Neighborhood Design, Circulation, Greenways etc...

I have always had lively and spirited with our Police Department concerning the creation of subdivisions and the pedestrian/bicycle connections. In a police world, these types of connections are escape paths for criminals, while in are world they are useful methods to encourage non-auto trips. So, we have such a conflict into whether or not we are going to have such connections because the police officers are not likely to want to get out of their cars if they would ever have to chase someone on foot. It's a rather interesting proposition because while there is limited crime and I can argue that point, in my town everyone is tied to their cars, so there is limited action in pedestrian connections. So, it really ends up being the preference of the developer as to what they want. Who knows, maybe we will get some progress on this issue if we can just find interesting places for pedestrians to go to that don't require a trip in the car.

We have an interesting issue in Greenfield where we are completely surrounded by agricultural land. Therefore, we require buffers between the fields and the developed areas that usually take the form of drainage ponds, parking areas, or other non-descript areas. Then one developer thought of the interesting idea of actually turn the buffer zone into a greenway. It looks great and is interesting, however not many choose to use it. The problem is that it doesn't go anywhere, it is just a walking path to nowhere on both sides. At least put something there that is of interest, and maybe it can be seen as useful. Sometimes I wonder if anyone cared about planning in this town. Now of course that I am here, no one wants to build anything given the slumping economy so we will still wait for a while until we get a chance to correct all of these problems by building better places.