Another Look at My Hometown: A Snail Would Move Quicker

Downtown Carmichael

I’ve previously written a couple of times about my hometown of Carmichael, near Sacramento.  Once I noted its supposed turn to urbanism that, while laudable, seemed wrongly focused.  Later, I bade it farewell as my mother sold the family home and moved away.

 But hometowns, even those that are the antithesis of walkable urbanism, can set their hooks deep.  I continued to wonder about what was happening there.  And I never got around to unsubscribing from the emails about upcoming projects.

It was the emails that got me to digging more deeply.  It seemed that there had been remarkably little residential development proposed.  So I searched all the 2016 agendas for the Carmichael Community Planning Advisory Council.  In the first nearly seven months of 2016, exactly two projects had been brought forward.

On March 16, an applicant asked about a 48-unit condominium complex.  Then, on July 20, an applicant asked about splitting one lot into two.

In seven months, that would be 49 new residences or about 115 new residents.  For a community of almost 62,000 people, the growth rate would be 0.3 percent.  And that growth rate assumes that both projects proceed, an assumption that’s often wrong.  If the condominium project fails, the growth rate drops to almost zero.

For a community that is far closer to the urban core than many other Sacramento suburbs, has a light-rail system at its north edge, and is served by a bus system that could be stronger but still meets commuting needs, that’s a pathetic growth rate, especially for a place that has expressed a desire to become more urban.

Even the condo project, which might be seen as a sign of hope, really isn’t.  It’s miles from the suggested urban core and a short block away from a five-lane arterial.  The only services available to pedestrians are auto shops, a tattoo parlor, a smoke shop, and Tap Plastics, none of which meet anyone’s daily needs, at least anyone I know.

Some will suggest that the market won’t support walkable urbanism in my hometown or that developers haven’t chosen to provide it.  But the problem goes deeper.  Most places have people eager to live in walkable settings.  And developers are always happy to build places that people want.  But the transition from drivable suburban to walkable urban is never easy.  The government must be an active, participatory partner in turning away from seventy years of mistakes and starting to create better places.  I don’t think my hometown has yet grasped that.

It’s hard to sever ties with a hometown.  I’m sure I’ll keep looking back, even if I cringe every time.

By the time I next write, I’ll have returned from traveling and will update a full calendar of upcoming opportunities for urbanist advocacy.

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

Saying Goodbye to a Hometown

In my last post, I wrote of my mother leaving the long-time family home in Carmichael, near Sacramento.  It was a big change for her, but she’s handling it well.

It’s also a big change for me.  I may not be doing as well.

It’s often said that one’s hometown is where one attended high school.  I’m not sure I would have agreed early in my adulthood.  I still retained fond memories of other stops in my young life.

But over the years, the validity of the adage became evident.  The pre-high school stops in my life, although still pleasant memories, retreated into the mist.  My college years, although a time that I wouldn’t trade for anything, were a near-adult experience, unrelated to a hometown.  Plus, when I tally up the friends with whom I’m still in contact after four decades, the number of high school friends is greater than the number from all my other educational years combined.

Carmichael, where my family moved just as I began high school and where my mother continued to live until only months ago, is my hometown.

I’m ambivalent about leaving Carmichael behind.  I’m equally ambivalent about having Carmichael as a home town.

To begin, although not all would agree, I found the educational experience to be fine.  My wife, who was two years behind me, found our shared alma mater of La Sierra High School to be only fair.  But I was exposed to a pair of teachers, one who gave me a lifelong love of numbers and the other of words, whose influences have continued throughout my life.  Even if the other teachers were less gifted, those two were enough to move the needle of my education well above average.

And La Sierra could turn out well-qualified students.  In my class, of the nine students who applied for admission to Stanford, seven were accepted, a ratio far above average.  Of course, the only ones of those who could afford to go to Palo Alto were the two on athletic scholarships.  The rest of us went elsewhere for more affordable but superior educations.

Unfortunately, La Sierra is now closed.  Built at the same time as several other nearby high schools during the post-war housing boom, it became the odd man out when the dust settled and the district found itself with one more high school than it could justify.  The campus remains a community center, but the students have been gone for more than three decades.

I miss having an operating high school as my alma mater.  I wouldn’t know anyone on campus today, but I’d feel better if there were still students hanging out in the places where I learned life lessons and made good friends.  And I’d probably still check the internet every Saturday morning in the fall to see how the football team had done.

But the lack of an active alma mater isn’t the reason for my ambivalence about Carmichael as a hometown.  It’s the fact that Carmichael is adamantly and almost proudly anti-urban.

In writing about great streets, I’ve noted that the challenge for many cities is the adjustment after a freeway bypasses downtown.  That will never be a problem for Carmichael.  Centrally but distantly located between the diverging routes of Highway 50 heading toward South Lake Tahoe and I-80 heading toward Truckee, Carmichael is miles from the nearest freeway on-ramp, but nonetheless serves as commute route for many heading into Sacramento for work.

Thus, the southwest-northeast six-lane Fair Oaks Boulevard serves as both the commuter arterial and downtown core.  The Carmichael “freeway” is a surface street.

There are those who argue that many cities would be better served if urban freeways were removed and replaced with broad boulevards.  I generally agree with them, although it’s not a subject that I put high on my urbanism wish list.  But the caveat on freeway-to-boulevard conversion is that the boulevard must be well designed to serve as both thoroughfare and community front door.  Fair Oaks Boulevard doesn’t meet that standard.  It instead evolved without long-range design thought and has become a dreary street that barely serves cars and is remarkably unfriendly to bicyclists and pedestrians.

Despite the unappealing character of Fair Oaks Boulevard, local zoning was assigned per the post-war standard, with long strips of commercial zoning along Fair Oaks and other arterials.  The predictable result is aging strip malls that can only be accessed by car and that are steadily working their way down the economic vitality scale.

As if putting all of the retail in pedestrian unfriendly locations wasn’t enough, Carmichael is proudly anti-sidewalk.  Originally founded as a summer refuge from Sacramento, some in Carmichael still cling tightly to the name Carmichael Colony and revel in retaining a country feel.  Admittedly, there is something bucolic about driving on a street with narrow, raveling shoulders and open ditches beyond.  But the key is that it’s bucolic mostly from a car.  On a bicycle or on foot, not so much.

As if affected by this anti-urban background, the town seems to have more than its share of dubious or unfortunate land uses.  Several examples follow.  They aren’t meant to be the worst examples, but only the ones that have consistently attracted my eyes over the years and seem to reflect the nature of the community. 

• ·         The coffee shop I remember visiting most often as a high school student is long gone.  (Being a franchise in the unfortunately-named Sambo’s chain didn’t help.)   Replacing it was a Burger King.  But to keep the Burger King population in check, another Burger King a mile away was demolished to make way for a super-sized McDonalds.
•  ·         At the beginning of the street that leads to my former family home is a bank.  As I was departing for college, I saw an architectural rendering for a façade remodel of the bank.  The most prominent elements were horizontal projections from the roof lines, faced in vertical slats.  I remember thinking it would be an improvement.  I was wrong.  It was my first experience with the reality that architects and graph designers can make bad ideas look good.  (It’s skill that civil engineers have never gained.) After forty years, the slats finally needed replacement.  The new material was horizontal panels.  The drumbeat of mediocrity goes on.
•  ·         Slightly closer to the family home is a church that was built during my college years.  A community group, including my father, met with the church building committee, welcoming them to Carmichael, but asking if they couldn’t upgrade the architecture.  The committee asked for forbearance, promising that, if the church could be built as designed, future funding would go toward architectural enhancements.  Four decades later, the architecture remains as it was, with the funding having apparently gone to concrete block monument signs and iron fences.
•  ·         Elsewhere in Carmichael is another church, an imposing edifice surrounded by lush green lawns and yet another iron fence.  When passing by it several years ago, I was spotted a pair of signs hanging on the fence.  (I still regret not stopping for a photo.)  The first sign exhorted the congregation to donate to a fund for the youth of Central America.  The second admonished the nearby children that they were absolutely forbidden from playing on the grass.  That disheartening juxtaposition remains one of my enduring images of Carmichael. 

But I also retain images of Carmichael that I treasure.  I recall an evening when I was perhaps sixteen.  Having borrowed a family car, an orange-red ’65 Mustang with a three-speed transmission, I was driving down one of those faux bucolic streets, looking into the setting sun, off to hang out with a friend for the evening.  It remains an enduring image of growing independence.  (Coincidentally, I’ve been communicating with the same friend in the last few weeks about catching a ballgame later this summer, showing the staying power of hometown friendships.)

It’s hard to leave a hometown behind, particularly when, even after nearly fifty years, I still have mixed feelings about the place.

Next time, I’ll offer anecdotes from the world of baseball that illustrate changing attitudes toward cars.

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

What's a NORC Without a NORC SSP?

A few month backs, my sister and I helped my mother move from the family home of 48 years into a senior living community.

Mom was doing well in her home, still mentally sharp, eating well, and engaged with friends.  She adjusted after my father passed away five years ago and found a new life that worked for her.  But her risk of falling and sustaining a serious injury was a constant concern.  Friends were advising my sister and me of their worries about her living arrangements, not that we needed the reminders.

After discussing the alternatives, including in-home support, Mom decided that a senior community was the best fit for her.  So we helped her pack up and make the move.  She’s doing well in her new setting, making friends, enjoying the vista from her apartment, and seemingly content to be out from under the burdens of home maintenance.

But I can still look back at the family home, now listed for sale, and observe the urbanist lessons to be learned.

My parents built the home in 1967, one of the first houses in a custom-home subdivision near the American River in Carmichael, an unincorporated portion of Sacramento County northeast of Sacramento.  With relatively large lots, an absence of through traffic, and proximity to the river, it was a desirable place for couples of my parents’ age to build homes and to settle in for a long stay.

(Although I lacked the words to express myself at age 14, I was less enthralled with the location, sensing that I was far removed from schools, friends, and interesting places to visit.  Luckily, at age 14, I could hop on a bike and overcome some of the deficiencies of living in a home with a Walk Score of 11.  Plus, the allure of having a backyard pool and of being able to easily wet a fishing line in the river overcame some of the unease with the location.)

Flashing forward 48 years, a surprising number of the original homeowners in the subdivision remain in place.  Less surprisingly, they’re all 48 years older, which means that the physical infirmities of the elder years are an increasing part of their lives.

The neighborhood has become a NORC, a naturally occurring retirement community, a concept that I described a few month when writing about senior living in urban settings.

To their credit, four-plus decades of friendly waves, holiday parties, and shared fence maintenance tasks have created something of a community.  Neighbors take in mail for those who are away, provide assistance with moving garbage cans, watch for suspicious sorts walking the sidewalks, and even stay alert for the first daily appearance of one another.  Not only is the neighborhood a NORC, but it’s a NORC with a level of mutual support.

But that mutual support isn’t enough to truly make seniors safe.  Although no tragedies have happened in my mother’s long-time neighborhood, we all know stories of seniors who have fallen or been stricken with a medical condition and who have waited an agonizingly long time before anyone became aware of their plight.  Cell phone and medic alert buttons are great, as far as they go, but nothing compares with having another person actively checking on a senior’s well-being.  And my mother’s former neighborhood didn’t meet that standard.

As described by Kriston Capps in CityLab, New York City has been working for 30 years with the concept of Naturally Occurring Retirement Community Supportive Service Networks, or NORC SSPs, striving to provide a more attentive level of service for seniors.  And, although more funding will always be needed, the concept is finding success.

Although every SSP will likely be unique, the general concept is mutual support between aging neighbors, described in a report quoted by Capps as “a determinant of well-being in old age”, supplemented by a layer of oversight from trained geriatric professionals, not intrusive, but alert to the possible need for assistance.

This subject is relevant to this blog because, as Capps notes, NORC SSPs have had their “greatest gains in New York, in part because the city's high density allows for the kind of NORC that's easiest to support.”  So urbanism can be a key element in the concept.

Personally, I love the idea of a group of 85 year olds meeting every day for coffee, with one of them toddling off to check if someone is unexpectedly absent, supplemented by geriatric oversight.   Indeed, I hope to be a member of a group like that when I’m 85.  But that kind of community isn’t well-suited to single-family homes where the nearest coffee shop is a ten-minute drive away and many of residents should never again be behind a wheel.

I’ll always appreciate the neighbors who remained aware of my mother’s well-being during her final years in Carmichael, but wish that there were more urban settings where she and my father could have moved ten or fifteen years, to begin nurturing an even stronger support network.

Next time, I’ll write more about Carmichael.  With my mother moved into senior living, it fell to me to finish cleaning up the family home, preparing it for sale.  Those tasks gave me a reason to take a final, lingering look around my hometown.  Saying goodbye brought up good memories and causes for urbanist dismay.

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: Carmichael, One Step Forward, One Step Back

Over recent weeks, I’ve been recounting a Northern California daytrip I took in late February.  My goal was to look, however briefly, at destinations that I hoped would offer urbanist insights.  I began my day with stops in Suisun City, Woodland, and Freedom Park Road in North Highlands.

Today, I reach the far extent of my outing, the unincorporated community of Carmichael, northeast of Sacramento.

Like many children of my era, my parents relocated several times during my youth as my father pursued greater professional success.  I don’t begrudge my parents the moves.  I’m pleased with how life turned out for them and I even believe that the occasional childhood move is good training for making new friends and learning how to live in new places.  Although I wouldn’t have minded if the number of school year moves had been fewer.

Luckily for me, the moves ended shortly before I entered high school, so I was able to spend those key years in one place.  That place was Carmichael, which I still describe as my “hometown”.

Carmichael was a good place to spend those final years of youth.  I retain largely fond memories of my time there.  Over four decades, I remain in contact with several old classmates, some of whom even read this blog on occasion.  Indeed, I communicate more regularly with my high school friends than with my college friends, which seems to speak well to the years in Carmichael.  Also, I met my wife during my Carmichael years.

With that said however, Carmichael had a land use pattern that was horribly misdirected.  Arterials lined by strip malls surrounded by vast expanses of residential, much of it far beyond the quarter-mile that is a reasonable walking distance to retail.

As a high school student, I was disappointed that most of friends could only be visited by a risky bicycle ride or by parental car, but it was the land use pattern to which much of my generation was accustomed.  It was just the way things were.  It took decades before I realized that my high school discontent wasn’t surliness but the germ of an idea that better land use patterns were possible.

My mother still lives in the home from where I attended high school.  So I’ve had a continuing reason to visit Carmichael over the years.  Like many communities that experienced their greatest growth immediately after World War II, it hasn’t aged well.

The strip malls have deteriorated, working their way down the economic scale.  It’s not uncommon to see a strip mall with over half of its space available for rent on a corner, while new strip mall is being built only a block away, as our tax codes and land use rules further undermine the already weak walkability.  (The Walk Score for Carmichael is 40, with the note “Most errands require a car.”  I think they overestimate the walkability.)

The stores upon which many residents rely, such as supermarkets, have concentrated into fewer locations, further overburdening already congested streets.

The community remains proud of their lack of sidewalks, although I suspect that the pride is stronger among those who are behind their steering wheels than those walking the narrow line between rushing traffic, raveling pavement edges, and roadside ditches.

The transit system is limited and more suited for commuting to workplaces in Sacramento than for local chores.

Against that backdrop, I was pleased a few years ago when Sacramento County, aided by a committee of Carmichael residents, began to assemble a plan for turning the community toward urbanism, at least along the main arterial.  The Fair Oaks Boulevard Concept Plan was a strategy to convert the land for a block or two either side of the arterial into a walkable, transit-oriented setting.

I watched from afar as the plan came together.  On several occasions, I even considered traveling to Carmichael to testify at public hearings on the plan.

My comments would have been simple and to the point.  I would have lauded the community for their farsightedness.  Then I would have cautioned that the adoption of a plan, no matter how well conceived, is only a minuscule step along the path to urbanism.  That the real hard work comes in convincing developers that the commitment to urbanism is real and in securing the funds for the infrastructure improvements to complement the new development.

Eventually, I choose not to testify.  The trip would have been long and I was unsure that four years of living in a community nearly a half-century ago, no matter how many fond memories I may have collected, entitled me to participate in their process.

Perhaps that was a mistake by me.  The plan was eventually adopted and remains a good template for turning Carmichael toward urbanism.  But when a small amount of funding became available for improvements along Fair Oaks Boulevard, the money didn’t go toward building a path for urbanism.  It was instead dedicated to improving a street intersection within the plan area.  Rather than building a place that might be better suited for people, the county once again improved the world for cars.

I’m not suggesting that the intersection improvements weren’t needed.  Traffic has increased since the intersection alignment was first established and multiple incremental fixes had gradually made the intersection awkward and difficult to drive.  But intersection improvements shouldn’t have been the highest priority.

It’s true that the intersection improvements included new sidewalks.  But how many pedestrians can be seen on those sidewalks?  It was only me with my camera and a scruffy gentleman awaiting a bus.

If the supposed goal of the community is a move toward urbanism, spending scarce resources on street improvements fails to open the doors to urbanist developers.  Even worse, it sends a message that the commitment to urbanism is, at best, half-hearted.

Just because one lived in a place years ago, and remembers it with affection, doesn’t mean that the community should make wise decisions long after one left.  But one can hope. 

Schedule Note

Another meeting of Petaluma Urban Chat is upon us.  We’ll meet at the Aqus Café at 2nd and H Streets in Petaluma on Tuesday, April 8.  We’ll convene for conversation at 5:30, with the discussion beginning at 5:45.  The discussion will again be about “Happy City” by Charles Montgomery.

As attendance was below average last month, we’ll return for a second time to the first five chapters of the book, giving all a chance to comment on the logical framework that Montgomery has begun to construct in support of his argument that human happiness is strongly tied to well-designed urban settings.  Even if you haven’t read the book, you should find the conversation engaging.

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