Friday, September 7, 2007

september and place-making in east county

IN THE GAZETTE: Construction trailer causes kerfuffle in Cloverly; Konterra development steals spotlight from growth of existing neighborhoods; my high school paper named best in the state.

ABOVE: These signs attempt to define the boundaries of Colesville.

As much as I love East County, it's hard to find a sense of community here. In the past forty years, rural farming villages like Burtonsville, Colesville and Fairland have been swallowed up by suburban development designed with little regard to creating defined "places."

"Place" refers both to the boundaries of a community as a whole - as suggested by signs like those used in Colesville (see above) and the spaces within it, like well-known streets, shopping districts, or parks and squares. Downtown Silver Spring has "the Turf," which serves as a hangout for the entire East County. Its success proves how important public spaces are to a community's health - and to the local economy, as seen by the measures Downtown restaurants are taking in preparation for this weekend's Jazz Festival, partially held on the Turf.

While these kinds of spaces don't exist Up The Pike, the whole month of September seems to be devoted to creating public spaces for East County residents to hang out with one another, even if only temporary.

so much more AFTER THE JUMP . . .

Attractions for this year's Summer Carnival are set up at the corner of Fairland Road and Old Columbia Pike.

For the next two weekends, the massive field at Fairland Road and Old Columbia Pike will become home to the 16th Annual Summer Carnival, hosted by the Burtonsville Volunteer Fire Department. Riding a Ferris wheel may not seem like a town-building activity, but the carnival creates a "town square" of sorts where East County residents can hang out and enjoy themselves, even if only for a few nights.

At the end of the month, the 17th-annual Burtonsville Day casts Old Columbia Pike as East County's Main Street, complete with a parade. This year's celebration is especially important as it commemorates the fifth anniversary of the Fairland Community Recreation Center, a facility that gives residents a place to meet year-round - albeit in a more structured fashion than a public square. I doubt you'll hear people say "let's meet up at the community center," but it's an important step towards creating better gathering places.

Over the summer, we talked about Ashton's struggle to create a village center that showed the community's heritage while also giving residents a place to hang out. These spaces are every bit as important to East County's development as office parks and highway interchanges, if not more so. Events like the Summer Carnival and Burtonsville Day show East County residents want to get together and celebrate their community. How can we harness that energy into creating places where they can do that during the rest of the year?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your paper is very divisive. East County has been getting all the amenities of the rest of Montgomery along with job growth and an astronomical increase in housing prices BECAUSE it is in MONTGOMERY COUNTY. Look at your PG counterparts and you should be glad that you live where the grass is greener. If you split Montgomery East and West, that basically moves West Montgomery to the nation's wealthiest county and East Montgomery to whatever is PG's ranking. I think together they both benefit as being ONE MONTGOMERY

Dan Reed said...

The column you're referring to is something I wrote three years ago completely in jest. I don't think East County should split off, but I do think we deserve some of the amenities that have been lavished on Bethesda and the I-270 Corridor.

Why should I have to spend an hour in traffic going to a mall or a job in Rockville? Why shouldn't I have access to those things in my own community? That would certainly take a bite out of traffic. If the Konterra mini-city in Laurel ever takes off, East County will become more a part of Prince George's - because we'll have an employment and retail center literally in our backyard.

East County's in an unusual position: to an extent, we share some of the cachet of Montgomery County, but compared to our counterparts in West County, we don't really reap the benefits: top-notch schools, higher-quality housing, easy access to jobs and shopping. I want us to have those things. The revitalization of Downtown Silver Spring is only a beginning.

Anonymous said...

While that view may be advantageous for whatever purposes you have in mind, whether political, or just promoting this blog, it is a divisive view. Montgomery County, under the General Plan, has only one corridor (I-270/Rockville Pike). What you often describe as the US 29 corridor is not one of the original corridors of the General Plan but merely a slice of the I-95 corridor in PG county. Bethesda has the good schools, Rockville has the good shopping. Places like Gaithersburg and Germantown also have mediocre schools, long commute times, and other things you complain about. Collectively, however, Montgomery has it all.

I will be similarly be glad to see the regional mall and other features go up in Konterra, if ever.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

I will be similarly be glad to see the regional mall and other features go up in Konterra, if ever.

September 07, 2007 3:05 PM

RE: Why do you say if ever??????????

Christopher Chambers said...

JUTP--you can bet when Ike Leggett joins with marty O'malley to get slots and video poker here, then the "parlors" will go right here in the east county. I predict a huge one displacing the Chuckie Cheese on Briggs Chaney. East county is on the fence. It can tip to something truly wonderful, or fall off into more sprawl, a dumping ground for subsidized housing/Section 8 folks, a means of saying there's affordable housing in MoCo, an example of the 21st Century of "white flight," a Soweto for immigrants from the Third World and Latin America whilst the Europeans and wealthier Muslims collect in Potomac...in other words, east county could soon be everything bad about a suburb in the 21st century.

A town center with attendant green and tree space is one answer, truly. Plus commercial space. I mean a real town center like main street with a park square. But I'm sure they'll put up some corporate creature of chain stores and flat office buildingsa la "Office Space." National policians are whores of various huge interest groups. Local politicians, unless they are single issue NIMBY types, or right wing Christian book burners, or left wing nuke free zoners, are largely whores to developers and builders. That's my theory and east county is a nice lab for which to test it.

Anonymous said...

Christopher Chambers said...

JUTP--you can bet when Ike Leggett joins with marty O'malley to get slots and video poker here, then the "parlors" will go right here in the east county. I predict a huge one displacing the Chuckie Cheese on Briggs Chaney. East county is on the fence. It can tip to something truly wonderful, or fall off into more sprawl, a dumping ground for subsidized housing/Section 8 folks, a means of saying there's affordable housing in MoCo, an example of the 21st Century of "white flight," a Soweto for immigrants from the Third World and Latin America whilst the Europeans and wealthier Muslims collect in Potomac...in other words, east county could soon be everything bad about a suburb in the 21st century.

A town center with attendant green and tree space is one answer, truly. Plus commercial space. I mean a real town center like main street with a park square. But I'm sure they'll put up some corporate creature of chain stores and flat office buildingsa la "Office Space." National policians are whores of various huge interest groups. Local politicians, unless they are single issue NIMBY types, or right wing Christian book burners, or left wing nuke free zoners, are largely whores to developers and builders. That's my theory and east county is a nice lab for which to test it.

September 15, 2007 12:11 PM

RE: Looks like somebody has been smoking a little too much on that Stuck on Stupid Grass.......

Anonymous said...

The only evidence that Christopher Chambers might be smoking Stuck On Stupid Grass is his notion that "east county could soon be everything bad about a suburb". SOON??? Brother, we are already there. There is no turning back from the cesspool that we've become.