By Joe Baur
One of the first lessons we learn in our society is that we can’t have it both ways. For example, you can’t enjoy excessive amounts of cake without expecting to gain excessive amounts of weight. You can’t nap during Spanish class and expect to wake up with the fluency of a language major. And it’s generally frowned upon to be dating more than one person.
The exception to this rule in Greater Cleveland has been that you can move to the suburbs and exurbs and still receive the same convenience and courtesy as those of us living in the city.
Both Ways
For the most part, folks across the thinking spectrum have accepted the “you can’t have it both ways” creed as a mere fact of life that can’t be tampered with. Any attempt to do so would be foolhardy at best, leading to a comical mishap that was the general plotline of any Flintstones episode.
But when it comes to some of us who have chosen to live in the suburbs, the urban core can’t be suburban enough. There’s not enough cheap or free parking in the city, we have to park too far away from wherever we’re going, and there’s too much traffic.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the appeal of the suburbs seems to be having more space, particularly more space for more things. One of these things is the house car. Most everyone has one, because where suburbanites have chosen to live is a place designed around this mode of transportation.
The best cities, however, are anti-car and, quite frankly, anti-space by their very nature. They were designed for pedestrians, because most (all) great cities are older than the car itself. They were at their best when cars were not a staple of society.
Vibrancy
Cleveland is a perfect example of a city caught in between the demand for suburban conveniences in an urban environment. Look at images of Cleveland in the early 20th Century before cars took the streets away from pedestrians and streetcars, demanding close and affordable parking at every corner. Euclid Avenue is packed with men and women enjoying the vibrancy of a 24-hour city. In these pictures, Short Vincent is still a thing – not an ugly line of parking garages as it is today.
Yet for the past 50 to 60 years, we’ve allowed folks leaving the city for the suburbs to have it both ways. We built them wide lanes of expressway to help them flee the city as quickly as possible, but assured them they would have sufficient space to park their car whenever they do have to come into the city by, at times, removing historic buildings for connected garages.
We’ve prioritized cars over the pedestrians this city was originally made for, especially in key intersections like Ontario and Carnegie where a pedestrian might have to wait as long as three minutes to cross the street. The average pedestrian walks at three miles per hour and the speed limit for cars is, I believe, 25 in that corridor. Why are we making it even easier for the car to move than someone who can barely traverse all of downtown in an hour’s time?
Zero F’s Given
Now as most of my thoughts seem to be read by people that don’t agree with me, they’ll assume I’m taking some sort of extremist approach that revolves around purposely inconveniencing suburban commuters. I’m not.
Or some will assume I’m saying someone who chooses to live in the suburbs is inherently less than we mighty urbanites. Not so. The amount of thought and care I give to where you decide to live is best said by this adorable creature.
I do care, however, when you ask for it both ways. I’m going to care when you say we need more parking that, whether you realize it or not, negatively impacts us all in the long-term as property values surrounding these objects void of any life plummet. I’ll care when you suggest a skywalk to the casino is fair, so suburbanites of all ages can reach their gambling haven with the same ease as if it were built on an abandoned Walmart lot despite the overwhelming objections from residents and general consensus from experts in city planning that it’s just a terrible idea.
If you live in the suburbs, that’s fine. I have friends and family in the ‘burbs – all super people. This is all of our Cleveland – suburbanites and urbanites alike. We all do and should have a say. But the opinions and wishes of those of us who are only reluctantly downtown for 40 hours a week and occasionally for entertainment does not entitle them to call for suburban development in the urban core.
You can enjoy space and long drives in the ‘burbs or walkable urbanism in the city. You cannot, however, have it both ways. Trying so will only make matters worse for us all.
[Photo by Elisa Vietri]
Joe Baur is a freelance writer, filmmaker and satirist with a diverse array of interests including travel, adventure, craft beer, health, urban issues, culture and politics. He ranks his allegiances in the order of Cleveland, the state of Ohio and the Rust Belt, and enjoys a fried egg on a variety of meats. Joe has a B.A. in Mass Communication with a focus on production from Miami University. Follow him at http://JoeBaur.com and on Twitter @BaurJoe.