Omaha Developer Sells “Walkable Main Street” of Parking Lots
As the downside of sprawling development becomes better understood, some developers are getting better at greenwashing sprawl.
Here’s a pretty great example from Omaha, Nebraska. Charles Marohn at Strong Towns came across a story about Lockwood Development’s new office park in the Omaha World-Herald. And he was so taken aback by the disparity between the rhetoric and the actual design, he had to write about it:
It uses all the current buzz words….
Mixed use. Redevelopment. Independent living. Walkable. Main Street.
Do those words mean anything? Sadly, Omaha’s Sterling Ridge Development — a so-called “Main Street” concept — is not even a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It is a wolf in wolves’ clothing.
My favorite quote from the article, where words are simply objects with no real meaning, is this one: “The architects said the idea is for the multipurpose campus to be a walkable community where people work, live, play and worship.”
How quaint.
Fortunately, Marohn says, World-Herald readers seem to see through the flowery language. “This is not a ‘Main Street’ scheme,” wrote one. “It’s an office park defined by vast stretches of surface parking.”
Elsewhere on the Network today: The Wash Cycle shares a great new video explaining how protected bike lanes are changing the way people get around in American cities. Exit 133 reports the epic urban-planning battle between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses will be turned into an opera. And Bike Portland says a local animal shelter is refusing adoptions to folks who plan to bike their new pets home from the shelter.
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