Route 20 was widened and Interstate 64 was built to help people get around, yet they make it difficult and unsafe for pedestrians and cyclists to get to Monticello. Bridging that barrier poses difficulties that are physical, psychological and bureaucratic.
This essay warns that plans to mitigate obdurate and problematic infrastructure can themselves become resistant to input and improvement. Yet, a visioning process that truly listens has the potential create positive change.
Anique Hommels illuminates a fundamental question facing planners who wish to change the world: the built environment—especially infrastructure—has a powerful incumbency that makes it very challenging to displace or modify. Aside from the broader truth that the status quo always has home-field advantage, one must reckon with issues of cost, interdependency with other systems, inconvenience and disruption but also the idea that physical forms shape human processes and thinking.
In my Monticello project, I am trying to find a way to get pedestrians safely past an interstate in general and a cloverleaf interchange in particular. That highway is a powerful fact-on-the ground that cannot be ignored: it is the prevailing reality. There will be costs and perhaps inconvenience associated with rejiggering the ramps to make them safe. However, I foresee a trickier social process problem in convincing the state’s highway engineers to modify their traditional approach—for example by substituting a right-angle turn for a cloverleaf or even adding a new light, crosswalk or stop sign. That’s not how they do things; it’s not in their protocols.
