See for Yourself by Rob Forbes

Author:Rob Forbes [Rob Forbes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
Published: 2015-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

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NAPLES

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DEER ISLAND

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VINEYARD HAVEN

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CHARLESTON

Charleston, South Carolina

The more walkable U.S. cities, such as New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, are a lot more conducive to seeing than those cities that were designed around the car, such as Houston, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, where walking is not given much of a chance. And one smaller U.S. city holds its own against the bigger metropolises: Charleston, South Carolina. Walk this city (with a modest population of 120,000), and you will find more diversity in architecture and cultural history and texture than you will in many much larger cities. How did this happen? Simple. The roads were not widened to make it easy for cars to speed through, parking lots did not take up precious public space, and shortsighted developers were prevented from replacing older, historic buildings. The shortsighted commercial interests have been kept at bay by the visionary mayor, Joe Riley, an eight-term politician who has battled to keep the city safe and sane for residents, not cars, for four decades.

And all across America the same phenomenon can be seen: a visionary mayor taking a stand for public spaces and residents over the need to move cars in and out of the city and thoughtless development. It has been through the force of their will and political power that we now have world-class destinations such as Millennium Park in Chicago (Mayor Richard Daley); and a rehabilitated Times Square, High Line, and neighborhood amenities such as bike lanes in New York (Mayor Michael Bloomberg). An outstanding example of this in San Francisco was Mayor Art Agnos’s decision to block the rebuilding of the Embarcadero Freeway following the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. The east-facing waterfront has become one of the most valuable amenities in the city, thanks to a mayor with vision and conviction. (He lost the subsequent reelection, at least partially for taking this stand.) In the pre-auto era in the United States we had many examples of enlightened civic planning, Central Park and Golden Gate Park being great examples. But such needs and vision were subordinated to the automobile and its requirements for most of the twentieth century.

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