My Built Environment: Good, Bad, and Really Ugly

Ok, so it isn’t quite Christmas, but close enough. Once again, we find ourselves under a blizzard, with about 2 feet of snow dumped on us. This doesn’t quite get up to the March 2003 blizzard when we had over 3 feet of snow, but with this storm, the snow will be with us for quite a while, as the cooler temperatures won’t melt it very fast.

It started snowing on us early Wednesday, and by noon at work, we called it a day. I went to fetch my daughter at school, and went home. by then we had about 4-6 inches. I drive a true 4 wheel drive SUV (and right now I am glad I do!), so I didn’t have any problems getting around, except for the other drivers on the road. The next morning, the snow had stopped, but the wind hadn’t! There were areas that were bone dry, and other places with 3-4 foot drifts! We had to keep our cars outside in the driveway, so we wound up with some major drifts around the cars. Thank goodness for my neighbor, who has a bobcat tractor. He used it to dig out the driveways of his neighbors! Course, I had to shovel out the drifts around the cars. I am also thankful now that we live on a collector that is a designated snow route…we get plowed! The first plow came through at 10 am following the end of the storm. While it was nice to get the street plowed, it did add an additional 2 feet of snow to the end of the driveway! Once again, thank goodness for my neighbor! He did make some major piles of snow in the street, that the kids have had a good time playing on!

Other than having closed the office for a couple of days, this storm has been nice in that it has rather put me in the Christmas spirit with a few days off, shoveling snow, and the like. It is very pretty out, and we are sure to have a white Christmas this year!

Merry Christmas everyone, and have a Happy New Year!

The other day I was driving down C-470 in south Denver, when my eye was caught by this housing development. I simply had to get off the interstate and explore this one…and I could not believe my eyes! This has to be one of the worst developments I have seen, particularly for townhomes! The first picture is what you see when you first drive into the development…nothing but a solid row of garage doors! There is no focal point, there is no sense of community, no sense of arrival. Nothing but a series of garage doors. The other side of the buildings isn’t much better. This is what visitors see when they come to your home…nothing but lined up porches, with little to break it up, or identify one unit from the next. In the front there isn’t even any differentiation in the architecture…talk about boring!

I am blown away by three things…that a developer would build something like this, that a jurisdiction would approve it…and even more surprised that buyers would buy this! Granted, this parcel of land was landlocked between two apartment complexes, and was long and narrow, but I would think that something else could have been done. Something to give this development some sense of arrival, some focal point. Sacrifice a few units to create something special. How about being proud of something that you build?

The November fugly award goes to a particular streetscape in the Greeley area. In this streetscape, somebody decided to plop down some large boulders as landscape elements. Now we use boulders all the time, but to be properly done, they need to be partially buried to look more or less natural. Not these, they were just plopped on top of the ground! And not just in turf areas, but in the concrete areas of the splitter islands for the round-a-bout. These look hideous. Not only are they out of scale, they aren’t buried properly, nor are they grouped to look some kind of setting. Nope…plop one here, one there, totally random.

Too bad, this was a nice project overall.

While helping to prepare some of the meal for Thanksgiving, I got out an electric hand mixer that I use a lot for small jobs. Using this hand mixer got me to thinking about a different aspect of sustainability, and that is how we have become a throw away society. These days, most of the everyday products we use are made of plastics or other similar materials, particularly the gears in the motors. These arn’t good plastics either, but cheap plastic designed to keep the end product costs low. But what usually happens? These products, particularly household kitchen appliances work well for a few months, maybe even a few years, then they break. Because they are so cheap, it is easier to buy a new one and throw the old one away…contributing to our landfill waste.

What is it that got me thinking about this? The hand mixer I mentioned above, is an old mixer. I got it from my mother when I settled in my own place 20 years ago. Now having a kitchen appliance for 20 years these days is really something, but this hand mixer is older than that. I remember using it as a kid, in fact I remember this particular mixer being around as long as I can remember….so that is pushing 40 years! And it is still going strong. Now it might not be the prettiest thing, it isn’t stainless steel, it isn’t shiny white, but a faded yellow…and it is made of metal. But in this case, it isn’t a beauty contest. It stays in the drawer and only comes out when needed, usually once a week or so.

Imagine what it would be like if common everyday items, be it kitchen appliances, toys, or whatever, where built to last. We wouldn’t have to throw everything away. Sure it might be more expensive initially, but it would sure be cheaper in the long run. Imagine having to shell out $100 or so for a good hand mixer that lasted 40+ years, instead of shelling out $30 every few years? Imagine how much less stuff would be trash, how much less resources we have consumed in making and transporting those products…now that is sustainability.

On November 15th, I was the proud recepient of the first every Urban Design award given out by the City of Fort Collins. We recieved the award for the Harvest Project that we designed a few years back, and which recently completed construction. The city gave out a total of 12 awards in 6 categories. The Harvest project was the only award given to a single family detached community, that was a greenfield development. It was an honor to recieve such an award.

Harvest was designed based on new urbanism principles. There are over 500 homes in the 105 acre community, with a mix of single family and townhomes. Within that is a broad mix of product types that where interwoven together. There were 4 single family product lines, with a variety of lot size needs. All these lot sizes where woven together within blocks to create a dynamic mix of homes and home prices. Also mixed in, where two townhome products. Again, these where interspersed throughout the community. Also included where 4 small pocket parks, a community recreation center that occupies an entire city block. This site is also surrounded by a public park, and a city natural area. The community was designed to be walkable with detached walks, street trees, and 95% of the garages are accessed by alleys. My client, Writer Homes (subsequently purchased by Standard Pacific Homes) designed an entirely new product line for this community. In addition, they used a variety of color schemes, to really create a vibrant streetscape. This is indeed a neighborhood and community to be proud of.