OPINION: When talking Pullman sidewalks, let’s look ahead a bit

It has been painful listening to conversations about sidewalk fees in Pullman conducted largely during city council meetings but also on the streets and among business owners.

Now that the new concrete is drying in downtown, it is time to talk money. How much should the city charge for a certain amount of sidewalk use outside storefronts. A dollar per square foot, $10, $15? The question is unfortunate, not least because what money will be collected will largely be symbolic and will hardly make the city richer or poorer. Inappropriate as well is the timing, with businesses having just gone through hell and back over the last few months just trying to survive.

Shouldn’t the conversation be much less transactional and much more celebratory, lighthearted and about visions of the future. Listen to the words exchanged during council meetings, and more importantly the tone with which they were delivered, and you’d be forgiven thinking that the topic at hand is funerary, dealing with the passing of a loved figure or the demise of friendly colleague. Cheer up folks and be generous. Set aside all talk about money in favor of one about ideas for the way the extra walking room can restore life and civic activity lost to years of shabbiness in downtown Pullman.

The new sidewalks by themselves offer little in excitement. If it weren’t for the bike lane, red and sinewy and potentially useless as a bike lane but great as a graphic expression, they would be dreadfully bland. Here and there, there are signs of design, but by and large they remain undifferentiated for long stretches at a time. Which is terrible in one sense but excellent in another, namely as a blank canvas on which to paint whatever we want. One could indeed argue that had the sidewalks been overly designed, they would have dominated the scene and left little for the community to build and develop on its own.

Why not take this time to change the culture of design in the city, currently dormant and hidden under a pile of fear. Look at the entire stretch of the emerging downtown and you’ll notice that every trash can, every bench and every light post is picked from a catalogue issued by a company somewhere in Nebraska, Minneapolis or who knows where else? Nothing is specific to Pullman, or even the Northwest. Even the brick, when not marching mindlessly between trees, does not know what to do with itself, but pool in sudden blocks of lost significance. What should happen there is not sure, other than perhaps express nostalgia for a distant masonry past.

Look closer still and you’ll notice that every one of these choices above has in it embedded the fear of originality, creativity and, dare I say, adventure. All hide behind the cloak of history, true and tried and well entrenched in familiarity. The look of history is nice, but it can also prey on the insecurity of those who fear the unknown, terrified of what the imagination can yield because no one has demonstrated the power of its generative capacity.

This is of course not the place to go into the clash between history and modernity, imagination and lack thereof, but suffice it to say that it is critical to consider this time of change as an opportunity to modernize established relations between town and gown, city and country, old and young, art and science and so much more. Let’s use the newly gained concrete ground to connect to those students who came and gave brilliant presentations to the city council recently and who called for fresh methods by which to get their voices heard and their talents materialized.

In them we might see an important solution to the relentless flatness of the emerging sidewalks, namely by providing stands and other urban features with which to answer their call for a meaningful presence in downtown. Light posts and benches take up that charge right now, both good but limited in terms of inviting action. With the help of more design, other vertical components could and would make a difference in fostering connections and inevitably drawing attention to nearby businesses. Be it through making available makeshift classrooms, bar-style countertops on which to enjoy a conversation with a friend while consuming a slice of pizza, built-in chess tables with parasol-like covers up above, or something else altogether — verticality would here slow the eye down and allow downtown to function as pockets of interaction and less as a mere conduit to get to the next step.

Call off discussions about fees and invite those that dwell on creativity, until such time that is when the theater of life is well underway, and it is now appropriate to harvest social and economic synergies.

Rahmani is a professor of architecture at Washington State University where he teaches courses in design and theory.