to tell you the truth the principals I have learned as a planner and deemed o so necessary such as neighbor interaction I have not followed. The battle between introvert and extrovert sometimes comes down to my wife hiding the remote control and making a pot of coffee to take outside in our individual IKEA mugs to watch a rain storm from our porch. It just so happens that most of our neighbors were up to similar conquests. It seems that in the drought summers of Utah a rainstorm makes for better entertainment than the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Katie, my wife, pointed out that durring the wind portion of the storm our front yard tree had a major crack in a large limb overhanging the street. Our neighbors were having a dinner party and a couple of the guests unknowingly parked underneath the limb of danger. So in the pouring rain it was my duty as neighbor to make the trek into the downpour and inform the quests of the impending doom. Afterall it was a "damage doing" branch. In the short hour or so of sipping coffee my wife and I were able to not only save our neighbors the pain of insurance companies but were also able to yell weather related comments friendily to several other pourch dwelling neighbors.
The storm although quite contineous allowed for a few breaks of rainfall. Long enough anyway for us to look down the street to half a tree laying on a lawn and ontop of a pile of white sticks that used to be a picket fence. The immediate neighbors and the home owner were all out discussing mother nature's byproduct. The interesting thing was that the crowd kept growing and as we entered the fray to offer condolences the crowd did have the same characteristics of a funeral precession. As we moved in to strike up a generic conversation another couple found their escape route having now been the longest participants in the gettogether.
Maybe the sunny days here in Utah are somewhat of a blessing and a curse. On this rainy day at least I was able to be more engaged in my community than all the sunny days combined. Sad but true. The lot sizes in my neighborhood are quite small, among the smallest in SLC. Living in the 9th and 9th area has its perks but also having seen the gathering of people around a downed tree screamed to me that on a block of homes there in no shared space, porches without a topic of conversation, a lot of built up community spirit that spills over onto joggers passing by at speeds far too fast for little more than a smile or hello. The blocks are so big that I wonder if the same tactics of breaking up our large city blocks could be implimented to achieve the same interest and influx of the casual? Midblock alleyways could be commissioned and or run by the neighborhood. These midblock alleys could provide attractive covered seating and along the street and provide a sort of sounding board to the people in the porches. Making these interactive with organic elements and embodying it with a small culture would indeed be an asset to interaction and a cup-o-joe.
The storm although quite contineous allowed for a few breaks of rainfall. Long enough anyway for us to look down the street to half a tree laying on a lawn and ontop of a pile of white sticks that used to be a picket fence. The immediate neighbors and the home owner were all out discussing mother nature's byproduct. The interesting thing was that the crowd kept growing and as we entered the fray to offer condolences the crowd did have the same characteristics of a funeral precession. As we moved in to strike up a generic conversation another couple found their escape route having now been the longest participants in the gettogether.
Maybe the sunny days here in Utah are somewhat of a blessing and a curse. On this rainy day at least I was able to be more engaged in my community than all the sunny days combined. Sad but true. The lot sizes in my neighborhood are quite small, among the smallest in SLC. Living in the 9th and 9th area has its perks but also having seen the gathering of people around a downed tree screamed to me that on a block of homes there in no shared space, porches without a topic of conversation, a lot of built up community spirit that spills over onto joggers passing by at speeds far too fast for little more than a smile or hello. The blocks are so big that I wonder if the same tactics of breaking up our large city blocks could be implimented to achieve the same interest and influx of the casual? Midblock alleyways could be commissioned and or run by the neighborhood. These midblock alleys could provide attractive covered seating and along the street and provide a sort of sounding board to the people in the porches. Making these interactive with organic elements and embodying it with a small culture would indeed be an asset to interaction and a cup-o-joe.
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