There goes the neighborhood, Part II: When a Name is More Powerful Than a Fence.

An unusually intense period at work reduced my blogging activity to a few uninspired posts these past few weeks, but at long last I can return to the second part of my study on the application of labels such as “neighborhoods” and “subdivisions” to sub-districts within a larger metropolitan area. In the first part, I focused on the moneyed Garden District in Baton Rouge, which, in a city which is dominated by automobile-driven development patterns, emerges as one of the city’s most successful walkable, urban neighborhoods.

I use the term “neighborhood” loosely, primarily because, as I elaborated in Part I, the difference between a “neighborhood” and a “subdivision” often parallels the implied understanding of the distinctions between urban and suburban. Neighborhoods are old, urban, and walkable; subdivisions are newer, suburban, and auto-driven. These gross generalizations unfairly sequester the old and the new into two disparate categories, and the former enjoys a far loftier position in the cultural pecking order than the latter. Virtually everyone living in a reasonably dense residential community would like to claim part of a neighborhood, and civic associations rarely if ever organize themselves as the Highland Park Subdivision Association, for example. They use the word “neighborhood” instead. A realtor is far more likely to promote a home as “being part of a community with a genuine neighborhood feel”, and Mister Rogers immortalized his miniature Pittsburgh with the opening song “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”. These examples may seem facile, but they demonstrate a prevailing aversion to “subdivisions” as anything beyond a clinical term; it is the developer-speak that refers to the initial reorganization of land title through the accrued sale of individually subdivided plats, derived from an initially significantly larger parcel. But a good subdivision almost always strives to shed its tedious image, away from a series of financial agreements into something apparently much more organic—conceived from the aims and values of the people living there, rather than the paper-pushing of a businessperson with eyes on the dollar signs. In short, subdivisions always try to mature into neighborhoods.

This is precisely what has happened with the Garden District in Baton Rouge. As I noted before, an address in this neighborhood ranks among the most prestigious in the metro. But the Garden District didn’t begin with such a distinct identity. In fact, it consists of several smaller districts, which today are on the National Register, but began as subdivisions platted out by a private realty company. The area shaded in red is Roseland Terrace, platted in 1911; the region in blue is Drehr Place, a subdivision platted in 1921, while the green rectangle to the south of the other two historic districts is Kleinert Terrace, founded just a few years after Drehr Place. Though the three developments are contiguous, they matured autonomously under these separate names for decades. The Garden District Civic Association relates its origins on the website. Essentially a rezoning hearing in 1976 for a house on the northern edge of Drehr Avenue drew an unexpectedly large number of residents in the vicinity. After learning about their shared interest in its future and well-being, several members decided to form a neighborhood organization. They agreed to bestow upon it the name “Garden District” because of the positive connotations it arose, recalling the prestigious New Orleans neighborhood 80 miles downriver. Within a few weeks, some of these neighborhood activists (many of whom live in the area to this day) had drafted by-laws and elected a president. Thus, the Garden District as a neighborhood name and its respective neighborhood association were born simultaneously. To this day, the Civic Association collects dues, publishes newsletters, runs the adopt-a-tree program for live oaks in common spaces, and maintains the signs and bollards it installed to demarcate the neighborhood’s entrance.
The original developers had conceived these three early subdivisions—Roseland Terrace, Drehr Place, and Kleinert Terrace—at slightly different time periods. But as they aged comfortably, their residents witnessed new development pushing considerably further to the north and east, and over time the architectural and socioeconomic similarities within the three early subdivisions became more widely visible. The eventual inception of a Civic Association was inevitable. It provided a forum for the transmission of the ideas and collective concerns that could reinforce the identity of a neighborhood. And through these regular meetings, the Association was able to bring to the table some of the technical specifications that the new Garden District was lacking—which, incidentally, happened to include the sort of “place-making” features that were increasingly prevalent in the subdivisions popping up in the outer suburbs. Essentially, the Garden District Civic Association—like so many others—has re-appropriated some of the initial roles of a developer. It clearly establishes cohesiveness to the neighborhood by simplifying the lines of communication. It also has implemented particular street and landscape improvements, which, in this day and age, would take place during the site planning stage, as a subdivision is getting off the ground.

By many standards, the neighborhood’s cohesiveness is patently visible (and no doubt was in 1976 as well). First, the array of housing types, while diverse, comes from a relatively uniform time period. The shared age of the housing mitigates the variety of styles and sizes. Secondly, the landscaping follows a certain basic pattern, emphasizing the tremendous tree canopy afforded by live oak trees, both in private property, and—in the wider streets—spaces throughout the broad, grassy medians. If the front yards cannot fit such an expansive tree, they will often host smaller indigenous species, such as the crepe myrtle. Thirdly, the three subdivisions share borders, proven by the three colored transparencies on the oft-referenced map.

Fourth, and perhaps the most important for the arguments featured in this half of the blog post, the three smaller subdivisions that make up the Garden District all share the same gridded street network. This shared network affords them a high level of interpenetrability among all the streets that make up the three, as well as—and this is critical—the surrounding neighborhoods. The strange brown shape shows the means of accessing the Roseland Terrace and Drehr Place involves nothing more than crossing an intersection. Even more critical is the purple demarcation on the map below: That thick purple line essentially separates the affluent sections of this part of Baton Rouge from the poor ones. I hate to make such broad distinctions on something as simple as a street map, but empirical evidence generally supports this. The Garden District occupies the northwestern most portion of a mostly upper-middle class part of town, but directly to the north and west of the neighborhood’s boundaries are considerably poorer districts. Particularly noticeable is the neighborhood west of 18th Street, where the housing more frequently looks like this: Simple, unadorned single shotgun houses with virtually no front yard and little foliage. Unlike in the Garden District, where cables are either buried or hidden behind back alleys, here they are out front along the streets and sidewalks. And the old commercial buildings along Government Street (the northern boundary to the Garden District) are generally vacant in the area to the west of the affluent neighborhood. Here is the vista at around 16th and Government: As Government Street continues toward the wealthier Garden District, the retail landscape is hardly top-tier for the metro, but it is considerably stronger than the virtual abandonment visible in the picture above.

In short, the Garden District—a general term for three old-money subdivisions in inner-city Baton Rouge—sits cheek-by-jowl with one of the poorer old neighborhoods, with not even a major arterial street or the stereotypical railroad track to separate them. For example, at the corner of 18th and Cherokee, on the edge of Roseland Terrace, one sees a typically immaculate house characteristic of the Garden District. And just a two blocks to the west, on 16th Street, the view below is not uncommon: In all likelihood, the neighborhood to the west of 18th street was not impoverished at the time Roseland Terrace was platted on the site of a former fairground racetrack. It was probably a working class or lower-middle class community. But by the time the Civic Association organized itself and bestowed the name Garden District to these three subdivisions, the fortunes on the two sides of 18th Street had diverged significantly. Forty years later, Old South Baton Rouge remains a largely low-income African American community, while the Garden District is mostly white and virtually devoid of poverty. In an era in which discriminatory redlining, fraudulent blockbusting, and publicly sanctioned segregation (once common in the South) are all illegal, how can two neighborhoods show such significant disparities, with the desirability of the Garden District remaining superlative despite sitting so close to such poverty? The Garden District Civic Association undoubtedly provides many of the answers. Aside from organizing a garden club to protect the live oaks, social committees to plan Christmas caroling and ice cream gatherings, or public relations to organize home tours, the Civic Association also has hired a separate security unit on top of the existing Baton Rouge Police Department. (Incidentally, the original Garden District of New Orleans, which sits almost as close to an even more impoverished neighborhood, also hires a plainly visible separate security force.) The association also allows homeowners who will be out of town for a lengthy amount of time to report their unoccupied home for extra monitoring during their absence.

Such actions are hardly unique among urban neighborhood associations, particularly those that are wealthy but remain close to considerably poorer areas. I by no means am attempting to portray the Garden District Civic Association nor the neighborhood’s residents as exclusive or prejudiced. They are reacting in a similar fashion as many other wealthy districts that rest squarely in high-crime cities, and the residents have clearly opted to buy into unity of activities as well as a shared sense of added security by remaining in the neighborhood instead of abandoning it to newer subdivisions out in the suburbs, where they would undoubtedly be far removed from inner-city privations and violence.

What is interesting about this is that, perhaps more powerfully than just signage and tree plantings, the Civic Association is helping to foster the unity an urban neighborhood needs, quite possibly as a compensatory gesture for the fact that its street configuration cannot exclude strangers in any other way. Compare the street grid from the color-coded maps above to the one below, several miles away on Highland Road, one of the wealthiest suburban districts within Baton Rouge city limits: Most of the housing around here post-dates the 1960s. Street designers for these subdivisions/neighborhoods have all but abandoned the old grid for a hierarchical design, in which most of the streets terminate in cul-de-sacs. Each individual development usually has only one or two means of ingress, as opposed to the Garden District, which has closer to twenty. The development pattern becomes even more pronounced a few miles further out on Highland Road. Here, in the last outskirts of the city and East Baton Rouge Parish, the housing typically post-dates the 1980s and is almost uniformly wealthy. The subdivisions are smaller and even less interconnected. Some of them are gated at the front.

Any elementary student of urban studies has caught on to this long ago; the average layperson can also recognize a change in street configuration from the old inner-city neighborhood and the modern subdivision. What is most striking is how urban neighborhoods have essentially had to co-opt certain features from suburban subdivisions—as well as duplicate basic city services—in order to preserve their desirability. The Garden District in Baton Rouge cannot build gates around every one of its entrances to keep the higher criminal activity at bay that residents might associate with the neighborhood to the west. Instead, the Civic Association must find ways to cultivate unity and inclusivity from within. It uses carrots like the neighborhood picnics, organized garage sales, decorative signage and lighting, and recommended arborists, electricians, or carpenters. It depends upon sticks as well, such as the additional security, stipulations for people who rent out part or all of their property, and a clear line of communication for reporting of city code violations, such as parking in the grass or sweeping debris into the street. Neighborhoods such as the Garden District will depend on a certain capacity to exclude on paper to compensate for the inability to exclude via physical barriers. One may consider this elitist or racist, but neighborhood associations are so prevalent in this day and age that they hardly single out certain segments of society—persons of all strata may find their neighborhood has one, rich or poor, white or black, urban or suburban.

The superficial stereotypes I listed in Part I of this blog post clearly placed neighborhoods into one categorical box and subdivisions into another. I did this ironically, because the old, venerable Garden District neighborhood originated from the subdivision of real estate that followed a similar pattern to the exurban subdivisions of today. Subdivisions and neighborhoods are little more than expressions of individual preferences; the line distinguishing them is impossibly blurry. The biggest difference, of course, is that the old urban subdivisions (which we are more likely to refer to as “neighborhoods”) typically depended upon rectilinear grids with an almost unlimited number of points of entry. Conversely, most contemporary neighborhoods (often referred to as “subdivisions” until they mature and develop something we like to call “character”) employ curvilinear cul-de-sacs that allow for a much clearer monitoring of who comes and goes—which nearly always happens by vehicle instead of by foot. One could argue, as many urbanists do, that the grid is more desirable because it offers a greater freedom of mobility. But the non-gridded subdivision emerged as a reaction to the characteristics that people found least appealing about the historic grid: namely, the ability to restrict who enters, whether it involves speeding cars that cut through or potential ne’er-do-wells from a neighboring community. The Garden District in Baton Rouge has undoubtedly attracted a certain type of resident that consciously eschews the suburban cul-de-sac, but such individuals often find themselves devoting more time and money to retain a certain level of security and privacy that almost everyone hopes to attain. The Civic Association has found a generally benign way of achieving this, keeping a gridded neighborhood safe and attractive as the majority of the population continues to surge toward cul-de-sacs ten miles down the road.

No surer sign of Texas envy.

Unfortunately job commitments continue to prevent me from devoting the time to assemble pictures and a credible analysis for the second half of my blog post on neighborhoods in Baton Rouge, but the end is in sight! In the meantime, I can at least briefly explore a topic which may already be widely known among the readers here, but it certainly seems to be common knowledge among the folks from the state who claim this as their own:


Yes, the Lone Star flag flies high in national prominence and proudly among Texans—no doubt they brandish it a bit more boldly than most states would; it is Texas, after all. But from almost any semiotic angle, it’s just a good flag. As I blogged about many months ago when looking at the Maryland flag (waved equally ostentatiously), the communicative properties of flags claims an area of study all its own, known as vexillology. And your average vexillologist would assert that the best flags possess some or all of the following features: simplicity of imagery; direct correlative meaning through colors and patterns; and a scarcity of text or direct illustrations. The Texas flag can claim all of these, and it has helped make the flag among the most memorable state flags in the nation.

But Texans have elevated theirs to an even higher status than most, if not all, other states. It is not uncommon for car dealerships to wave American flags, or even some other promotional flag. But where else besides Texas could one see a flag of this size? The one below (and in the first photo) sits along Interstate 45 at a car dealership slightly north of Galveston.

Equally striking is the absence of an American flag nearby on the dealership’s property. Such deference to a state—at the implied lack of recognition of the nation—would raise an eyebrow elsewhere in the country, but is a common sight in the Lone Star State. Equally routine is the flying of the flag on a separate pole as the US flag, but at the same height.

This image has fuelled the widespread myth that Texas, as a formerly independent nation, is the only one permitted by federal law to fly at the same height as the US flag. Not true. While federal codes do prescribe standards for the handling and display of state flags, they do encourage a variety of approaches beyond conveying that the state flag is superior. Such a notion would also carry an undeniable whiff of favoritism out of Washington DC, and lawyers may argue that preferential treatment for a single state would implicitly violate the Equal Protection Clause.

So maybe it does come down to vexillology to explain the pre-eminence of the Texas flag. The symbols are bold, spartan, and clearly evocative of Texas’ history as a briefly independent nation. The fact remains that Texan pride is only a small component, and the ease for conveying the messages implied by the flag helps it transcend all the lousy state flags out there. New Yorkers, Floridians, and Californians also claim sizable populations but their respective flags are hardly as wedded to the state identity. Maybe if Texas’ flag were as cluttered and unmemorable as that of New York, the state’s residents wouldn’t have it plastered across any feasible flat surface. But the fact remains that they do have this advantage (as do Maryland, and South Carolina, and New Mexico, and all the other places with unambiguously good flags) and when 25 million people can claim it as the banner for their state’s identity, it’s hard for people in the other 49 to overlook it.

Getting from A to B via Z(ig-zags).

I’m in the midst of a particularly intense period at work right now, and I have had literally no time to post. A computer slow-down at the moment is all that’s giving me a breather to squeeze a quick observation in. The second part of my dissection of the neighborhoods/subdivisions in Baton Rouge will have to wait until this crunch time ends—hopefully within a few days.

In the meantime, I offer a reflection on a topic of considerable interest to me—the engineering of spaces to accommodate the disabled. For the most part, the infrastructure that aids mobility for the vision-impaired or wheelchair-bound has blended in with the surroundings fairly effectively. Phone booths, rendered non-compliant with the 1990 Americans with Disabilities act, have become a rare sight—all we generally encounter today are pay phones poised on metal poles. (And how much longer will we even see those?) In a matter of years, audible “chirping” pedestrian crossing signals will be commonplace. Nearly all public restrooms serving a facility over a certain minimum size have at least one double-wide stall with support bars. Most fire alarms in buildings feature flashing lights for those who cannot hear. And the novelty of wheelchair access ramps has worn down, so chances are we don’t even notice them most of the time.

But not always.



This small college in West Virginia features a central foyer in its principal lecture hall, and the seating for the two large lecture rooms on either side is just as heavily sloped. As anyone who has been to West Virginia knows, it is a state of great topographic variety—the most consistently rugged core of Appalachia. It is not uncommon for the north side entrance to a structure to be at an entirely different grade from the south side. The slope upon which this building stands is unsurprising; the prevalence of the handicapped ramp is unsurpassed. Regardless of which side a person enters, it is the only thing that stands out.



Though the appearance of the building does not suggest it to be particularly old, I would venture a bet that it still predates the Americans with Disabilities Act—it is almost certainly a retrofit. I can think of no other reason why an architect would design a ramp (or why the University’s facilities planners would approve of it) so that it becomes the only means of negotiating a grade change. Clearly the slope is severe enough that this was the only way of integrating a usable handicapped ramp into the relatively limited space that still falls under maximum incline standards, but it is visual obstruction as well as a physical one for the 99% of people who would be perfectly content with using stairs. They have to use the ramp as well.

The problem at this school represents a strange inverse of the predicament I blogged about a few weeks ago at the Memphis Airport, in which the absence of ramps along a concourse means that stairs are the principal option for managing a grade change. Wheelchairs can negotiate through a neighboring elevator, but what about an emergency evacuation when elevators may be down? Ramps provide the best option. Meanwhile, here in West Virginia, the absence of stairs at the buildings primary arterial could cause far more congestion for the majority of students, who would otherwise use stairs to evacuate.

These dilemmas demonstrate more vividly the challenges of accommodating extreme situations, for which external constraints are often formidable. Is it reasonable to plan for highly unlikely evacuation scenarios? Clearly the introduction many decades ago of fire codes and mandatory exit signage suggests that the public has continuously respected alterations in building construction that favor as close to a universalizing of safety as possible. But the continued introduction of new safety mechanisms also proves that universal design—the closest means of articulating the goal—is an incremental process, and it perpetually pursues the metric for perfection (i.e., universality) that will continue to dwell out of reach of engineers and designers as new demands for safety and accessibility pose increasingly diverse constraints. As cynical as this may sound, imperfection is a fact of life and will always stimulate human ingenuity to strive for improvement. The humble little building in the above photos is part of a medical school, and no sensible physician would ever claim to go into the profession with the goal of curing all disease. An irritant for one person may be the anodyne for another; solutions to the built environment are no different.

There goes the neighborhood, Part I: Separating the Typologies.

I have long wondered what forces were at work that spurred the transition from using the term “neighborhood” to the more contemporary “subdivision” when referring to residential communities in metropolitan environments. One could easily rattle off some widely held assumptions that more often than not distinguish the two, and I’m bold enough to assert that many of my readers would probably agree with me. What is the difference between a neighborhood and a subdivision?

- Neighborhoods are older; subdivisions are new.
- Neighborhoods are urban; subdivisions are suburban.
- Neighborhoods support walking through high density in order to meet daily needs; subdivisions sprawl and require a car to get even a can of Coke.
- Neighborhoods are interconnected to the surrounding area through a grid; subdivisions tend to end in cul-de-sacs.
- Neighborhoods feature small lots and pocket parks; subdivisions offer abundant green in the form of huge private front and back yards.
- Neighborhoods use very subtle signage (if they have any at all); subdivisions announce their names loudly at the very entrance.
- Neighborhoods emphasize a community and shared experiences more than the private residence; subdivisions commodify the housing so that the buyer’s goal is the domicile filled with the most amenities.

All of the above points are obvious glittering generalities, and most of them have a tenor that tacitly sneers upon the subdivision. This line-in-the-sand dichotomy does not escape the radar of those who value urban living, many of whom are seeking something that fits the above rigid standards for a neighborhood. If it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi, somehow it isn’t a “real” neighborhood. Communities without an urban scale, old housing, or walkability far too often suffer the broad dismissal of lacking neighborhood-ness (and thus being a mere subdivision) by the lovers of cities. Meanwhile, those who live in the suburban developments that city-lovers deride often quietly avoid the “subdivision” appellation as well, as though it were a pejorative. People are far more likely to promote their community as a real neighborhood rather than a subdivision, and virtually no civic groups have referred to themselves as a “Subdivision Association”. The term carries a vague whiff of exurban blandness. In short, our cultural perceptions often cause us to infer that neighborhoods are to subdivisions what main streets are to strip malls.

Though it is easy to draw the conclusion that subdivisions and neighborhoods have different cultural backgrounds, it’s nearly impossible to learn where the semantic territory to one begins and the other ends. Could they essentially be the same, but with vaguely different connotations? An examination of one of Baton Rouge’s most prestigious districts/communities/enclaves—to pull a few more words from the lexicon—reveals how that terminology may evolve over time.


The city’s Garden District (subtly revealed to passers-by though the wooden sign) may be the one most closely associated with old money, even by this relatively young city’s standards. According to the neighborhood’s Civic Association, the area essentially began as three independent smaller residential developments dating initially from the 1910’s: Roseland Terrace (colored in red), Drehr Place (colored in blue), and Kleinert Terrace (colored in green).


Interestingly, the Civic Association refers to Roseland Terrace as Baton Rouge’s first subdivision, platted in 1911 by the Zadok Realty Company—at a time when it was largely perceived to be a risk because the property was too far out in the country, a little over a mile away from the city center. The developers clearly understood the market as they tailored it to a middle- and upper-middle class population, with a diversity of housing sizes and styles, generous planting of trees along the streets, concealed utility poles in the rear alleyways, and larger lots than was custom at the time (though still small by today’s standards).

Below is the most commonly visible architectural typology, the Louisiana bungalow:


Other homes in the area, lining the stately Park Boulevard, are a bit more grandiose, such as this one taking proud advantage of the visible corner:


The narrower residential streets often mix styles and sizes.


The broader streets routinely feature a wide median—or “neutral ground” in South Louisiana—lined with the regions archetypal tree, the broadly canopied live oak (apologies for the blurred quality):

The subdivision to the east, Drehr Place, features some particularly stately homes, among the most valuable residential real estate in all of Baton Rouge.



And then Kleinert Terrace echoes the street configuration, with its diligent intervals of live oaks in the neutral ground, stretching across to the front yards.


The truth is, all of these communities—introduced to the National Register over the past 30 years—began as the dreaded subdivision. Only as their identities fused through their proximity to downtown and shared affluence did they assume the name the Garden District, perhaps borrowed from the opulent counterpart in the neighboring city of New Orleans 70 miles to the southeast. By today’s standards, the Garden District is a neighborhood, but it was—like virtually every residential development for more than one family since codified land title began—a subdivision from a single large parcel, divided into much smaller lots during the platting and site planning process. Today the Garden District—comprised of Roseland Terrace, Drehr Place, and Kleinert Terrace—is one of Baton Rouge’s elite neighborhoods, but it followed more or less the same administrative proceedings as your average vinyl village in the exurbs.

So how did the Garden District elevate itself from a group of subdivisions into a neighborhood? Was it a conscious decision? I’m not sure it was, but it took several smaller evolutionary intervals to get there, some of which were quite conscious, including the very conspicuous name change. Those aspirational steps may illuminate the process by which this community adopted the characteristics that one stereotypically associates with a neighborhood, and it requires a far better understanding of the brand—the Garden District name—and its boundaries, both patently visible and undefined. Stay tuned for the cultural implications behind neighborhood naming in the second part.

Pioneering waterfronts: extending the Indianapolis Canal Walk.

Approaching the end of the month, the blog is due for another photo-centered post, and this one is particularly telling because images are about all there is to offer. An Indianapolis revitalization initiative announced in 2007 had two primary goals: 1) intended to introduce streetscape improvements to the Martin Luther King Drive; 2) it proposed an extension of the Central Canal Towpath, carrying it southward from its current terminus near Riverside Park down to 16th Street. While it is possible that the sour economy stalled the plan, more likely than not it was just incubating, as leaders from the Martin Luther King Business Revitalization Association and the Department of Metropolitan Development finalized details to the design. At any rate, press coverage was scant, and even the Indianapolis Business Journal archived article only seems to survive through a reference by a suburban Indianapolis mayoral candidate’s webpage.

At any rate, the two-part proposal involved spending $3.8 million in proceeds from a TIF (Tax-Increment Financing) district that had been accruing funds since its establishment in 1997 by then-Mayor Bart Peterson. The structuring differed from the usual TIF district in that revenue accrued before the planning of any clear revitalization initiative—in most cases, the redevelopment or reinvestment transpires within the district before the revenue has been collected. At its most basic, the fundamental nature of a TIF is that the anticipated increase in revenue from improved property values and commerce helps to pay off the bonds issued for the initial development. But the project explored under this TIF district has clearly experienced delays since the initial announcement. At long last, city officials broke ground earlier this spring on the MLK improvements , covering about 10 blocks in one of the most densely populated portions of the corridor, running through the heart of the United Northwest Association’s neighborhood. The map below illustrates the series of plans proposed for the area:



The area outlined in blue indicates the streetscape improvements for Martin Luther King Drive, currently underway. The area in green indicates the proposed extension of the Central Canal Towpath from its current terminus at 30th Street to its new location at 16th Street, for which little information regarding the proposed extension seems to be available. My focus, however, with this photo montage is on neither of the aforementioned proposals. Rather, I wanted to explore the unresolved lacuna that will remain, even after the Canal Towpath benefits from an extension southward from 30th to 16th. That is, I hoped to explore the no-man’s land between 16th street and the current terminus of the Indianapolis Canal Walk, at 11th Street. I’ve featured several blog posts in the past on the Canal Walk, for which I am not entirely complimentary, but I generally can at least appreciate that the 11th Street terminus at the recently restored Buggs Temple (to the center-right in the below photo) offers some decent vistas and a handsome waterfront hardscape.



But a satellite view of that same area circled in red shows the immense challenges facing any attempt to revitalize or beautify the stretch of the Canal from between 11th and 16th Streets.



In short, the Canal isn’t there. It has been undergrounded to make way for the spaghetti junction of exit ramps at the point where Interstate 65 curves from an east-west trajectory to resume its typical north-south path. My goal with the photos below is to show the northernmost end of the Canal Walk, at the 11th Street locks, pressing northward to reveal the urban environment which has supplanted much of this segment of the Canal. Let’s start at the locks, which at this point are more of a decorative feature signaling the end of the Canal Walk than an actual instrument for regulating water levels.



Crossing 11th Street to stand underneath the Clarian People Mover, the gates to the locks are visible in the background.



Pivoting from this position, I have tried to scan with the camera the path that the Central Canal should take as it negotiates 11th Street.



Then it would continue alongside the interstate ramp, in the grassy area with trees in the photo below.


The gentle swale here most likely captures the former path of the canal, though it is impossible for me to tell exactly where it crosses the high-speed entrance ramp onto Interstate 65, but the third photo below captures the approximate location.



At some point, the culvertized, underground canal crosses under those ramps, buried beneath a series of high-speed lanes that look like this:

And the grassy swale continues on the other side behind a chain link fence.

The following photos are visible while traveling along Martin Luther King Drive, and they form the back yard to some puzzling condos that I blogged about last year.



At this point, the swale—the only remnant of the Canal—is plainly visible.


The bridge that is visible in the final of the three above photos leads directly to the intersection of 16th Street and Martin Luther King Drive, which at this point will comprise the southern terminus of the Canal Towpath extension, whenever it is completed. Judging from the photos below, the intersection only stands to benefit from the introduction of new pedestrian amenities.


Looking northward of the 16th Street/MLK intersection, one can see more of the grassy swale which, in this instance, will ideally be reverted to a canal with the towpath at some point. Clearly $3.8 million in TIF money would hardly cover the cost to unearth the canal and add a parallel trail, but at least the contours of the land already hint at an eventual vision of an uninterrupted canal. Here’s the view:



And just beyond the barrier seen in the distance here is the canal—a portion that remains exposed to the sun and generally ignored by the public.


(Note: The above photo series was taken in the late summer of 2009. Since that point, the Glick Eye Institute has experienced considerable construction progress at 16th and Martin Luther King, and will most likely engender some modest pedestrian improvements at the intersection.)

This crude sampling of urban archaeology effectively demonstrates the enormous investment that a City such as Indianapolis was willing to incur decades ago, when it decided that one mode of transportation (car/road) had unambiguously fostered the obsolescence of another (boat/canal). The Indianapolis Central Canal was never a success, and it nearly bankrupted the state when it was first implemented 150 years ago. But its curiosity lingers—so much that artists’ renderings have devised fanciful proposals that actually envision a daylighted canal and towpath, extending underneath the interstate to link 16th street with 11th. For example, the shelved “Circle Truss” proposal from a few years back clearly envisioned an uninterrupted Canal Walk passing under the interstate, manifested in the renderings here, from the Urbanophile’s web link.

Whether the public would ever support the phenomenal expense for this final leg—circles circled in red in my above maps—is anyone’s guess, but the fact that visions exist for such a plan shows the enduring power of introducing water to urban revitalization proposals. My own opinion is that the extension of a path along the canal easement to link 16th and 11th streets would be costly but feasible, and would elicit a high return on investment by creating an uninterrupted greenway that significantly enhances the pedestrian network for the city’s near north side. However, unearthing the buried canal in this stretch may prove far too challenging and troublesome to justify the enormous cost. But big-city redevelopment initiatives over the past thirty years prove that we venerate water much more than we did in the mid 19th Century—the era of urban interstates—so I would hardly rule anything out. Like the Canal Walk itself, improvements should be incremental and perpetual, avoiding any collective complacency that normally accompanies the sensation of having reached a long-awaited goal. Regardless of the outcome of the TIF initiatives on Indianapolis’ near northwest side, the investments will most likely prove but a small component of an unceasing work in progress.

Scrubbing.

As public and private forces continuously try to repel the contaminants from despoiling the fragile coastline of my temporary adopted state of Louisiana, I can only reflect upon some house cleaning that could benefit this blog. Awkward analogies aside, I always hope to improve the scope of the blog, plumbing new depths through observations of the built and natural environment—simultaneously learning from others and teaching myself. The goal remains to divorce myself from partisanship as I look at things and simply ask, "What does it mean?" As American Dirt approaches its one year anniversary, I will set aside my goals for the blog’s impending toddlerhood:

1) Refinement of earlier posts. In a matter of weeks, you will see repeats of earlier essays—not out of laziness, though I most likely will time these re-runs for moments when I’m particularly busy. Rather, they will always be improvements of writing from before, whether it involves an interview, additional research, or recommendations/observations from the commenters.

2) Greater geographic diversity. I have had people ask if I will ever feature essays outside of the US. I deliberately wanted this to remain an American commentary, so I see that as highly unlikely—and the ground here in the States remains so fertile that I rarely if ever need to look overseas. I may reference observations from trips abroad, or from research that derives from foreign sources, but my goal is for this to remain an American blog. However, I do hope to show a greater geographic spread. Right now the American West is particularly underrepresented, which is more a product of having not traveled there much lately. I am bound to get a western blog post before too long. Indianapolis will remain the hub and will probably dominate the posts, though, as has been clear lately, I have strayed from Indy-based posts lately, mostly out of necessity.

3) Improved photography. This may be my biggest challenge. Clearly I’m not a pro photographer, nor do I have a state-of-the-art camera, and I’ve always wrestled with how much I want to instill artistry into my camera work. For truly distinctive urban photography, look no further than The Heidelberger Papers, whose blogger has also recently expanded his focus to cities well beyond Indianapolis. And Huston Street Racing deftly chronicles urban issues with a much more sophisticated lens than I can hope for. Photography is critical to my blog, but the blog will never elevate photography to the primary focus—as much as I try to improve photos through settings, shutter speed, and framing, far too many of my pics are taken spontaneously, often on the sly, and using an only moderately precise cell phone camera. I will let the readers of the blog know if I have a certain post that emphasizes photography first. And in spite of my often crude photos, I am already getting to the point where I have to be conscious of maxing out the available disc space for my blog. Chances are I will have to shrink the sizes of photos from my early posts, since they were inordinately large.

4) More clearly articulated themes. Aside from the “Terra Firma” sidebar, which is working pretty effectively, I want more of a rhythm to my posts, and I want them to be more obvious. Each month I try to do one photo montage but I don’t quite announce it. It should soon become clear. I may also soon start featuring guest posts, sometimes with a “Point-Counterpoint” approach. I will always make clear when, on occasion, I feature guest photographs, as I already have in the past.

5) More short posts. My early posts were monsters, sometimes totaling over 10,000 words. I was frustrated with so few responses, but I deserved it. Now if I have a long post I usually break it into parts, and I will try to feature many more brief posts as well, often with only one or two pics. (These may be the ones where the emphasis is the photography itself.) Most of my posts average about 1,200 words, and 2,000 has become the understood breaking point. I’ll try to make it abundantly clear whenever I have a mega-post and again will divide it into smaller parts.

Clearly the ultimate goal of all these refinements is to further foster discussion and feedback. I appreciate all the response in the past, and welcome your further recommendations for keeping this labor of love going strong. Thanks again.