TRANSPORTATION AND DOWNTOWN BAKERSFIELD

Transportation has always posed problems for downtown - and that was just as true if the conveyance was a horse-drawn tram, elevated train, or even subway - but the automobile was different. The mobility it offered made downtown an option for the middle class, not a necessity.

In the 19th century, that every city had to have a downtown, it was inevitable and desirable. This balance between the concentration of businesses and the dispersal of residences, are assumptions that nobody questioned in the late 19th century.

Unfortunately most American Cities followed the surveyor’s grid of mile squares. Bakersfield subdivided this grid into smaller squares to give us “city blocks.” Unfortunately the dimensions of the parking spaces in structures just do not quite fit well enough into these blocks. Our city is unlike Boston’s that follows the curves and twists of 18th-century pathways.

It's very hard to live in a good downtown community because that concept is what [University of Michigan historian] Bob Fishman calls, `the bourgeois utopia': It's a single-family home on a lot with nice trees and a lawn. Again we struggle to adapt the dimensions of parking cars in structures with apartments above for comfortable living. More than that we battle with the complexities of creating more parks and open spaces for people to enjoy in downtowns. The other things such as neighborhood shopping are also somewhat missing.

Bakerfieldians would be happy to live in downtown if they could somehow find a way to live in that single-family house on that quarter acre and raise their kids there! When that becomes increasingly difficult, and at present is impossible because of the nature of downtown, they move out into the suburbs.

Almost all my colleagues in the architectural, planning and engineering disciplines are involved in solving problems, offering solutions, and designing stuff. What is missing is the receptacle of downtown does not offer incentives comparable to suburbia that balances or surpasses the needs of living in the suburbs.

The density and intensity of living on the one hand needs to be explored against the balance of elements that will provide for a gracious civil interface of people. Is not walking together a little more safe than commuting by car daily much like lemmings into clouded dirty air!

Resolving the transportation problems downtown for both pedestrian and vehicles is the first mark to forwarding a better environment for people who might choose to live there.

BY Graham Kaye-Eddie – Master Urban Designer.

Makabusi Inc. – Bakersfield – California

Email – makabusi@pacbell.net

Atomic Energy

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The following headings were found in the WSJ on the 14TH NOVEMBER 2001

Canada’s Bombardier said it’s rail equipment division willclose two manufacturing plants in Germany next year and a service center in Britain, and will convert two European manufacturing plants to service facilites. Most employees will be offered alternative jobs. Bombardier said the changes are the result of an analysis on it’s European facilites following the acquisition of Germany’s Adtranz in May.

This is not a good indication of a healthy RAIL Industry.

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E.P.A. Reconsiders Human Tests of Pesticides

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