Just a brief continuation of yesterday's entry. One point I was trying to make is that a city should not give itself over entirely to cars and the kind of lifestyle they encourage: individuals and families as isolated, self-absorbed units, people rushing here and there to make money or to spend it. A city should open itself to the twenty-year-old wanderer, the defenseless and curious young child, the old men playing chess on a park bench. In other words, city planners have to create spaces for sloth, for idleness. For dreaming. For wandering.
Paris, France cannot be held up as a model green city by any means; and yet...Bertrand Delanoë, the current mayor, seems to understand the importance of incorporating idleness into the city plan. He created Paris Plage, a summertime beach installed right on the banks of the Seine with temporary sand; he designated bus-only lanes on the more popular thoroughfares; and now Paris has Velo Libre, or "Vel Lib" for short--a fleet of perhaps several hundred bicycles available free of charge at various street corners throughout the city. Paris has always been an ideal city for people who like to wander and daydream in slow-motion, given its plethora of parks, gardens, benches and stairways, plazas, passages and lazy-afternoon cafes. But now it's an even better city for the bicyclist, the bus-taker and the Sunday sunbather.
Whenever a city's ecological proficiency is evaluated, people often forget to ask, "Are we having fun yet?" Delanoe seems to understand this. I'm not sure San Francisco's own city planners always remember how to incorporate fun into their projects.
No comments:
Post a Comment