Tiger Boulevard Sucks
Tiger Boulevard sucks and it's everyone's fault. We've spent so long perfecting our life for cars that we forgot what we were supposed to do with the people in them. The sidewalks that line the road in Tiger Boulevard aren't really meant for walking. There aren't many places to park so that you can get out and walk, and if you're going to cross the street, you're either jaywalking or walking half a mile to the nearest pedestrian crosswalk. Even some neighboring restaurants don't give you the ability to cut to the next building without going to the road, instead blocking it with hedges and fences.
The road serves two functions: providing a primary artery into Clemson's campus, and housing 60% of the retail and restaurants found within two miles of Clemson. How often has my daily commute been ruined by Chick-fil-A's drive thru being backed up a quarter mile into the street? Where is the community? The culture on Tiger Boulevard is pick up your food and leave or just flat out leave. Not only that, but unlike some box stores that will help smaller businesses gain some traction by placing them into an environment where people are going to be (which is a different but fairly equal amount of suck), there are few instances where there are shared parking lots. One of the few exceptions being a Gamestop and a Caribbean jerk chicken restaurant.
Building our roads for cars is not only making it worse for people, it's making it worse for cars too. Tiger Boulevard is the antithesis of Koolhaus's commercial complex. It provides no adjacencies or ease of access to most of the buildings on its perimeter, and it also fails to meet any form of uniqueness such as the corner stores of mixed program spaces found in Tokyo. It's a Las Vegas strip filled with ineffective signage and an absent community. The shame is Tiger Boulevard is just one of the many roads like it in Upstate South Carolina.
Tate,
ReplyDeleteI think this is a very interesting comparison. My first instinct is to question whether or not its fair to criticize the spatial (and infrastructural) patterns of Clemson vs. a Koolhaas skyscraper in Manhattan. Not only because of the geographic discrepancies, but also because Clemson simply lacks the cultural congestion that is necessary to justify Koolhaas' logic. However, there is no doubt Tiger Boulevard could benefit from a reimagination of program adjacencies and better community planning.
Tate & Brittany,
ReplyDeleteMy first thought I think was in line with Brittany's where the comparison seems a little far removed from Koolhaas's time and place by essentially you're saying, that's the point. In argument of Koolhaas's proposal, here we can see the repercussions of the opposite in a way. Though would an argument for or against Koolhaas only really be relevant if we consider precedents in the urban condition that were successful or failed? I guess technically they call it The City of Clemson...