Prying the Overton Window Further Open

An intersection in Calistoga
that lacks pedestrian accommodation

A few weeks back, I noted a Petaluma post on Nextdoor, a neighborhood-based social media site, arguing for increased pedestrian awareness by drivers.  It was cleverly written and I agreed with the thrust.  However, I disagreed with the implicit suggestion that awareness/education was the right approach for achieving a goal, pedestrian safety, for which 100 percent compliance should be the target.

So I wrote a post arguing that education isn’t a strong enough tool when universal compliance is needed.  Instead, I suggested alternative thinking about street design, specifically proffering street configurations that would result in lower travel speeds.

It was topic that many people found worthy of further discussion.  Tweets and retweets to over 20,000 followers followed the publishing of the post on my own and the Vibrant Bay Area websites.  Also, a link was included in a national blog on street design.  

But it seems likely that few of the readers I attracted were local.

I posted a link on Nextdoor comment thread that triggered the post.  Before the thread died, there were 42 comments total.  Of those, how many do you think agreed with my suggestion for alternative thinking about street design?  Zero.  How many even acknowledged my contribution to the discussion?  Still zero.  Every other comment remained, in one way or another, on the theme of better educating drivers and/or pedestrians.

I don’t report this to ridicule the other commenters or to complain about the lack of attention.  I’m accustomed to the response.  Silence, followed by a wandering away of the audience, has been the typical reaction to similar calls I’ve made elsewhere for street design changes that would reduce travel speeds and promote pedestrian safety.  The lesson I’ve garnered is that I must be persistent, with the hope that someday folks will begin paying attention.

I’ve now learned that there is a developed philosophy on the subject of acceptable and unacceptable topics for public discourse.  The Overton Window was named after the late Joseph Overton, an official with a public policy think tank.  Initially formulated to describe the rhetorical limits for public officials, the Overton Window has been described as the “range of policies considered politically acceptable in the current climate of public opinion, which a politician can recommend without being considered too extreme to gain or keep public office.” 

The Overton Window models argues that, radiating outward from current policy, are ideas that progress through decreasing levels of public acceptance from popular to sensible to acceptable to radical to unthinkable.

Applying the Overton Window to the current presidential campaign, I think we’ve found that xenophobic police states, as long as described in temperate language, are somewhere between acceptable and radical, as are universal healthcare and reduced costs for secondary education.   But when the last two are described as “socialist” they become unthinkable, an interesting case of a label changing perceptions.

Moving to the world of urbanism, I’d suggest that mixed-use development is in the acceptable range.  Having a mixed-use district, along with transit and other accoutrements, to create walkable urban development is in the radical range.  But alternative street designs to promote pedestrian safety are unthinkable.  I find it an odd place to draw that line, but I’m not a member of the general public, at least on this topic.

So, what can be done to bring some of these ideas inside the Overton Window?  Increasing discourse.  I don’t see an alternative path to making topics become more acceptable than to continually talk about them as being reasonable and appropriate.  By writing this blog, I’m doing what I can, while acknowledging that there is always more that I could be doing, but what is truly needed is for readers to further the spread of urbanist ideas.

Obviously, I hope that readers agree with much of what I write.  But even if they disagree, or have alternative perspectives that differ in the details, they need to be participating in their communities and talking about ideas like walkable neighborhoods and improved pedestrian safety through different road design standards.

And lest someone think that the task is impossible, I’ll point out that Edinburgh recently set the speed limits on 80 percent of its streets at 20 mph, becoming the most recent city in Great Britain to take a similar step.  Ponder that for a moment.  A capital city, a functioning, vibrant city, set the most of its speed limits below the minimum speed limit allowed on California streets.

The problem isn’t that urbanists don’t have good ideas.  It’s that we haven’t been successful at getting those ideas into general circulation on this side of the pond.

Let’s work together to shove the Overton Window further open.

The earlier post on changed street designs also triggered comments on vertical traffic calming.  I have a further insight on the subject to offer in my next post.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Northern California Tour: Freedom Park Road

Two weeks ago, I began recounting a recent daytrip I took through Northern California.  My goal was to look, however briefly, at destinations that I hoped would offer urbanist insights.  I began my day in Suisun City, a city center of well-conceived urban redevelopment and a personal favorite.  I continued with a stop in Woodland, checking on how the burgeoning big box district was affecting the attractive but languishing historical downtown.

Today, I’ll describe the next destination on my meandering route and the reason I conceived the daytrip, a recently reconstructed road in North Highlands, near Sacramento.

Sacramento County received an award from the local chapter of the American Planning Association for the redesign and reconstruction of Freedom Park Road within the former McClellan Air Force Base.  The grounds for the award are evident.  Wide and comfortable sidewalks.  Roundabouts in place of stop signs.  Stormwater runoff routed into vegetated swales.  Energy-efficient lighting.  A pavement mix design that included recycled tires.  All the elements of an environmentally-sensitive road design.

That is, all the elements of an environmentally-sensitive road design except the most important one.  Walkability.  Freedom Park Road has fine sidewalks, wide, without obstructions, and safely set back from the vehicle lanes.  But during the fifteen minutes I spent visiting the street, not one pedestrian came by.  None.

Nor is the reason surprising.  There are few destinations along the street.  Residential developments front on the street, an apartment complex to the south and small-lot single-family homes to the north.  But there’s virtually nowhere to go for anyone who lives in either.

Retail is usually the key destination.  At the east end of Freedom Park Road, where it terminates at an arterial, there are strip malls on both corners, but they‘re half-empty and moribund.

Otherwise, there’s a park that includes casual play and organized sports areas.  But casual play parks sometimes struggle to attract users and it’s likely the many of organized sports participants arrive by car from points of origin far beyond Freedom Park Road.

There’s also an aerospace museum that I’ve visited and enjoyed.  But realistically, how many times can people visit the same museum?  Perhaps twice a year?

Overall, it’s not surprising that the only folks I saw along Freedom Park Road, other than the drivers of

passing cars, were a handful of teenagers sitting at the entry to the apartments, looking at the world through bored, half-closed eyes.

If we use Jeff Speck’s “Walkable City” for its walkability punchlist, the shortfalls are further highlighted.  Safety?  Yes.  Comfort?  So it appeared to me.  Interest?  Not much.  Most of the uses are not visually appealing, set far back from the street, or both.  Usefulness?  Nope, barring the occasional purchase that can be made at the struggling strip malls or the infrequent desire to play on a swing, there’s not much useful on Freedom Park Road.  With all four points needed to for a street to be walkable, Freedom Park Road falls well short.

I understand why the APA gave an award for the road reconstruction.  I’m sure that design touched on many of the hot buttons in environmental design.  But the fact remains that virtually every street in downtown Sacramento, by facilitating walkability, provides more environmental benefit than Freedom Park Road.

Don’t misunderstand my point.  I’m not saying that vegetated swales and energy-efficient lights are bad road elements.  Instead, I agree that they are very good road elements.  But the ultimate good road element, the essential road element, is walkable urbanism and if we aren’t encouraging urbanism, we’re only chipping at the fringe of the environmental challenge.

In his book “Hot, Flat, and Crowded”, New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman argues that many Americans, faced with the environmental challenges of the 21st century, are going only as far as a “green party”.  Rather than making fundamental changes in their lifestyles, they’re setting out the recycling can, replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs, throwing a handful of confetti, and carrying on with life as they’ve always known it. 

He makes a good point.  All of us, me included, can and should do more to face the challenges of our time.  And passing out an award for a road that doesn’t address walkability, the keystone of environmental sustainability, is a good example of a premature and unjustified green party.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)