Day 36

September 5, 2014 Marcel

Today’s walk took me to the Chilesburg area along Hays Boulevard and close to Todd’s Road and I-75. This neighborhood as a whole is fairly new; new houses were under construction within view of the area through which I walked. The houses I passed were relatively old, but still built in the last 15 years or so.

Newer neighborhoods have adopted some common design elements. While earlier neighborhoods were built on a trunk-and-branch philosophy, these areas typically feature a circle with branches. They often feature parklets, as this area does. They also seem to deal a little more thoughtfully with stormwater. Perhaps this is due to required environmental impact investigation? Streams are allowed to remain above ground and even in some cases landscaping around them (though I don’t know that we’ve reached a point where the landscaping is always suitable.)

What works: Trees work well to keep the highway sound down. Stormwater stream is an amenity.

What doesn’t: The narrow streets caused some problems when roofers and recycling pickup (trash trucks) competed for the same space.

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Day 35

September 4, 2014 Marcel

Today’s walk was through an odd mix of light industrial, commercial and residential along and behind Winchester Road. The commercial strip stood out; this stretch of Winchester is generally gritty, the kind of place you go to shop for a greasy part in your car, not where you would go to find a trendy boutique. The specific section I walked along featured two nightclubs, two “gentleman’s” clubs and a KFC. The opposite side of the street has some intriguing businesses that look like the kind of nondescript places where people who know something shop for…vintage pinball machines? I have to remember to take a closer look at those shops when I return to walk through the area on the south side of the street.

Another feature of this area is a named alley. (I love these. Who wouldn’t want to have an alley named after them?) But of course, street names have stories and you can learn from this Herald-Leader column that there was a La Flame nightclub along Winchester from the late 1950’s.

2014-09-04_13-19-24-M — One of the more peculiar sights among the car-oriented businesses was this car with missing and inadequate tires.

This area is surely more interesting at night; I wonder where everyone must park. Transit in this area is evidently a challenge. A bicyclist was using the marked bike lane, but minutes later, two vehicles parked in the bike lane so their owners could grab lunch. Despite the steady number of pedestrians, it’s clear cars own this stretch just out of the sheer number of auto-oriented businesses.

Side note for the geeky: the geographic center of the area I walked today is due south of the center of the area I walked on Day 34; both have the same longitude, to four decimal places!

What works: This short stretch of Winchester has some unique things.

What doesn’t: Parking needs compete with bike lanes.

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Day 34

September 2, 2014 Marcel

Today I visited a neighborhood off of Russell Cave Road called Radcliffe. The area through which I walked was originally built out over a relative long period stretching from the early 1950’s until well into the mid 1960’s and had a correspondingly diverse range of construction types and styles. Overall, my impression of this neighborhood was fairly typical for neighborhoods from this period. It was pleasant to walk through, and probably the most fragrant (or at least, pleasantly fragrant) of any I’ve walked through all summer. The people I ran into were all pleasant. And I think the good weather (cool, cloudy, nice breeze) may affect my judgment, it felt shady and cool despite relatively few street trees.

Neighborhoods sometimes have subtle signs of distress, and this one had a few. Among the many well kept yards, there were a few that were running wild, a few places where liquor bottles were disposed inconspicuously or smashed. And the neighborhood seems to have some high turnover despite other owners who have lived in their homes for decades, with some houses being sold this year for two thirds of what they were sold for eight years ago. Though this area seems to exemplify the housing crisis and it’s impact on Lexington, it also feels like it’s close to coming through the crisis.

Though it was very evident here, every neighborhood has its nice yards and its wild ones (and in my neighborhood, to be honest, my yard is one of the wild ones). Generally, neighborhoods seem to have some self-regulation. A degree of weediness or wildness may be tolerated (or even preferred) in some neighborhoods while others consist almost entirely of perfectly manicured lots. And this becomes an interesting psychological question–do residents take after their neighbors in caring for their yards, or is this self-regulation really the result of people self-sorting into neighborhoods with yards that they themselves would be comfortable maintaining? And, when this self-regulation breaks down, how does the neighborhood react? Is their an informal mechanism for correction (which may or may involve a homeowner’s association)?

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Day 33

August 29, 2014 Marcel

Today, I had my first shot at walking through Chevy Chase. While I had some expectations based on its location and designation as a historic neighborhood that it would fit a relatively urban typology, it seemed more in line with the quiet but very nice suburban areas around Andover or Chilesburg, although there are some pre-World War II apartment houses located along Cochran as well as some duplexes from about the same time.

As in many other neighborhoods within a similar market range, there is a lot of construction going on here. It ranges from simple painting to more ambitious remodels (including one landscaping project where the architect’s sign in the yard proclaimed they were “building someone’s dream”). In general, the recent work done to houses in the neighborhood appeared to make the neighborhood more like its cousins outside New Circle Road in spite of the restrictive design criteria.

Any single person or family moving to a neighborhood changes it, perhaps almost imperceptibly. The sum of those changes can reflect a greater shift, and I wonder if that is happening in Chevy Chase (though of course, it’s much harder to tell with my very limited exposure to the area).

What works: The parklet at the end of Chenault

What doesn’t: Existing design criteria may not be sufficient to preserve the neighborhood’s (built) character.

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Day 32

August 28, 2014 Marcel

Today’s walk was dominated by the strip malls along Richmond Road at Man O’ War. Most of the time I find that walking slowly past a place allows a lot more detail to sink in than driving past quickly, but that was less true here. My biggest surprise was that the first of many painted horse statues that I will walk by during this project turned up in front of a Texas Roadhouse.

Texas Roadhouse's painted horse — Texas Roadhouse’s painted horse

But today’s stroll did give me the opportunity to walk down nearby Rio Dosa and Locust Hill, past a retirement living complex and a pretty standard apartment complex.

I’ll probably say this about every single strip mall I walk past, but this again feels like an opportunity. Some of the people who work in the strip mall live in the nearby apartments. So do many of the people who shop at the grocery store. Yet this area is treacherous to travel by foot. Two things really stand out as contributors to this. One is the traffic flow. The service road concept works fine in small highway towns, but in areas with heavier traffic, drivers are forced to focus on too many things. A certain volume of traffic making left turns onto streets like Locust Hill is unavoidable, but there are design features that can make this a little less dangerous for pedestrians as well.

Second is the lack of pedestrian features in general. In this case (as in Hamburg) pedestrians are driven to walk through parking lots or narrow streets with landscaping. The message is that, if you don’t drive, we don’t want you. Sometimes this is not an obvious problem because of the type of businesses; indeed, this stretch has many car-oriented businesses. But this is short-sighted, as better pedestrian features might encourage someone to seek out a coffee shop while they wait for their car repairs.

What works: mix of apartments, including retirement complex, close to shopping

What doesn’t: true pedestrian connectivity could use some work