Urbanity, History and the Giant Supermarket at Tivoli Square

Giant parcel pick-up lane constructed illegally in the public space on Park Road NW.

On the Columbia Heights email list someone wrote:

I actually heard a driver, as he was leaving his car parked in the pickup area, yell at some pedestrians that "this is a road, over there is the sidewalk" pointing at the area on the other side. I quickly yelled at him that "this is a sidewalk, that's the road" pointing to the street. Probably didn't do any good, but I had a good laugh.

I wrote:

I saw in the Giant announcement about the Cleveland Park store that for there, they hired an architecture firm with more direct experience designing projects in (real) cities. I think that the Tivoli debacle might have had some impact on that decision.

and Marcus Popetz wrote:

Last I heard they had submitted a design to DDOT, DDOT said "that's almost the same as what's there...no". and then said something to the affect of "Submit a new design by X date or we'll build it for you and charge you". I don't remember what that date was though.All gossip heard at the coffee shop, but may be some validity to it.

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Still, we haven't received any report about this. The arguments about the use of pubic space vs. having a "better" supermarket, and urban vs. suburban design are similar to the pro- and and anti- arguments about historic preservation.

Cities are great because of their urbanity and their history. By definition, the things you do to diminish urban design and history such as build suburban styled-car oriented buildings and spaces, demolish historic buildings in favor of post-modernist junk, or put on additions to buildings that are cheap and out-of-context compared to the use of historic materials and craftsmanship, weaken all the qualities that make cities (have the potential to be) great.

If we don't start young, and teach children these principles and why they matter and what they mean, we will continue to struggle against refashioning cities along suburban lines, the car (unless the world runs out of oil...)--not of a humanized scale, a walking city for people to go places and do things with others--on foot.