Remember,
tonight is the work session on transportation for the NEN-SESNA neighborhood plan - the areas around Englewood and Bush Schools.
It's a blank slate.
What about a nearly finished product?
The project to update the Morningside Neighborhood Plan,
Morningside 360, kicked-off almost two years ago, and a full draft of the
Morningside Neighborhood Plan is out for review. Tomorrow night, Wednesday the 10th, the Neighborhood Association will vote on it.
There are two reasons it's hard to know what to say about the it.
The first is general, about its meaning and intent.
Most of us approach language with an interpretive charity, right? As we decide what it means, we want to give it the benefit of the doubt, we assume it is sincere, and we expect action to follow intention.
But almost inevitably, though, advocates and even ordinary citizens in Salem reach the point where they realize that too often plan language is empty gesture, essentially meaningless, a theatrical palimpsest on which others write the script that's actually followed. It's not always this way, of course, but it seems like the technical details - is a sidewalk necessary here? How many bike and car parking stalls are required? etc - in a plan are not so difficult to see enacted, but that more general policy goals really tend to be diluted or disregarded. So what, really, is the value of a plan when its language is not likely to be interpreted very closely? How cynical should we be?
The other reason it's hard to know what to say here specifically is that the area it covers is way too big and diverse to constitute an actual neighborhood. It's an administrative planning unit bounded by Commericial, Kuebler, the railroad, and a bit of I-5! How is this an actual neighborhood?
As a document of compromise and negotiation and multiple interests, it's not something that is necessarily going to be coherent. Nevertheless, like many other neighorhood plans, and perhaps more than most, it is a jumble, more a grab-bag than an articulation of a vision.
According to the plan,
[O]nly the goals and policy statements in a neighborhood plan and generalized land use map may be considered for adoption as a component of the Comprehensive Plan. Accordingly, the goals, policies and generalized land use map...shall be consistent with the Comprehensive Plan Map, Comprehensive Policies Plan and the statewide planning goals....
[these] Goals, Policies and Generalized Land Use Map...serve as the guiding document for the neighborhood association’s recommendations to city boards, commissions, or outside agencies. Likewise the neighborhood plan shall be taken into account by city boards, commissions and agency staff in making any decision or recommendation which would affect the Morningside Neighborhood.
The section on commercial areas shows some of the difficulties. (One important note of background: In lawsuits and mediation with the State, the City has contested t
he language of "activity nodes and corridors" since 2005 and never embraced it whole-heartedly after successfully stone-walling DLCD; some of the ambivalence, or even contradiction, here may in some sense be intentional.)
 |
Part of the main "acitivity node and corridor" -
Will this ever be "a vibrant, transit-integrated...corridor with
design elements promoting usability by pedestrians and cyclists?"
(And will these things ever have decent prose?!) |
The introduction to the section on Commercial Development says,
Key
neighborhood priorities to promote revitalization retrofit of Morningside’s
commercial corridors include support for a vibrant and integrated local business
community, urban design elements to provide a diversified and engaging
commercial streetscape, and pedestrian safety in commercial areas.
Even though they are on the edges, two giant roads shape the "neighborhood": Commercial running north and south, and Kuebler running east and west. These are significant barriers to anything but auto travel, and essentially all non-residential, commercial development is confined along these corridors.
