I went for a walk this morning on the Monon Trail and explored Carmel’s new Central Park for the first time. It’s a curious and somewhat schizophrenic beast. I say beast because, for the area, it’s pretty large at 160 acres. The schizophrenic bit results from perhaps trying to be too many things at once.
The park straddles the Monon Trail, the 15 mile greenway that stretches from downtown Indianapolis to the Northern end of Carmel. At its center is the Monon Center, a combination health club, community center, and aquatic park. West of the center are some natural wetlands, an artificial lagoon, walking trails, a board walk, and, despite the fact that the park is surrounded on three sides by roads, a road right through the middle of it! The only thing I can figure is that they really wanted to spend a lot of money to build a pretty bridge over the lagoon.
I guess it never occurred to them that they could have build a number of pedestrian bridges over the wetlands and lagoon for less. The end result of all these roads is that you can never really suspend disbelief that you are in an urban area, like you can in the real Central Park, because you are always within ear shot of traffic. The west side is pretty, but not very functional. The walk trails get use, but you don’t see people lounging or picnicing on the lawn like you do in many urban parks. This may have something to do with the fact that all of the maintained lawns are on a slope. They didn’t design the landscaping very well on the slopes, and some serious erosion has resulted.
The east side of the park is an abomination. Once again, the park is bisected by a road, and, since the park is narrower on this side, there is not really room on either side of the road for any other amenities. I’d say roughly 30 of those 160 acres are useless as result.
In the end, the Monon Center is a fabulous amenity, but the surrounding park could use some work.
Since my last post dealt with my interest in urban planning, I thought I’d share the first in a series of videos I found on YouTube that has influenced my thinking in this regard…enjoy:
Northern Light Productions has a pair of excellent documentaries on urban sprawl. The first covers Phoenix, and the second Cleveland. One is new, the other is old, and both experiencing similar problems. As sprawl expands in concentric rings around the city, the less desirable inner rings begin to decline. Additionally, the vast geographic area that the metropolitan area begins to cover results in a staggering growth in the cost of maintaining the infrastructure. They are excellent films. Occasionally replayed on the on the local PBS affiliate’s HD channel, they are highly recommended if you get a chance to see them. You can catch a preview here.
The Cleveland film, especially, hit home with me. Because, in many ways, Indy has seen a similar pattern. As the first ring of suburbs began to be supplanted by the second, first tier neighborhoods decline and commercial and retail flee to where the money is. The Eastgate and Glendale malls, which originally were a source of decline for downtown retail, are now either a shell of their former selves or closed completely. Now, as the third tier of suburbs are the growth centers, you see Washington square, which supplanted Eastgate, in decline. Meanwhile, the cost of upkeep on what is fast becoming 8 counties worth of rather sparsely populated, but urban infrastructure, has the citizens in near revolt over property taxes.
Until we begin to plan and manage our growth in a smarter direction, we will continue to reap what we sow.
