Planners from hell
The City Hall bureaucrats who are plotting to wreck Portland's South Park Blocks to make them more bike-y are talking out of both sides of their mouths about how many of the spectacular old elm trees they're going to chop down to do it. Fred Leeson, a capable old-school journalist if ever there was one, tried to get to the bottom of what they're actually planning to do. He wrote up his findings here, on the blog Building on History.
Take your blood pressure pill before reading it.
This project is truly a disaster in the making. And who are the people responsible for it? Here's one. Moved here three and a half years ago from Vancouver, B.C. Here's another one. Moved here two and a half years ago from New York City.
These people know better than you. So get with the "vibrancy" already.
Trees are racist. They breed amongst their own species and block the sunlight from competitors. They hoard all the habitat that need trees to survive (birds, squirrels, insects, fungus) for themselves. They also prevent the developers from making a killing by not letting them destroy perfectly good infrastructure and infilling everything possible.
ReplyDeleteNow there's no more elm oppression
DeleteFor they passed a noble law
And the trees are killed for bikes
By hatchet, axe, and saw
Suddenly I feel like I'm reading Rush lyrics. Canuckian, not Limbaufian.
Delete