Category Archives: Uncategorized

Day 114-Sights, smells, sounds

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Today’s walk was through an interesting neighborhood near the ballpark on Broadway. This was one of those walking experiences that I really enjoy just because of the variation of stimuli. Sure, this is a visual experience, with some amazing trees, like the ones at Twelfth and Broadway, plenty of colorful or otherwise visually interesting structures, but there also lots of sounds and smells. Some of these are some standards–the yapping dog, but also the crowing rooster. A fragrant tree but also flavored tobacco. I’ve heard people conflate “interesting” or even “vibrant” with “dangerous” when speaking about neighborhoods. The reaction has been to build safe, bland places. It’s hard to put a price on safety or vibrancy, but it’s also hard to imagine that at this moment, the tradeoffs involved in building safe places have been worth it.

Day 113-Almost all of the pieces

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Today’s route brings me back to Joyland. Similar to some of the neighboring areas I’ve visited, this neighborhood was quiet, almost subdued. There are positives here: access to a park, an elementary school, even (in a limited sense) shopping. The housing stock appears to be in good condition, too. Someone has to do something about the struggling retail, though!

Day 112-Scale, mystery and creating comfortable places

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This route took me past some apartment and condo complexes, but also the headquarters of Ashland Oil. As if passing a business part and residential area weren’t enough, I was also treated to the smell of fresh cut grass courtesy of a tractor mowing just south of Yorkshire Boulevard.

Stairs up to a common area shared by several townhomes
Stairs up to a common area shared by several townhomes

The impressive thing about the residential parts of this area is that it hits a golden zone in terms of how building height, street width and landscaping create a sense of human scale. It’s difficult to capture in photos, but the feel, in the residential areas, is that this is just right. I also like the stairs up into a common area shared by several townhomes. This seems like an appropriate way to separate public and semi-private spaces (if done right) and it lends a little intrigue as well. (You may have noticed I like this sort of thing!) I wish that developers would spend more effort on aspects of construction like these, which are easy to overlook but critical to creating a comfortable place.

Day 111-Dramatic Tension

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This walk in the Easthills neighborhood featured a tremendous amount of tension. There was quiet drama. I don’t know if it was impending storm clouds, the grass brown and dormant already in mid-June, the number of people out despite the heat. But it was unique, memorable, enjoyable even. There was just so much atmosphere…  It was dogs barking, planes flying overhead, a truck with a loud exhaust pipe. It was the smell of juniper and spruce trees. These things are everywhere, but there was something about how they came together here that was special.

Day 110-Liberty and Death

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Today brought me back to the Eastwood neighborhood. I don’t know that I really came up with a lot to add. I spent a fair amount of time navigating Liberty Road, which recently recorded a pedestrian fatality near here. If I could be mayor for a day and could add a sidewalk to any stretch of any road in Lexington, it would be this stretch of Liberty.