We'll start with an easy bit.
14th and Mission, looking west When it was slow, more people biked there! Salem Library Historic Photo Collection |
You can read more on it, including a transcription, in a previous note on its "establishment history." The retrospective makes no real attempt to engage the disruption created by ramp spaghetti. Because the neighborhood was having some trouble, it justified disruption by saying "it's already bad, so no big deal." It uses "slum clearance" as rationale:
Many of the buildings had been neglected and in a state of disrepair. Less than 8% of the structures surveyed showed evidence that the owners were maintaining them.Houses were demolished or moved. Blank spaces and walls created a fissure between two neighborhoods. And the "improvements" for people who walk and bike are uninviting, and work mainly in theory as lines on a map. They are not very good in practice. They fail a "family-friendly" or "all ages and abilities" test. You would not send a child on them alone. The Mission Street overpass may have been good for "moving traffic," but it had many other ancillary costs that we do not adequately reckon with. When we privilege "moving traffic" through a place, we systematically erase the place itself and the values of people for whom it is a place. Limited by its hydraulic autoism, the retrospective centers "moving traffic" at the expense of everything else.
Barquist House at 14th and Mission, looking north, Bonnie Hull. Faced with demolition, it was moved to a site on Court Street |
The blankness and void: Former site of Barquist House today 14th and Mission |
Bigger streets cut off neighborhood schools (from the 17th Street Study, part of the bigger Mission Street project) |
Blank walls and disconnected streets: Mission at 15th |
Walking and biking facilities that remove "conflict" with cars |
More of the walking and biking facilities |
1 comment:
The term that applies here is "sacrifice zone." It's very sad. And this is what the 3rd Bridge would do to the neighborhood at the west end of Pine and Hickory Streets that is starting to see some new life. It would become another sacrifice zone. The report that the City produced for the work session states that a total of 108 residences and businesses would be "displaced" by the Salem River Crossing project on both sides of the river. That's a big sacrifice.
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