Our cities rarely give pedestrians a chance

By SANDRA THOMPSON

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 8, 2000

Imagine this: a walking neighborhood, the impossible dream of urban Americans held hostage to the car. Imagine shops and restaurants so close you can actually walk to them -- a concept central to the new architectural buzz phrase "traditional neighborhood design," which basically means new developments built like old neighborhoods, with plenty of places nearby to walk to -- for a carton of milk, a latte, whatever.

I would love to live in a walking neighborhood, I told people, until I realized I already do.

In minutes I can walk to get a carton of milk or a latte. I can walk to an English pub, a Cuban cafeteria, a high-end northern Italian restaurant, a personal trainer, a vet, an antique shop, a convenience store, a florist, a stockbroker, an accountant, a laundromat, a quilt shop, a hair salon. I can go to Delizie for lunch or to pick up fresh mozzarella or focaccia. In fact, I go there often. It's 260 steps from my front porch to the door.

I drive.

I live on a side street off MacDill in South Tampa, a block from the newish pink strip center called St. Croix Plaza, where Delizie is. To the north is a four-block strip of small businesses in an odd array of buildings, from the old cracker-style house that's now Le Spa Jardin to the concrete block shoe box with La Fonda and Clayton galleries.

Any new traditional neighborhood would kill for the places I can go sans car. But traditional neighborhood design includes wide sidewalks and the concept of slowing down traffic -- so that pedestrians and cars have an equal chance, they say. On foot, I'm no match for a Honda Civic at 25 mph, much less a sports utility vehicle at 50, but where I live not even a nod is made to the pedestrian.

This stretch of MacDill is a 35-mph, two-lane street through a mostly residential neighborhood. It's also a straightaway from Euclid to Gandy, 20 blocks with not one street light or stop sign. And it's a truck route. MacDill is the only north-south through-street east of Dale Mabry open to trucks -- Himes and Bayshore are not -- even as tall semitrailer trucks clip branches off the oak canopies that make this neighborhood special.

In the block between my house and Delizie, there is a sidewalk on one side of the street -- and it's about 2 feet from the street, sometimes with tire tracks over the slim buffer of dirt. The sidewalk is so narrow it requires single-file walking and winds around a utility pole. Rarely do you see anyone walking on it. One of the few times I was, an alarmed neighbor stopped in her minivan and offered me a ride.

The walking that's done in our neighborhood is on the side streets and on evenings and weekends -- briskly, often behind strollers or baby joggers or dogs -- everyone on their way to Bayshore where, once across, they're home free. We walk for recreation, but not to actually do anything.

Our neighborhood association is the one that's paying off-duty cops to ticket speeders for a few hours three days a week. They've given out more than 200 tickets in less than four months, mostly on Bayshore, MacDill and Himes; top speed, 65. The Bayshore Beautiful Homeowners Association (the name's not our fault; it derives from our neighbors to the north, New Suburb Beautiful) is also trying to lower speed limits on the side streets from 30 to 25. A more informal approach is practiced by residents who scream "Slow down!" to cars flying off Bayshore.

When I lived in New York City, I walked everywhere. I dashed across streets against red lights, darted through stalled taxis. I love to walk, but it's not really safe to walk here.

We don't need light rail to get us out of our cars. In some neighborhoods, like mine, we don't even need places to go. But we do need wide sidewalks, traffic lights and stop signs, and appropriate speed limits that are enforced -- all the time, in every neighborhood. To complete the urban landscape, we need people walking, but right now there's no room for them.

- Sandra Thompson is a writer who lives in Tampa.

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