I’ve never understood how a few property owners near the Sacramento River made city and state officials think public safety means keeping people off the levee parkway.
For 50 years, the safety and security argument was a smokescreen—a stratagem to give exclusive parkway access to several dozen residents and lock out everyone else.
Now the ruse is dead. Mayor Kevin McCarty and the City Council are ready to finish the paved levee bike trail that links Freeport to Downtown and the American River Parkway.
The safety and security con job was obvious from the start, dating from the late 1970s. But nobody challenged it.
The truth stood in plain sight. Obstructing public access to parkways creates trouble.
A writer named Jane Jacobs explained why fences are enemies of public safety. Her 1961 book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” tells the story. The work is a classic, studied today by urban planning and public policy grad students.
The book is a deep dive into urban life. Jacobs explains why neighborhoods thrive with diversity. She describes how cars destroy communities by commandeering public spaces.
Jacobs didn’t write about the Sacramento River and its levees. But her ideas are extremely relevant to the river parkway—yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Change the names and dates. And watch how Jane Jacobs proves the dumbest thing Sacramento ever did for public safety on the levee parkway was inhibit public access with private gates and fences.
Jacobs writes, “The worst problem parks are located precisely where people do not pass by and likely never will.”
She gives examples in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco where empty parks attract flashers, muggers, drunks and drug addicts—the same characters cited by Pocket residents near the levee when they demand higher fences and stronger gates.
Jacobs explains what happens when diverse citizens—“early-bird walkers,” students, mothers with children—use parklands. She writes, “Generalized parks can and do add great attraction to neighborhoods that people find attractive to a great variety of other uses.”
Her words define the Sac River bike trail. A great variety of other uses. A beautiful waterfront path filled with cyclists and pedestrians and fishermen, all bringing life to the city.
Local authorities finally caught on. McCarty led the way when he explained why completing the parkway is a “top priority.”
He recalled 20 months ago when the city opened the Del Rio Trail from Land Park to Bill Conlin Youth Sports Complex in South Pocket. The route follows the old Sacramento Southern rail tracks.
“We opened the new Del Rio Trail and people were concerned about more activity there—it’s going to bring in more negative activity,” McCarty says. “It’s been the opposite. We bring in more moms on strollers, more dads on strollers, and bikes and seniors walking, more eyes on the street. The old Jane Jacobs model.”
The old Jane Jacobs model. The new model for urban success.
When the City Council unanimously approved environmental reports for the levee parkway bike trail, several speakers adopted McCarty’s theme. They name-checked Jane Jacobs.
A few property owners who hate public access looked baffled. Who was Jane Jacobs, this icon everyone keeps talking about?
Here’s who: a woman without credentials, without college diplomas, derided as a loudmouth New York housewife.
But she wrote a book that changed the way urban planners think. She organized her Manhattan neighborhood to stop a freeway that would cut through Greenwich Village, Little Italy and Chinatown—a freeway inconceivable today. She died in 2006 at 89.
Jane Jacobs was no romantic. She rejected the fantasy that parks are idyllic antidotes to urban congestion and poverty. She said parks evolve. They need tangible uses, design and nurturing.
Most of all, parkways need people. Not gates and fences. Not deceptive demands for security.
R.E. Graswich can be reached at regraswich@icloud.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
