“A city sidewalk by itself is nothing. It is an abstraction. It means something only in conjunction with the buildings and other uses that border it…. Streets and their sidewalks, the main public places of a city, are its most vital organs.”
— Jane Jacobs, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” (1961)
In the coming days Thrive Allen County will host a series of events with Mark Fenton, the nation’s foremost authority on creating safe, walkable, bike-friendly communities.
Billed as a public heath, planning and transportation consultant, Fenton — a former Olympic Trials racewalker and erstwhile host of PBS’s “America’s Walking” — will join area civic leaders on Monday in an in-depth, on-the-ground assessment of the streets and sidewalks, storefronts and parks, schools and trails, in and around Humboldt and Iola.
At 8 a.m. Tuesday, Fenton will present the results of his findings, as well as concrete recommendations for local improvements, to members of the general public at a free breakfast hosted by Miller’s on Madison.
“There is good evidence,” argues Fenton, “that how you design a community — the details — actually influence whether somebody walks [or] rides a bike, [whether they] get physical activity as part of their daily life.”
But Fenton’s survey won’t dwell on physical fitness alone. A thoughtfully designed public space offers what Fenton describes as a “triple bottom-line benefit” — which includes improvements not only to the physical health of a community but to its economic and environmental health as well.
Fenton, in previous lectures and publications, makes the case for certain baseline imperatives community leaders should consider in their regard for a healthy, safe and prosperous town.
He advocates, first of all, a greater mix of land use. “The more we have different things where we live and work and shop and play and learn and pray — the more they’re mixed up — the more likely we are to walk between them, to get more physical activity.
“The more that we spread them out, [however] — a housing subdivision here, a mall over there, a big, consolidated school on the edge of town over here, an office park there — then the more we have to drive between those things, and the less physical activity we get incidentally.”
Fenton’s appeal, too, is that these specific sites — churches, stores, schools — honor their users who arrive on foot or by bike with amenities (benches, shade trees, bike racks, etc. ) that encourage the habits of a non-motorized commute.
Of course, the ultimate success of any mixed-use environment depends, explains Fenton, on “a good continuous network of facilities between things” — namely, an accessible, dependable, well-marked circuitry of streets, sidewalks and trails.
Last but not least, underlying any vision of town planning is the requirement that the design “be safe and accessible to everybody in the community.”
For Fenton, the insistence on safety is not an idle concern. He was instrumental in developing the Safe Routes to School program in North Carolina, and is a proponent of the policy nationwide.
To this end, Fenton will address members of the Iola City Council and the USD 257 Board of Education — itself a recipient of a SRTS grant — in a joint meeting at 5 p.m. Monday.
The largest fraction of a busy Monday, though, will be devoted to the Healthy Community Design Workshop, which will gather city and county leaders in charge of planning, public works, maintenance, parks and recreation, code inspection, economic development, and other areas of civic life. The workshop runs from 1 to 4 p.m. at Classy Attic in Iola.
Downtown merchants from Iola and Humboldt, who stand to profit from a strategic rethink of the built environment around their stores, are also strongly encouraged to attend the workshop. “This is about healthy community design,” explained Thrive’s executive director David Toland, “but it is also about economics. How can we strengthen Iola, how can we strengthen Humboldt, and the retail and restaurant businesses that are there?”
And this is not to leave out hotels, said Toland. “We purposely put [Fenton] up at the Regency Inn, which is 20 feet from the Prairie Spirit Trail. We want him to give us his practical, real-world suggestions on how a lodging establishment like that can leverage the trail as a way to put heads in beds.”
Allen County, which has garnered a positive reputation statewide for its top-flight network of multi-use trails, continues to look for ways these investments can benefit the greatest number of its citizens. The hope, according to Toland, is that Fenton’s knowledge, his track record, his eye for what ails us, and his practical recommendations will ensure that the perks of the trails reach a public beyond the runners and hikers and bikers that traverse its paths.
“We’re getting there,” said Toland, “but we need somebody to help us make the leap from where we are to where we could be.”
Decisions about the safety, cohesion, aesthetics, efficiency, commercial potential and environmental impact of a town’s design are only as refined as the thinking that underpins them. If Fenton is able to educate the citizens of Allen County in the ways of achieving a healthy, safe and prosperous community, he’ll be left with a second challenge: marshaling the will and cooperation of the city and county officials in charge of implementing those changes.
But it’s not a challenge he’s unused to or one to which he’s unsympathetic. “The problem is: This stuff is hard to do,” says Fenton. “What we have to do is help leaders … understand their role, and advocates and residents support those leaders, whether they be elected officials or the head of the planning department or public works. … We have to help them all make the sorts of decisions that create the kind of system we’re talking about.”
Fenton’s visit is sponsored by the Healthcare Foundation of Greater Kansas City. Contact Thrive Allen County with any questions: 620-365-8128
