Growing Indoor Children In The Summertime

Here we are in the middle of summer - and I mean right in the middle of summer - and the kids are going back to school. Some of them got out a few weeks before summer began but all will be going back well before it ends. Even the “unofficial” end of summer, Labor Day, is three weeks from the real end of the season.

Summertime, as a kid, for me was a whirlwind stream of activities either in the park across the street or biking to other parks for events and, eventually, explorations out into the then suburbs. I often tell people that I grew up not on a street or in a certain house, but I grew up in the park, specifically Woodland Park.

I crossed Woodland Park twice every day while attending elementary school and most days four times, since they allowed us to go home for lunch. I can probably count on both hands the number of times that I ate Maxwell cafeteria food.

But summertime was a time for spending all of our available hours doing something with the other kids in the park, be they friends from school or not. After a morning playing games and waiting for the activities directors to show up, we would run home for lunch, then run back for the afternoon's events. Dad had to round us up for dinner and again after the lights went out at the ball field to usher us home to bed.

I don't see that these days and I can pretty well guarantee that you don't either. The days of “free range” kids is well over. On the streets full of single family houses which make up a large percentage of our city, one rarely sees anything but indications of children “living” there. Walk by on a warm summer morning and the birds will be making more noise than the kids – quite different from when I grew up.

When many households consist of 1-2 working adults and youngsters requiring day care, there will be little in any daytime activity. Simply put, our suburbs are pretty much empty during the day.

Daycare, now there is a strange bird. Daycare now has to sell themselves as “pre-schools” with many parents, since they are supplying the early instructions that family members used to demonstrate for free. Daycare now has secluded, fenced play areas, rarely exceeding a few thousand square feet when 20 acres seemed small to me. Outdoor activities at daycare may average less than 3 hours a day, depending on weather.

Is it any surprise that compared to the 1970s, children now spend 50 percent less time in unstructured outdoor activities? And the '70s were not the '50s of my youth. The average early teen, 10 to 16 now spends only 12.6 minutes per day in vigorous physical activity. If it were not for the soccer moms and the little league parents or the pee-wee football and basketball camps, that would be much less.

All of the blame cannot be placed at the doorstep of day care. Although 40 % of the kids in a British study (I don't think that they are that different from American kids) stated they would like to play outside more often, it was the parents who simply didn't allow it. Fear of traffic and a fear of abductions by strangers were the top two reasons given.

Can traffic be so bad as to fear the random careening auto sailing through your front yard? Is not one of the common complaints about our suburbs that cul-de-sacs and limited connecting streets are so prominent? Would it not be one of your neighbors who was driving so erratically? As for the abductions, statically those are done by non-strangers though it does happen it is rare.

Frankly, all of us kids roaming the neighborhood and playing in the park back in my day were being watched by many eyes, without our knowledge. With so many stay-at-home moms and the older couples moving throughout the area, there was little that we could do that did not get home before we did. Empty houses and neighbors who are little more than nodding acquaintances cannot do the same quality job.

When did it become necessary to be so absolutely certain of our child's safety that we limit their opportunities to practice the decision making skills that we should be teaching them? Could it be that we are NOT teaching those skills? Could it be that we are not confident in our teaching abilities?

I have heard it said that parents will structure their child's time so as to incorporate themselves into the child's life. The child needs transportation and support. Television programing and commercials add to the myth by showing the child playing one on one with the parent and not with neighborhood kids. What happened to the TV shows of old like “Dennis the Menace” and “Leave it to Beaver” or the cartoons of “Peanuts” and “Fat Albert”? Teaching, supportive adults / parents and the kids played outside.

“Neighborhood” Options

I kind of wish that I had written this.

There are a handful of ways in which you can tell FILL IN THE BLANK is still just a small town on the cusp of being a big city. Restaurants that close at 9 p.m. and don’t open on Sundays is one. Another is the attitude many FILL IN THE BLANK'S RESIDENTS have toward parking.

Parking has been a constant topic of discussion – and outrage for some – lately. Neighbors seem to spring into action over the idea of a café or bar around the corner, lamenting that they don’t want cars parked on their streets. Others think the City of FILL IN THE BLANK should provide free parking downtown and in destination areas like FILL IN THE LOCATION . I think everyone should just get over it.

FILL IN THE BLANK is a developing city thanks to the unique personalities and businesses that are already here (and have been developing here for decades) and to the encouragement of the state and local government. People like FILL IN THE BLANK for its weather, its local businesses and its quirkiness. People moving to this city are helping improve this city.

I find in this writer a somewhat kindred spirit. Someone who feels about cities in the same way that I do. Reading farther, it just gets better.

She talks about the new and exciting restaurants which have opened and the many recent arrivals who are bringing increased vibrancy to her city's scene. And who can leave out the rise of the creative classes which throng to exciting places.

I think that she really strikes a chord when she says of the attitudes of the established locals;

“I want to enjoy all FILL IN THE BLANK has to offer, but not within walking distance of my house.”

Is this not the attitude we see in the many comments against what some could call the natural evolution of a city? Apparently it is not just our city, because it is happening elsewhere. Many forms of NIMBYism are alive and well all across America.

A vibrant, diverse and creative city doesn’t have a single “business district” – that model of city planning, where a large central business district is surrounded by housing developments, is a failed idea that creates car dependency, pockets of crime and overweight people.

Don't you just want to shout this from the top of the Lexington Financial Building (Big Blue, to a lot of us)? This wildly suburban attitude may be just the thing that is keeping us from reaching that next step up the city evolutionary ladder.

Multiple or distributed business districts can, and should be, more than extended shopping corridors along the primary thoroughfares leading onto or out of town and large commercial centers. It is the presence of these distributed business districts which helps to describe real neighborhoods. In order for non-residential uses to consider anything other than the extended corridors or centers, the impact of traffic and parking is always discussed, - no argued.

Increasing levels of traffic are indicators of the vitality of an area but are usually also looked at as markers to the diminished safety of a residential section. I choose to believe that the quietest streets are not always the safest and not all traffic activity is vehicular. A cul-de-sac far from a commercial district can be as lonely as living on the moon.

Parking, on the other hand, really only becomes a major headache when the activity or retail endeavor has to draw clientele from more that a comfortable walking distance. Unfortunately for many people, that comfortable distance is growing shorter every year. Turns out people are not very good at conceiving of the distances they walk with any accuracy, according to Kevin Krizek, a planning and civil engineering professor at the University of Colorado. An evening walk to the corner pub or bistro-like dining is something our suburbanites may never know.

A solution to the traffic and parking questions could, or I think should, be more “neighborhood” options. The more “neighborhood” options in an area, away from major, busy traffic corridors, the greater likelihood of people living within that “comfortable distance” of those multiple options to ditch automobile and walk. Voila, cleaner air, healthier people and a more vibrant neighborhood and city.

Some of us are old enough to remember when there were more of these “neighborhood” options and they were located in a somewhat organic manner. They did seem to just grow there, “naturally”, neither forced nor constrained.

Did the strong survive? Did the survivors adapt? Both are good evolution questions but the real question is: Why have more of them not sprouted in our newer neighborhoods? That would take us back to the topics of traffic and parking. While the older “neighborhood” options got along without one or the other, any new ones will be required to have both. Maybe these could be classified as a GMO strain of local retail, but they have definitely been rejected.

So, does anyone recognize the city about which my kindred spirit writes? It surprised me to see that it is also a State University city with many college students. It is a center of politics and economics and if you would like to read more of her work, Stephanie Myers can tell you all about Getting Around the city of Austin, Texas.

Downtown Jeopardy

I'll have “Random Dates in Lexington History” for $200, Alex.

And the answer is, September 10, 1950.

What was the day when we got most of our one-way streets?

Correct. That was the day when, at least, six of the downtown streets were converted to one-way and new parking limitations for autos and trucks set in place. Today, many of the parking rules and loading zones are vastly different, but all but a few of the changed one-way streets are still with us.

One-way streets are a hot topic these days and I doubt if it is due to the changes made back those 61 years ago. Downtown traffic has always been a sore point and especially since the introduction of the automobile. Even in the horse drawn buggy and wagons era there were traffic problems. The conversation today is about slowing down the traffic which moves through downtown rather than just getting to and from downtown.

Is it not odd that the morning rush hour traffic which flows well on the two-way radial spokes of Richmond, Winchester/Midland, Tates Creek or Leestown roads need the one-way uses of Main and Vine to get to where they are going? During off-peak times are all of the vehicles solely trying to get to the other side of town since many feel that downtown is not a destination?

The 40 year experiment with one-way traffic on Main & Vine, the pattern which many now believe that we cannot do without, may be a factor in the oft referred decline of downtown and its bland atmosphere of rapidly moving traffic and lack of pedestrians. The nice thing about experiments like this is that the can be reversed.

Take the example of East Short St from around the turn of the last century. The section from Limestone to Walnut (now Martin Luther King...) was made one-way. In the winter of 1926 a delegation of Short street property owners petitioned for a repeal of that change and it returned to a two-way street. Due to the narrowness of the roadway where it passed the county jail, parking was prohibited for its full length. Twenty-four years later, during the changes of 1950, Short St was made one-way from Georgetown St to Deweese.

What has surprised me most in doing research for this is the Limestone, then U.S. 27, was still two-way and the oddest change was for Mill and Upper Streets to assume part of that traffic as it passed through town. Upper St was a southbound one-way at that point but not a part of the national highway system and Mill St (or portions of it) was northbound one-way.

Under the 1950 change, Upper became northbound and Mill became southbound. U.S. 27 traffic was diverted from North Broadway at Third and apparently used Upper and Mill to connect with Bolivar, from which one used Upper St to proceed south to Limestone and Nicholasville Rd. This only last a few short years, since, as a pre-teen, I remember Limestone and Upper as the exist today.

From the map accompanying the newspaper article, the old version of Vine St was changed to one-way from Broadway to Kentucky Ave. though I have no recollection of that at all

The plan of 1950 shows the westbound changes to Second St for both of its East and West portions and Church street for its entire length, along with Corral from Deweese to Midland.

That leaves High and Maxwell Streets which became the one-way pair as we know them today. As I have always known them from my days attending Maxwell School. I don't think that I have ever heard anyone suggest that it be any different. I do believe that if it is reverted to two-way, then any parking on them anywhere would have to be eliminated.

What will this new, nearly half million dollar study determine for our downtown streets? Will two-way streets add the necessary vitality to the streetscape? Will this be another wasted attempt at “bringing downtown back” which so many suburbanites bemoan from the safety of their insulated subdivision communities.

Downtown will never “come back” and I thank God for that. We can make it better and not just from a traffic standpoint, and I thank a whole handful of folks for that. But making it better is not as simple as doing or undoing what may be “failed” experiments. It could be tweaking some things and wholesale makeovers on others, so we need to be thoughtful in how we proceed. Since they were looking at parking restrictions and loading zones/times as part of the traffic(auto and foot) problem, then maybe we should revisit them as well.