Hollister had a visit last week from a nationally known advocate
for walkable communities, and he stressed during the speech to
local leaders and citizens that this area has the
”
bones
”
to thrive as a more environmentally friendly city.
Hollister had a visit last week from a nationally known advocate for walkable communities, and he stressed during the speech to local leaders and citizens that this area has the “bones” to thrive as a more environmentally friendly city.
Dan Burden, co-founder of the Walkable and Livable Cities Institute in Washington State, spoke to a packed Hollister City Hall chambers last week. The event was sponsored by the Free Lance and Pinnacle newspapers, the Economic Development Corp. of San Benito County, the Community Foundation for San Benito County, and the city and county. Before the talk, he spent a couple days in the area and took tours of the city and county.
Burden, a former National Geographic photographer and Florida’s first bicycle and pedestrian coordinator several years back, noted to the crowd how he is on the road most of the time doing speaking engagements and that he is home about 20 days a year. But he rarely has the chance for an introduction to a community like he had in Hollister.
He said there are a lot of cities in American that will make it, but also a lot that won’t.
“You’ve got the right bones,” Burden said, “the patterns, the history, the culture, the place.”
Burden throughout the speech, which included dozens of photos on a projector, emphasized building cities that are focused on people, not on traffic. He made several mentions of the country’s dependence on a decreasing supply of oil – “It doesn’t matter how many wars we fight,” he said – and how smaller towns that prepare for more walkable communities will succeed.
Burden used many examples from other cities, both positive and negative. He showed a photo of Friday Harbor in Washington, a crossing where streams of people had been walking, and called it that community’s “100 percent location” where everybody “goes to see and to be seen by others.”
As for Hollister, he noted its apparent absence. “Perhaps you know where it is and I just didn’t have enough time to find it myself.”
He mentioned some other flaws here such as what he described as “overbuilt roads” – he pointed to the new bypass in particular – and also posted a photo of a residential neighborhood in Hollister and underscored the obvious, there being no sidewalks for pedestrians. In general, Burden said poor pedestrian planning means a community is under-serving about one-third of its population.
“This is stupid,” he said, an adjective reiterated a few times during the talk. “You have a wonderful setting for color and pageantry, but you’ve got bad neighborhoods where nobody can really walk unless they’re in the prime of their life and quick to jump.”
See the full story in the Pinnacle.
