You liked the chirping birds, so let’s keep them
Hardly a morning on Twitter or a Zoom meeting went by without acknowledging the precious spectacle of chirping birds on trees all over the…
Hardly a morning on Twitter or a Zoom meeting went by without acknowledging the precious spectacle of chirping birds on trees all over the carless public realm.
The streets, free of fumes and noise had become havens for all kinds of birds and spring helped. March and colors and smells came by and framed the daily concert.
Delightful.
As cities begin to slowly come out of lockdown, more businesses are deemd essential and more people return to their cars.
Everyone in their right mind is advocating for streets to be turned into pedestrian roads and keeping the chirping is one of the arguments.
But the thing is we need larger arterials to connect, principally, people to jobs.
Bluntly, the strength of cities comes from their metro region. Centers had become wealthy and dotted with company headquarters, exclusive shops, star restaurants and luxury flats.
The wealth of centers requires a workforce that cannot participate in many of the paid amenities ($18 espresso with amaretti, anyone?). The metro region supplies workers who live as far from the center as unaffordability allows.
There’s also small-scale manufacturing, some agriculture and most of the B-side of urbs: the logistical tangle of rail tracks and highway exchanges, warehouses, wholesalers and collection centers for both regional goods and recyclables and airports. All surrounded by their usual ancillary: truck stations, loading docks, miles of rusted chain-link fences… you get the picture.
Hardly a tree on sight. Not particularly a haven for congregations, gulps or exaltations. Of magpies, swallows or larks, that is.
The drab side of progress requires this blight to support the myriads of quaint cafés surrounded by the aroma of Costa Rican coffee with cozy entrances lined by lovely wooden carts imported from Bangladesh, filled with bouquets of fresh flowers from Ecuador that stand pristine for instagrammers to capture.
So away from Instagram and back to our little chirping birds. Bringing them back means keeping the slow streets with fresh air and lots of trees where they can nest and play that we have had during lockdown.
Local and neighborhood roads can safely be converted permanently. Trees abound on those so retaining the bird population shouldn’t be that hard. Small changes in geometry (remind me to tell you what we proposed for South Orange NJ) can work wonders to keep those streets safe for their human and aviary populations.
Some streets, however, need to let cars go through. Lots of cars. They are the links to the creation of wealth and innovation that we will desperately need after the devastation brought by the pandemic.
Let us focus on those streets. They need trees. Yes, they have some but they can easily accommodate more.
No, Mr. County Engineer, Sir. Trees are not dangerous objects. Cars in the hands of imbecile drivers are dangerous objects.
So let’s fill those with trees. Make mitigation the name of the game. The strategy is to allow roads to accommodate pedestrian life by masking the incessant, polluting hum of cars connecting people to places beyond what’s reachable by foot or bike.
Transforming major metropolitan and regional roads into «Green axis» can be combined with them retaining their capacity to carry vehicles and connect places. We have the technology and the knowledge. And ROI should not be hard to figure out.
Just remember how it felt when the only sound we could hear was the singing of birds. Wasn’t it nice?