Day 130 was a return to the Meadows neighborhood, near Bryan and New Circle Road, that I last visited last July, on Day 18. My impression of the area, having walked through on a cool, wet late fall day and a hot July day, is the same. This area shows some wear, but there are definite bright spots, freshly painted houses or yards that show evidence of life, toys or carefully curated landscaping. I really walked down two blocks, and the block length stood out. As I passed a long line of similar looking houses, I pondered the characteristics of a neighborhood. The neighborhoods in which I grew up consisted of a funky mix of houses, apartments, small stores, and community buildings like schools and churches. These things were all marbled together, so that there were, for example, two small grocery stores within a quarter mile. These neighborhoods had a sense of identity that was based around these local places and years later I could talk to someone about the supermarket with the pet name o a particular laundromat and they would know exactly what I was talking about. Technology–cars–have allowed us to broaden our range. We can work further away and this expands our opportunities. But neighborhood design that followed forced us to rely on cars for things that were typically provided in the neighborhood and has weakened that set of social bonds.
Tag Archives: 40505
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 107-Past and Present
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Today was a return to the “Dixie” section of Eastland. This area is pretty typical of its neighborhood cohorts. It’s well kept but shows its age. It seems to have a little more economic diversity than the average Lexington neighborhood but (as I’m finding) it’s sometimes difficult to perceive some of these subtleties through a surface-level view of the neighborhood.
The mail pouch work shed is worth a moment. It seems odd, at first, but I suppose its consistent with our image of suburbia as keeping us close to both our agrarian past and our urban present.
Day 106-Unselfconscious
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I took another journey to Joyland today. This stretch was along the back of the neighborhood where it abuts I-75. I enjoyed walking through this part of the neighborhood. Areas like this that are along the edge, out of the way, often feel comparatively run down. And maybe there was a little of that. But it generally just felt unselfconscious in a refreshing way. There was a lot of olfactory experience: cinnamon oil wafting from a car, a strong scent of orange juice, tree blossoms, play-doh.
The streets here are narrow for their era; this may help cultivate a sense of neighborliness.
One curiosity is a “No Trespassing” sign in the middle of a very enticing clearing at the end of the street. It’s not doing a very good job!