The gods of streets renaissance blogging are a little closer to San Diego

Welcome, Streetsblog LA. (Thanks to carfreeusa)

So how can we get someone in San Diego to write about planning for: streets as public places, carfree living, carfree transit, and proximity all the time like Streetsblog (NYC) and Damien Newton (LA)?

Here's the links for background on Damien and the LA Streetsblog:

• LA Streetsblog intro post
• Street Heat intro post (Damien's previous blog)
• The framing is key, and here's how the original Streets Renaissance project introduces itself:
  

Streets are more than just car corridors; they are valuable civic spaces, resources, which must be wisely allocated. The New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign is building the movement to re-imagine our streets as lively public places.

[no mention of "carfree" of course--so I've probably already spoiled this venue. The strategy seems to be: encourage people to re-imagine, re-design, while advocating & providing data for reducing car use and leave it at that.]

If anyone from WALKSanDiego or SDCBC wants to give this a shot, the SD/TJ Design, Plant, Harvest blog was meant to be a demo space for this kind of discourse, if not the actual thing.

Here's a proposal: that someone (WALKSD?) start a pedestrian advocacy email list allowing discussion of streets and an announcement of the kind of walking tours / audits / re-designs that it does.

Eventually, we can combine the efforts of WALKSD, SDCBC, and other groups such as SD Food Not Lawns which seek to transform our public spaces to be more life-enhancing, and come up with complete street redesigns and reconstructions. We can tear up the middle of vastly overpaved streets such as Streamview Dr (just one example of many), plant orchards and gardens, bike lanes, crosswalks, water-harvesting curb cuts, traffic-calming curb-extensions, and so on.

Does that sound like fun? We could continue this conversation at sdtjdph. SDCityRepair is another possibility-- I'd love it if someone with a bit more savvy and leadership experience would take this up.

We'll figure this out eventually!