Two Sides of the Same Woods

On one side of the road, you have tourists reading plaques about trees. On the other, gay men circle the woods looking for potential hookups. The Bronx River Forest is one of the few remaining sections of the great woodland that once covered the New York region. While we tend to consider the plants and animals that populate wooded areas like this as "wild," this landscape is highly shaped by the physical interventions and social activities of humans. It is easy to overlook how much human action can shape the "natural" environment, but the differences created by separate jurisdictional control over trails winding through the woods along the Bronx River on each side of Allerton Avenue create a stark contrast.

People duck under a fallen tree (covered in poison ivy) on the Blue Trail north of 204th Street in the Bronx Forest managed by the Department of Parks and Recreation

Tourists stop along the trail in the Thain Family Forest in the New York Botanical Garden to read facts about the trees 

South of Allerton Avenue, the Bronx River flows through the New York Botanical Garden. Since the 1890s, this land has been City parkland, part of Bronx Park, which is administered by a private institution specifically charged with the development and maintenance of a great living museum. To the north, the parkland is under conventional control of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

There are some physical differences in terrain between the two sections. To the north, the river passes through a floodplain. After flowing into the garden, it quickly drops into a ravine with some moderately steep slopes down to the river. Nonetheless, the main distinctions between these two sections is how the land is managed and access is controlled.

Below the Roadway

In recent months, I have frequented very different places tucked underneath some of New York City's elevated roadways. It is a startling juxtaposition between the invisibly marginalized and the thoroughly gentrified.

Sometimes it amazes me that in one of the world's largest cities and the densest in North America, there are still places so isolated and hidden they seem like private places for the most dispossessed in society. Recently, I returned to one of these places for the first time in nearly a decade. It remained virtually unchanged.

The Only Place Where New York Is Still New York

There is a quiet, residual space tucked under some of the city's infrastructure that I visit from time to time. It is a forgotten place, sometimes inhabited by a few of the city's dispossessed and occasionally transited by a curiosity seeker. The gradually deteriorating infrastructure above forms an interesting architectural space. Social commentary has been tagged onto the base of its structures.

Social commentary was written on this space over a decade ago:
THIS MIGHT BE THE ONLY PLACE WHERE NEW YORK IS STILL NEW YORK

The same graffiti is still there today, with little change in the space over the years

Old Town in Salinas

A few months ago, I passed through Salinas, California for a funeral. I wish the circumstances had been better, and that I could have spent a little more time and had an opportunity to speak with some of the local planners. The relationships between the spaces along the Main Street corridor in Old Town seemed quite interesting.

The Main Street commercial core in Old Town is a compact area. This is due in part to its conversion into a sort of enclave. It encompasses a relatively short distance of Main Street that is effectively demarcated from the rest of its length. The busier arterial streets that flank the Main Street core also create some separation from the surrounding area. It is interesting to note that this length of Main Street is generally consistent with the "400 meter rule." The section from San Luis Street to its termination at the Steinbeck Center is a little under 500 meters. It is also significant that the Steinbeck Center terminates the vista and encloses this section of street more like an outdoor room.

While many planners who talk about walkable downtowns are quick to promote two-way streets as a sort of pedestrian panacea, it is interesting to note that the pedestrian-friendly area of Old Town is along a one-way section of Main Street. The use of angled parking effectively calms the traffic, as do the mid-block sidewalk extensions with pedestrian crossings. The traffic calming treatments could be applied to either one-way or two-way streets, although it may be possible to introduce angled parking on a second side of the street on some one-way streets that would not have sufficient width under a two-way configuration. A one-way configuration also has the inherent advantage of limiting the demands on pedestrians to try simultaneously gauging traffic coming at them from two different directions at uncontrolled mid-block crossings.


View Larger Map
The angled parking and the mid-block sidewalk extensions calm traffic

The mid-block crossings form a pedestrian axis that is more than just an extra place to cross the street between intersections. They align with pedestrian passageways through the block to parking areas on the other streets. In some cases, these passages provide additional store frontage or space for outdoor restaurant seating. It was not clear on my quick visit if the outdoor restaurant seating had failed, or if it was a seasonal use that hadn't started yet for the warmer months when I was there.

Civic Life for a Wino Park

There was a Halloween party for children at Whalen Park in the Norwood neighborhood in The Bronx on Saturday.  More than a hundred kids attended with their parents.  They played games.  They made crafts. They danced to music played by a DJ. They sat and listened when the children's librarian from the Mosholu Branch Library next door came outside to read stories. Dozens of older adults gathered along the sidewalk right outside the park, leaning on the low fence to watch the spectacle inside and generally socializing with one another.

Whalen Park has suffered from a reputation as a place where the homeless and drunks congregate.  Its image was perhaps worse than the actual conditions ever were, and it has improved considerably over the years. Nevertheless, use of the park often remains low, and, occasionally, somebody sleeping on one of the benches will still make neighborhood residents feel uncomfortable being there.

There has been an ongoing debate within the local neighborhoods about the future of Whalen Park. There are a few local individuals who share the view of senior officials at the Department of Parks and Recreation that the park should be converted to a playground and surrounded with a taller fence. The idea of converting the park is intended to force out the "undesirables."  In New York City, adults are legally prohibited from entering a playground unless they are accompanying a child. This perspective seems to belong primarily to people who have only fleeting glimpses of the park, many of them local library patrons from an adjacent neighborhood.