Pass the Olives

A Jumble of Opinions on Living, Thinking, Reading, and Making Things

Tag: Urban Planning

Cars Improve Our Quality of Life?

The incalculable costs of cars are in medical care, road building and maintenance, traffic control (though there seems to be little of that), dead car and rubber tire disposition, emergency vehicles for accidents, building and maintaining parking, etc. The air pollution is not just from driving but from manufacturing and processing the raw materials.

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Walter Reed (Army Hospital) Development

The need is for an entrance on the west side of the Takoma Metro Station, one that looks like an entrance — open, light, with a sign. Not just for Walter Reed but for everyone else on the DC side. Since this is not likely to happen now that Cedar Crossing, the Gables, and the soon to be built Metro-Village are all big buildings blocking the possible development of a visible entrance, perhaps some other solution could be found. A trolley is planned to go from Georgia Avenue across Butternut Street up Fourth Street to the Takoma station. Maybe before they get the trolley, they could put a big sign on the overpass. Something attractive and old-time trolley-friendly, like the one that would have been there before the Metro was built and a trolley served the area.

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The New Neighborhoods

Neighborhoods like the one you, or your parents, or your grandparents probably grew up in are still alive and well but are in high-rise buildings, the suburbs, urban renewal, and housing complexes. Our old neighborhoods were, where our grandparents and great grandparents lived, were relatively stable with generations of the same families living on the block, and if not on this block the next one over. It was a place […]

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