Troy Community Works

After a long summer hiatus, the Building Community blog for TCW is back.  Many may not know the title of this blog is taken from a poster/postcard from Syracuse Cultural Works that we often hand out at TCW events.  The title is “How to Build Community” and includes a collection of loose prose with such phrases as “leave your house; know your neighbors; talk to the mail carrier” and my personal favorite “bake extra & share.”  The lines conclude with the phrase “know that no one is silent although many aren’t heard-work to change this.”  I have adopted this phrase as part of my personal mission statement, but it is also something that TCW believes in.  Let me explain….

Although this blog has taken a summer break, TCW has not.  As an organization we have been busy solidfying our foundation programs and going in new directions.  Our HomeOwner Center has recently formed an advisory committee made up of builders, realtors, bankers, and landscape professionals.  This team is working to expand our current foreclosure counseling efforts, but also to add two new classes for Miami County residents- first time homebuyer education and homeowner maintenance. Diane Flora, our housing counselor continues to serve the Miami County citizens and keeps up to date on the latest news and trends in this area by attending state and national training opportunities.  The board of TCW continues to expand and improve as well.  This summer Board Member Ritika Kurup led the rest of the board in a strategic planning retreat using the compression planning techniques.  Our first strategic plan, completed in 2008, will expire at the end of this year and our board was committed to following an updated plan.  We’ll release the highlights when it is complete.  Our neighborhood analysis is almost completed-we were lucky to have intern Bethany Brubaker complile hard data from police reports, housing code violations, and a physical assessments to allow Doug Wenning of the City of Troy put it into a GIS map.  More on this in a future blog. We have also begun work on our 2010 Make A Difference Day Fix It which will again feature non-profits around Troy.

And last, but not, TCW’s biggest project to date.  We have acquired 221-223 E. Main Street (formerly the Salvation Army Building) as our first development project.  Pictures and more will soon follow, but we are looking forward to restoring this blighted property to its former glory.

It appears to be a busy fall for TCW- I hope you will join us on the journey as we continue to build community.

In three weeks TCW will host Eric Fredericks from Sacramento, CA to come to Troy for a workshop and evening presentation as part of our second annual summer speakers series.   As someone who lives for environmental planning, to spend a day chatting with colleagues about walkability is my idea of good time, but why should you be interested?  And just what is “walkability” anyway?

The definition of walkability is just how friendly is an area to walking-how easy is it to get around to things without being dependent on a car.  The Walkable and Livable Communities Institute has a good page on what is  (see our links).  It can include such things as having good connections between shops, parks, and residential areas, to looking at car speeds and volume of traffic.  People like to have a stroll in a place where they feel safe and where they feel connected to a community.  Improving walkability can go hand in hand with such varied things as economic development (ie filled storefronts make people want to walk on by and look inside) to rails to trails conversations (walk from your home to the bike path). 

As gas costs continue to hover around the $3 per gallon mark here and, not withstanding terrible oil spills, will likely to stay there or increase, people are looking at new ways to get around.  Walking is just one of those ways (cycling, carpooling, and more people working flex hours or from home are other ways to reduce gas consumption).  But walkability does so much more than just ease the pocketbook.  When you walk around your home, you notice things you wouldn’t in a car.  When you walk in your hometown, you might say Hi to someone,  you might stop into a shop you’ve never been to before, and you just might stop and smell the flowers your neighbor just planted.  All of those things contribute to making our community a safer and stronger place to be.

I’m really looking forward to having Eric come back to Troy to speak about walkability and I think you will enjoy his presentation too.  Mark your calendars for May 25 at 7pm and look to this website & blog for more details.  The next few weeks I’ll try to post other blog topics about walkability.