Commentary: You can’t paint a town green

Commentary

by Gary Wilson

Few things bug me more than hypocrisy. Here’s an example:

Last year the town where I live painted murals on public walls illustrated with a “350” coupled with a photo of Earth from space. A little research revealed that “350” refers to greenhouse gas emissions and the murals are part of a public awareness campaign on global warming. There was no explanation of the “350” so the murals got folks thinking, which was the intent.

Oak Park in a few sentences

I live in Oak Park, the first city you hit eight miles due west of Chicago’s Loop.

Technically it’s a suburb but it’s really more urban than not and is much more like Chicago than the typical suburban sprawl. It is densely populated with narrow streets, very good public transportation and way more traffic than the central business district streets can support.

Oak Park has a reputation as being elitist and that is deserved. But no matter, I like where I live.

From pedestrian malls to clogged streets

For years the downtown shopping area was basically a pedestrian mall.

Through streets were closed and converted to walking venues, but ample parking remained on the nearby periphery. That made sense to me when I moved here.  I viewed it as smart and progressive.

Beyond congestion and pollution, cars isolate people and create tension and intolerance in tight urban streets. Parking lots are no better. They isolate, are aesthetically displeasing and make people vulnerable to criminals.

Pedestrian malls encourage walking and dining. Shopping on a pedestrian mall creates community, interaction and tolerance. Those positive

traits are so much of what Oak Park was about.

But over time the pedestrian malls fell out of favor and the two main streets were opened up to traffic and street parking. I suspect complaints from retailers were likely the driving force behind the change. Oak Park has long struggled to support a retail district and that continues today even as the streets are open to cars.

There was also a proposal for a parking structure at the local high school, presumably for the students to park their cars or those of their parents’.

A quick geography lesson

Oak Park is only 4. 5 miles square and has excellent public transportation that runs right by the high school. Building the parking structure and the related expense were controversial, but the power structure prevailed and the students got their parking garage –  the benefit of walking and the use of public transportation by able-bodied teens be damned.

Despite the concern for global warming expressed by the village with its “350” murals, Oak Park’s actions run counter to those concerns.  At every turn it has facilitated the increased use of cars which produce greenhouse gas emissions.

And talk about ironies, on its website Oak Park lists as an environmental accomplishment that it created an Idling Gets You Nowhere campaign to encourage motorists to turn off their engines.

This flies in the face of the fact that motorists many times have to wait, idling, for two or even three red light cycles during peak travel times to drive through what was once a pedestrian mall.

I asked Oak Park’s communications director, David Powers, to reconcile the “350” murals with the way the village’s decisions have facilitated vehicle traffic, congestion and pollution.

Powers didn’t provide a direct answer but wrote in a long email that Oak Park’s pedestrian malls were in response to the “advent of the enclosed malls that decimated traditional small business districts. The experiment was a failure of the highest order in Oak Park…..”

He justified the parking garage for the high school students as giving in to pressure from area residents who didn’t want the cars parked on their streets. He acknowledged Oak Park’s ample public transit but said “it doesn’t get everyone everywhere they need to go.”

Powers concluded his two-page response by asking that I not “condemn” and “chastise” and that I “acknowledge the complex milieu within which government must operate.”

Tough decisions and competing priorities

I understand that managing a community comes with competing priorities and management decisions can conflict with values. We all get that.

If wiping out pedestrian malls to make room for cars and parking is in the best interests of the community, fine.

If building a questionable parking lot for high school students in a small and walkable town with great public transportation somehow made sense — a real stretch — OK.

But the “350” murals designed to make Oak Park seem progressive on dealing with climate change are at odds with the reality and consequences of their decisions. Plus, it’s easy. But when those managers had to make tough choices with a real impact on citizens and the environment, they chose to facilitate auto transit with its attendant congestion and polluting emissions.

And that seems, well, hypocritical.