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Community Corner

What Comprises Your Evergreen Park Network?

The Evergreen Parker examines the idea of urban networks and considers his own network.

Over the Christmas break, I read an article in Metropolis Magazine about "The Network City." Metropolis, if you've never checked it out, is one of the best architecture and design magazines out there, primarily because amid articles about crazy houses you'll never be able to afford (or want to live in) and furniture you'd never think of buying are thoughtful pieces like this about the places in which we live.

The gist of the article, co-written by a planner and a mathematician, is that one thing cities do well that modern suburbs do not is form networks. What does this mean? Well, cities – and well-built (read: older) suburbs – form natural networks using relationships between streets, sidewalks and buildings. As Jane Jacobs noted, these "networks of proximity" not only allow people to interact, but allow them regulate the amount and intensity of that interaction. Proximity also allows sharing of resources among people and even the built environment. A sidewalk allows outdoor restaurant seating when the weather is nice, for instance.

These "urban networks" help people form critical connections to one another, to businesses, and to places themselves. Cities (and older suburbs) tend to form these networks more easily than modern suburbs for a couple of reasons. One is that stuff is just closer together in cities, making the building of networks easier. Another reason is that cities and older suburbs tend to be laid out on a grid, have streets with sidewalks that go through (at least for pedestrians) and have business and residential uses close to each other. Newer suburbs don't. Streets don't go through and uses are segregated through stringent zoning codes.

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"local" need not always mean "within walking distance,” but it's a lot easier for me to get to a grocery store from my house than it is for my in-laws to get to a grocery store from their place in Tinley Park. I can get to two via sidewalk. They either need a car or must walk in the gravel along side the road.

It's not going to be the same for everyone in Evergreen. Some people live farther from grocery stores than I do, but they may live closer to a restaurant or a park. We're not the city here, but we're not Tinley Park. We're in the middle, trending more toward the city.

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"… the traditional, mixed-use city is alive, precisely because of its inclusivity of distinct functions, different scales, and different dynamics…." the authors wrote.

Examining our local networks, and how they're formed, can help us as we think about how Evergreen Park should develop in the future. I would rather work toward building a more traditional urban network than a traditional suburban network. I think there's a better future in urban networks, particularly as oil becomes more expensive. As the authors point out, and as I have said before, the car-centric pattern of modern suburban development simply has no viable future. When we think about how we want Evergreen Park to look and function, we should consider this.

"To achieve the auto-catalytic set necessary for a living city, sprawl, because of its stretched and fragmented network geometry, requires enormous expenditures of energy: it is, in fact, the most energivorous urban invention in history," the authors wrote.

"Simply put, sprawl is inefficient because it requires more resources to navigate than traditional neighborhoods and cities. "… when the oil runs out, and the climate goes haywire, what will we do then? We may well come to regret that we didn’t pay more attention to the structure of our networks — especially, the structure of efficient, livable, walkable cities."

What's your Evergreen Park network, and how would it work if you couldn't drive? I think about that as my parents age. Their network in suburban Portland, Ore., is too loose to work for them without a car. I don't want that same problem as I get older here in Evergreen.

This Metropolis article is dense in places, but it's worth reading and thinking about as we consider the future of the place we live.

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