Category: <span>Gov’t & Policy</span>

In the comments to my previous post about Northfield/Apple Valley, Anne B. said, “I’ve been asking for two years and I don’t have a clue what you and Ross and others want the city to be.” Well, I’d certainly never try to speak for Ross and others, but I’ll take another, more comprehensive crack at the subject to see on which points we might find agreement and disagreement.

What I “want Northfield to be”, or rather, my vision for the community, is fairly straightforward, and I’ll try to limit my details to those concerned with planning and land use. Things like “quality education”, “good health care”, “controlling heroin use”, and “promoting the arts” are beyond the purview of this discussion. At least for now.

The short answer is, I’d like to see Northfield be a community that demonstrates cradle-to-grave livability based on the collective wisdom of the last five millennia or so of urbanized societies; a cohesive, functioning community of people with a multiplicity of connections to each other (education, recreation, work, civic, church, social) that go beyond the superficial.

That means a mix of ages, a mix of occupations, a mix of land and building uses….. built to a scale designed for the convenience of human beings (not for 2000 pounds of motorized steel and aluminum). This discourages isolationism and encourages interaction between residents through all seasons of life, which fosters a genuine sense of community. It’s also psychologically and socially healthy, and if done well, sustainable. No more bowling alone.

People have known how to do this for a long time, and relevant examples abound. We’ve lost a lot of that knowledge in the 20th century, particularly in the postwar era, but the tools and examples are still there, and the knowledge is being recovered. (If this is too subtle, or too vague, I’d be happy to provide an extensive reading list and point to relevant resources to elucidate the things that are implicit in these first few paragraphs. For now, I’d like to keep moving along toward a longer, more detailed answer.)