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Converted from paper version of the Broad Ripple Gazette (v05n06)
Green Broad Ripple - Planning Livability - by Cortellini
posted: Mar. 14, 2008

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Planning Livability
The paradigm which, even today, directs the efforts of most city planners and zoning ordinances that brought us our pervasive sprawl landscape emerged in the 1950s. An early influence in this direction was a proposal made by Ebenezer Howard in 1898 in London England to build a new kind of town - the Garden City. Sir Patrick Geddes extended the Garden City to entire regions under concepts of regional planning that were enthusiastically adopted in American building in the 1920s. The works and teaching of Lewis Munford, Clarence Stein, Henry Wright, Catherine Bauer. . . among others, elaborated the concept that cities would be best thinned out with their population and enterprises dispersed among smaller towns. They became known as the "Decentrists" and they gave us suburbia.
Our need to ramp up the postwar economy and our victory in WW2 gave us an unquestioned confidence in the power of industrialization which made it easy for us to adopt proclamations such as: "Our enormously productive economy. . . demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption. . . We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate" - Victor Lebow, 1955. We have been consuming with reckless abandon ever since. Our love of competition, genius for practical problem solving and the availability of cheap energy made us Number One in the World in almost any way one cares to measure with the exception of happiness perhaps. Yet it has also brought us to this moment in time where it has become apparent that the aggregate of negative consequences of our approach to growth has reached a critical mass so as to demand our attention to the need for change. What must change? Well for starters we need to reconsider our consuming habits and then the way we go about planning our communities.
In matters of planning, here is what the Indianapolis - Marion County Green Commission had to say in their first report issued at the end on 2007: "Recommendation 27: Invest in community organizing around quality of life planning. We recommend marrying neighborhood organizing with neighborhood planning that identifies, inventories, and builds upon existing assets in the neighborhood. When neighborhood residents participate in defining the character of their neighborhood, they are much more likely to feel a sense of control, ownership, and pride toward their neighborhood and, subsequently, are much more likely to actively participate in sustaining a higher quality of life in their community." This seems to me to be a new approach that is based on some sound reasoning. The approach recognizes that the power and authority to determine how a community is to grow rests best with the members of the community itself - with those who have intimate knowledge of how the community actually works; not some remote bureaucrat employing abstract notion of how a community should function. We, the citizens of Broad Ripple, should rightly be the planners of Broad Ripple's future. How are we to begin?
With authority comes responsibility. Planning involves complicated issues that often require counter-intuitive insights. If we, the citizens of Broad Ripple, are to undertake such an enterprise, we will need to muster and cultivate our highest level of objectivity and put our prejudices behind us. We will need to organize and build sound democratic organizations that are inclusive while remaining effective. We will need to bring all facets of our community together in open and candid dialogue and work cooperatively toward a mutual goal. Most importantly, we will need to educate ourselves for it will not serve our efforts well to simply rely on our good intensions and good instincts. As an inaugural event in this enterprise, Green Broad Ripple Inc. will coordinate a "One Book One Broad Ripple" community wide read. During the next month, however many join the effort, will read "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs. The book was written in 1961 and has become a classic. The New York Times described it as "perhaps the most influential single work in the history of town planning. . . " All who have an interest can purchase a copy at our very special local Big Hat Books bookstore or take it on loan from the Glendale or 42nd Street libraries. Additional details are to follow.
As war is too important to be left to the generals, community planning is too important to be left to the officials. We, in Broad Ripple, have an opportunity and even an obligation to build a plan setting forth the direction of our community's future. Each of us has something of value to contribute. We who have been around a while and remember how things used to be can provide continuity and a sense of heritage. Those with families can provide stability and hope for a viable tomorrow. Youth can contribute vitality and expectation of the future. All this and more will be needed in any viable effort towards making Broad Ripple a more Livable community now and for the decades to come.



Cortellini is a licensed architect in the states of Indiana and Arizona. He holds a BFA from Indiana University Herron School of Art. He has taught architectural technology at the college level at several universities and has pursued independent artistic endeavors. His architectural practice has focused on residential and small commercial projects. He has recently committed his practice to designing Green buildings, is a member of the US Green Building Council and is a LEED Accredited Professional. Send questions/comments to cortellini@BroadRippleGazette.com




cortellini@broadripplegazette.com
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