I realize a great many Santa Claritans and, consequently, many readers of this blog think there’s nothing wrong with the way Santa Clarita is laid out, built, designed, what have you.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with the SCV’s design and layout either, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.
Enter Reburbia, a contest in which people, most likely big-city dwellers, think about problems in our suburbs and offer ways to fix them.
Some of the ’solutions’ are cool, elegant and quite inventive. Others are just silly. Here’s a few from their website:
Airbia
The Problem: So you’re a typical SCV resident with a job in downtown Los Angeles, Santa Monica, or God Help you, the LBC or OC. Metrolink doesn’t exactly work for your schedule (or perhaps you don’t like the smell) but you’re tired of driving south all alone in your $45,000 SUV. Add to that the fact that the freeways suck, will never be improved and traffic is only getting worse. What do you do?
Solution: Airships! Airships depart the SCV at say, the Cadsden Property, every 30 minutes on weekday mornings, two hours on weekend. They fly you south at a leisurely 45 mph while carrying 400 fellow commuters and land in strategic spots around Los Angeles. Ticket prices are more expensive than the train, but less than your gas in an era of $4.25/gallon gasoline.
My Take: Entirely too Sci-Fi for us, plus there’s the whole “Oh the Humanity!” factor to get over. But I’d so be down with riding an air ship to work.
Big Box Agriculture:
The Problem: The recession has hit Santa Clarita retail real estate pretty hard, leaving a large number of big box retail buildings empty. Empty buildings attract undesirables, which in SCV speak include Other People’s Teenagers with skateboards, homeless people, and ugly, empty beige buildings. There seems to be little demand for this gigantic spaces, leaving ugly storefronts and big, empty parking lots.
Solution: Turn these big boxes into indoor greenhouses/community farms where people can plant, shop for, consume, and prepare organically produced produce.
My Thoughts: Never happen. Even though farmers markets are popular in town, this would require zoning changes, massive amounts of water which we don’t have, and would be expensive (to modify the buildings).
Regenerative Medians
The Problem: Other than looking pretty, street medians (where they exist) in Santa Clarita don’t do much. This proposal says it’d be smart to transform those medians into something that benefits local neighborhoods.
Solution: Make medians useful by installing water treatment systems, allowing community gardens.
My Take: Meh. We’re entirely too anal about our streets to allow something like this, though I could see support for small, local community gardens taking off in many neighborhoods in the SCV. We’re thinking of doing one ourselves in my condo complex.
Anyway, take a look at the finalists and the winners and post your thoughts below. I think the SCV already distinguishes itself from other suburbs in a number of ways, including the paseo system, but some of these ideas might have merit nonetheless (especially the ones that look at water use).