What brought me to write this post after taking a more than six week hiatus? Sacramento.
That's right. This past weekend, I took a class for my Master's program in Sacramento. The classroom building lies in mid-town, about a 15 minute walk from the Governor's Mansion, the Capitol, and City Hall. It's a really neat neighborhood, with curb extensions that provide for on-street parking and slow traffic down; a human-scale assembly of shops and houses on tree-lined streets; and a good mix of what seem like historically-significant buildings and more modern buildings that blend in well with their older counterparts. Generally, the whole area says "pedestrians welcomed here."
Next to midtown is old Sacramento, which tries to blend the 19th century-look of a typical Western city with the well-scaled and eclectic shops of a small town. It succeeds not completely, but enough to make it an appealing place to walk. The riverfront could be featured more, but I learned that it used to be completely ignored and that it is better-used now. Besides the intimidating highway on old Sacramento's border, it is also pretty pedestrian-friendly.
Outside the city, though, is the usual sprawl of leapfrogged development, cutting up farm land and aligned generally along the highway network. Some of these neighborhoods are gated. But all of them seem to be fairly narrow in terms of socio-economic diversity (vis-a-vis lack of any diversity in home types and prices).
Overall, I had a great experience. My hosts were exponentially gracious and nice to me. I got to see the human-scale city and the greater region. I made it to class on time. And, perhaps most importantly, I had fun. In addition, the experience reminded me about the importance of scale. People often describe cities as homogeneous units: New York is a pedestrian's paradise; Los Angeles is completely unwalkable. Such generalizations, though, ignore scale. Some neighborhoods in New York, at least in the metropolitan area, are as sprawled as anything else in the U.S. And some neighborhoods in Los Angeles are great for pedestrians. Scale is important. Maybe this isn't that profound, but I think it's often, unfortunately forgotten.
