Neighborhood fix: Teens take DIY tactics to the streets
Patricia Borns
It was just a short walk with a bunch of teens on a Saturday morning, but Tyrell Davis, who grew up on these Fort Myers streets, had the feeling he was seeing them for the first time.
“I didn’t really notice how bad it was around here,” Davis said. “When you go across the bridge to Cape Coral, or to Naples, it looks really nice. We have to do better.”
As he and the others strung along Ford Street with clipboards and smart phones, they snapped pictures and jotted observations on an audit form:
Sidewalks? Cracked and non-existent. Street trees: zero. Crosswalks? Hardly.
After the audit, they’ll come back and fix these problems; doing what years of traditional planning hasn’t accomplished, for hundreds of dollars instead of millions.
Taking it to the streets
Variously called DIY urbanism or tactical urbanism, the fix is a quick, temporary demonstration that can lead to permanent change, says Davis’ local DIY mentor, Ann Pierce.
“When people are tired of cities moving slowly, it’s a pop-up intervention that shows what’s possible,” Pierce said, leading the way like a pied piper. “Some are done with permission, but others just turn up overnight, like astro turf and tables and chairs in a parking space.”
A driving force behind BikeWalkLee, Pierce put out the idea to people at Dunbar High School and Quality Life Center, both located in the neighborhood; and to City of Fort Myers’ Chief of Staff John Talmage, so the kids would have access to city engineering staff, and the staff could appreciate what they're doing.
"As an old city, we've been playing catch up replacing infrastructure. There's always more we could do," said Talmage, who welcomed the effort.
In fact, "city hacking," as it's also called, has mushroomed into an informal worldwide movement of people-powered solutions for urban blight. New York City’s Times Square gave the mother of all demonstrations 10 years ago when masses of people took to lawn chairs in the normally gridlocked streets. Today’s square enjoys a pedestrian-only plaza.
Start small, think big
“Pull up your intersection page,” Pierce said as the team, which includes Dunbar High engineering students, approached the Fort Myers intersection of Ford and Lincoln streets.
The spot is a perfect DIY intervention because it's problems are bite-sized but the payback for the fix could be huge.
“Is this the first shade we’ve come to since we left the elementary school?” Pierce said as she stood in the shadow of a tree branch. “Have you seen any benches? Can you imagine your grandparents walking here?”
Although it looks “bad, bad, bad,” said Davis, DIY’s goal is to show people how much better it can be. In this case, more people would stop at the businesses. About 500 kids from the nearby elementary school could walk the two blocks to a local community center instead of being bused because it’s unsafe.
“There’s a fairly used market here,” Juliano Ruano, a junior in the engineering program, said as he pointed to a peach-colored store where he’d just observed a car pass within a couple of inches of an oncoming biker. “There’s no bike lanes and no cross walks at this point."
Ford Street, they saw, is about trucks and cars instead of people. But the intersection had potential. Besides the corner store, the team noted a restaurant a block away; likewise, homes and churches, an elementary school, a community center and a community park.
“Those are attractions. People want to go from one of those places to another,” Pierce said.
Planners consider it the ideal urban environment when you can walk to a variety of “mixed uses.” The neighborhood has all the basic ingredients to achieve that Holy Grail. DIY helps others see it.
Just add people
Thanks to GHD, a development services firm with a Fort Myers office, the team will have professionals helping them design their remedy to code, making it that much easier for the city to adopt their ideas.
But a DIY intervention doesn’t require experts. Pierce is a Fort Myers resident. Dunbar High engineering teacher Janna Ion majored in electrical rather than civil engineering. Another mentor, Katrina Shanks, leads teen programming at Quality Life Center.
Streets Alive of SWFL, a non-profit dedicated to livable communities, hosted the audit with a grant from AARP.
On the cheap
The fix will cost peanuts.
Supposing the team wants a cross walk at the intersection: a couple of buckets of yellow paint (removable), rollers, roller covers, paint trays and painter’s tape costs less than $200.
How could they make a sidewalk on the east side of Ford when there’s currently a deep drainage canal there?
Wooden skids can be fashioned into a DIY board walk to demonstrate a solution found in other cities from Atlanta to Sarasota, Pierce said.
Change happens overnight, literally
The magic of DIY urbanism, the transformation, is a form of performance art.
In a few months, 40 to 50 volunteers will get up at dawn and retrofit the streetscape. The public will be invited to come and see. If the new DIY intersection works and people like it, city leaders and staff could be moved to make a real change.
“The students got so interested, they’d like to make their high school part of another audit,” Pierce said. Dunbar High is near the intersection of Veronica Shoemaker Boulevard and Edison Avenue: a nightmarish stretch wider than an interstate highway with industrial trucks hurtling by at break-neck speed.
Yes, you can try this at home
When something bothers us about our environment, it’s often easier to tune it out. Formal city meetings are long and tedious for busy people. DIY is creative and fun, even when, as also happens, the project doesn’t get long-term results.
If you’d like to give it a try, start with picking a place to walk and observing it. Pierce suggests making your own audit form: Google ‘walking audit forms’ and pick the best questions from each.
See a free DIY guide by the Street Plans Collaborative
Invite your friends. Walk and observe. Then put your heads together.
Let your imaginations soar.
Follow this reporter on Twitter @PatriciaBorns.