Open Space Town Hall (10. November 2007, 12:47 by Whitney) ~ Speak Up for Open Space
The Pierce County Council wants to hear about how to protect farmland and open space during a town hall meeting next Thursday.
County Councilmembers Tim Farrell (District 4) and Calvin Goings (District 2) will host the forum. Public feedback is needed to help identify worthwhile open spaces and critical habitat ideal for preservation.
“Our urban open spaces are disappearing as we speak,” Farrell said.
The council is considering a proposal that would preserve open space by allowing the county to purchase the development rights to two types of land over the next two decades — rural farmland and urban open space. In rural areas, county funds could be used to purchase the development rights to farmland to ensure it is not converted to non-farm uses; in urban settings, the county could acquire creek ravines and other open parcels that are in danger of being developed.
When and Where
Thursday, Nov. 15, 6:30 pm
Snake Lake Nature Center, 1919 S. Tyler St.
Commenting Is Closed
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Open spaces are an interesting topic. One that Tacoma needs to do much better at. Downtown Tacoma has a number of “open spaces” which are designed poorly and dysfunctional.
Here’s a lively quote from Jane Jacobs : Death and Life of Great American Cities which was the recommended summer reading for Exit 133. Jacobs gives this perspective on open spaces:
In orthodox city planning, neighborhood open spaces are venerated in an amazingly uncritical fashion, much as savages venerate magical fetishes. Ask a houser how his planned neighborhood improves on the old city and he will cite, as a self-evident virtue, More Open Space. Ask a zoner about the improvements in progressive codes and he will cite, again as a self-evident virtue, their incentives toward leaving More Open Space. Walk with a planner through a dispirited neighborhood and though it be already scabby with deserted parks and tired landscaping festooned with old Kleenex, he will envision a future of More Open Space.
More Open Space for what? For muggings? For bleak vacuums between buildings? Or for ordinary people to use and enjoy? But people do not use city open space just because it is there and because city planners or designers wish they would.
But American cities today, under the illusions that open land is an automatic good and that quantity is equivalent to quality, are instead fritting away money on parks, laygrounds and project land-oozes too large, too frequent, too prefunctory, too ill-located, and hence too dull or too inconvenient.
City parks are not abstractions, or automatic repositories of virtue or uplift, any more than sidewals are abstractions…
Generalized parks can and do add great attraction to neighborhoods that people find attractive for a variety of uses.
page 110 – 111.
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