[Vision2020] Third Street bridge and the making of community

[Moscow Cares]

Courtesy of today’s (February 3, 2018) Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

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Biz View: Third Street bridge and the making of community
By Ayad Rahmani
The argument against the Third Street bridge in Moscow is twofold. The first has to do with flow, the other with the reputation of Moscow as a town steeped in community. The two overlap, but each has its own trajectory as well.

Flow is important to towns and cities, not least because it ensures economic strength and a less stressful way of life than congestion. Who wants to sit in traffic jams when an alternative route offers continuity and speed? But flow can also be misleading, generating in those who champion it a blind spot against the opposite, not congestion of course, but some form of slowness.

It's an old joke at the expense of traffic engineers that much like an obese person may wish to fight obesity by loosening his belt, so do traffic engineers fight congestion by widening streets. The point is this: just as allowing one's waist more room to expand is not the answer to weight gain, so is adding infrastructure seldom the answer to traffic problems.

Slowness may be bad for cardiac health but it is good for building community. Through it, neighbors get to develop relations, communicate and not merely wave. Otherwise we would be like atoms bouncing around from spot to spot without care or recognition that our happiness is in large part the product of our ability to connect.

John Helliwell, a leading researcher in the economics of happiness, put it this way. "If 10 percent more people thought they have someone to count on in life it would have a greater effect on national life satisfaction than giving everyone a 50 percent raise. Our trust in neighbors, police, government and even total strangers has a huge influence on happiness."

Indeed, meeting face to face and knowing your neighbors well is more than a mere luxury or a touchy feely thing we do to pass the time. It is critical to our well-being. Unfortunately, urban slowness doesn't happen by accident but requires planning. Traffic calming features such as rounded and billowy curb features and speed bumps are good, but better is recognizing natural elements and building around them.

This way when we encounter a tree, a rock outcropping or a river, instead of, say, a traffic light or a stop sign, we don't slow down under the auspices of codified behavior but those of context and place. If the first is ameliorative and has the effect of unifying us, the second is coercive and has the effect of putting us on guard, wary of the world around us.

None of this should mean that we stop building bridges over rivers and creeks; of course we will, not the least because our economic order demands it. But it does mean that we seek to protect our natural resources to the best of our ability, see in them an amenity and not merely a nuisance we step over.

A better use of the intersection between Third Street and Paradise Creek would be to turn it into a pocket park, stepping down, amphitheater style, to the water, inviting play and generally a restorative communion with nature. The design could double as a pedestrian and bicycle connection between the two sides of the creek, perhaps a modest paved bridge, serving as a catalyst for the community to gather.

Moscow needs these outlying amenities. As it stands, the city is at risk appearing like a one pony show with Main Street being the only expression of communal connectivity. Drive out in any direction from the center and before too long the close-knit association of buildings and spaces begins to give way to anything goes, almost as if conspiring to deny the center a meaningful hold on society.

It is more than critical that the town finds a way to connect center with edge. Small but important, Third and Paradise must match Moscow's reputation as a well-integrated community, complementing the language of Main we all like.

Ayad Rahmani has been with Washington State University since 1997 and is an associate professor in the School of Design and Construction.

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Third Street Pocket Park Concept (as presented to the City Repair Workshop on September 10, 2005)
http://www.moscowcares.com/Third_Street_Bridge/Third_Street_Pocket_Parket.htm

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Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .

"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)
http://www.MoscowCares.com
  
Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

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