A Walking Dream of Laura Street: The Path to City

A new and improved Laura street is coming with wider sidewalks and the promise of foot traffic for downtown business. Let's imagine that vibrant city street to be. But first, play George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue on your iPod, YouTube, or your brain if you remember the tune (United Airlines uses it in all their commercials if that helps). That's the sound of a bustling progressive city. The yawn of the clarinet is your entry on to the street. It doesn't take long before the syncopated rhythms of people walking, cars honking and flashing lights signal, the start of something great. Last week was the Jacksonville Jazz Festival and it was a reminder of how great crowds are. Walking down the sidewalks through crowds of people was like a little fantasy. Imagine for a moment that it wasn't an annual festival but rather your daily walk to work. Not so much the crowds sitting but the people walking with purpose and destination. 

At this point, if you've fired up of Rhapsody in Blue you should be filled with that enthusiastic sound of progress and optimism. Pretend that your standing in line not at that booth for funnel cakes but at vendor's truck window parked along the sidewalk and your buying your first cup of coffee for the day. The old guy in the truck leans out the window and growls in a thick Albanian accent “dollar twenty-five, you want cream and sugar?” Somehow you manage to lift the lid, blow on the coffee and nod no thanks without a word. You fish two bucks from your pocket, pay and walk up the street.

This feeling is familiar, you've been there before. It's Georgetown in DC at lunch hour, South Beach on a Friday night. It's walking down a sidewalk with people behind you and in front for a moment sharing a path before you go reach your separate destinations. You know your not in a stale shopping mall because you the trees are still wet with the morning dew and dogs on leashes are great each other with sniffs and licks. It's the feeling of CITY!

Back at the festival sitting on the edge of a planter listening to jazz you watch people in a narrow line passing each other going to the left and right through the sea of portable lounge chairs on the street. And again you start to imagine being on break from the office, walking down the sidewalk eating a hot single slice of cheese pizza, being careful not to get any grease on your white dress shirt. People pass and you glimpse each face, a teacher, an electrician, a mayor, a hippie. It's a parade of the everyday. Sometimes smiling, sometimes grouchy, sometimes speeding past the slow line, late for an appointment somewhere. You remember you have a have box of proposals ready at the print shop. Turn on a dime and head back up the street past the cafe tables; past the tiny grandmother squinting and at the sign hanging over the ophthalmologist store; past that giggling group of girls clearly to young to be downtown in the middle of a school day; past that fire hydrant you always bump into and through the glass doors of the print shop. There's a line at the counter. Where's that girl that always takes knows what she's doing? You give her one of those toothy grins that says; hey, remember me? I need those prints from yesterday, go get them 'cause I'm a regular customer and I'm in a rush. She smiles back politely with the look you give someone who has a regular account.
Now we're at the part of Rhapsody in Blue that earns it's name with the big emotional pay-off. We feel ecstatic with the kind of emotional exuberance that comes from one good thing happening after another. This is it this is the moment where incremental achievements realize big intentions. Laura Street is that energized path that leads to a great Main Library and bustling plaza; a thoroughfare that aligns itself with a corridor to nightlife along Bay Street to remind you that there's more to do when the sun goes down. What really makes a great street is that it's more than just a path to get from one place to another. It's a destination in and of itself that isn't the place of home or work but a great civic space that has more people than cars.
Laura Street is going to be what urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg calls the Third Place. It's where we can be social, interactive, and democratic in a way that home and work can't be. Festivals, parades and fireworks are all very thrilling but they come once a year. Imagine a little bit that thrill every weekday, walking through a swirl of community. What a great place that would be away from the increasing isolated primary place of home or the demanding secondary place of work. Jacksonville already has a street called Main. But when it's finished Laura will become the main street. Our main street.
Listen to your ears ringing with the crescendo of Rhapsody in Blue the hurried pace of the city slowing down but your hearth still beating fast as you cross the threshold that turns into home or work. You wake up from your happy little urban dream of a city coming true.