just got back from a trip to Durham's venerable ol' Northgate Mall, a rusting tribute to the fading allure of suburban ammenities in an environment that could support an urban lifestyle. Northgate Mall, home of businesses with names I love like Mantrap Salon and the SmellGood Cafe, is basically falling apart. Vacant store spaces abound. It's particularly sad because the location is smack dab in the middle of very vibrant neighborhoods, Northgate Park, Duke Park, Walltown, Trinity Park, Colonial Village, and Watts-Hillandale.
So, what should we do with a dying mall on what should be prime real estate? If we're an uncreative and backwards looking town, we should just go open up a new, single-use mall in another location with a more contemporary look. Oh, wait! We did that already. Okay, well let's be creative and open a new, mixed-use development on environmentally sensitive land and let this old mall rot and bring down the surrounding neighborhoods!
Or....we could put a school in Northgate Mall.
Yup, classrooms sprinkled around the Mantraps and Smellgood Cafes. A food court instead of a cafeteria. Kids could learn math by closing the registers at Macy's at the end of the day. A Newt Gingrich-inspired practical education!
Just kidding!
But seriously, a school in Northgate Mall is a great idea. Retrofit a part of the mall to be a seperate school. There is so much asphalt, just turn some of it into outdoor space for the students. Parents and students from Central Durham can walk and bike there on existing roads and sidewalks. No need to clear land or do the insanely expensive work of brining in utilities. The businesses in Northgate Mall would benefit tremendously from having a real community anchor. Northgate Mall could treat the school as an anchor tenant and give them a very favorable deal on the lease. The community would benefit by having a centrally located, mixed-use development. Heck, for good measure put in a grocery store and you'd have yourself one heck of a functional place. The mall is right across from the Walltown Community center, so there is a community gym right there. It is a good urban planning and public health dream waiting to happen!
So does Durham need a new school? If you live near me, or if you have had the (uhhh...) distinct pleasure of being subjected to my ranting in the past few months, you know that central Durham is having a terrible problem with school locations. There are three elementary schools less than a mile away from my house, but we can't get into any of them because they are competitive lottery schools. So, yes, Durham seriously needs to look at where they are putting schools.

reduce, reuse, recycle, RETROFIT.

Read my previous blog post for more about suburban retrofitting. Be sure to watch the TED talk video there, too!

Chapel Hill Library Bummer

Does anyone else feel like University Mall in Chapel Hill is like something from the Twilight Zone? A downtown that got sucked into a vortex and mysteriously popped out inside a mall?

I get that feeling every time I go in there. If the roof weren't there and the parking situaiton were somewhat inverted, you'd be excused in thinking you were on Main Street USA. You'll find small, locally owned businesses, comfortable public seating, a police substation, a farmer's market, all it is missing is a library. Oh wait, there is a library in there now! 

Sadly, the city has opted to return the library to a pastoral setting lacking the density of University Mall. 


What do you think of these points from a letter from the Library Board of Trustees to the Town of Chapel Hill, "Mall is described as a "ghost land" and a "wasteland." It is viewed as a struggling retail venture with an uncertain future. Many businesses have left and there are fewer and fewer places of interest for library users. "? The letter also expressed the concern that "Staff will face a greater volume of demand from those with and without library cards. This will lead to need for additional staff which means additional funding from Town. "   Uhh...how is that consistent with being a "ghost land"? Ya know, the mall wouldn't be a "ghost land" if there were a library in it that was so popular it called for lots of additional library staff! (Or are they alluding to that old yarn about University Mall being infested with chain-rattling ghosts who hitchhiked from the Twilight Zone Chapel Hill's downtown's journey through the vortex of bad urban planning?)

I understand that there are lots of concerns about the site and the public/private overlap, but people who think that University Mall is just a bastion of rampant commercialism that would distract from an almost monastic approach to books are missing the point. Civic institutions, like libraries, are catalysts for economic and community vibrancy.

Maybe there is a Chapel Hill in another Twilight Zone episode that plopped out of a vortex like ones  "in Australia and New Zealand [where] it is now generally accepted that new public libraries should not be standalone, but should be, at minimum, within shopping centers as key retail anchors or collocated with other community facilities and agencies such as swimming pools, child care centers, family health and medical clinics — and that they should be multiuse and provide a range of spaces.” I, for one, would like to rattle chains with ghosts in "a mixed-use, multimedia complex that is meant to foster social interaction and creative ferment as much as reading and research, [...] an engine of city-center rejuvenation." 


Check out this Ted talk video about creative mall reuse and retrofitting suburbia, then decide what you think of the issue.


Just for the record, I really like you, Chapel Hill! No hard feelings, buddy. 

Look at this cute little old building at 1214 North Mangum St. Isn't it sweet? It's a house now, but it clearly was a retail shop. I'm not sure exactly what it sold, but I can easily picture people from all over my neighborhood strolling there to pick up some provisions. Of course, I can much more realistically picture myself, out of some basic item, hauling the baby into the hot car, schlepping to the grocery store, the baby falling asleep in the car so I have to keep on driving because I don't want to waste a nap, then I have to drive through McDonald's and get a cookie (because you have to eat cookies when you drive) and feeling bad because I've been a big polluter and eaten more cookies than I ought to. Wouldn't it be nicer if I could just take a quick stroll up the street to my local little store? Maybe it would be a neighborhood grocery /coffee shop, because the necessity I'd be on the hunt for would most likely be coffee. It would really be nice if our zoning laws made more sense for feet. Maybe when humans evolve to have self-locomotion this will turn back into a little retail operation.