On Friday I posted a “guest column” from Meg Niederhofer, who for many years was GNV’s City Arborist.
That’s not a position to be taken lightly. Gainesville’s tree canopy has been a point of civic pride since way before any of us were born. And defending our urban trees is only going to get tougher as GNV continues to grow.
And make no mistake. We take our trees seriously in this town. The term ‘tree huggers’ is considered neither derogatory nor exaggerated in GNV.
Meg’s immediate concern is over two Heritage Live Oaks on SE 1st Ave. across the street from the county administration building. The City has nailed yellow tags to the trees indicating that they must come down in order to conform to the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Sounds reasonable, right? If people with disabilities can’t navigate a sidewalk on a wheelchair or a walker or with crutches because of a couple of obstructing trees….well, then, the trees must go.
So I went downtown and had a look. And sure enough, there is precious little pedestrian space on the sidewalk where those two trees live. In some spots there is less than three feet of walkable space on that sidewalk.
But wait a minute.
If you spend more than about 30 seconds pondering the problem of Americans with disabilities navigating SE 1st Ave., you find yourself asking: What’s really obstructing walkability on that street?
Here’s a hint. It’s not two trees.
If human beings who have not encased themselves in steel cocoons are afforded only two or three feet of space in which to, um, mobilize…
…then what earthly concept of mobility equity justifies reserving so many parking slots that, by my admittedly rough estimate, stretch out for a dozen feet?
In other words, on that street alone the space given over to storing metal boxes is four times the space allowed walking Americans with or without disabilities.
Nobody asked me. But if anybody did, I’d say the square footage of downtown space we allot to people vs. the square footage of space we reserve for cars is wildly out of proportion…
…for a city that, ostensibly, aspires to have a ‘walkable’ downtown.
Let’s not kid ourselves, GNV.
In our autoAmerican culture we have so marginalized the public space we (grudgingly) given over to people who want to get from here to there on foot…
…that we have created a wide and deep auto-abyss in the public realm.
Call it the autoAmerican tragedy of the commons.
Still, those two downtown trees have got to go, right? They are clearly an obstruction to Americans with disabilities.
God forbid we should…oh, I dunno…reduce the space given over to metal box storage, widen the sidewalk…and leave those trees alone.
Apropos of nothing at all. The City just conducted a survey designed “to help shape the future of downtown parking!” This is the graphic that accompanied the press release announcing the survey.
Twenty parking slots. Two trees. That looks about right.
FreeGNV 