In the two decades between 1950 and 1970, Anaheim grew from 14,500 residents to 166,000. More than at any other time in American history, urban planning over those same twenty years was dominated by the automobile. Anaheim’s rapid growth during this car dominated era has lead to a city whose infrastructure has been built around getting people from place to place by car. This monomaniacal focus on the automobile is felt throughout the city even today.
The primary challenge presented to the city because of this rapid growth at the height of the car culture is that Anaheim’s infrastructure is designed around the car. Anaheim is very spread out, without any centers for people to congregate or transit connections between different parts of the city. Many communities have been bisected by freeway construction and continue to be harassed by freeway expansion. There is not a single street or block throughout the city that has not been negatively affected by parking whether it’s a lack of parking caused by over crowding or the creation of sufficient parking that leads to great expanses of asphalt that negatively impacts our community in other ways. Anaheim needs to transition its infrastructure from being car dominated into one that is more walkable, transit oriented and sustainable. While it is easy for some cities to build new infrastructure that’s not completely designed around the car, since they’re not having to change their legacy systems, it will take decades for Anaheim to change and evolve
While these changes will be hard to imagine in a city like Anaheim, we must start our journey down this path if we are to see the city thrive in the decades to come.
A Well Rounded Transit Plan
The first step towards building a more sustainable and closer knit community within Anaheim is to build a multifaceted transit system. This system must provide for multi-modal transit including driving, walking, cycling, and mass transit. Currently, the only way to traverse Anaheim is via car, we need to expand resident’s options without removing the car as one of those options.
The City of Anaheim is already looking at starting this process with the Anaheim Fixed-Guideway Transit Corridor Study. This study looks at building a dedicated bus route or monorail between ARTIC and the Anaheim Resort Area. This is a good start, one that needs to be encouraged and followed through on. But the scope of this study must be expanded to reach other parts of Anaheim. In needs to stretch from the furthest reaches of West Anaheim all the way through The Anaheim Canyon.
In addition to reliable mass transit, the city needs to endeavor to create complete streets that serve to transport cars, pedestrians and cyclists with equal ease and safety. Over time, as the city repaves and reworks roads, new bike lanes need to be installed and these bike lanes need to connect to one another to create a transportation network that allows cyclists to move around the city in safety.
Our pedestrian thoroughfares are the most important part of the city’s transportation network. Today, they are sorely lacking and must be improved. It is at the pedestrian level that social interaction happens and where communities are formed. In getting more residents walking throughout the city, health will improve, crime will be reduced and an air of sociability will arise in Anaheim. After all, we don’t get the chance to know our neighbors while stuck in traffic.
The Creation of City Centers
Cities and major commercial centers often spring up at transportation crossroads. The urban history of American’s West is largely defined by advances in transportation.
The first major outposts in the West were along the Oregon Trail and other routes west used by settlers in conestoga wagons. As the railways began to crisscross the country, new cities were founded and prospered. Then, as the automobile began to dominate the transportation landscape, we saw two waves of new cities come and go. The first was along the old Routes, such as Route 66. Today, many of the towns along the old routes only survive as tourist destinations catering to people looking for a throwback to an earlier time. The second wave continues to this day as new cities expand along the interstate system.
While this is true on the macro level for whole cities, it is equally true on the micro level within a city. City centers, those places where residents congregate to socialize and shop, occur at the intersections of transportation corridors. Currently, Anaheim has very few, if any, of these types of city centers. It is these types of centers that give cities their energy and economic vitality; and it is these types of centers that must be created within Anaheim.
Anaheim’s transportation infrastructure needs to be designed with these city centers in mind. By properly designing the transportation, city centers will grow organically without the Redevelopment Agency’s heavy hand interfering. As long as proper development incentives are in place, the city’s involvement in these centers should be minor.
Transportation is the foundation for these monumental changes we must see throughout the city if we are to prosper. Transportation is like the skeleton that everything else will connect to and hang from. If we can rebuild our transportation infrastructure, many of the other changes to our built environment will come naturally and organically, albeit slowly.
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