Walking in Claremont and elsewhere: slowing down and living

By BILL CHAISSON
Our reporter just returned from her first visit to Springfield, Vermont and pronounced it a pleasant place to be because it was so walkable. The downtown is compact and people live there, so there are people on the sidewalks and the place feels alive.

This is unfortunately not quite the case in Claremont. This is not the fault of Claremonters per se, rather it is the result of a series of planning decisions made by the city many years ago that were perhaps thought to be sensible then, but it is now generally agreed among planners that they were a mistake.

I speak, of course, of the cave in to car culture. Claremont is in relatively good shape in some respects, because relatively few buildings have been razed. But the emptiness of downtown sidewalks is a perfect example of a positive feedback loop in a system. Positive in this context does not mean “good feedback.” It means that the more it happens, the more it happens. In this case it means the more often someone in a car sees that there is no one on the sidewalk, the more often they are going to just keep driving.

The businesses along the north side of “Opera House Square” (I put that in inverted commas because I think it should be called Tremont Square again) have achieved a critical mass, particularly in the warmer months, by having outdoor tables on the sidewalks. These are filled people who are obviously living la dolce vita and your average motorist can probably barely restrain themselves from parking and joining in, even if they have somewhere else to be.

Routes 11, 12, and 103 all come together at the square, which should be a good thing, because it means motorists have to drive by businesses. But two things have been done incorrectly planning-wise in Claremont. First, the North Street bypass allows, yea, encourages drivers to avoid downtown entirely. Second, when you get to downtown there are not enough structural cues given to get drivers to slow down and/or stop. In addition to simply having people in evidence, it is important to build, for example, “bump outs”, not just at corners, but also in the middle of city blocks. When motorists see these narrowings of the roadway, they instinctively slow down and look around, trying to figure out who had the nerve to impede their progress. 

There is something about being encased in glass and steel and propelled by an internal combustion engine (often accompanied by one’s personal, loud, and dramatic soundtrack) that gives many people a sense of entitlement, a sort of “get the heck out of my way” kind of attitude. This is not conducive to the development of a lively street culture in a populated area. In addition to bump outs, it is advisable to install cobblestone intervals or some other hard-to-miss texture change in the paving and to plant street trees and shrubberies that make the roadway seem a bit crowded.

Just drive out to Washington Street to see the complete opposite of all of this: four lanes of traffic, minimal roadside vegetation, stores that face parking lots, not the roadway, a discontinuous sidewalk at best, and no one doing anything outdoors except walking briskly from the air-conditioned comfort of a store to the soon-to-be air-conditioned comfort of their personal automobile. It is all marvelously convenient and perfectly alienating. 

Very few people walk around on Washington Street for three reasons: (1) nothing really connects anything for a pedestrian; (2) things are very far apart; and (3) hardly anyone lives there. Downtown Claremont does not have the first two problems, but it does have the third, and for no good reason. There are plenty of places to live, but a lot of them are in horrendous shape.

It is a catch-22. Downtown businesses can’t thrive until there are people on the streets, but there won’t be people on the streets until there are more downtown residents. Some brave businesses are making a go of it and they deserve community support. In the short term, slow down, park (there’s lots of it) and enjoy your downtown. I’ve dwelt upon Claremont, but this actually applies to some degree to Springfield and Newport too. In the long term though, this is up to local government to do something. They have all been at it for 20 years and it is ongoing — the Main Street project in Claremont is the latest example — but they need to know that the population is on board with this downtown revitalization trend. Support your local businesses; shop and live downtown.

 

Bill Chaisson is the editor of the Eagles Times and he works and often eats out, but does not actually live downtown.