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Today’s route was an ill-advised route along Richmond Rd and Man O’War. This area is dominated by restaurants along Richmond and offices along Man O’ War and the side streets. Richmond is the most visually interesting but least walkable. The remaining streets are walkable but plain.
Today, I revisited the Cove Lake neighborhood near Man O’ War and Richmond. I previously visited this area on Day 42 and Day 72, but this portion was a little more homogenous than the portions I passed through on those days, with mid-1970s single family housing throughout. The key feature of this area is the hilly terrain. There are views of the St. Joseph East Campus on the other side of Richmond from the tops of the hills. Retaining walls of various sizes are in many yards.
All in all, this was a chilly day and a quiet neighborhood and there isn’t too much to add. I do like to comment on features that I like, and one house had a nice hedge around it’s yard, a nice break from the open yards that dominate. Hedges and fences seem like they would tend to isolate houses, but when they are low enough to see over they almost feel like they have the opposite affect by connecting the entrance of a home to the sidewalk. A neighborhood with picket fences or hedges, when well implemented, feels social and welcoming rather than isolated and suspicious.
Today’s walk was through the Squires Acres and Squires Woods neighborhoods behind Richmond Road near Eagle Creek. The Richmond Road stretch of this circuit is commercial, consisting of strip malls with huge setbacks and a car dealership. The residential area behind Richmond is mostly multi-family; apartments on the north end, attached homes and townhomes near Squires on the south end of the area I walked through.
There were two things I liked today. I liked the narrow setbacks of the older attached houses (dating from the mid-1980’s) just north of Squires on Cove Lake. These made for a very comfortable pedestrian scale for that section of road. I also like the townhomes of Squires Woods, which, in contrast to Hamburg Farms, present sufficient space for self expression even while providing what appears to be a similar amount of parking. The planner Oscar Newman thinks that this semi-private space is a crucial aspect of defining boundaries and establishing a sense of ownership of the place, and though it doesn’t compare to Hamburg Farms in newness, this complex does feel a little more comfortable. And pity any stranger walking through here–the neighborhood watch grilled me pretty thoroughly and I’m not sure I ever convinced them I was on the level.
The stretch of Richmond road that I traversed reinforces a common issue I encounter. Streets within neighborhoods are well connected, but from a pedestrian standpoint, the arterial roads are unbelievably bad. In this location, the car-oriented design is especially shameful because the homes here could have excellent access to the retail along Richmond Road up to Man O’ War and beyond, as well as Jacobson Park to the south. Instead, Richmond is a mess, with cars traveling faster than they need to, no sidewalk, and not even a curb to offer some sense of protection. At the intersection of Richmond and Squires, the sidewalk crosses a full ten feet behind the painted stop line, so someone walking here could encounter a situation where the path across the street is blocked by traffic. And, since this is a turn lane, the pedestrian may not be able to predict when the first car will turn and the line will move up. Walking along this stretch required extra attention, as there were plenty of opportunities to intersect the paths of cars whose drivers may or may not have anticipated someone walking.
I don’t really intend to use this as a soapbox, but it should be evident that I’m passionate about walking. Walking is something that most of us can do, and we have design elements available to make sidewalks accessible to people with disabilities. Driving to the store or the park may not be a big deal to most of us. But to fail to provide a basic level of on-foot accessibility is to discriminate against the old, the young, and people with disabilities. There are plenty of similar stretches of road; perhaps someday most or all of the arterials in Lexington will be multimodal. But in terms of bang for the buck, in the sense that residential density and destinations exist to support it, this stretch of Richmond seems like an excellent candidate to improve sooner rather than later.
Today was a split day, with a portion of my walk through a residential neighborhood just south of Man O’ War called Cove Lake and the rest along the commercial corridor along Richmond Road behind the neighborhood.
The contrast between residential and commercial is very clear along Lake Wales. This street appeals to me for a reason I can’t put my finger on. It feels as if maybe it is just less self-conscious than most streets. Lake Wales ends in a cul-de-sac, and it’s hard to tell from the map but it sits perhaps 12 feet over the adjacent car lot with a surprising view of brightly colored street lights at shoe level. Here, the sounds of insects is almost loud enough to drown out the sound of traffic passing through what is probably one of the city’s busiest intersections.
The commercial strip is, of course, image conscious. Besides, the car lot with the yellow and blue light posts, there are a number of fast-casual restaurants tending toward the trendy and up-and-coming, serving food out of buildings that weren’t here a year ago. This being the place to be, the biggest surprise may be that a lot that has yet to be built has signs of a previous building that must have been razed. Winding back on Eagle Creek, literally through a car dealership, puts you back in the older Cove Lake neighborhood.
The term “conspicuous consumption” is thrown around often enough to describe luxuries from extravagant phone accessories to large houses. The simple houses here belie a time when the aesthetic was quiet austerity. The tract houses built from the 1940’s through the 1960’s and into the 1970’s were generally simple. Houses along Eagle Creek are very different than the bright new restaurants with visually interesting facades.
What works: The commercial strip is adjacent to the neighborhood but feels buffered.
What doesn’t: The maps. Neither map provider I use correctly identified the intersection of Sand Creek and Richmond.
