Friday, April 13, 2007

Carbondale 2.0

When the Carbondale Times came out yesterday, its headline "Candidates Butt Heads" made me ask, "They ARE?" My impression is that, outside of a little negative campaigning, they are both pretty good people who mean the best for us. Nevertheless, they have failed to address what is to me one of the biggest issues, and that is that Carbondale does not have a city center, a place for people to collect and enjoy a nice day, outside and away from the noise of a highway.

Other cities have made places with a little park, fountain, brick pedestrian mall, large play structure for kids, etc., where on a nice day one can walk and enjoy the atmosphere. It seems like Carbondale's prettiest places are all right next to 13 or 51, and normal sounds like conversations are drowned out unless you go indoors. Maybe businesses resisted rerouting of the highway(s), because they wanted the area's traffic to go right past them. But the result has been bad for us, the people of the town, who now have no nice place to collect when the weather gets better.

There are a number of solutions to the problem- including moving one or more highways, developing the area by the old train station and Monroe Street, building sound barriers, or changing the placement of parking lots. The goal would be that some nice place is fixed up, pleasant to be in and sheltered from the noise of either highway- I'm sure we can do it. I haven't heard anyone say they would try.

I'm sure that headline will make it to Letterman- and that whoever wins the race will do fine in many ways. The title of the post, "2.0" comes from the Web where they are trying to envision the future as they want it...so I thought, we residents of Carbondale should do the same, and let people know what would really make this a better town. That's my first idea- though it may not be original- still, I'd like to see someone run with it.

Comments:
I agree with you.
 
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