A major component defining neighborhood is
accessibility. In a neighborhood, one
should be able to do more than simply live.
They should have some basic services--at least food, recreation, and school. In a neighborhood one should be able to do more than have to drive to get to a destination, you should be able to walk and bike. If you take a look at the
planning literature, you would find that a five minute, or a quarter mile walk,
is often considered the extent a typical person will walk. After that, the thinking goes, people choose
other means, usually to drive. A quarter
mile radius encompasses about 125 acres. The web site walkscore.com gives its highest scores to areas within a five minute walk, and scores decrease from there to 30 minutes. Except for the more highly urban areas, in reality seldom do you have a
mix of uses within that walking distance today.
It certainly is not present is suburban areas, where you may have at
least half that distance to get to the end of your street. For sake of this
post, and for those sufficiently energetic to walk more than a quarter mile,
let us extend walk distance to about one-half mile, or a ten minute walk. One would think that to get to a job, or
children going to school a walk of 15 or 20 minutes, or up to a mile may be in
order. If a child attends school over
two miles distant, by state law the district needs to offer busing to that
student. That is more than twice the
level suggested in this post for an easy walk, although it certainly can be
accomplished by bicycle.
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| Downtown McFarland, about two blocks in length Source: Google maps |
Walking and biking are important, and more so than
the proponents of our current standard form of development would admit. This is shown by the health
issues now present in the United States.
Form of development, it is now thought, affects our health and may well
play a larger role in two major national
health issues: childhood obesity
and type II diabetes. The continued
trend in overweight children contributes to earlier puberty and a whole host of associated issues. The current generation of young children is the first projected to have a shorter lifestyle than their parents. Our ability to find
services and schools within a neighborhood walk distance is one key component
that may help address these two health issues.
This, the third post in a series on neighborhoods, will focus
primarily on McFarland, WI and deal with both shopping and schools, and what has
transpired in less than 25 or 30 years for walkability and bike-ability in that small community. The first post focused on what is a
neighborhood and its relation to sense of place, the second focused on the city
of Sun Prairie, and the transition of commercial development in its historic
downtown, and its possible effects on social capital.
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| Aerial view of downtown McFarland Source: Google maps |
When I moved to McFarland in October 1990, the house in
which we lived was located near both shopping and schools, with the middle
school the furthest distant from our house.
The bank, grocery store, pharmacy, post office, and village hall were
all within about a 10 minute walk. Some
of these places were not in an urban setting (i.e. close to the street) but were in a standard suburban form with a large parking lot adjoining the street and a walk
through an asphalt “desert” to the stores.
But, hey, at least you could get there in about ten minutes. It was not unusual for me to haul my young
children down to the grocery store using their wagon to haul them and groceries
back. Major shopping trips were
accomplished by the use of the car, but walking worked well for those common
secondary trips. Over the past twenty
years or so the village has changed. Retail has basically moved out to USH 51, a four
lane divided highway with no sidewalk.
The mall would eventually pretty much empty out and become a blight in
the heart of the village. The main use
of the site would be to provide extra parking for events at the high
school, which is located across the street.
Fortunately, we now have the hardware store occupying the old grocery
store space in this former mall. Perhaps
it will add some vitality to the heart of McFarland.
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| Old grocery store and related strip mall, with sea of asphalt, bank to left Source: Google maps |
McFarland has now been defined more by the its strip everyday
development along USH 51, than by its former downtown. When my boys were young and the new grocery
store was under construction in its current location on USH 51, we were
travelling by the store and one of the boys asked, what was being built? We noted that that the grocery store was
going to move to the new building, he then asked, with more sense than that
exhibited by the McFarland Village Board, “How will we walk there?” He had noticed the lack of sidewalks, and
perhaps the lack of good street connectivity.
Our auto-oriented culture placed walking in a secondary position, and its back door route is indirect and
rather tedious. A young child had more
sense than the village board. With the
movement of the grocery and other stores to the west, next to a four lane
highway, these children were being disenfranchised from being able to make a
trip themselves. In the village, the
idea of a child walking on his/her own to a store to buy a treat is a rather quaint
idea from the past.
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| The Village of McFarland and school locations, with grade configurations Source: DCIMap |
If any use should be walkable, one would think it would be
schools. But, here too the car culture
has dominated the form of site and building design, and grade
configuration. The ability to easily walk
to school is now a minor aspect of design.
The new form for a school is for it to be placed on a large amount acreage of
land with a massive paved area in front of the building, barren except for cars. Children, at least
from K-9 are unable to drive and are a major demographic customer to be served
by the school, but yet, since the 1970’s, the schools retain their focus on auto
orientation. With, and since, the
construction of the middle school, new schools in McFarland have been designed
more for cars than for access by students.
To get to the middle school from where it accesses Exchange Street, a
person (i.e. a child) has to walk up a rather long grade of a hill about 1,120 or more
feet. This does not include a walk to
get to the drive entrance. That is
almost a quarter mile (200’ short) simply travelling up hill to the school
purely on school property. The standard walking distance is almost
fully used up just from walking on school property to the entry door. Assume a child will walk 15 minutes to school this walk will take about a third of their walk time.
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| Middle School, note its distance from the street, 1120' Source: DCIMap |
One could say big deal--bike to school. However, besides the school being located at
the top of a rather steep slope, for most all of the years my two sons were at
the middle school, the bike parking was located near Exchange Street, in a small
appendage of the site. The simplest walk
route from the bike parking was through an athletic field and up the steepest
part of the hill. It may be a great
slope for football conditioning, or sledding, but it is likely the last obstacle a child wants
to come across on their way to school.
As if being a middle school student is not sufficient punishment, to add
this steep hill on the last part of the route is to add insult to injury. So a child bikes to school, walks over 445’
or more through a dew laden field, another 300’ along the drive or sidewalk to
get to the building’s entrance, only to have wet shoes and socks for the
remainder of the day. Here we have the
schools doing what every mother tells their child not to do—get their feet wet.
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| Walk from former bike area to Middle School driveway Source: DCIMap |
As egregious as the walk and bike example to a misplaced
middle school student may be for health,
what may be even worse is the alteration of grade configuration which works
counter to walking and biking to school.
McFarland, following a growing trend of suburban school districts has
broken grades down into small increments for each building. McFarland has five school buildings, and from
entering kindergarten to completion of eighth grade a child will have been in
FOUR different school buildings. When it
comes time for their next school building it is likely building grade
configuration will be broken down even further.
(The school board is probably salivating in their dreams of having six buildings for 12 grades.) This started when they built what is known as
the Waubesa Intermediate School (WIS) at the north end of McFarland. Rather than create a new K-5 neighborhood
school, they decided the need for voter approval was such to gain support of
those in the generally older southern half of the community to break the grade
configuration down and send students all over the village. Pity the parents who have a family of four
children, for which it is possible that they have to get a child to four
different schools. The School Board and
Administration would not answer this author’s questions when they decided on
building grade configuration as to how the next school would be configured for
grades. They also noted that they view
the village as one neighborhood.
Obviously they do not understand, or care to understand, planning,
neighborhoods, or for that matter a simple way to better student health. The breakdown of grade configuration helps
lead to a lack of independence for the child, the growing waist lines of our
youth, and further enhances auto dependency.
The decision by the board is evidence of auto-based thinking
that has in-part led to the health problems now precipitating. They did not think ahead and will end up
paying in the long run by assisting in continued deterioration of the health of
adults, children and our air.
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| Primary (lower school) and CE after new parking and drop off construction Source: Google maps |
As earlier commented, a developing body of research shows that
our form of development is affecting our health, including that of our children,
who instead of walking or biking to school now get driven to school. The Safe Routes to School guide information
notes that in 1969 48% of children 5 to 14 walked or biked to school; in 2009
that figure was only 13%! Further noting
how the pattern of sprawl and its associated form, for both housing and school
location, has affected our ability to walk, in 1969 41% of k-8 students lived
within one mile of school (with 89% walking or biking to school), by 2009 that had dropped to 39% (with only 35% of those walking or biking to school). The continued winnowing down of grade
configuration in a school building only perpetuates the growing disparity by
moving away from neighborhood schools. A
survey accomplished by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed
that the primary reason parents drive their children to school is mainly due to
distance (with a 61.5% response to that issue), with perceived traffic related danger next at 30.4%. Of course, driving children to school only
increases the traffic problems (and hence the perception) as one can easily
view in McFarland by its kindergarten building.
The CDC estimates that over 25% of peak hour morning traffic is for dropping children off to school. It may not seem like much, but in the world of transportation a small extra percent of vehicles can lead to system breakdown. The breakdown of grade configuration has created more car trips, more car trips leads to perception of less safety, less safety means more car trips, less walking and biking leads to less healthy children (and adults), less healthy individuals leads to higher health care costs, higher health care costs leads to higher insurance premiums, which leads to less disposable income. Schools, and us as a population, have created a vicious cycle with no end in sight. The federal government’s Safe Route to Schools program is using federal
money to help put in sidewalks and paths.
In other words federal money is going to help communities fund improvements
which should have been funded by the developer as part of their improvements, but was not done under the sprawl-type of suburban development that has been so common over the past 50 or more years.
This is a subsidy to the communities that plan poorly at the expense of
those that have planned well.
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| Nice wide curb cuts to accommodate vehicle entry and exit to CE, but where is the sidewalk for pedestrians?..... (Photo by author) |
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| .....there it i! Nice orientation for auto drop off of students, but no sidewalk to the street that is to the north (top of photo). Is this pedestrian friendly? I don't think so. (Photo by author) |
Last year McFarland schools spent over $250,000 to
reconfigure drop off space at Conrad Elvejem (CE) and McFarland Primary
(Primary), in hopes of allowing better ease of drop off for children. In so doing the front entry of CE has moved
from the street to the near the back corner.
Rather than making it easier for a child to walk to school, they now add
distance. Rather than being a building
that engages the street they have divorced it from the street. Rather than being in place for children, it
has become centered on the car. If one
is walking from the east and wish to head to the new main entry they need to
walk in the driveway until they reach the sidewalk, and even then the sidewalk
is set up for auto drop off as it curves well beyond a direct path to follow
the drop-off driveway (which is needed to accommodate vehicle stacking). It is almost as
if they expect every child living easterly of the school to be driven to the
school. All this in the large bow to
accommodate the plethora of mini-vans and SUV’s, and cross-over vehicles. The resulting traffic pattern has only
increased the perception of it not being safe to walk to school, by creating a
traffic nightmare around the school with a system of one way streets, stop
signs which do not meet warrants, and putting the main entry away from the street.
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| Primary school building entrance, which is pedestrian friendly as it is right off Johnson Street (Photo by author)
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| Door B, is off the new parking lot. (Photo by author) |
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| The above photo from Google Earth, shows how the school property looked before construction of the new drop off. Please note the soccer goal post to the right |
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| This photo shows the school after the drop off and parking lot was installed. At the corner is a large rain garden. Compare the photo above (Photo by author) |
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| Wauwatosa East High School, notice the relationship to the street |
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| Lincoln School in Wauwatosa, it too is related to the street |
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