Reimagine The Leslie Park Pool

Ok, we all may remember the The Accordion Pool Party, an outpouring of energy last summer meant to get people thinking about the neighborhood's small outdoor swimming pool.

Now a series of meetings will be held seeking more input and ideas. I think this is from a letter being sent around.

"A pool again?" she writes. "A skate park? A spray park? A community arts center? The planning team wants YOU to share your dreams for the park site, and have a meaningful discussion and move forward. Everyone is welcome! Bring a neighbor, your teenager or grandparent. We want to hear from as many residents as possible!"

We all have our preferences but honestly-- I think pool works best but this is a sweet and potentially useful, well located and interesting space that could be adapted for an outdoor amphitheater or a skate park or perhaps allow many uses. But once again the root problem emerges of a lack of a good transit system capable of bringing the wider community there and the general lack of density in the neighborhood itself (related problems). Lawrenceville has a much smaller population than it once had.

Notice the somewhat threatening use of the term "residents", which is discouraging. Would a little input from a Bloomfield, Stanton Heights or Garfield resident be that out of line? I may be reading too much into that.

Read more on City Walkabout.

Great Blog Profile: City Walkabout

I will be randomly throwing up posts about blogs I find of personal interest, most of which shine a light on the Pittsburgh cultural scene, urban oriented design or architecture.

First up is City Walkabout, a blog on the Post site touching on Pittsburgh's neighborhoods and streets from a more personal, practical and pedestrian perspective. One flaw so far is that this blog has to slim comment thread. It would be great if more people would join the conversation.

Check it Out.

City Walkabout

Still More Jane's Walk Talk

More general buzz and discussion popping up about bringing some kind of Jane Jacobs related events and walks to Pittsburgh and other former Rust Belt cities.

Diana Nelson Jones, who hosts one of the few blogs focusing on Pittsburgh from a pedestrian perspective did this post, which quotes one of my comments on Null Space. She also links to a number of other Jane related sites, articles-- and we can add to this the previous talk on Rust Wire, all of which point to some building support for doing something in the Spring.

Using the inevitable football metaphor, living here is often like watching a terrible coaching staff leaving almost all your best running backs on the bench, refusing to block, refusing to tackle while wasting time and resources on ever more bizarre hail Mary passing plays or relying exclusively on kickoff returns.

Not only do the coaches and owners, not put the best people on the field, we can't even let them practice and even worse, one always has to live in fear of which reasonably good or potentially great players might be traded away or cut next, whose property might be seized, whose street cut off and taxes raised for another "special teams operation".

It's not like Pittsburgh doesn't have some great walkable neighborhoods-- and it's not like they ain't successful-- there's plenty of game tape out there that shows what's working on a social and economic level as well as plenty of red ink, empty streets and failed shells to show us what hasn't worked. Yet almost all major government policies repeat these failed plays over and over. Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining!

Team is a good word to use, since as Jane pointed out city's are continuous experiments in social interaction.

Just one more thought, Jane always left a cop out for bad coaches looking for excuses when she said "no two cities or streets are alike". Obviously, this is self evident, but one just has to look at Death and Life's chapter titles, listed below to get the idea that she thought some things worked and some things didn't or only look at a few cities closely to see she was mostly right.

The uses of sidewalks: safety
The uses of sidewalks: contact
The uses of neighborhood parks
The uses of city neighborhoods
The need for mixed primary uses
The need for small blocks
The need for aged buildings
The need for concentration
The curse of border vacuums
Gradual money and cataclysmic money
Erosion of cities or attrition of automobiles

May not be sexy enough to always make the highlight films.