Monroe Mall

So I'm back in Grand Rapids again for Christmas break, which means I find myself commenting on local news stories.

The Grand Rapids Press did a story yesterday on the history of downtown:  Monroe Center's failure as pedestrian mall.

It used to be these articles on the history of Grand Rapids would get my parents and grandparents reminiscing.  But in a sign that I'm getting old, the history recounted in this article is something I remember from my own high school/college days.

Growing up in the suburbs, I didn't really experience downtown Grand Rapids until I got the mobility that came with turning 16 and getting a driver's license in 1994, but I was just old enough to catch the tail end of Monroe as a pedestrian mall.  My high school classmates would go out to Monroe Mall for the Blues on the Mall series in the summer, and I would come along.

I remember also that wonderful pedestrian area being turned back into a street in 1997, and feeling regret about it.  But unfortunately no one ever consulted me on the decision, so I just watched as they plowed the street through there.

The article linked to above talks about how the pedestrian area was an economic failure, and I'll take their word for it.
But ultimately, sooner or later, Americans are going to have to learn to start walking.  This gets back to the Crisis in American Walking post I did a few months back.  The environmental crisis caused by cars (global warming is becoming a bigger issue all the time) and health crisis caused by Americans' phobia of walking (the growing levels of obesity and diabetes) just are not going to go away.

So I find it a very unsatisfying answer to simply say: "Well, what are you going to do?  People just weren't walking, so we had to change it back."

 Ultimately I think the way of the future is to create more pedestrian zones, and so I view the end of the pedestrian center on Monroe as a sad step backwards.

But it's a complicated issue I'll acknowledge.
Part of the larger problem is that to even get downtown you needed to take a car.  Grand Rapids has a lot of urban sprawl like many other North American cities, so if  you're in the suburbs it's a good 30 minute drive just to get downtown.  And the public transportation system isn't great.

But I'm curious what my favorite urban planning expert has to say on the subject.  Peter?

Link of the Day
Professor-Noam-Chomsky & Angela-Davis

...And I Get Feedback

As predicted, the Grand Rapids Press Public Pulse is beginning to get responses to my letter on Gerald Ford and East Timor. Yesterday had this gem:

Mr. Joel Swagman's Pulse letter on Jan. 10 "President Ford and East Timor" is a classic example of Shakespeare's account of what Marc Anthony stated at Caesar's Funeral "The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones."

Actually, that's pretty mild, isn't it? It's hardly raking me over the coals. If this is the worst feedback I get, I'd say I'm doing pretty well. If memory serves, there was bloody hell the last time this issue was in the "Public Pulse". Not to mention all those weeks of criticism we got in the "Public Pulse" over the Rehnquist affair.

And yet, you still have to wonder what exactly this guy is smoking. The GR Press and the local media spend untold hours and pages praising Ford as the next candidate for sainthood. I get two paragraphs buried in the "Letters to the Editor" section (to my knowledge the only thing critical printed about Ford in any of the mainstream local media), and all of a sudden the demagogues have taken over and everything good about Ford has been forgotten?

....And speaking of demagogues, I'm not sure this guy gets Shakespeare. If you remember from the play, Marc Antony uses this phrase as a rhetorical trick to make the crowd forget what a tyrant Caesar had become, and shift the blame onto the assassins instead. It's not meant to be taken as a literal truism. In fact taken in context, you could say that Shakespeare was arguing the opposite: Beware of people who praise dead politicians too much and overlook their faults.
(Shakespeare's account wasn't historically accurate, but we'll leave that part alone for now.)

Useless Wikipedia Fact
The tannins in coffee may reduce the cariogenic potential of foods. In vitro experiments have shown that these polyphenolic compounds may interfere with glucosyltransferase activity of mutans streptococci, which may reduce plaque formation. In rat experiments, tea polyphenols reduced caries. [14

Link of the Day
"Mother Goose Goes to Hollywood" cartoon on youtube. Apparently this cartoon has been banned for racism, but I remember watching it when I was a little kid. It must have taken them a while. At any rate the impressions of 1930s Hollywood celebrities are worth watching