Buried in the local news is the story of a toddler run over and killed in the K-mart parking lot on Lake Street last Sunday....no word whether the city will send police to control speed-crazed motorists rampaging in the streets...
A client of mine told me that she won't let her kid walk to school...four blocks away.... I suggest they set up speed traps near every school in the city and share the proceeds with the schools...50th Street between Nicollet and Lyndale whould be a good spot....two schools on 50th Street and every driver drives twice the speed limit of 15 mph. This is a very dangerous city for kids...I just read a great speach by the former Mayor of Bogata, Enrique Penalosa. He has some great suggestions for making a city safe for children. The whole speech is at: http://socrates.Berkeley.EDU:7001/Events/spring2002/04-08-penalosa/index.html Here's a few excerpts: The task for all of us involved in creating environments where many generations will live is not simply to create a city that functions efficiently. It is to create an environment where the majority of people will be as happy as possible. Happiness is difficult to define and impossible to measure; but let us not forget that it is what all our efforts, collective or individual, are about. Over the last 40 years the environment became an issue of deep concern to all societies. So much that today any 8 year old is worried about tropical forests and the survival of mountain gorillas. Curiously, a similar interest in the human environment has not yet arisen. There is much more clarity in our time as to what the ideal environment is for a happy gorilla or a happy whale, than what the ideal environment is for a happy child. We are far from having a shared vision of an ideal human environment; much less of the transportation system for it. God made us walking animals: pedestrians. As a fish needs to swim, a bird to fly, a deer to run, we need to walk, not in order to survive, but to be happy. A bird can survive inside a small cage and even bear descendants. But one suspects the bird would be happier inside an enormous cage the size of an auditorium and even more flying free. As we could survive inside an apartment all our life, but we can be much happier if we can walk and run about, as freely as possible. Ken Avidor Kingfield _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
