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Could we liven up Northwest Washington? Here’s one idea:
The residential areas of northwest Washington are divided by a strange street system. Cutting across the familiar American grid are diagonal avenues, usually named after American states. Some of these avenues are zoned for commercial uses along at least part of their length, and are lined with shops and restaurants. Most of them are not. And because they cut across the grid at angles, they end up creating triangular plots, too small for parks, too oddly shaped for building lots.
Result: While many neighborhoods are moderately densely inhabited, the combination of zoning rules and the street pattern leaves much of northwest devoid of cute cafes, shops, and services, but crowded with a host of not-so-cute, not-so-practical triangular patches of grass inconveniently situated in the middle of streets and intersections.
If this were Paris, or perhaps even New York, these numerous plots of grass would have been transformed into streetside cafes or shops where passing commuters or at-home moms could enjoy a coffee, buy a newspaper, or drop their dry cleaning. As is, they mostly serve as open-air dog toilets.
This café, located in the Parisian Latin Quarter is not on a sprawling avenue, but rather, situated on a metropolitan island in between two one-way streets – an island not unlike the many grassy patches to be found scattered around the busy intersections of northwest Washington, D.C.
Washington’s zoning theory would deem this cafe a nuisance or a blight. Does it look like a nuisance? Wouldn’t it be interesting if Washington City Council would authorize an experimental cafe or shop or two on one or another of the blank urban triangles of Washington’s Ward Three?
I understand you loved Paris. But why must you convert an American city into a faux Paris? You’re back, put Paris behind you, and discover what is unique, not what is missing, in the city where you are now. I’d much rather read an essay that lists the marvels of DC that no one else has uncovered than all the things you miss from your experience abroad. The former would take more work and serious leg work than writing easy criticisms of what is obvious to all; and what American city wouldn’t pale next to Paris? Take the advice of Sonny Boy Williamson who sang: “Take it like you find it, or leave it like it is.”
You’d be better off critiquing real problems with Washington DC as opposed to superficial issues. Perhaps more subway lines to under served areas, a lack of a particular type of cuisine, a lack of nightlife and so forth. But I must question why this article is on a political website? It seems to go counter to the mission of the website in general (unless you can blame Obama for it).
Rabiner: But I must question why this article is on a political website?
How to revitalize a major American city is a perfectly valid topic for a political blog.
And we don’t have to choose between more subway lines and more sidewalk cafes.
I would point out that in New York City where I was born, Broadway cuts diagonally across the Manhattan street grid, and New Utrecht Avenue cuts diagonally across the Brooklyn street grid. Both produce oddly-shaped blocks shaped like trapezoids and triangles; yet that hasn’t resulted in any of that real estate going unused.
The famous Flatiron Building was constructed on one such block.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatiron_Building
Many buildings have been constructed on the triangular parcels of land abutting New Utrecht Avenue.
http://www.brooklyn.com/streetview.php?40.6262646&-73.996968
So if those triangular shaped parcels of land in Washington DC go unused, it’s because of zoning restrictions, not because businesses and architects couldn’t find something useful to do with them.
I like the triangle photographs.
I kind of like Washington DC being a cultural and economic ghost town. Too many countries are dominated by their capitals, which are not only their political headquarters, but also their leading cities for business, manufacturing, academia, sports, arts (fashion, film, music, TV), journalism, population, etc. etc. It all leads to a hubristic centralization, especially in the political culture. The more DC is looked down on by the literati as a boring, one “industry” town, Hollywood for ugly people, deserted at night because everyone’s home in the suburbs, the better – it helps, on the margin, keep government smaller and the rest of us freer than would otherwise be the case.
Matthew Yglesias » Paris: Denser Than You Think // Jul 1, 2010 at 8:32 am
[...] week I tweeted a link to Rachel Ryan’s article on DC’s plethora of small unprogrammed triangle parks, which she compared unfavorably to Paris’s habit of parking cafes and the like on spaces [...]