Fountain Square vs. Downtown

This morning I woke up early to take the bus to a restaurant at Fountain Square for an 8am breakfast meeting.  When I decided to give up driving for Lent, I promised myself I'd try to do everything I would have with a car - including going to meetings that aren't within walking distance of my office.  Fountain Square, for those of you not familiar with Waukegan, is the shopping district off the highway with a bunch of big box retail stores and chain restaurants.  It's pretty much the opposite of downtown, and I learned that even more clearly trying to walk around it this morning.

First of all, compliments to Pace Bus that's always been on time in the mornings when I've taken it.  I was in good company with people on their way to work, students on their way to school, and  people like me just going places we need to go.  There were a lot of people getting off the train and taking the bus, and at the corner of Washington & Sheridan, there are way more people taking public transit than driving by.  I got on the 568 bus at 7:02am and headed for Fountain Square.  I really like talking to people on the bus.  Some of you would probably dread sitting next to me on an airplane or bus or train because I'm a talker, but I learn a lot that way.  This morning I was on the bus with some middle school kids on their way to Jefferson (where I went to school!) and some people headed to Walmart.

I didn't realize this at the time, but that was the stop I was going to have to get off at too.  At 7:32am I got off the bus, yes, at Walmart.  The arch-rival of downtowns and small businesses.  I walked down a very empty, very long sidewalk around the Walmart to get to the restaurant where my meeting was.
Not only was my walk extremely lonely and the sidewalk literally only went all the way around Walmart island, but I can't imagine it's used much.  Fountain Square, unlike downtown, is built for cars - not for pedestrians.  I'm positive that people walking from their cars in the Walmart parking lot to the section of the store that sells milk have a way longer walk than I do from my apartment to buy milk.  And then they have to drive home.

I had about half an hour before my meeting started so I decided to grab some coffee at my other arch-rival: Starbucks.  After surviving crossing the giant, crosswalk-less street and getting to the door of Starbucks that didn't connect to a sidewalk (only to a parking lot) I made it inside.  The cashiers were really friendly but I didn't know them and they didn't know my name because they're not my neighborhood coffee shop.  As I sat by myself drinking coffee and watching an insane number of cars go through the drive though, all I could think about was how much more stressful the whole situation was than my relaxing mornings or afternoon coffee breaks at Joplin's Java in my neighborhood.  I love going there because I always see people I know, the coffee is great, and I like supporting the local economy and re-investing my dollars in my neighborhood.

So I made it to the meeting, had a great talk, and headed back to the bus stop to wait for the 568 back home.  I only had to wait a few minutes (although all bus stops without wind shelters are freezing cold in winter wind) and I knew one of the guys on the bus when I sat down.  One of my neighbors, this guy was actually working on a petition to expand Pace service on a couple routes to Zion and to the Navy Base so they have weekend service.  He had tons of signatures and was getting more every time somebody got on.  If you're interested in being part of the conversation about Pace Bus service, come to one of the upcoming community forums in the area.  I really a hope a lot of bus riders will come because most of the people who make these decisions about funding public transit don't actually take public transit.  There's a quote from Place Matters, a great book about urban inequality and metropolitics, on the subject:

"Metropolitan polarization is more than a troubling statistical trend.  It violates basic American values.  The spatial and political isolation of the central-city and inner-suburban poor prevents them from forging the cross-class coalitions necessary to make their influence felt and makes blatant class legislation against the poor more likely.  It threatens to dissolve the bonds of solidarity that join us as Americans.  As a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York observed, it forces us to ask 'whether we will be able to go forward together as a unified society with a confident outlook or as a society of diverse economic groups suspicious of both the future and each other.'  Indeed, Henry Richmond argues that the political fragmentation of metropolitan areas represents 'the most important community-building challenge to face America since the adoption of the constitution'." - Chapter 7, Metropolicies for the 21st Century, pg 253.   All that to say, economic inequality is cyclical because people with lower incomes tend to have less political power, and economic segregation only serves to keep people from building alliances that can be used for political progress.

Lessons learned today:  people are great, buses get you where you need to go, and in my opinion, downtown is still way cooler and definitely more pedestrian friendly than big commercial shopping centers.  Mixed-use neighborhoods with public transit access and walkability are where I like to live.